... 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 elements. Sherwood Andersons, I Want To Know Why', like Mansfield's The Grave' are stories about unaware children, and their entrance into the world of knowledge and truth via the process of initiation and sudden awareness. I Want To Know ... he gains through his woode...

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

... , the gaining of experience and insight, is depicted as a physical movement, a journey. This symbolic trip of the protagonist additionally supports the three-part structure, which is usually found in initiation stories. The three-part structure of initiation can shortly be described as the three stages of `innocence′ - `experience′ - `maturity′ (Muller 41). The motive of the journey reflects ... Camp" In "Indian Camp"3 - being the first story of the Nick Adams-cycle and thus marking the starting-point of the "Konglomerat gescheiterter Initiationserlebnisse und traumatischer Schock...

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

... 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" by government standards. The rate ... , virtually all reviewers laud the shift. Anatole Broyard, who suggests that a reader must be "something of a semiologist" to understand Carver, also links him with "strong American...

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

... as certain conceptions common in the Puritan past of the country. I shall look at these features of Irving's story in detail later on. Both stories are told in the er-narrative, the form that enables both detachment from the narrated material and a greater level of objectivity. Nevertheless, the narrator ... mainly German, folktale themes and motifs. Having introduced the life of the community, I shall devote the following paragraphs to the individual characters in these stories as I believe their respective fate is the key to the understanding of the function of the legend in the narrati...

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

... philosophical outlook leads us to psychology of his inner personality and is also 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 ... are, death, horror, dream like atmospheres, murder. He published "The Oval Portrait" in 1842 which is also considered one of his shortest stories. While many critics suggest that Poe is a post-Gothic writer, he nevertheless used many Gothic conventions in his own work, including medieval settings, superna...

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

... treats him like an equal when he should be the superior because he is a white man and his neighbor is of color. O'Connor uses language throughout her stories that a reader almost cringes in present day hearing, like in the "Geranium" when it says " I say they got 'em a ... servant next door-a nigger- all dressed up in a Sunday Suit" (The Complete Stories 8). When I first started reading, I thought she was racist but as I write this paper, I have come to realize that it was in her nature to write like ... ." According to Teaching with Documents: The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, "The p...

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

... , and to not give up on it. Paul is very unhappy with his common life and does not want to end up working in a factory like his father. He creates stories to make his life seem great which results in him not having any friends in his life. To fill that hole he chooses to spend most of his time at ... teacher who visits a concert as being unworthy of the theater and "had the feeling of wanting to put her out " because she did not belong to the "fine people and gay colors "of Carnegie Hall" (p.75).  Devoting in art and music is Paul's addiction, a solitary drug and pleasure that replaces ...

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

... 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 person by vivid, comical and often grim characters and describe in great detail the ordeals ... , had damaged most of organs as a result of excessive drinking and was in poor health. In the story we see that there is jealously between the brothers, common between same sex siblings. The narrator tel...

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

... house builder, a painter, a thief."" In the past, minority groups have been suppressed and not given the opportunity to present their version of history. Alice emphasises the importance of telling personal stories: "Each person had their moment when they assumed the skins of wild animals, when they took responsibility for their story."" Here, Ondaatje is again talking directly to the reader, explaining ... essay is based upon a paper the author wrote for Professor Neil Bissoondath's "Postcolonial Literature II" [ANG-64699A], Laval University. Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion narr...

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

... from Firozsha Baag. The middle-class Parsis who inhabit the residential block known as Firozsha Baag come to life in these eleven intersecting stories, just as the building itself takes on an embodiment of its own. Placing the characters for the most part within the confines of ... and the older ones fear the encroachment of a changing world. This conflict between religious tradition and personal fluidity creates the tension in each of the stories. The collection has been compared to Joyce's Dubliners and to Chekhov's work-again, fiction that focuses on a limited company but manages to u...

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

... from Firozsha Baag. The middle-class Parsis who inhabit the residential block known as Firozsha Baag come to life in these eleven intersecting stories, just as the building itself takes on an embodiment of its own. Placing the characters for the most part within the confines of ... and the older ones fear the encroachment of a changing world. This conflict between religious tradition and personal fluidity creates the tension in each of the stories. The collection has been compared to Joyce's Dubliners and to Chekhov's work-again, fiction that focuses on a limited company but manages to u...

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

... analyzing the human psyche than was possible for anybody in his time, perhaps even our own. I do not believe that he wrote his stories for our personal entertainment, but rather depicted humanity very deliberately in its whole erroneousness. The truth found in his writings is just too awe- ... the reader wonders what is the driving force behind the narrator's insanity. Even though there are many more elements to Edgar Allan Poe's short stories than just his creative use of narration and setting, these are characteristics, which have attracted the most attention. Yet this is merely a too...

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

... that we encourage students' appropriation of academic discourse to enable them to critique it" (432).1 By allowing students to bring their own stories, experiences, ideas, and critiques into the classroom, this provides the students with opportunities to work together, to learn from one another, and respect ... 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 logic ... tend...

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

... which can be found and applied in Carver's well-known short story Cathedral. The short story Cathedral was included in Best American Short Stories, 1982. It is the final story in Carver's collection Cathedral published in 1983. With its publication he finally received the critical praise ... 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 (Encyclope...

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

... 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 Cinderella experience. The film was very successful and she went to Hollywood for a short time where she ... just sort of grab the tail of the last person's story: it reminds you of something and you keep going on. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break and fall, it g...

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

... 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 devote all his time to his writing. ... 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. This race of beings is ... called Finnegan, an...

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

... their names on it so you can write home about them."" (Fiction A Pocket Anthology R.S. Gwyn page 69 paragraph 3) Maupassant took the subjects for his pessimistic stories and novels chiefly from the Norman peasant life, the Franco-Prussian War, the behavior of the bourgeoisie, and the fashionable life of Paris. (http://www.online- ... evident with the short story of Mother Savage, the author was greatly influenced by the war. Having served in the French Army, many of his stories were written about this particular war. As it was discussed in class that even today, we are affected one way or...

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

... American novelists and short story writers. To some, Nathaniel Hawthorne has earned both of these titles. From writing several successful novels, and many short stories, Hawthorne has introduced the way of life in Puritanical America to many readers. Along with his views on this culture, Hawthorne uses irony, ... 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, and shows how society looks upon these people. ... it was no...

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

... began to study science, decided to abandon her Catholicism, and started to write and publish. Her first novel -At Fault- was published in 1890, followed by two collections of short stories, "Bayou Folk- in 1894 and "A Night in Acadia- in 1897. "The Awakening-, another popular story written by her, was published in 1899, and by then she was well known as ... a writer, and had published over one hundred stories, essays, and sketches in literary magazines. She liked her writing to be spontaneous, and normally she wrote her stories all at once, with little revision. "After the public uproar...

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

... , when I was in elementary school, my one and probably only goal at that time was to impress the teacher with an excess of complicated vocabulary. So instead of beginning my stories with "Once upon a time- I probably used something like "And so it fortuitously occurred in an exciting annals of history that ." I at least hope my writing has come along way from ... first story, Little Bear Plays Tag. In third grade, I won third with the less inspiring piece, Chris's Birthday Party. In these stories, in their awards, I found my passion, though at nine, it only flickered. I have not written ...

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

... narrative reveals information supporting the hidden meanings. Both of the literary works' hidden meanings also have many alternate hidden meanings that can change depending on the perspective from which the stories are read (Straus 652; Sokel 204). Another explanation to the wide variety of hidden meanings is that both authors, Kafka and Hemingway, wanted their work to be ambiguous so that ... actually 'happens'" to the protagonists, which means that almost all of the substance emerges from the vague dialogue between the man and the girl, Jig (Link 3). In short stories, language is...

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

... Fitzgerald himself that he is talking about. " It's been mighty funny, this success and all," said Dick. "Just before the novel appeared I'd been trying, without success to sell some short stories. Then, after my book came out, I polished up three and had them accepted by one of the magazines that had rejected them before. But the really awful days aren't when ... ...

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