... the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he moved to Sacramento, California, where he became a hospital custodian for three years. During this time, he began writing seriously and publishing his stories. Carver suffered personal turmoil in 1967, both losing his father and filing for bankruptcy. However, in the same year, ... into the living room. The narrator, thinking about the scenic ride up the Hudson, asks the blind man which side of the train he sat on. His wife scolds him for his inquiry as she gives him a look and asks him why it matters. The narrator, who says ... of storytelling that gained p...

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

... that this would keep them warm they helped her. The soldiers more or less helped dig their own graves without even knowing it. After dinner she sat by the fire to warm herself and the soldiers climbed up into the loft to go to sleep. Mother Savage then removes the ladder from the ... what she wanted and she said what she thought, even when it was scandalous. Kate does not restrict herself to a certain way of acting, living, or writing, as is seen in the content of her stories and novels. In a time that it was not acceptable for women to speak out about sexuality and independence ... , Ka...

• Word Count: 2584
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

... a year after finishing high school and maintained his wife and two children by working as a janitor, gas-station attendant, and delivery man. He became extremely concerned in a writing career after having a creative-writing course at Chico State College (now California State University, Chico) in 1958. His short stories began to appear in magazines while he studied at Humboldt State College (now ... the end of his life, which ended permanently after the struggle with lung cancer. He died in August 2, 1988 at the age of fifty (Kennedy, X. J. and Gioia, Dana, 2005). Writing Style Carver's ...

• Word Count: 3978
• Approx Pages: 16
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... and over twenty full-length novels. Lafferty quit his job with Clark Electrical Supply in 1971 to devote all his time to his writing. Raphael stopped writing in 1980 because of health problems. He suffered a major stroke in 1994 that left him incapacitated. R.A. Lafferty passed away on March ... but that in drama and outrageousness beats such familiar history highlights like the "Boston Tea Party". Lafferty has captured the essence if Indian writing very well. This is shown by his description of day to day living of the Indians. This book showed how Lafferty could be versatile ... writ...

• Word Count: 2850
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... audiences would be able to argue different meanings depending on what they considered to be most important (Straus 652; Sokel 204). Both Kafka and Hemingway exhibit, through their styles of writing, ambiguous meanings, implied motifs, and similar hidden themes. Hemingway's short story, "Hills Like White Elephants," is a narrative "in which little actually 'happens'" ... Kafka's and Hemingway's literary works are intentionally ambiguous. In "Hills Like White Elephants" the clearly intentional ambiguity derives from Hemingway's use of the iceberg principle and vague writing style....

• Word Count: 3072
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the statement: 'This book is hard to classify.' Then why bother? Many more assert vehemently that it is not a novel. Myself, I prefer to call it a narrative" (On Writing 12). Cather's preference anticipated an important reformulation of the criticism of fiction: the body of literary theory, called "narratology," articulated in the 1960s by French structuralist writers. Narratology's purpose, ... more dwelt upon than are the trivial incidents of their lives; it is as though all human experiences, measured against one supreme experience, were of about the same importance" (On Writing 9). T...

• Word Count: 7335
• Approx Pages: 29
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... serves as Hawthorne's messenger in relaying the old maid's heroism or journey beyond her domestic guidelines as a woman: "Hitherto, the lifeblood has been gradually chilling in your veins as you sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or another. Henceforth, you will at least have ... ...

• Word Count: 2986
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

... their lives in a desperate and degraded effort. Wealth - or the promise of wealth - turns Anthony into a failure. He believes nothing is worth doing and refuses to work. He dabbles with writing a medieval essay, and rejects his grandfathers' offer to make him a war correspondent. Anthony falls apart in wild and repulsive parties during which "people broke things: people became sick in Gloria ... with too much gusto. Dick Caramel is Anthony's friend. He is an unpublished writer when the novel opens. Fitzgerald uses him to discuss his own ideas about literature, philosophy, and writing. D...

• Word Count: 2828
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... , Phoenix Jackson, and through this character, she displays the example of what that passion and perseverance looks like walked out in life. These works mirror each other in that Frost's writing "is simple enough for a child to read, but the meaning is complex enough to foster scholarly debates and long essays" (Cummings, n.d.). Similarly, Welty's work "is most intriguing ... . While there is much to be learned from this character, we do not know much about him or her. Perhaps that is the brilliance behind the seeming simplicity of Frost's writing, which propels so much thought. The atten...

• Word Count: 2554
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... , that a piece of language was estranging doesn't guarantee that it is always and everywhere so; it is estranging only against a certain normative linguistic background and if this alters then the writing might cease to be perceptible as literature. As to literariness, Eagleton says that it is a function of the differential relations between one sort of discourse and another; it is not ... patterns. In this way of looking at narratives, the author is canceled out, since the text is a function of a system, not of an individual. Structuralism argues that any piece of writing, or any signif...

• Word Count: 3510
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... for historical omissions. This provides an opportunity for the once marginalised persons to stand up and be heard. The Post-Colonial context gives one a strengthened understanding of Ondaatje's purpose in writing this novel- to narrate the forgotten stories of those who contributed to the building of the city of Toronto. Through this narration, readers are given an alternative, if not more ... ) at the strong recommendation of a friend. I am happy to report that I enjoyed reading this novel very much. It too is complex but I was carried along with the author's near-poetic writing and his...

• Word Count: 3985
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School

... in discussion of variants of development of a plot, the aleatorica of the novel is unwrapped, supported by author's references on Alan Rob-Grije, Rolan Bart and other theorists of the "writing". Existential sights of the author find the expression in basic of the concept of the novel "there is only one good definition of the God: freedom which supposes existence of ... ...

• Word Count: 2592
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... and imagination of the writer/poet, the Realists wanted to de-emphasize the contribution of the writer and thought writers should "objectively" see contemporary life as the material for their writing. They attempted to keep themselves as writers from coming between the reader and the life they presented in their art. Also, the age of the Romantics valued the details of ... ...

• Word Count: 3498
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate

... and sudden awareness. I Want To Know Why' is told from a first person point of view where the sensitive narrator is trying to comprehend the meaning of the epiphany that's what I'm writing this story about. I'm puzzled. I'm getting to be a man and want to think straight and be O.K. Comprehending and trying to understand can similarly be seen in The Grave', where Miranda, like ... ...

• Word Count: 2806
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate