Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Use of Symbolism
Use of Symbolism
The use of symbolism in the novel
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Use of Symbolism
The Cherry Orchard
The “Cherry Orchard” by Anton Chekhov, is a symbolic story about change. The story centers on one family, and the people that come into their lives. It takes place during a time where Russia is changing, becoming a more modern world. The cherry orchard symbolizes the past, and each character deals with leaving the past behind.
The play begins with Lopakhin, a friend of the family, coming to the house, and being greeted by the maid, Dunyasha, only to find out that the owner, Ranevsky has been in Paris for the past five years. We find out that Lopakhin is a businessman, and that he used to be a peasant, already revealing the changes that have taken place in Russian Culture. No longer is it only aristocratic families that can become rich.
Ranevsky and her daughter, Anya, soon arrive home. Ranevsky seems overjoyed to have finally arrived home, and in a later scene, we find out that Varya found her mother living in poverty in Paris. This is when Varya reveals that the family’s estate is going to be sold in August, so they can pay their debts. We also learn that the father and brother of Varya have drowned, and Ranevsky moved to Paris in order to escape the pain.
Lopakhin begins thinking of ideas to sell the house. Ranesvsky is hesitant, because she does not want to cut down the cherry orchard that means so much to the family. The second act consists of the family questi...
On one side, there is Kathy Nicolo and Sheriff Lester Burdon who want the house from which Kathy was evicted. It previously belonged to Kathy’s father and she is reluctant to relinquish possession of it. Then there is the Behranis, a Persian family who was forced to flee to America in fear of their lives. They want the house because it symbolizes their rise from poverty (they had to leave everything behind and were quite poor when they arrived in the United States) back to affluence which, to this family, will help to restore their family’s dignity, lost when thrust into poverty. The story centers on gaining possession of the house. Unknowingly, all of these characters are doomed to tragedy by their inability to understand each other, hurtling down an explosive collision course.
Essentially this play can be regarded as the mid-life crisis of Walter Lee Younger, passionate for his family, ambitious, and bursting with energy and dreams. Walter cares about his family, and he hopes that buying the liquor store will being a brighter future to Travis, ?And-and I?ll say, all right son-it?s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you?ve decided?...Just tell me where you want to go to school and you?ll go. Just tell me, what it is you want to be ? and you?ll be it.?(Hansberry 109). Walter Lee, shackled by poverty and prejudice, and obsessed with his own sense of success, which he felt, would be the end of all of his social and economic problems. The dreams he had gave him a great sense of pride and self-satisfaction. Unfortunately Walter had to learn a hard lesson in life; pride and greed will eventually lead to unhappiness.
If you think about it, today’s world is not such what we call “user-friendly” place.
...s a gloomy place harboring mystery and misery. The main character, Evgeny, finds himself in the midst of a great flood. He was contemplating his future, his life with a woman named Parasha, when this flood interrupts his life. When it ceases, Evgeny makes his way through St. Petersburg finding vast amounts of destruction. Parasha’s home nowhere to be found, and people beginning to try and put the pieces back together.
Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is a tale of poignant family relationships and childhood and also of grim privation. The story revolves around the protagonist of the story, young Francie Nolan. She is an imaginative, endearing 11-year-old girl growing up in 1912, in Brooklyn, New York. The entire story revolves around Francie and the Nolan family, including her brother Neelie, her mother Katie and her father Johnny. An ensemble of high relief characters aids and abets them in their journey through this story of sometimes bleak survival and everlasting hope. As we find out, the struggle for survival is primarily focused against the antagonist of this story, the hard-grinding poverty afflicting Francie, the Nolan’s and Brooklyn itself. The hope in the novel is shown symbolically in the “The “Tree of Heaven””. A symbol used throughout the novel to show hope, perseverance and to highlight other key points.
In the beginning of the play, Walter is foolish and quarrelsome, with his heart set on becoming affluent. As he grasps how hard work his father worked and how hard his family works, he reasons that living by his standards is more important than gaining wealth, and he stops feeling resentful towards them. This play highlights how many members of society focus more on making money than living by their ethical
A general air of superficiality invades the production. Why? Unless done with reality, the play loses its “tam” (Yiddish for taste), fringes on mockery of the way of life being depicted, and weakens the accomplishment of the author’s purpose.
Karl was on the final lap, approaching Heartbreak Hill in the marathon race. His breathing was already rough and scraggy, the air escaping from his tired lungs in gasps and wheezes. Karl knew that Heartbreak Hill was his toughest challenge. If he could go over this hill, today he would be the winner in the Boston Marathon. Even if he could just reach the top of the hill, then the rest of the course was downhill and fairly easy to finish.
Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg is a large, uncaring city which fosters a western style of individualism. As Peter Lowe notes, “The city is crowded, but there is no communality in its crowds, no sense of being part of some greater ‘whole.’” Mrs. Raskolnikov initially notices a change in her son marked by his current state of desperate depression, but she fails to realize the full extent of these changes, even after he is convicted for the murder. The conditions and influences are also noticed by Raskolnikov’s mother who comments on the heat and the enclosed environment which is present throughout the city. When visiting Raskolnikov, she exclaims "I'm sure...
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard were famous for the way in which they depicted the changing of cultures. Both plays act as a sort of social commentary during times of widespread liberation, and use the contortive nature of these seemingly stereotypical characters’ actions to speak about groups of people as a whole. Throughout the course of both plays, this subversion of how different groups of people were typically perceived created a distinct contrast which often shocked and appalled audiences of the time. However, the effects of these plays were felt long after they were presented.
The final logic of plot that must be explained at the end of the story is Pyotr's confrontation with his guilt-ridden, contemptuous father before he leaves for Moscow. The intent to reconcile father's financial loss is expressed through Pyotr's coaxing rhetoric and judgemental approach to his father's daily attitude at the table. Finally, the room is brightly lit, not by the family's ability to regroup--their affections were a bonfire now--but by a single, dazzling beam of sympathy to Pyotr, when his father says "Good-bye...the money is on the round table."
Robert Penn Warren’s “Blackberry Winter” is the story of one young boy’s sudden and painfully realistic venture from behind the blissful cloak of childhood innocence into the more brutal reality of the world. Warren captures this transition through the eyes of the young and happily naïve Middle Tennessee farm boy, Seth. When the story begins, the nine year old Seth is lingering on the very edge of his innocence, but is undoubtedly still in the throws of the methodical and simple life that only a child can truly have. Before that fateful day when the unusual stranger appeared so suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, Seth led the secure and rhythmic life that comes with both ignorance and innocence. Seth having never left or even given much thought to life outside his small farm community, he had been sheltered from the true evils of the world. He had no concept of time or change, and had never needed one. That day, and that stranger, forced him to become aware of things that were beyond his control and even made him question the very things that he had always held as the gospel truth.
Symbolically speaking the serf is now buying out the Noble man and woman. This act of the former serf buying out the orchard from the noble family (Renevsky family) is the symbol, the connection between the orchard; which is a representation of the noble status, and the purchaser who is Lopakin; an individual who has a serf background depicts the change of Russian society and its ideals. This is the ultimate change that Chekhov fits in the play, the purchase of the land by Lopakhin to appease the demons of his serf ancestry is the ultimate indication of political and social change; the Ranevskys have been thrown out of their home, and the rising middle classes seems no more compassionate or liberal than the nobles before them.
“In the Orchard” by Muriel Stuart is a good poem in which to convey the ageless theme of unrequited love to students who need to be aroused to the poetry portion of literature. The students will be able to connect with the message of the poem and relate it to what is happening in their lives. Students may learn to love poetry and all of the hidden meanings that are contained in poems.
The plot structure in The Cherry Orchard is not as meaningful as the impact of events on the inner sensibilities of the characters. Chekhov divides his characters in The Cherry Orchard in a variety of ways so that the orchard and its sale take on different meaning for each of them. It is necessary then to examine the loss of the cherry through some of the major character; Yermolai Alexeyitch Lopakhin, Peter Trophimot, and Madame Ranevsky. When writing TCO he us...