Alice Munro summarizes Edie’s life full of love for Chris Watters, a pilot whom she had fallen in love with at age fifteen. This short story provides the reader the idea of not letting a person be too busy that he/she miss all the wonderful things that are happening or passing by his/her life. Edie also thought that in order to keep people happy one must let them believe what they want to believe. Edie did just that by not telling her husband why she waited at the mailbox day after day. Edie kept her husband happy and that made her happy. Sometimes young people can tend to believe everything that the people that are close to them tells them. Especially that first love will make them a different person, either for the good for the bad. As young
and inexperienced, young people tend to make decisions that if they were older would not make. Young people would not hesitate in believing any promises that older man would make to them. Just in the case of Edie. At the end of the story, Edie took responsibility for her happiness rather than wait for a man to give it to her.
In Empathy, Stephen Dunn, who went to war to fight for his country. When he was on the leave from the army, he felt that it was the beginning of empathy for himself. In Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro learns about the significance of the relationship between a young mathematician named Sophia and her professor. The professor admits that one of his self-interest was for a student to challenge him completely, who is not only capable of following the rules of his own mind but to open up his mind. The interplay between empathy and self-interest is that they both effect on each other in many ways, such as, we benefit as a whole from selfless self-interest and caring for others more than we would from the survival of one at the cost of everyone else.
It has been said of Anton Chekhov, the renown Russian short-story writer, that in all of his “work, there is never exactly a point. Rather we see into someone’s hear – in just a few pages, the curtain concealing these lives has been drawn back, revealing them in all their helplessness and rage and rancor.” Alice Munro, too, falls into this category. Many of her short-stories, such as “Royal Beatings” focus more on character revelation rather than plot.
Ten year old Annie John who grew up and lived in Antigua, goes on an internal journey to develop from a little naive girl to a women overcoming various obstacles. She tries being more comfortable with her mother and creating a closer bond despite the big age gap between her and her mother. The story she wrote and presented in class about her mother swimming and drawing patterns on a rock far from the shore. The story shows a common aspect of childhood; the parents are greatly relied on. The day will come when the mother has to leave with all of her teaching and the child has to face reality. Annie’s sentiment changes as she grows up and develops into an independent woman. The novel reflects this change through symbolism representing Annie’s development from a child to an independent woman.
Brenna Strickland Miss Sibbach AP English III 12 December, 2014 The Journey of Love In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie’s relationships unceasingly alter her perception of love. Since birth she has traveled on a journey to find true happiness which included love. Through her three opposing marriages, her grandmother and a strong friendship she eventually succeeded in defining love. Throughout the novel, Janie molds her opinion on love based upon her experiences in life.
In Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her thoughts on relationships, love, inner peace, and contentment. During her vacation by the sea to relax and detach herself from the hectic outside world, Lindbergh masterfully provides insights to a reader of any age or gender. Her poetic and flowing style allows the reader to easily absorb the themes from her meditations. She warns against the pitfalls of modern life because of what she calls hectic rhythm, as opposed to a more fluid and natural primeval rhythm. By removing herself from the outside world, she is able to look at life, love, and relationships from a different perspective. Also, she allows the natural world to help her make connections. She provides advice on how to treat our relationships with other people, and our ever evolving relationship with the outside world.
“People will be people good or bad, and if you say you love them then you have to love them through it all”, says Pearl Brewer eighty year old widow and mother of twelve. By looking at Pearl you can see that she has lived a full yet hard life. She is a mother, a wife, and daughter. She has migrated from rural Oklahoma to the Midwestern factory town of Peoria, Illinois where she has experienced a successful career at one of the town’s most booming factories: Caterpillar.
Love, however, is not the only factor that creates and maintains a relationship. Love has the power to bring people together, but can also break them apart. In addition, it can lead to irrational decisions with terrible consequences. In this short story Margaret Atwood shows the powerful effect that love has on people’s lives. At first glance, the short stories in "Happy Endings" have a common connection: all the characters die.
...her own identity, her own morals, and her own beliefs. It is this individuality that will carry her down the road of life. Unfortunately, when someone else governs her life, that uniqueness that sets her apart from everyone else is tarnished. However, Alice Munro gives the reader a sense of hope and potential happiness for the girl by planting a seed that suggests that women can be self-governing, and they can survive without men controlling their every movement. Keeping that possibility in mind, this short story produces a sense of comfort in the reader, and also keeps the dreams alive with the promise of a new tomorrow.
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro Plot: Woman gets a call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly disappointed that the mother did not have money.
Have you ever thought about the story a person has behind before they met you? Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”, is a novel that illustrates how experiences can cause a change in people. In the novel, the characters experience a lot and the situations change their lifestyle and deportment. At the heart of the story, the narrator who is nameless, met this man in a hotel, and after a few weeks, he proposed to her and married her. But she did not know the story behind this man. Maurier attained the theme of “Rebecca”, through the use of different themes and literary terms, she portrayed the author’s feeling through different ways.
"All of it is clear to a person who has understanding and right to those who have acquired knowledge." (Proverbs 8:6-9)
Many people lose hope in tough situations. They think all is lost when they do not get something the first time, but there is always hope even in the worst situations. Eve Bunting demonstrates this theme of finding hope in a bad situation with her short story, “Fly Away Home”. Andrew doesn’t lose hope because, he sees a brown bird that shows him hope. He also saves money in his shoe hoping it will help.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.
All humans are frightened by anything that is likely to take away their love life, family or joy. “The Exchange” by Alice Ostriker is a poem that tells the story of a woman, frightened by the possibility of losing the precious things and people she values. In many of her interviews with media personalities and literary critics, Ostriker observes that we always experience both disappointments and joys of love; at least at one point in our lives, regardless of the means it is manifested. This paper examines the theme of family in the poem, and specifically the ever-present trepidation that some “ghost woman” could take the speaker’s place in her marriage, an aspect of her life that she truly treasures. The paper also analyses the poetic aspects used and how they enhance the theme.
“The Story-Teller” is a short story by H. H. Munro who goes by the pseudonym of Saki. The story is about a man who tells a story about the potential difficulties in life to an aunt and three children. The story explores the idea that although being especially bad has its consequences, as well as anyone who is exceptionally good also can attract misfortune just by standing out from the crowd. Munro used the story the bachelor told to portray aspects of modern society using the characters and location of his tale.