... some larger and greater intuitive leap. It is as if 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 was considered "poor" ... lead lives of near-panic. If they have work, the are generally unhappy with their jobs. Many critics describe Carver as a "blue-collar realist." In other words, Carver's characters...

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

... accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true." Balzac's admonition proves appropriate as the tale of four characters unfolds over 603 pages of a finely crafted novel, even more old-fashioned in its fictional technique than Such a Long Journey. This time the personal misfortunes unravel against another watershed in ... heavy with irony. In contrast, the less fortunate survive by achieving what one character calls "a fine balance between hope and despair." This summary merely skims over the agony these haunting charact...

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

... accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true." Balzac's admonition proves appropriate as the tale of four characters unfolds over 603 pages of a finely crafted novel, even more old-fashioned in its fictional technique than Such a Long Journey. This time the personal misfortunes unravel against another watershed in ... heavy with irony. In contrast, the less fortunate survive by achieving what one character calls "a fine balance between hope and despair." This summary merely skims over the agony these haunting charact...

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

... their lives," (Ondaatje, pg.157) is a well-written metaphor that describes his relationship with his friends. A prism, by definition, refracts light into a spectrum of colors. Correspondingly, Patrick contorts other characters' identities as his own. The readers are introduced to this concept of reflecting light even before the novel begins. This is indicated by, "(D)riving the four hours to Marmora under ... resides today. These once marginalised migrants are now given a chance to present history from their perspective and give readers the underside of history'. Ondaatje tells the stori...

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

... the writing of the decades before coined the term Post-Alcoholic Blue-Collar Minimalist Hyperrealism to describe the school Carver may have inadvertently founded (Jerome, Wallace. 2007: 2827). Carver's characters are typically working-class people somewhat down on their luck. Often, alcohol figures in their lives, less as a stimulant than 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 insufficie...

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

... the participants never get caught up in the meaning of it. War is merely a place to leave. The characters hurry back to life as usual with all its money and booze. The characters in this novel never reach tragic proportions; instead they are simply pathetic. They do have their poignant moments, but ... they never rise to the greatness that the characters in Fitzgerald's later novels reach. There is a bleakness, a sorrow to the novel, a pessimistic cloud that hangs over all the characters and America as well. The title suggests the protagonists' movement from the pampered life of ... yo...

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

... of the poem "nightfall- Through her past experience the child's welcoming of change has allowed their relationship to progress. In addition to this the characters have exchanged roles, we view the father has grown old weak "your face has grown to ancient innocence- whilst the child is now portrayed ... figures of adulthood and responsibility. They desire to go back but realize it's too late' Instead of accepting responsibility and change as do the characters in Father and child they long for their life before. From the first word I' the poem becomes personal. Robert has created a nostalg...

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

... she explains and shows you as the reader what it was like to live in the post World War II South. Flannery O'Connor's characterization of racist characters in "The Geranium," "The Barber" and "Judgment Day," illustrate the existence of racism in the post World War ... Segregation, Freedom's Story, TeacherServe). With O'Connor living in the South it becomes evident why her writing was influenced this way. O'Connor has a number of characters with racist traits but there were three that stuck out to me. "The Geranium" reveals a character named Old Dudley. He is an interesting ... to deal wi...

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

... we got them where we want them, drunk, running. They"ll give us what we need" (Zitkala-Sa 23-25). Writing intuitively, allowing characters to tell their own stories with their own voice and at their own pace, writing without chronological structure, writing prose daily, and working on several ... Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Bingo Palace and Tales of Burning Love are multi-voice narration and non-chronological storytelling. With recurring characters who are victims of fate and the patterns set by their elders. They are structured like intricate puzzles in which bits of informat...

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

... and beings. Such a disposition is an obvious prerequisite for the creation of legends and local tales. The occurrence of natural phenomena puzzles the characters who are in the habit of being suspicious and trying to find answers outside the material world which is later on applied in the creation ... not to be only far-attached from the Puritan concept of the world but also to ridicule it and illustrate its bad effects on the characters which is chiefly the case in the representation of Ichabod Crane's personality. The people are under the spell of this quiet place and therefore ... us...

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

... ELDERS The lack of family structure in Lives of Saints and There Are No Elders have profound consequences in the development and actions of the characters. Lives of the Saints by Ninno Ricci is about the troubled life of seven year old Vittorio Innocente who lived with his mother Cristina and ... 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 in first ...

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

... dark, coarse and dreadful imagery appeared in Poe's stories, in here "The Oval Portrait". Also to explore the inner psyche or the idea behind the creation of the characters in the story and relate them to Poe's own personality and background: The Narrator, The Painter and his Bride. For what particular reason or reasons, they behave the way they ... and quaint and why the painter is so obsessed with his job of painting. In other words, the main focal point of the article is on the psychology of the characters in the story. Another important thing to discuss is that, in what ways Poe's w...

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

... witchcraft, and the concepts of guilt, confession, and hypocrisy to show his feelings on the Puritanical society and the way they treat other people. He does this by using primary characters in the novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and many short stories who have a problem, like an inner secret, or who have some kind of guilt ... intense emotions as jealousy, lust, and revenge, Hawthorne never allows these to appear. Indeed, he often trivializes the negative drives of characters by referring to them as "naughty." The adult passions are also removed by making many...

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

... lets the reader glimpse into the mind of the narrator or the main character of the story, exposing to us his fears, his hate, and his perversion. Many of the characters in Poe's stories seem to be insane. The narrator often seems to have some type of psychological problems. For example, in Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," the story opens with ... the very end of the story that we realize that the entire event occurred fifty years ago, a subtle detail, further enhancing Montresor's obsession. David Herbert Lawrence says that "to the characters in Poe's story, hate is as inordinate as lov...

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

... story contains, that most readers would not consider upon their initial understanding. In "Hills Like White Elephants" there is a commonplace opinion that the implied meaning of the two characters' discussion is about whether the girl should go through with getting an abortion (Link 4). Through this understanding many people assume that every other symbol in the story relates to the ... ...

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

... students a better understanding of how individuals have responded to their current society and culture and its relationship to the past. The human effect can be felt through identifying oneself with characters created with emotional relevance, thereby adding weight to an outlined dates-and-facts study of history. In this fashion, it is planned to urge students to think beyond their individual ... ...

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

... hour "The story of an hour- is really not an interesting story. The story has a very confusing plot which made me take a very close look at the story and the characters to understand the meaning of the story to the author point of view. The first sentence of the story knows that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble great care ... ...

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

... about the personality behind his name. At the end of the story he changed his name to something more daring and ends up becoming a more daring person. Lafferty names his characters much like Hawthorn did in relation to personality and role in the story. Writers like Lafferty has inspired people even start schools for people interested in writing science fiction. People ... ...

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

... story and is desperately searching for luck and money in order to please his unhappy mother. As in My Son the Fanatic', this story also has a reversal of roles between characters. However this reversal is more apparent and dominant. Paul's mother defines luck as what causes one to have money and as a result Paul begins a desperate quest to prove to his ... ...

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