The struggle for superiority can sometimes grow too intense. In Penelope Lively’s novel Moon Tiger, she illustrates a scene with two siblings scaling a cliff at the beach as they search for fossils. Once Claudia sees her brother Gordon find something, she desires to reach the top of the cliff in hopes of finding a wealth of these fossils. As she attempts to pass Gordon to reach the top, he tries to block her path, and she ends up slipping and falling to the ground below. Their mother, Edith Hampton, attempts to calm her children and help Claudia regardless of her exhaustion. Lively uses literary devices such as diction, personification, imagery, repetition, and selection of details to dramatize the complex relationships among the family …show more content…
As the passage opens, the author employs an intense vocabulary to explain the behavior of the characters. Claudia is scaling the cliff and “hunting for those enticing curls and ribbed whorls,” and she “[pounces] once with a hiss of triumph” when she finds an ammonite (Lines 4-5). The use of words like “hunting”, “pouncing”, and “hiss” produce an animalistic image that compares the extreme focus that she has during her search for fossils to that of an animal hunting for prey. She is taking this expedition very seriously, and a rivalry unfolds from this intensity. Claudia sees her brother examining something he has found, and “Suspicion and rivalry burn her up” (Lines 12-13). The personification of “suspicion” and “rivalry” displays the potency of her jealousy, and she rushes to surpass Gordon’s progress. Once Claudia reaches her brother, she struggles to pass him to reach the “wonderfully promising enticing grey expanse she has …show more content…
As Claudia’s climb to the top continues, the beach becomes further away from her, and “its shrill cries, its barkings, its calls are clear and loud but from another world, of no account” (Lines 6-8). The personification of the beach and its distant noise exhibits her indifference towards her surroundings. Claudia only focuses on her goals and the path she must travel to accomplish these goals while blocking out the rest of the world. She is oblivious to the events occurring in the environment around her, and she feels that they are insignificant in her life and should have no influence on her behavior. Gordon is also clueless about his surroundings, and he is only concerned with what he has claimed as his bit; he feels that it is solely his space and that Claudia should find her own excavation site. Gordon’s sense of ownership and repetition of “my” and “mine” throughout their argument demonstrates his limited view of the world as whatever he is focused on with complete disregard for the other people within his environment. He only worries for his claimed part of the cliff while refusing to acknowledge the rest of his surroundings. In comparison, Edith is painfully aware of their effect on the environment. As she attempts to pacify the children and inspect Claudia’s injury, there are “clucking mothers and nurses, the improvised sling, the proffered smelling salts” around
The author uses diction in the passages to signify the effect of the author¡¯s meaning in story and often sway readers to interpret ideas in one way or another. The man in the story arrives to a ¡°[dry] desert¡± where he accosts an animal with ¡°long-range attack¡± and ¡°powerful fangs.¡± The author creates a perilous scene between the human and animal in order to show that satisfaction does not come from taking lives. With instincts of silence and distrust, both of them freeze in stillness like ¡°live wire.¡± In addition, the man is brought to the point where animal¡¯s ¡°tail twitched,¡± and ¡°the little tocsin sounded¡± and also he hears the ¡°little song of death.¡± With violence ready to occur, the man tries to protect himself and others with a hoe, for his and their safety from the Rattler. The author criticizes how humans should be ¡°obliged not to kill¡±, at least himself, as a human. The author portrays the story with diction and other important techniques, such as imagery, in order to influence the readers with his significant lesson.
Since Sister was affected the most by certain actions of the family, Welty narrated this short story through Sister’s point of view to show how the function of the family declined through these actions. Sister was greatly affected when her sister broke the bonds of sisterhood by stealing her boyfriend and marrying him. Secondly, Sister was affected by the favoritism shown by her family towards her younger sister. Since her sister was favored more than her, this caused her to be jealous of her sister. For example, Sister shows a lot of jealousy by the tone she uses when describing what Stella-Rondo did with the bracelet that their grandfather gave her. Sister’s description was, “She’d always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away. Papa-Daddy gave her this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace when sh...
Once while hunting for boar with Arab Maina, Arab Kosky, and her dog, Buller, Markham comes face to face with a dangerous, lone lion. In this section, Beryl is extremely descriptive and recalls the memory in a fashion that allows the reader to see the events unfolding through her eyes at a lifelike pace. “Buller and I crouched behind them, my own spear as ready as I could make it in hands that were less hot from the sun than from excitement and the pounding of my heart.” (Markham 87), depicts Beryl’s thrill at the possibility that she may go toe-to-toe with the lion. This excitement outweighs her fear of injury for herself; however, she restrains Buller, as to prevent him from trying to sacrifice himself in the conflict.... ...
In conclusion, William Golding uses a complex combination of diction, devices, sentence structure and theme to inspire the atmosphere of danger in the passage in the novel Lord of the Flies. Various hints are given throughout the writing that suggest that Castle Rock may not be all that it seems to be: a safe place that could use the tide to protect them from predators. All of these components of the passage work together efficiently to not only create this atmosphere, but to create a deeper understanding of the section, encouraging the reader to read between the lines.
Robert had invited Edna to go to the beach with him and at first she denied but compelled by the spell of defiance followed along allowing herself to indulge in deep self understanding. “A certain light was was beginning to dawn dimly within her,- the light which, which showing the way, forbids it.The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in it’s soft, close embrace” (Chopin 13), that night Edna had formed a fatal attraction to the sea and its seductivity for the presence of the river weighed heavy that night. Causing her to develop a great love for swimming for it gave her a reason to be wrapped up in the ocean’s smothering
Nature often plays an important role in the books and poems. Through the use of imagery, an author is able to help the reader to visualize the surroundings and the habitat in which the book is set up. In Michael Ondaatje’s memoir Running in the Family nature is interspersed here and there with the newly discovered family history. In addition to facts that Michael Ondaatje discovers, through the use of nature he associates the behavior of some of his family members. Michael Ondaatje connects his father with dogs and snakes, and his grandmother with horses and gardens. By connecting the nature with one of the most important characters in the book, the author uses symbols to imply his father and grandma’s true personalities. By doing this he is
Sibling rivalry is common in a family household, where the competition can get very dangerous. In Penelope Lively book “Moon Tiger”, Claudia and Gordon Hampton are searching for ammonites in “shelving plateau of the cliff”. The brother and sister rivalry over the ammonites becomes very intense. Lively uses literary devices such as imagery, dialogue, and narration to reveal the complex relationship between the siblings and their mother. The imagery captures the environment scenery like the cliff, where the sibling are looking for ammonites. The dialogue between the characters reveal the interconnection they have with each other. Dialogue allow the readers to understand an individual character’s viewpoint. Narration shows the truth of what occurs, and allows the reader to see the whole picture. Lively encapture competition between siblings and the aftermath of the end of the competition.
"The Loss of the Creature" starts off with the definition of beautiful, which is a key point throughout his essay. Next, he moves in to his example of a family of tourists, and their experience (through his eyes) at the Grand Canyon. He describes his theory of the sightseer, and the discoverer; "Does a single sightseer, receive the value of P, or only a millionth part of value P" (pg 1) Value P, being the experience, and the beauty in which that person collected. Following the sightseers was a couple who stumbled upon an undisturbed Mexican Village. The couple thoroughly enjoyed their first experience, but could not wait to return with their friend the ethnologist. When they did return with him, they were so caught up in what his reaction would be; there was a total loss of sovereignty. Due to their differences of interest in the village, the couples return trip was a waste. The second part of the essay includes a Falkland Islander who comes across a dead dogfish lying on the beach. Furthermore, he explains how a student with a Shakespeare sonnet, has no chance of being absorbed by a student due to the surrounding's or package of the class room. The two students are receiving the wrong messages, on one hand we have the biology student with his "magic wand" of a scalpel, and on the other hand the English student with his sonnet in its "many-tissued package". Both students are unaware of the real experience they could undergo, and the teacher might as well give the dogfish to the English student and the sonnet to the biology student because they will be able to explore and learn more within the different setting, and without the surroundings and expectations (pg 6).
The story of this poem tells about a young boy that is lured in by the sensuousness of the moon, and then dies because of his own desire for her. The symbolic meaning is much more hidden and disguised by the literary elements of the poem. The storyline and aspects of the literal story add meaning when searching for the figurative meaning. The warning learned from this poem is that infatuation with anything can lead to a downfall. The moon seemed to offer a comfort that attracted him, but it was only a disguise to lead him to death. The passion the young boy felt for the moon can easily be modified to describe the passion a person can feel for anything. The young boy saw safeness in the moon that brought him closer to her. Any obsession will seem to offer the same comforts that the young boy also saw, but this poem warns that death can always disguise itself.
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
Tan has written a novel without a central plot but with characters and events that are as powerful as myth, and which often entangle it. The stories of the aunties are interspersed with events involving the daughters, so that China and America come
Since its first appearance in the 1886 collection A White Heron and Other Stories, the short story A White Heron has become the most favorite and often anthologized of Sarah Orne Jewett. Like most of this regionalist writer's works, A White Heron was inspired by the people and landscapes in rural New England, where, as a little girl, she often accompanied her doctor father on his visiting patients. The story is about a nine-year-old girl who falls in love with a bird hunter but does not tell him the white heron's place because her love of nature is much greater. In this story, the author presents a conflict between femininity and masculinity by juxtaposing Sylvia, who has a peaceful life in country, to a hunter from town, which implies her discontent with the modernization?s threat to the nature.
In his ancestor’s world, communal and mythical values prevail over individualism and materialism. When he is in Danville, Milkman learns that place is significant because it “makes the past real”(231). When he arrives in the South he wears a “beige three – piece suit, button down light–blue shirt and black string tie (and) beautiful Florsheim shoes”(227). But stripped of his three piece suit and dressed in worn hunting clothes he enters the woods outside Shalimar and immediately stumbles upon his uncharted self. For the first time he considers his behaviour in relation to the others: “Under the moon, on ground alone… the cocoon that was ‘personality’ – gave way…..there was nothing here to help him - not his money, his car, his father’s reputation, his suit or his shoes… His watch and his two hundred dollars would be of no help out here, where all a man had was what he was born with, or had learned to use. An endurance”(276-277). Reduced to the essentials for the first time in his life, Milkman begins to question his surroundings and as he listens, noise becomes language or “what there was before language”(278). Milkman here comprehends a mythic dimension as he reaches back toward a time when humans and animals shared
Bishop begins by admiring not her lover, but lichens, described as “still explosions on the rocks.” The lichens’ growth records the passage of time, and yet “they have not changed”. Lichen is a type of fungal organism that grows very slowly and gradually. Over time, the lichen can spread and overtake the surface it grows on. A metaphor describes how the lichen “grow by” means “spreading, gray, concentric shocks” in a pattern that can be compared to an “explosion[s]”. The idea of “gray” is used here to describe the pattern of lichen growth; it is repeated throughout the poem and echoed in the third stanza. Bishop uses a whimsical hyperbole to describe the meeting of the lichen with the “rings around the moon”. Lichens cannot actually grow far out enough to meet with an object in space, but Bishop exaggerates their growth to emphasize that they are
He admires the world that he live in, the way everything supposes to be. On the way through the canopy filled with dark air, he finds himself among the creepers that dropped along the canopy suddenly shiver as he walks by them, create a pleasant welcome. As Simon finds a beautiful glade that fills with life, which he contemplates the island's sights and sounds as he meditates. Soon after helping the littluns gather fruits, he continued his went on a path that opened in front of him, “Soon high jungle closed in. Tall trunks bore unexpected pale flowers all the way up to the dark canopy where life went on clamorously. The air here was dark too, and the creepers dropped their ropes like the rigging of foundered ships. His feet left prints in the soft soil and the creepers shivered throughout their lengths when he bumped them...the sounds of the bright fantastic birds, the bee-sounds, even the crying of the gulls that were returning to their roosts among the square rocks, were fainter. The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the