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Narrative writing vs descriptive writing
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Narrative writing vs descriptive writing
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This is a very interesting short story with several underlying issues. On the surface, it’s a story about a beautiful popular girl that is kidnaped by a monster of a man and his friend. This style of writing is very new to me. It is very descriptive in that I know everything about the characters’ appearance, social status, and thought processes. The main character “Connie” is a very vein and self-centered 15year old. The antagonist is an older man and his friend are almost a devil figure. The idea of reading a book for pleasure is a foreign concept for me, this short story grabbed my interest and quite honestly, I don’t quite know why. Why am I interested in the way she dresses or the way she views herself? Connie has defiantly cultivated
Miss Hancock, her personality and beliefs were contrasted entirely by her character foil, Charlotte’s mother, “this civilized, this clean, this disciplined woman.” All through Charlotte’s life, her mother dictated her every move. A “small child [was] a terrible test to that cool and orderly spirit.” Her mother was “lovely to look at, with her dark-blond hair, her flawless figure, her smooth hands. She never acted frazzled or rushed or angry, and her forehead was unmarked by age lines or worry. Even her appearance differed greatly to Miss Hancock, who she described as,” overdone, too much enthusiasm. Flamboyant. Orange hair.” The discrepancy between the characters couldn’t escape Charlotte’s writing, her metaphors. Her seemingly perfect mother was “a flawless, modern building, created of glass and the smoothest of pale concrete. Inside are business offices furnished with beige carpets and gleaming chromium. In every room there are machines – computers, typewriters, intricate copiers. They are buzzing and clicking way, absorbing and spitting out information with the speed of sound. Downstairs, at ground level, people walk in and out, tracking mud and dirt over the steel-grey tiles, marring the cool perfection of the building. There are no comfortable chairs in the lobby.” By description, her mother is fully based on ideals and manners, aloof, running her life with “sure and perfect control.” Miss
To begin, innocence is represented through Connie’s character in both versions. As a matter of fact, Connie is only 15 years old which means it is the period where she is searching for her own identity. Consequently, many of her actions will be innocent due to a lack of knowledge. In the movie, we can see that she is always dressing up in a provocative manner to seduce any boy that comes in front of her. For instance, when Connie and her friends are at the mall for the first time in the movie, we can see that Connie is dressed up with a tight overall and a cleavage that reveals her shapes. While they are taking the escalator, some boys come from the other way. Connie then bend over to show them her "assets". This is a proof of innocence. She
In the 18th century, reading novels served as a pass time and a diversion from household chores for the women. Though formal female education is not developed, the female characters are seen having a keen interest in books, something that was earlier frowned upon for the sentimental content of books might be destructive to societal values. At the time, books were meant to teach and reflect upon the socially acceptable ideas of romance, courtship, and marriage. We find Miss Wharton asking for books to read from her friend Mrs. Lucy Sumner, “Send me some new books; not such, however, as will require much attention. Let them be plays or novels, or anything else that will amuse and extort a smile.” (Foster, 192) Mrs. Sumner sends her novels which she considers “chaste and of a lighter reading” (Foster, 196). We can thus construe that books and novels in The Coquette though meant for reading pleasure, also play form part of the female
As a cautionary tale, Charlotte Temple serves as a novel that teaches a moral lesson. As a seduction novel, Charlotte separates herself from the security of her family and ends up in desolation. In her novel, Susanna Rowson demonstrates that Charlotte plays an active role in her downfall because she is not able to make decisions for herself. Rowson’s goal was to prevent girls from making the same mistakes as Charlotte. Her purpose was to teach young girls to be cautious and think for themselves so that they do not face the same fate.
This level of detail allowed the reader to imagine walking in the footsteps of marguerite, the main character, experiencing her trials and feeling the way she felt. Marguerite longed for the day she would wake from her “black ugly dream”(4). She wanted long blonde hair that she could straighten and hypnotizing light-blue eyes; she wanted this
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind; Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon first glance, these classics of literary legend appear to have nothing in common. However, looking closer, one concept unites these three works of art. At the center of each story stands a woman--an authentically portrayed woman. A woman with strengths, flaws, desires, memories, hopes, and dreams. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara, and Williams’ Blanche DuBois are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated women: strong yet fragile, brazen yet subtle, carnal yet pure. Surviving literature that depicts women in such a realistic and moving fashion is still very rare today, and each piece of that unique genre must be treasured. But unlike those singular works, there lived one man who built a career of writing novels that explored the complex psyches of women. Somehow, with each novel, this author’s mind and heart act as a telescope gazing into an unforgettable portrait of a lady. Through the central female characters in his novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence illuminates dimensions of a woman’s soul not often explored in literature.
Money, class, power, and other such evils feed into the “machine” which D.H. Lawrence holds accountable for the repressive nature of society. Even Connie, who resides in the upper echelon of society, feels constrained due to her “forbidden” love for a man in the lower class; money is holding her back, even though—or rather, because—she has it. One thing that stood out to me when reading the novel was how Connie attempts to free herself from the clutches of her drab life. Connie’s life at Wragby is devoid of meaning and physical contact, comprised only of empty conversations with her impotent husband. At the beginning of the novel, she is only living the mental life. Later on, Connie begins to use sex as a way to break free of the mental life and embrace “t...
Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” tells the tale of a fifteen year old girl named Connie living in the early 1960’s who is stalked and ultimately abducted by a man who calls himself Arnold Friend. The short story is based on a true event, but has been analyzed by many literary scholars and allegedly possesses numerous underlying themes. Two of the most popular interpretations of the story are that the entire scenario is only dreamt by Connie (Rubin, 58) and that the abductor is really the devil in disguise (Easterly, 537). But the truth is that sometimes people really can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Connie, a victim of terrifying circumstance will be forever changed by her interactions with Friend.
In the coming-of-age short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, a fifteen year old girl named Connie has an incident involving a strange man, Arnold Friend, that causes her to grow up quickly and causes her to see the real world for the first time. Through this incident, the author shows how Connie’s vanity, love of music, and her life without a father figure lead her to not be able to handle situations where a person uses those qualities against her; therefore, she has a harsh and quick coming of age.
Throughout the story there are several aspects of the Protagonist’s character that play a major role in the shaping of her future. During her childhood she often demonstrates a sense of fear when she is sent to her bedroom. “We were afraid of the inside, the room were we slept (pg. 549).” She is intimidated by her personal space because she does not have control over it. Later, she gains control by adding lace to her side of the room; symbolically adding personality to herself and slipping into womanhood. When she felt uncomfortable she exercised her imagination, to psychologically regain control over the confusion in her life. Her subconscious effort to control confusing times were carried on to her later years as she was constantly put in difficult situations, which helped her to adjust quickly to change during adulthood. The dreams she created changed when she began to place emphasis on her appearance-that which she could control, other than past dreams of heroism that seemed so distant from reality. The Protagonist filled her childhood with much pride and maintained a consistent focused upon the activities that filled her childhood. She relished working at the side of her father, taking immense pride in every aspect of her assigned duties. She proclaimed, “I worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride (pg. 551)” Once after her father introduced her to a feed sales man as “my new hired man (pg. 551),” the Protagonist was flooded with pride as she “turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (pg. 551).” In her later years her pride helped her to assemble strong self-confidence she used in her years of growing. Passion and depth were characteristics that impacted her future as a woman. Her passion and depth was revealed early on in the story ...
Disliking Books By Gerald Graff is about the authors own aversions, starting as a young boy, who grew up simply disliking reading books, for both academic and leisure purposes. Growing up in his neighborhood, it was highly disregarded for a boy to enjoy reading; they were looked at as “sissies” and had the potential to have been beaten up. He maintained this ideology all the way into his college career, where ironically, he majored in English. Although by this point he replaced his fear of being beaten up with the fear of failing his college courses, he was able to squeak by with doing his homework at the mare minimum. He felt as though he wasn’t able to quite relate, much less, enjoy the text. It wasn’t until his junior year he was finally able to find the spark he had been lacking all these years. It was over the controversial ending of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some of the critics believe the story really ended when the boys basically stole Jim away and other believed it was actually when they learned that Jim had already been freed. Finally realizing that “reading and intellectual discussion might actually have something to do with my real life, I became less embarrassed about using the intellectual formulas” (Graff, Para 12). He then turned to more and more literary works to understand further of what reading critically can help you appreciate, even turning his lesson into his future profession as an English Professor.
In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the author Joyce Carol Oates, tells a breathtaking story about a teenage girl named Connie. Connie is faced with an earth-shattering situation with a stranger who is known as Arnold Friend throughout the story. To the reader of the story, Connie could be seen as hopeless and self-absorbed, who is looking for someone to accept her. She uses her beauty to make herself feel mature and get the boys attention. However, when Connie ran into Arnold, her beauty only made her look like an easy target. Throughout the story, the character’s reactions made it clear to the reader Connie’s earth-shattering experience was only part of a dream.
When first reading this short story the character of an older woman comes to mind only to find later in an important passage “She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength (Clugston, 2010, sec 2.1). This passage finally gives the reader a detailing idea of the woman in this story and defines her as a younger woman rather than an older one. This may l...
Ever since I was a child, I've never liked reading. Every time I was told to read, I would just sleep or do something else instead. In "A Love Affair with Books" by Bernadete Piassa tells a story about her passion for reading books. Piassa demonstrates how reading books has influenced her life. Reading her story has given me a different perspective on books. It has showed me that not only are they words written on paper, they are also feelings and expressions.
There is one thing in common with all short stories in this collection. They all have a twist in the tail. We can also notice that many of the characters are ordinary and respectable on the surface, but many of them have an unexpectedly dark and cruel side to their personalities.