... to know why by Sherwood Anderson, The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence, The Grave by Katherine Mansfield and My Son The Fanatic Hanif Kureishi. These short stories are all associated through the theme of childhood and youth and can be comparatively and contrastively discussed by using this theme as well as different fictional ... ideals and how they have a bearing on his problem of wanting to know why'. He wants to know why Negro's are squarer' with kids than white men and why they hold a position of inferiority. He wants to know why Henry Riebeck's father is condemned by the commu...

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

... -Maurice, a 19th century Canadian writer, and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, a writer widely considered as the father of the American short story. In my analysis, through comparing the two stories I want to look at the different functions legends play in the creation of the narrative. First ... old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day, that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means." Women could also be seen as the engine that either drives the character to willingly change his attitude to life, or causes troubl...

• Word Count: 2890
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to describe a cathedral, but has trouble. He says they are very tall, have buttresses, supports and carvings of devils, lords and ladies. They're big, and can be made of stone and marble, he says. Men wanted to be close to God in those days, but that's ... the narrator suddenly realizes that through contact with another person, he somehow encounters the divine. Historical Context Economic Climate The characters who people Carver's short stories, including "Cathedral," find themselves in times of diminishing expectations. In 1978, only about 11.7 percent of the United States population wa...

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

... No Elders by Austin Clarke is about West Indians and the complications they face when separated from their native land and culture. Clarke assembles eight short stories each having unique characters and plots that tell about different aspects of the lives of immigrants in Toronto. Most of the stories are recounted ... after the passing of his mother. Similarly we see how age difference contributes to the separation of family in book There are No Elders. In the short story entitled "They"re not Coming Back" the mother, named Claudette, is a single parent of two daughters. One day when th...

• Word Count: 2760
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... accomplished pianist. She attended numerous social events and became very popular in St. Louis high society. She also became interested in the movement for women's suffrage although she never became very politically active. When she was nineteen, she married Oscar Chopin, a twenty-five-year-old French-Creole businessman ... fragile heart. After reading "The Story of an Hour- and processing it in my own interpretation, I was lead to believe this short story was talking about women's rights and how they were suppressed and held back during that time period. In Janice Chopin's story, it appe...

• Word Count: 4614
• Approx Pages: 18
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... These soldiers would help out around the house, and "could be seen cleaning up the kitchen, washing dishes, chopping wood, peeling potatoes, washing linen-in short, doing all the chores like four good boys working for their own mother."" (Fiction A Pocket Anthology R.S. Gwyn Page 65 paragraph 3) These soldiers appeared to ... the behavior of the bourgeoisie, and the fashionable life of Paris. (http://www.online-literature.com/maupassant/ Literature Network) As is evident with the short story of Mother Savage, the author was greatly influenced by the war. Having served in the French Army, ...

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

... block. While some readers interpreted the collection's final story, "Swimming Lessons," as a forerunner to future fiction about the immigrant experience, their expectations fell short when Mistry's first novel, Such a Long Journey, appeared in 1991. This complex tale of corruption during Indira Gandhi's years in office returns once ... his community defenseless and despairing. As the narrative opens, it moves once more into the familiar milieu of Bombay Parsis, which the earlier short-story collection introduced. The engaging but far from exceptional activities of Gustad's family, inclu...

• Word Count: 4673
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... block. While some readers interpreted the collection's final story, "Swimming Lessons," as a forerunner to future fiction about the immigrant experience, their expectations fell short when Mistry's first novel, Such a Long Journey, appeared in 1991. This complex tale of corruption during Indira Gandhi's years in office returns once ... his community defenseless and despairing. As the narrative opens, it moves once more into the familiar milieu of Bombay Parsis, which the earlier short-story collection introduced. The engaging but far from exceptional activities of Gustad's family, inclu...

• Word Count: 4675
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... not the major component that Hawthorne used to express his attitude toward Puritan society. He demonstrates in the novel The Scarlet Letter and the short story "Young Goodman Brown" just how hypocritical the citizens of Salem could be toward one another and how their actions completely contradict their beliefs ... one the inside and causes more guilt. These are ways Hawthorne addresses guilt and confession in The Scarlet Letter. "The Minister's Black Veil" is a short story, which Hawthorne uses to address guilt using a similar theme. A young minister had a bad memory in his history conc...

• Word Count: 3188
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... and hope for the future. The third book finds Anthony enlisted in boot camp and having an affair with Dot. She is reminiscent of many of Fitzgerald's women in later novels. Dot is a Southern illiterate girl who is stupid, earthy, uneducated, too easy to get in bed and horribly in love with her man ... He is unable to stay in love with Gloria. He is a man of dreams and illusions. His traces of violence and his need to dominate his women grow into other male bullies later in Fitzgerald's career. Anthony begins as the trim and dapper man-about-town, wearing his attitudes in the same way .....

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

... the form of transcendental aestheticism and the way they are psychoanalytically inter-connected. Keywords: Freudian Psychoanalysis, Complex, Vampirism in Art, Eros and Thanatos, Women, Death, Immortality 1. Introduction Edgar Allan Poe once said "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." ... one of the key techniques he employed in writing most of his stories. The present study tries to apply traces of psychoanalysis in the short story "The Oval Portrait" using specific technical terms of Freudian psychoanalytics including complexes, obsessions and disorders in human being...

• Word Count: 3098
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... she shows how these issues intertwine with the literal and figurative immigrant journeys that an ethnic women writer has to pursue in American culture (Zaborowska 115). Yezierska's first book Hungry Hearts was a collection of short stories that was made into a Hollywood film. Through this book she went through the ... and Redbook as well as anthologies of Native American writings, such as, Earth Power Coming and That's What She Said, also Fiction by Native American Women. She has published two collections of poems, Jacklight (1984) and Baptism of Desire (1989). Her novel Love Medicine (1...

• Word Count: 3356
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... true through an analysis of the texts The poem "In the Park- by Gwen Harwood, The poem "Father and child- by Gwen Harwood, The short story "Sky High- by Hannah Robert, Shakespeare's Othello' and the film "Cruel Intentions- by "Kevin Williamson- The poem In the park' composed ... regret and disappointment the central character undergoes as she acknowledges the self- sacrifices she has made as a mother. The Catalyst accountable for this women's change occurs when an unexpected confrontation with a past lover reminds her of her past of opportunity, freedom and romance. Their awkward and me...

• Word Count: 2540
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 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 Humboldt State University) in Arcata, Calif (Encyclopedia Britannica). Later, ... as a further depressant. Completely indifferent, their failures, like their hopes, are small, even weak (Jerome, Wallace. 2007: 2827). The characters in Carver's short stories struggle to find a way to express their problems.  Words are insufficient.  Carver's su...

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

... material for investigation. As the analysis will focus on the definition of stories of initiation and the appliance of these criteria on Hemingway′s short fiction, other aspects of interpretation (e.g. the often mentioned autobiographical content or stylistic devices which are characteristic for Hemingway′s iceberg-principle) have to ... of the initiatory experience. This includes the loss of original innocence concerning the protagonist1 and is often compared to the biblical Fall of Men (Freese 97). Furthermore, this approach generally stresses the aspect of duality in the initiatio...

• Word Count: 5305
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

... explore his interest in writing. The New Mexico Quarterly Review published "The Wagons" in 1959, his first short story. In 1968 his first novel was published, Past Master. Lafferty wrote over two hundred short stories and over twenty full-length novels. Lafferty quit his job with Clark Electrical Supply in 1971 to ... the same time. Lafferty's Nine Hundred Grandmothers is an interesting display of his sense of humor. This story is the title story of a collection of short stories. Ceran Swincegood, the main character in the title story, is a member of an expedition to an inhabited asteroid...

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

Willa Cather's short story, "Paul's Case," is about a young man who is fighting what he fears most: to be as common and plain as the world around him. Paul feels he ... solution to his problems, and when he realizes this only temporarily fulfilled his dreams, he gives up and decides to take his own life. Within the text of Willa Cather's short story "Paul's Case" the use of symbols and motives help to develop and understand the main character. Paul is introduced as a smiling young man with disrespect for most ... expeditions and bragging about encounters with celebrities. According to Jennif...

• Word Count: 2556
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... hatred and prejudice is replaced with more noble values, such as understanding and a sense of mutual respect? These are among the themes in the American short story, "The Tower Pig." The tale is set behind, and outside, the walls of the Thomaston Penitentiary in present day America; the exact geographic ... as mutual respect. But nevertheless, the personal impact the journey has on Caine seems tremendous. Though many arguments could be made against why the two men could never be friends, and while I am aware that it would be a blatant and severe act of arrogance, if I should attempt to s...

• Word Count: 2809
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 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'" to the protagonists, which means that almost all of the substance emerges ... as contrasting Gregor's in the novella, out of respect for his own sister, Ottilie (Nervi, "Kafka's Life"). Similarly, Hemingway's background also relates the hidden meaning in his short story, "Hills Like White E...

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

... in number than the other two regions. While I wanted to stick to my own list, some of my students were in favour of including short stories from other regions such as South Asia, Africa, Latin America and Caribbean Islands, being prone to embrace the works from periphery. The ... very rewarding. Another confrontation I faced with my students was the selection of topics for term final papers. Once again, as is the case with short story selection, I came up with my own selection of topics that they found exclusionary. In my effort to find a middle ground, I called for ... students is tha...

• Word Count: 2530
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... I am only adapted to live in one place, the zone of darkness, and I would not have it any other way. The mythos I chose for this narrative short story is romance. The tripod fish is the protagonist and has a very high amount of power. He is the leader of the other tripod fish, and set out ... he increases not only his knowledge, but also that of others. He is ultimately a good soul and cares for everything around him. I chose a short story to show a journey, and also to tell a tale of a fish who wants to better his life and that of others. The ... short story allowed me to show detail,...

• Word Count: 2853
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

... ; and "Judgment Day," illustrate the existence of racism in the post World War II South. Throughout most of O'Connor's writing there is a racism factor in each novel or short story. She touches on this in every story because she has seen first hand the racism in the South as well as when the Nazis put the German Jews in ... like this to teach the reader about the history of the South and what went on from the 17th century to the 1960's. As I read on in O'Connor's short stories I came across a short story called "The Barber." Rayber is the main character in this story as he confronts the ...

• Word Count: 2519
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

What was Daphne Du Maurier attempting in "The Birds" and does she succeed? In the short story "The Birds", Daphne Du Maurier tells us about how humans have a false superiority. They think that they are the most intelligent race in ... word "fluttering." We are all reminded of what a bird's wings sound like. This sentence sounds better as a long one than it would if it was a short one. It speeds up your reading pace because everything that is happening is all written in one sentence and so the person reading it wants to know what is happening ... to emphasize the sharpness of the bird's beaks...

• Word Count: 4431
• Approx Pages: 18
• Grade Level: High School

... formal writing I would find inspiration enough to write another book. I have yet to accomplish that goal, but I am still a writer. In seventh grade, I discovered a marvelous new genre of literature: the short story. In the short story, I found again that pilot light that had not burned in me since my last award. I have won no awards with my ... short stories, despite a few efforts to gain recognition, but I have found, in recent years, that I need no bronze-plated medal or cardstock certificate to tell me I write well. I write not to ... of one than anyone expects. I would consider my...

• Word Count: 2564
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

... , bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life. This is a haunting tale of passion, privilege and biting physical labour, of men and women moved by compassion and driven by the power of dreams - sometimes even to murder. Michael Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on Sept. 12, 1943. He immigrated ... " (137). Patrick's effort at trying to elucidate Clara's and Alice's mysterious past is actually an attempt at coming to terms with his own story since the stories of these two women are intricatel...

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