The diversity in the stories The Moth has to offer is incredible. The two stories that I listened to could not have been more different. One was about the capture of one of the most notorious criminals of all time, the other was about a simple pastry chef who ends up getting a job at the white house. Both stories were incredibly well told and interesting, despite being different in every way possible. The first story was told by Josh Bond and was titled Call Me Charlie. The story is about how Josh, a musician living in LA area, helped to capture Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger is one of the most notorious criminals of all time, and at the time of his arrest he was living under the alias Charlie Gasko in an apartment building that Josh ran. Josh, …show more content…
who introduces himself as and extremely normal man, becomes a huge part of Whitey’s arrest when the police start to suspect that Charlie Gasko is really Whitey Bulger.
Josh is by all accounts an average man. He works as a musician and runs an apartment building to supplement his income. On the day of Whitey’s arrest Josh had the day off of work and was planning on attending a concert with his friend. Josh tells the audience how he hasn’t have a day off in two straight weeks and was dying to have a night out. Starting the story in this way helped to paint a picture of Josh’s life and make him relatable. Throughout the story the audience feels for Josh, who is being forced to turn in someone he believed to be a friend. He is being thrown into an extremely high stress situation in which the FBI is calling all the shots. Throughout the story Josh sees the good and the bad in the situation he is in. At one point he calls his brother because he is so excited about what is going on. He has …show more content…
adrenaline pumping through his body and is having a really good time. Slowly this feeling dissipates and is left with a feeling of unease. Josh had been living next to Charlie Gasko and his girlfriend Carol for years. He recounts how they were kind to him over the years, how they joked with him, and how they exchanged Christmas cards every year. Josh starts to wonder if what he is doing is a good idea. He begins to question the FBI and at one point refuses to help them. Ultimately, however, he does give in, and the FBI captures both Whitey and his girlfriend. Josh explains the feeling he gets as he stands watching the FBI putting Whitey in handcuffs. He felt guilty. This experience may not have changed his life in a huge way, however, he now lives knowing that he had a hand in capturing a man at the top of the FBI most wanting list. He also lives knowing that he had a hand in capturing a man who had been a friend to him. The second Moth story is slightly less high intensity.
It is a simple story about a gay democrat from New York named Bill Yosses, who ends up being the pastry chef for George and Laura Bush. Bill is a nice man who has worked as a pastry chef for many many years. The way Bill tells his story the audience can tell that he is a humble man, despite the fact that he has had quite a lot of success in his life. Bill’s story starts when we gets a phone call telling him that the pastry chef from the White House was retiring. Bill’s friends pushed him into applying for the job, and after sending in his resume he felt extremely confident. Bill didn’t get the job. He didn’t even get an interview. Instead he went back to his normal life and didn’t think about the job for two more years, when the job re-opened. Yet again his friends pressured him into applying for the job, this time he got an interview. The interview process was lengthy and complicated. Bill explains that in order to even bake anything he had to go to several interviews and have several back ground checks. Eventually he got to the point in the interview process where he got to meet the president. He talks about how standing in the White House all he wanted was to be a part of history in some way. He thought about all the people who had lived and worked there and wanted so badly to get to join them. Bill eventually got the job and has been working at the White House ever since. He saw the Bush leave office and Obama take
over the presidency. Bill now works closely with Michelle Obama to end obesity in The United States. Both stories on The Moth were very different, however, they both contained a simple man who had something extraordinary happen to them. In the end that’s what most stories are: the creation of something extraordinary from something extremely ordinary.
Franklin is faced with numerous internal conflicts. The conflicts set foot right when Franklin lands a job at Wendy’s working a night shift. The conflict emerges when Franklin is required to serve his community. It is the case because Franklin who works at the Wendy’s lives a few blocks away from the restaurant which states that the customers who flock to the restaurant are among the community members who are recognized by Franklin. Franklin’s boy is a member of the Boy Scout Troop and many of the customers who come to Wendy’s restaurant are parents to boys who attend the Boys Scout Troop. Franklin feels embarrassed when the parents that he knows come to the restaurant. To avoid the embarrassment, what he does is to attempt to explain the case by stating that it is just a temporary process working at the Wendy’s at night. There is an internal personal conflict that is encountered in this segment. Franklin has to make ends meet by fending for his family but also he has to serve his community members which posses a great challenge to his desires and working at the Wendy’s. Furthermore, before the start of the job at Wendy’s, Franklin had a conflict on whether to seek for the job or avoid seeking for a vacancy. An incident to note is when he, Franklin hid his resume inside a menu before the manager walked and talked to him about the work duty at night in the
“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage.” In America, Americans are blessed to have the right to freedom. Unlike other unfortunate countries, their freedom is limited. In many Latin American countries, the government’s leader has all power of the Country. Citizens have no rights to freedom, they are trapped in a cruel country where innocent people are killed each day. Civilians fear to speak out to the regime of leader; However, there were a few courageous citizens enough to speak out against the government. For example, “The Censors” by Luisa Valenzuela and the historical fictionalized account, “In The Time Of The Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez reveal individual 's role in overcoming oppression.
The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory.
“September Elegies” is a poem written by an American poet Randall Mann in memory of Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi. It articulates a gloomy story about four young boys who took their own lives by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The memorialization is a reminder of how cruel our world can be and how bigotry and indifference destroy people’s lives. The poet reveres their memory by making use of various literary devices in order to transmit the pain the boys experienced.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
In the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, is a story of three girls who develop from being innocent girls to being part of a revolutionary to stop Trujillo a Dominican dictator. Throughout the story we see each of the sisters go through hard moments in their life. However the sister that has developed the most though is Minerva. She goes from being just a girl with a dream to be a lawyer too a woman willing to sacrifice anything to support the revolution and stop Trujillo.
The author skillfully uses literary techniques to convey his purpose of giving life to a man on an extraordinary path that led to his eventual demise and truthfully telling the somber story of Christopher McCandless. Krakauer enhances the story by using irony to establish Chris’s unique personality. The author also uses Characterization the give details about Chris’s lifestyle and his choices that affect his journey. Another literary element Krakauer uses is theme. The many themes in the story attract a diverse audience. Krakauer’s telling is world famous for being the truest, and most heart-felt account of Christopher McCandless’s life. The use of literary techniques including irony, characterization and theme help convey the authors purpose and enhance Into The Wild.
The famous phrase "looks may be deceiving" strongly pertains to Helena Viramontes's short story, "The Moths." The story, instead of focusing the creatures in the title, is actually about a young girl who comes of age as she is faced with the deterioration and death of her grandmother. Even though the title, "The Moths," seems to have no relevance at the beginning, these creatures help to portray a sense of spirituality, rebirth, and become, finally, an incarnation of the grandmother. The relationship between the moths and the main characters aids in conveying the main theme of the story, which is not simply the death of a loved one, but a spiritual and maturing experience undergone by the grandchild.
The Mirabal Sisters, otherwise known as Las Mariposas, made their mark in history due to their efforts in the revolution against the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. Julia Alvarez, a native Dominican herself, wrote In the Time of the Butterflies due to an account told by Dede Mirabal about the lives and tragic fate of her sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa. Dede’s three sisters were murdered due to their involvement in the revolution; Dede did not join the revolution, and thus survived to help recount their story. Since the novel’s publication in 1994, In the Time of the Butterflies has impacted various aspects of life, and contemporary culture frequently alludes to facets of the novel. One critic commented that "In the Time of the Butterflies suggests that the Mirabal sisters not only fought against the Trujillo regime, but also against the Dominican Republic’s patriarchal culture and gender roles. They were very
NOTE: This isn’t even close to how I would like the essay to be laid out. I’m just writing paragraphs and eventually I will get them in an order I like them and revise.
Lord of the Flies is a novel written by William Golding in 1954 about a group of young British boys who have been stranded alone together on an island with no adults. During the novel the diverse group of boys struggle to create structure within a society that they constructed by themselves. Golding uses many unique literary devices including characterization, imagery, symbolism and many more. The three main characters, Ralph, Piggy, and Jack are each representative of the three main literary devices, ethos, logos, and pathos. Beyond the characterization the novel stands out because of Golding’s dramatic use of objective symbolism, throughout the novel he uses symbols like the conch, fire, and Piggy’s glasses to represent how power has evolved and to show how civilized or uncivilized the boys are acting. It is almost inarguable that the entire novel is one big allegory in itself, the way that Golding portrays the development of savagery among the boys is a clear representation of how society was changing during the time the novel was published. Golding is writing during
Much of history’s most renown literature have real-world connections hidden in them, although they may be taxing uncover. William Golding’s classic, Lord of the Flies, is no exception. In this work of art, Golding uses the three main characters, Piggy, Jack, and Ralph, to symbolize various aspects of human nature through their behaviors, actions, and responses.
It could be said that tragedies serve as Humanity’s catalysts of thought. When we line up literary eras with wars, the shifts in eras are always marked by some war- especially in America. The Romantic period was broken by the dawn of the civil war, and took a little magic from the world of writing. Writing shifted to realism, which was the polar opposite of romantic thought. When the First World War broke out, the modernist movement overshadowed realism. Similarly, the Second World War produced postmodernism. Should there be another horrible tragedy, the view will shift similarly. Whatever the implications may be, tragedies seem to change how us humans think and act. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, he tells the story of a group of schoolboys
John cleared his throat and continued, “At 10:55 Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated,” A unanimous gasp rose among all the men. Pure shock, that’s the only emotion I felt at hearing this devastating news. I had followed Harvey Milk’s career since he had been elected roughly a year earlier. Harvey Milk being the first openly gay man elected to public office had made tremendous leaps for the gay community. “I’m giving you all the rest of the day off to call your families and tell them you love them. In times like this it’s important to remember and cherish the things that we do have,” Everyone dispersed, gathered their things and began to file out of the door. I stayed where I was too stunned to move. Soon John and I were the only people left in the
After a few years, Cecil Gaines left the plantation. At first, Cecil Gaines could not find food, work, or a place to sleep until he broke into a shop, got caught, and asked the man for a job. The man said “yes.” Shortly after, Cecil Gaines was offered another position at the White House as a butler. He took the position and joined a t...