... married man, who has always been exceedingly kind and gentle. The disturbed speaker attributes his downfall to the "Fiend Intemperance" (p.12) and "the spirit of perverseness." (p.13) Perversion, he believes, is "...one of the primitive impulses of the human heart." (p.13) "Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action for no other reason than because he knows he should ... which bears this motto, appears "a huge human foot d'or, in a field of azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel." (p.283) It is important for ...

• Word Count: 4324
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... collaboratively with the text, arrives at understanding through a cyclic process of reading and rereading the signs, trying to fill in the open spaces that are at the heart of such fiction. This kind of approach is sometimes called "reader response criticism." The use of a first person limited narrator is one of the ways that Carver opens the text to multiple interpretation. Although the ... is as if in the darkness created by his closed eyelids that he finally "sees" the essence of the cathedral, and by extension, the essence of human life. In a moment of quiet epiphany, the narrator a...

• Word Count: 11148
• Approx Pages: 45
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School