Allyson Doan
Mrs. Lusby
English 105/14
9 April 2015
The Unforgettable Surprise
In “Birthday Party” Katharine Brush uses many literary devices, such as characterization, diction, and symbolism, to convince the reader to feel empathy towards the woman in her marital relationship.
Brush begins the story with a soothing description of the main characters, the wife and husband. The husband has a “round, self-satisfied face, with glasses on it” (Brush 1), because he is easily self-content and arrogant. His glasses emphasizes his narrow-mindedness. He appears to be kind and proper at first; subsequently, the reader discovers that he is a verbally abusive and controlling man. Katharine Brush illustrates the wife as “fading pretty,” which indicates that she is aging and her youth beauty is slowly vanishing. “Fading pretty” also shows that the wife is soft
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hearted, kind, and emotional. The reader comprehends that the husband is dominant. The narrator is also an important character in “Birthday Party.” The narrator and customers at the restaurant represent the people in the world. The narrator, specifically, exemplifies the people who see actions going on but do not partake in situations to help. Katharine Brush’s diction is one of many key literary devices, which are used to personally connect the narrator and the reader with emotion.
Brush begins “Birthday Party” in third person, and transitions to first person in the last paragraph. Third person indicates the point of view from an outsider, the bystanders. The narrator uses “you” to lure the reader into the story. Brush makes the reader feel as if they are sitting at the table with the narrator, witnessing the same situation and experiencing the same feelings. Katharine Brush describes the setting of the short story as a “narrow restaurant” (Brush 1). This description portrays the couple’s confined marriage. The word “little” is carried throughout the short story; however, it is ironic that the “O” in “Occasion” is capitalized. Although the couple’s date night is supposed to be a “little surprise” with a “little cake,” the occasion transforms into one big, unforgettable night. The short story shifts from pleasant and exciting to harsh and depressing. The wife plans a surprise for her husband, but instead she receives a disheartening surprise
herself. Lastly, Brush symbolizes certain objects in her short story. For instance, the husband wears glasses, which fools the reader. Usually, men with glasses are sophisticated; however, in this case the husband with glasses is conceited and very confident of himself. Therefore, his glasses represents a mask, covering his true marital relationship. In addition, the wife’s “big hat” and “best hat” reflects her feelings. The wife is “fading pretty, in a big hat;” therefore, she feels beautiful. She is proud of her “little surprise.” In contrast, towards the end of the story her “best hat” is used to hide her heartbreak. Furthermore, Brush describes the “glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the center” (Brush 1). The glossiness of the cake and pink colored candle illustrates her happiness of her surprise and hopefulness to please her husband. The one candle “burning in the center” of the cake resembles the wife’s stance in her relationship, standing all alone. All in all, Katharine Brush accomplishes her message, persuading the reader to share emotions with the wife in her troubled marriage, through characterization, diction, and symbolism.
The protagonist is Ann who has lived on the farm with her husband of seven years. Her life is tedious and lonely. Her nearest neighbor is Stephen, a bachelor living on a farm about two miles away. John, Ann’s husband, has little ambition other than make his farm work. He loves Ann and is very proud that she is his wife. On the other hand, Ann finds much that she is
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Marriage is an important theme in the stories Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. When someone hears the word “marriage”, he thinks of love and protection, but Hurston and Chopin see that differently. According to them, women are trapped in their marriage and they don’t know how to get out of it, so they use language devices to prove their points. Chopin uses personification to show Mrs. Mallard's attitudes towards her husband's death. Louise is mournful in her room alone and she is giving a description of the nature as a scene of her enjoying “the new spring life” and “the delicious breath of rain was in the air” (Chopin1).
Most of us can easily picture a typical child's party, loud and hyper boys running about, noise and fun and screaming kids and chaos, but this party seems to be viewed differently by the mother. It is a more serious and quiet event. She sees the boys as "short men" gathering in the living room, not as children having fun. The children seems subdued to us, with "hands in pockets". It is almost as if they are waiting, as the readers are, for something of imp...
In class there have been many discussions over the relationships and marriages among the books we have read. When someone thinks of marriage, a fairy tale with a happy ending might come to mind, or possibly a safe haven for those looking for something stable. In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, marriage takes a turn for the worse. Marriage is no longer the happy memories in a lifetime. It can be the thing that hinders the women in these stories from developing their full potential or experiencing the world and other lifestyles. Through these texts and this time frame, we will analyze the meaning of their marriages, how they function, and the end result of both.
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
In a subtle way, Brush also makes the wife’s actions selfish. Even though her husband was wrong to react in the way that he did, she was also selfish in her actions. Clearly, her husband has a shy personality because “he was hotly embarrassed” (13) in front of “such few people as there were in the restaurant” (11). Using a couple of this age (“late thirties” (1)), Brush asserts that the wife should have known her husband’s preferences and been sensitive to them. The author also uses the seemingly opposite descriptions the couple: “There was nothing conspicuous about them” (5) and the “big hat” (4) of the woman. The big hat reveals the wife’s desire to be noticed.
At the beginning of the story, in plot “A”, John and Mary are introduced as a stereotypical happy couple with stereotypically happy lives of middle class folks. Words like “stimulating” and “challenging” are used repetitiously to describe events in thei...
The bleak tone of this story takes a particularly sad and disturbing tinge when the wife illustrates a scene from early on in her marriage where she tries to get her husband to satisfy her desire and provide her with mutual satisfaction, only to have him rebuke and reprimand her. In fact, the husband responds in such a particularly brusque and hysterical manner that the reader can see how traumatized the wife would have been at ...