“Death by Landscape” and “Sexy”, two short stories written by two very different authors; although different they share some similarities. “Death by Landscape’s” Margret Atwood is a Canadian writer who began writing in the early 1950s during her teens. Atwood published “Death by Landscape” in 1990 during the time in which the female faculty of Victoria College vocalized about feminism, Atwood since has portrayed her non-male characters with female power and promise in a man's world. The author of “Sexy” is Jhumpa Lahiri an Indian woman whose first literary collection debuted in 1999. Her common language and characters that resemble foreigners from India coming to America often characterize Lahiri’s work, but in “Sexy” the main female character is a young white woman. Both Atwood and Lahiri use main characters that are female and use object setting and place setting to help them find whom they are, but the difference is in which whom these women become once they see themselves.
While Atwood in "Death by Landscape" tells the story of Lois, an old woman fixed on looking into her past as a young girl at camp Manitou after experiencing the disappearance of her good friend Lucy; Lahiri tells of a young woman Miranda, who falls deeply in love with a married Indian man. Atwood uses multiple settings unlike Lahiri. Atwood uses the season’s of summer and winter as well as the past and present in “Death by Landscape”, the use of summer and winter are to show when Lois’ best friend is at camp with her and not at camp just like the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter. The other two occurring settings are past and present, where you see the build up of Lois’ growth and the never changing solidarity of her loss. Lahiri places her story in the c...
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...vident truth that Lois knows is that her best friend is dead and she will continue to wait for her until she dies because at this point Atwood shows that Louis has forgotten how to be a mother and wife to her children and husband.
Works Cited
1. "Biography of Margaret Atwood (1939-)."Biography of Margaret Atwood. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. .
2. "Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Sexy” – A Review." Jim Breslin. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
3. "Reflections on Kosovo." Reflections on Kosovo. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
4. "this to say about that." : "Death by Landscape" by Margaret Atwood. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .
live in the wilderness can recognize the central truth of existence, which is that death lives right beside us at all times, as close and as relevant as life itself, and that this reali...
Jane presents one aspect of woman in The Waking collection (1953): Ross-Bryant views Jane as a young girl who is dead. The poem expresses concern with the coming of death. This poignant elegy is presen...
Bouson, J. Brooks. Margaret Atwood the robber bride, the blind assassin, Oryx and Crake. London: Continuum, 2010. Print.
The assimilation of human feeling with nature impacted the writings of Edna St. Vincent Millay throughout the entirety of her career. At an early age, on the coast of Maine, Millay had a quasi-religious experience while nearly drowning, that when written down ten years later became the foundation of one of her most staggering works, “Renascence.” The way in which Millay confronts and interacts with nature, namely the sky, is unnerving, raw, and beautiful. She transcends time and is enabled to take part in an empathetic experience with the entirety of what she perceives around her. This poem serves as a precursor to later poems that deal with the human and its counterpart in existence, nature. Over the course of her work, Millay was constantly reconfiguring her notion of God, humanity, and nature and how they were interrelated. This examination and understanding of a oneness with things is the theme found throughout her writing. In addition to “Renascence”, it is found in “Spring” as well as “Epitaph for the Race of Man.” The constant it seems is her communion with that around her in the natural world. Her offerings of interpretations and meditations on the earthly goods of nature and humanity showcase a pantheistic view of the world, in which everything equals God.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
The Connection of Mortality with One’s Love of Life in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Yulisa Amadu Maddy's No Past No Present No Future
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.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
The short stories “Medicine” by Lu Xun and “Death by Landscape” by Margaret Atwood both have a mysterious forces in the stories. This means that there are similar forces in both, however, the forces in each do have different effects. These invisible powers will either give someone a sense of hope or a sense of fear. Even though these effects could be good or bad, the forces impact one another and some forces give strong emotions towards someone. While one may see a force having a positive effect another may see the side of it being a negative effect.
Hoby, Hermione. "Margaret Atwood: Interview." The Telegraph. The Telegraph, 18 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning and also the basis of education. Curiosity had killed the cat indeed, however the cat died nobly. Lives of Girls and Women is a novel written by Nobel Prize Literature winner, Alice Munro. This novel is about a young girl, Del Jordan, who lives on Flats Road, Ontario. The novel is divided into eight chapters; and each chapter refers to a new, unique event in Del's life. As an overall analysis of the book reveals that Del Jordan's intriguing curiosity has helped her throughout her life, and enabled her to gain further knowledge The character is often seen in scenarios where her attention is captivated, and through the process of learning she acquires information in order to her answers her questions about particular subjects. There are many examples in the book that discuss Del’s life, and how she managed to gain information, as well as learn different methods of learning along the way.
After reading “Brooklyn” by Paule Marshall and “One Off the Short List” by Doris Lessing, I learned about the different ways in which someone can be viewed as a sex object. The first story “Brooklyn” was about a Jewish professor and an African American student’s interaction. The professor Max Berman was an older white Jewish man who attracted to a graduate student in his class. Ms. Williams is a African American woman who is also a graduate student who is registered in Max Berman’s class. Both of the characters have been alienated from their culture.
Most of her work has a meaning about nature and many of her titles seemed that way, but there is a twist to them. "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" to the metaphysics of "I died for Beauty — but was scarce," and poems such as "Sweet Mountains — Ye tell Me no lie — " are not just nature poems, but transformations, the creating of a more woman-centered religion that incor...
...to reality: "The lake is quiet, the trees surround me, asking and giving nothing" (Atwood, 224).
Katherine Mansfield explores profoundly the world of death and its impact on a person in her short story, "The Garden Party."