Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of settings in literature
The importance of settings in novels
Setting and background in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Importance of settings in literature
"IND AFF or Out of Love in Sarajevo" by Fay Weldon
In “IND AFF, or Out of Love in Sarajevo,” Fay Weldon uses the setting of her story to teach a young woman a lesson in morality, and about life and love. This unnamed young woman narrates the story from the first person point of view, giving the reader a private glimpse into her inner struggle. The young woman is the protagonist in the story, and is a dynamic character; learning and growing in the few pages Weldon gives the reader a chance to get acquainted with her. Setting the story in Sarajevo allows Weldon to use historical events to teach the young woman about life. The largest role that setting plays in “IND AFF” is the historical event, which took place in this small town in Bosnia. An assassin named Princip took the life of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, in Sarajevo. This event is said to have propelled Europe into war, a war that came to be known as World War I. Visiting the town of Sarajevo the young woman ponders Princip’s decision to murder the Archduke and his wife, and these thoughts move her into a different course of action.
Weldon’s story is filled with irony, as the young woman seeks justification for an affair with a man who was, “supervising my thesis on varying concepts of morality and duty” (Weldon 147). Peter is her professor; his duty is to teach her about morality. As a married man, Peter is burdening her with the choice between her own morality and a struggle to be like her sister. The woman’s sister urges her to “just go for it, sister. If you can unhinge a marriage, it’s ripe for the unhinging, it would happen sooner or later, it might as well be you” (150). She wrestles with the idea of destroying a marriage, and ov...
... middle of paper ...
...hange the fate of a nation or the life of a marriage, but only if they are already filled with turmoil and discontent. A contented, satisfied people will not be propelled into a war with the death of one man, as a marriage will not fail simply because a pretty face tempts a spouse. The young woman is faced with a moral decision, should she be “the shot that lit the spark that fired the timber that started the war” (148). In the end, she cannot have that on her conscience, and realizes that “a bit later or a bit sooner…might have made the difference” (148). Throughout the story, the nameless student changes and grows, influenced by the setting of the story. She begins a woman in denial, “I suppose Princip’s actions couldn’t really have started World War I” (148), and comes to realize that she is not willing to burden herself with the guilt of destroying a marriage.
Many war stories today have happy, romantic, and cliche ending; many authors skip the sad, groosom, and realistic part of the story. W. D. Howell’s story, Editha and Ambrose Bierce’s story, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge both undercut the romantic plots and unrealistic conclusions brought on by many stories today. Both stories start out leading the reader to believe it is just another tpyical love-war senario, but what makes them different is the one-hundred and eighty degrees plot twist at the end of each story.
Mahin, Michael J. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper: "An Intertextual Comparison of the "Conventional" Connotations of Marriage and Propriety." Domestic Goddesses (1999). Web. 29 June 2015.
In individual searches to find themselves, Frank and April Wheeler take on the roles of the people they want to be, but their acting grows out of control when they lose sense of who they are behind the curtains. Their separate quests for identity converge in their wish for a thriving marriage. Initially, they both play roles in their marriage to please the other, so that when their true identities emerge, their marriage crumbles, lacking communication and sentimentality. Modelled after golden people or manly figures, the roles Frank and April take on create friction with who they actually are. Ultimately, to “do something absolutely honest” and “true,” it must be “a thing … done alone” (Yates 327). One need only look inside his or her self to discover his or her genuine identity.
Annemarie is a normal young girl, ten years old, she has normal difficulties and duties like any other girl. but these difficulties aren’t normal ones, she’s faced with the difficulties of war. this war has made Annemarie into a very smart girl, she spends most of her time thinking about how to be safe at all times “Annemarie admitted to herself,snuggling there in the quiet dark, that she was glad to be an ordinary person who would never be called upon for courage.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
In order to understand most of the events that took place in the novel it is essential to understand how the war erupted. After Serbia refused to apologize to Austria for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Germany pushed Austria to declare war. Germany’s desire to start a war can be explained by the internal tensions that were increasing in the country at the time. The assassination was a timely scapegoat to direct the peoples attention and animosity to external sources. In short, on July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia and the allies of each country joined in, starting this global war.
Pollard, Percival. "The Unlikely Awakening of a Married Woman." Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994. 179-181.
Pat Barker's riveting World War I novel Regeneration brilliantly exemplifies the effectiveness of fiction united with historical facts. While men aspired to gain glory from war and become heroes, Regeneration poignantly points out that not all of war was glorious. Rather, young soldiers found their aspirations prematurely aborted due to their bitter war experiences. The horrible mental and physical sicknesses, which plagued a number of soldiers, caused many men to withdraw from the battlefield. Feelings of guilt and shame haunted many soldiers as they found themselves removed from the heat of war. Men, however, were not the only individuals to experience such feelings during a time of historical upheaval. Women, too, found themselves at war at the dawn of a feminine revolution. One of the most contentious topics of the time was the practice of abortion, which comes to attention in chapter 17 on pages 202 and 203 of Barker's novel. Through Baker's ground-breaking novel, we learn how men and women alike discovered that in life, not all aspirations are realized; in fact, in times of conflict, women and men both face desperate situations, which have no definite solutions. Illustrated in Barker's novel by a young woman named Betty, and many broken soldiers, society's harsh judgments worsen the difficult circumstances already at hand.
In the dawn of the twentieth century, while political turmoil spurred tension amongst European nations, a single bullet incited one of the bloodiest, most gruesome wars to ever happen in human history. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Archduke, by the hands of a Bosnian Serb propelled a conflict of gigantic proportions, pitting country against country and dividing the continent into two rival factions. However, the mayhem that ensued was for nothing. It is evident that the war was unnecessary, for its roots were pointlessly trivial, it could have been avoided, and yet it left a shattered world behind, damaging the world in a way that would take decades to repair.
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.
In Anatomy of Criticism, author Northrop Frye writes of the low mimetic tragic hero and the society in which this hero is a victim. He introduces the concept of pathos saying it “is the study of the isolated mind, the story of how someone recognizably like ourselves is broken by a conflict between the inner and outer world, between imaginative reality and the sort of reality that is established by a social consensus” (Frye 39). The hero of Hannah W. Foster’s novel, The Coquette undoubtedly suffers the fate of these afore mentioned opposing ideals. In her inability to confine her imagination to the acceptable definitions of early American female social behavior, Eliza Wharton falls victim to the ambiguity of her society’s sentiments of women’s roles. Because she attempts to claim the freedom her society superficially advocates, she is condemned as a coquette and suffers the consequences of exercising an independent mind. Yet, Eliza does not stand alone in her position as a pathetic figure. Her lover, Major Sanford -- who is often considered the villain of the novel -- also is constrained by societal expectations and definitions of American men and their ambition. Though Sanford conveys an honest desire to make Eliza his wife, society encourages marriage as a connection in order to advance socially and to secure a fortune. Sanford, in contrast to Eliza, suffers as a result of adhering to social expectations of a male’s role. While Eliza suffers because she lives her life outside of her social categorization and Sanford falls because he attempts to maneuver and manipulate the system in which he lives, both are victims of an imperfect, developing, American society.
Different levels of education in a marriage will give women a lot of pressures. In Gilman’s story, John controls his wife just by being a doctor. “If a physician of high standing and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression [...]” (154). Since her husband is a professional doctor, she cannot fight back with John about her illness. She believes that John’s higher education is putting more pressure on her as his wife. This shows that one higher education can be a pressure of others in a family. The levels of education make marriage become an oppressive re...
Marriage is a powerful union between two people who vow under oath to love each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. This sacred bond is a complicated union; one that can culminate in absolute joy or in utter disarray. One factor that can differentiate between a journey of harmony or calamity is one’s motives. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, where Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Mr. Darcy’s love unfolds as her prejudice and his pride abate. Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” explores class distinction, as an impecunious young woman marries a wealthy man. Both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” utilize
Not attempting to hide, Mrs. Mallard knows that she will weep at her husbands funeral, however she can’t help this sudden feeling of seeing, “beyond [the] bitter moment [of] procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin, 16). In an unloving marriage of this time, women were trapped in their roles until they were freed by the death of their husbands. Although Mrs. Mallard claims that her husband was kind and loving, she can’t help the sudden spark of joy of her new freedom. This is her view on the release of her oppression from her roles of being a dutiful wife to her husband. Altogether, Mrs. Mallard claims that, “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin, 16). This is the most important of Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts, as she never officially states a specific way when her husband oppressed her. However, the audience can clearly suggest that this is a hint towards marriage in general that it suffocates both men and women. Marriage is an equal partnership in which compromise and communication become the dominant ideals to make the marriage better. It is suggested that Mrs. Mallard also oppressed her husband just as much as he did to her when she sinks into the armchair and is, “pressed down by a physical exhaustion