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More handpicked essays just for you.
The role of woman in literature
The role of woman in literature
Gender and roles of women in literature
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Death is inevitable; if you want happiness in life, try A. Margaret Atwood, the author of “Happy Endings,” uses six separate short stories to depict outcomes with different scenarios. The author practices the use of flash fiction which adds to the entirety of each version. Though this short story has portions of unusual context, the content can teach a reflection on life. As the reader analyzes all six versions, the gender roles are evident as the story progresses. Atwood starts the short story by introducing the two main characters, John and Mary, and then proceeds to tell a variety of options as to who they are and what happens to them. In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Happy Endings,” the central theme of fiction provides several different
No matter how hard society tries to achieve the perfect life, it does not always go as planned. It doesn’t matter if the characters are bored and depressed, confused and guilty, or virtuous and lucky; the gradual path of version A is not always in reach. Atwood states near the end of the short story, “You’ll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don’t be deluded by any other endings, they’re all fake, either deliberately fake, which malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die” (690). The idea of this short story is not the fact that every one dies, but with the eventful memories that can make the life worthwhile. The author says, “So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with. That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what. Now try How and Why” (690). This short story forces the readers to question the meaning of life. Every story has the same ending, because very life has the same ending. Life is exciting because of the experiences that can lead each individual onto their own path in life. The how and the why are the inspirations, the feelings, and the interpretations that the reader goes through as they make their own way through version A. Be adventurous and make memories because the story isn’t in the ending; it’s in what’s done on the way
People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into for a deeper understanding of the choice death for these characters.
Narrative, it seems banal to observe, opens a space. This space is not so much a place of play for unlimited possibilities (although in the best of possible worlds it might yet be) as somewhere determined, always, in advance, by the future anterior: what will have happened and how it will already have taken place lure us through stories to their ends, become the end that shines through from the very start. Reading for the ending: in narrative, the end justifies the means; the end is the means.
Through an intimate maternal bond, Michaels mother experiences the consequences of Michaels decisions, weakening her to a debilitating state of grief. “Once he belonged to me”; “He was ours,” the repetition of these inclusive statements indicates her fulfilment from protecting her son and inability to find value in life without him. Through the cyclical narrative structure, it is evident that the loss and grief felt by the mother is continual and indeterminable. Dawson reveals death can bring out weakness and anger in self and with others. The use of words with negative connotations towards the end of the story, “Lonely,” “cold,” “dead,” enforce the mother’s grief and regressing nature. Thus, people who find contentment through others, cannot find fulfilment without the presence of that individual.
We are born into this world with the realization that life is hard and that life is like a box of chocolates and it is hard to take it at face value. The majority of our time is spent trying to answer an endless stream of questions only to find the answers to be a complex path of even more questions. This film tells the story of Harold, a twenty year old lost in life and haunted by answerless questions. Harold is infatuated with death until he meets a good role model in Maude, an eighty year old woman that is obsessed with life and its avails. However, Maude does not answer all of Harold’s questions but she leads him to realize that there is a light at the end of everyone’s tunnel if you pursue it to utmost extremes by being whatever you want to be. Nevertheless, they are a highly unlikely match but they obviously help each other in many ways in the film.
This story was a weird one. The details didn't really make any sense until you got to the very end when it all came together. These types of stories make me angry because most of the time they are literally about nothing and I am not patient enough to read them if they are pointless. This story was really frustrating to read because you have no idea what is going on throughout the story until you get to the end where all of the details come together. I can only be confused for so long until I give up on trying to figure it out. Raymond Carver wrote the short story Everything Stuck to Him and the ending is what really ties this story all together the ending is where the ending is where we figure out from the details that the father and daughter are trying to work on their relationship, the ending showed me the father and daughter relationship by the use of details, and this story ends happily because the father has a moment of where he puts the past behind him.
Common among classic literature, the theme of mortality engages readers on a quest of coping with one of the certainties of life. Katherine Anne Porter masterfully embraces the theme of mortality both directly and indirectly in her story, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Understanding that all mankind ultimately becomes subject to death unleashes feelings of dread and anxiety in most people; however, Granny Weatherall transitions from rushing to meet her demise in her sixties to completely denying she is on her deathbed when she is eighty. Readers have seen this theme of mortality reverberated over and over in literature, but what makes this story stand the test of time is the author’s complexity. In Katherine Anne Porter’s
No matter where one grows up, they will always strive for their parent’s approval. The location, the time, or their age will not determine if they would love for their parents to approve of them. The problem usually uproots because the parents grow up in a different generation than their kids. Some parents want their kids to do better than them, or grow up as they did. In Hosseini’s Kite Runner and in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, express the problem that children have getting their parent’s approval very well.
The Grave is another realistic fiction story, and is set in Texas, in 1903. The main character is a girl called Miranda, who was nine years old; additionally, she is backed up by her brother who was called Paul, and was twelve years old. Miranda’s main conflict was a mixture between conflicting social norms and some existential issues, which were realized when she witnessed her brother kill a pregnant rabbit, and then cut out its babies. Whenever Miranda faces a problem in the story she looks within herself and finds resolutions through thought and reasoning, which is similar to the methods used by William and Mary. All three characters had some sort of an epiphany; a moment where they simply stopped and clarity, with some new insights towards their lives, filled their minds. Furthermore, Miranda gained not only an insight on the meaning of life, but also, like Mary, gained an insight on the nature of death, as well. However, unlike the other two stories, I felt that the ending was too ambiguous to draw a real conclusion; regarding, how successful Miranda was with overcoming her issues. Even though she gained valuable insights into life and death, she did become “reasonlessly horrified” at the vision of the events that took place with her brother. It remains ambiguous as to how she really feels in the end. As far as the best solution model, set by the characters, I cannot give a definite answer; seeing that, they all used extremely similar methods for solving their problems. All three of them looked inwards and thought, while applying logic and reason. This method of solving problems is already the dominant method that I use in my own life; due to the fact that, in my experience, using emotions and looking outward for solutions tends to drag in more
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” death plays a major role in developing the story. It also shows how the death of one person can change a city as a whole. However, if you compare this story to the life of the author, William Faulkner, you can see how death in his life can contribute to why he wrote the story the way he did. The death of the people is used to add to the meaning of the work altogether. William Faulkner’s experiences add meaning to his work, “A Rose for Emily,” through several deaths and Emily’s ultimate demise.
In conclusion, the three women end up with different fates, they all face similar conditions within their lives. Each woman deals with their circumstances differently and it impacts not only their lives but also the men’s lives that they interact with throughout the story. Both authors highlight the key issues surrounded by the lack of power that women have, isolation, and mental health illness within the Victorian time period through their characters and enlighten the reader to the similarities and differences between the themes that Brontë and Gilman both address.
Atwood writes “Siren Song” is written in free verse, thus enhances her main ideas. In a free verse poem, there is no rhyme or organized meter. However she has other organizing elements exist in order to strengthen the speaker in the poems ideas and main purpose of the poem. There are nine stanzas, in which each has three lines. The three lines appear to mirror the three sirens that are mentioned in the poem. The speaker is one, and then she says, “with these two feathery maniacs”(16), referring to the other sirens that accompany her singing. Moreover, enjambment plays a major role in this poem, because it drive the poem in significant moments. The speaker ends a stanza not fully completing her thought, making it so that the audience feels more
In “Bored,” Margaret Atwood displays her regret towards not appreciating time spent with her father during childhood, creating a repentant and nostalgic tone, suggesting to the reader enjoying life is important and to recognize the brevity of it. For example, “Holding the string while he measured, boards...which I then (bored) weeded,” conveys her resent towards the smaller tasks she was given to do while her father did the main tasks. The author implies that her father guided her throughout life, “..he drove, steered, paddled...” Moreover, the line “Perhaps though boredom is happier,” indicates once she grew up she had to lead herself through life, and misses her simple childhood in contrast with her complicated adult life. In conclusion,
In Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings”, the plots center around the two major protagonists, who are John and Mary. The central themes of the story are about marriage and romance. In every version of the story, the main protagonist will get married and live happily ever after with their partner on the end. No matter how many obstacles the main protagonists have faced in the story, they never give up on finding their loves and live a happy life with his or her partner. Therefore, the protagonists in the story is like a hero that have faced many difficulties before they can find their true love and also like a fairy tale which the prince and the princess will always live together happily ever and after. “Happy Endings” is a romantic type of love which includes plots that usually comes up in heroine novels.
Death can be very scary for the elder and young. One never really knows how they will react to the event of death. Even though inevitable, death can be shocking for some or troubling for others. A shocking and a troubling reality of death are depicted in two short stories, Used to Live Here Once by Jean Rhys and A Father’s Story by Andre Dubus. How characters in a story react to death are often different from one another.
the end of the novel as both the women in his life have other men at