Lost Lady

899 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Childhood trauma literature

The diction and detail used by Willa Cather in the book A Lost Lady, paints a picture in the readers mind by her prose selection of diction and arrangements of graphic detail, which conveys a feeling of passion, sadness, tense anger and unending happiness through Neil Herbert. Throughout the book, Cather describes Neil Herbert¡¯s life from his childhood, to his teenage years, and then to his adulthood with surpassing diction and supporting detail.
As the story begins, Cather describes Neil Herbert as, ¡°a handsome boy of twelve whom she liked.¡± This description gives us a mental picture of this boy with a smile on his face and always being courteous. In his younger years, the reader can assume that Herbert was very energetic and always merry. He¡¯d even try to catch a bird in a tree so Ivy Peters couldn¡¯t kill it with a rock. ¡°If I can get it now, I can kill it and put it out of its misery.¡± Through Cather¡¯s details the reader can tell that Herbert had a strong determination to catch the bird. Herbert ends up falling from the tree and breaking his arm of which he gets treated at Mrs. Forrester¡¯s house. ¡°What soft fingers Mrs. Forrester had,¡± and he though, ¡°what a lovely lady she was.¡± The author states that ¡°The little boy was thinking that he would never be in so nice a place again.¡± Through Cather's description the reader can tell that Neil had a yearning passion for Mrs. Forrester and that her house was like heaven on earth.
&nbs...

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of the Poem Black Walnut Tree by Mary Oliver

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tree “swings through another year of sun and leaping winds, of leaves and bounding fruit.” This sentence evokes images of happiness and serenity; however, it is in stark contrast with “month after month, the whip-crack of the mortgage.” The tone of this phrase is harsh and the onomatopoeia of a “whip crack” stirs up images of oppression. The final lines of the poem show the consequences that the family accepts by preserving the tree—their family heritage. When the speaker judges the tree by its cover she sees monetary value, but when she looks at the content in the book she find that it represents family. Even though times may be tough for the family, they are united by memories of their ancestors.

    Read More

  • Irony and Symbolism in Willa Cather's Paul's Case

    1774 Words  | 4 Pages

    Brown M. & Crone R. Willa Cather the Woman and Her Works. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In 'Doe Season' By Michael Kaplan

    1569 Words  | 4 Pages

    The setting takes place mostly in the woods around Andy’s house in Pennsylvania. The season is winter and snow has covered every inch of the woods and Andy’s favorite place to be in, “They had been in her dreams, and she had never lost' sight of them…woods always stayed the same.” (327). While the woods manage to continually stay the same, Andy wants to stay the same too because she is scared of growing up. The woods are where she can do manly activities such as hunting, fishing and camping with her father. According to Andy, she thinks of the woods as peaceful and relaxing, even when the snow hits the grounds making the woods sparkle and shimmer. When they got to the campsite, they immediately started heading out to hunt for a doe. Andy describes the woods as always being the same, but she claims that “If they weren't there, everything would be quieter, and the woods would be the same as before. But they are here and so it's all different.” (329) By them being in the woods, everything is different, and Andy hates different. The authors use of literary elements contributes to the effect of the theme by explaining what the setting means to Andy. The woods make Andy happy and she wants to be there all the time, but meanwhile the woods give Andy a realization that she must grow up. Even though the woods change she must change as

    Read More

  • Willa Cather Describes Erotics of Place in her Novel, A Lost Lady

    2966 Words  | 6 Pages

    Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski with Kari Ronning, Charles W. Mignon and Frederick M. Link. The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997.

    Read More

  • Femininity against Masculinity in A White Heron

    1703 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...usting civilization upon it? (P. Miller, p.207). With all this, the author has achieved the vividness implication that aggressive masculine modernization is a danger to the gentle feminine nature. In the end of the story, Sylvia decides to keep the secret of the heron and accepts to see her beloved hunter go away. This solution reflects Jewett?s hope that the innocent nature could stay unharmed from the urbanization.

    Read More

  • A tree grows in brooklyn

    1576 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Use of Environment, Landscape, and Cycles in My Antonia

    3299 Words  | 7 Pages

    Dyck, Reginald. "The Feminist Critique of Willa Cather's Fiction: A Review Essay." Women's Studies 22 (1993): 263-279.

    Read More

  • Special Bond In Willa Cather's My Antonia

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cather, Willa. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th edition, Vol 2. New York:W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1998, Pgs 937-1070.

    Read More

  • Considerations Of A Strategic Plan

    1447 Words  | 3 Pages

    Innovation has rapidly assumed a position of prominence in world competition on a global scale. To compete in this environment, organizations need a level of innovation. As competition becomes more global and time-based, organizations must develop and deliver new and superior products or services in less time. The challenge for modern organizations is to revitalize them so they can successfully and continuously develop newer products and enhance business development.

    Read More

  • Loss of Innocence in The Flowers, by Alice Walker

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walker uses the positive imagery of “The Flowers” at the beginning of the novel to set up a naïve, sweet world in which a gruesome appearance of the lynched victim turns out to a reasonably unexpected, shocking event that robs Myop of her innocence. The first half of the text focuses on Myop’s childlike innocence with sweet kinesthetic imagery of Myop feeling “good and warm in the sun” to hit specifically on Myop’s childlike inhibitions. In the same case, sweet and gentle visual imagery continues to play in the first few paragraphs of a happy agricultural lifestyle where “each day a golden surprise” and a ten year old girl like Myop could “skip lightly from her house to pigpen” and bounce “this way and that way”. Myop’s joyful rapping of the stick that goes “tat-de-ta-ta-ta” enables auditory imagery to play on a merry sort of onomatopoeia that goes strongly with Myop’s innocence. Imagery had little direct prepa...

    Read More

  • Othello and the Virtue of Love

    2748 Words  | 6 Pages

    Othello and Desdemona are so attractive that we tend to see them only as they see each other: the noble Moor, the pure white maiden. But Shakespeare shows their love, even here at the very beginning, as dreamy, utterly defensele...

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis In The Great Gatsby

    547 Words  | 2 Pages

    This passage shows Nick making his way through New York at night, seeing the sights and narrating the way this external stimuli makes him feel. It exemplifies the manner in which Nick interacts with the world around him, often as an observer, rather than participant, and is integral to the development of his character. Fitzgerald utilizes vivid imagery throughout the paragraph, paired with a strong narrative regarding Nick’s experience in New York; furthermore provoking the audience to ponder a theme central to the novel.

    Read More

  • How Is Mrs Mallard A Dynamic Character

    583 Words  | 2 Pages

    The imagery portrayed in the first half of the story is solemn, melancholy and grim depicting the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, is effortlessly flabbergasted at the harsh news of her husband, Brently Mallard’s disastrous death. In hearing the news of Brently’s premature death, Mrs. Mallard immediately accepts his death and is overcome with grief and leaves to her room unaccompanied. It is in her room, which she peers through the window contemplating on the recent news that she has received, when there is an overall shift to the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

    1261 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performed Overture to La Scala di Seta by Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), which represents the Classical Period. Rossini

    Read More

  • The Window In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

    490 Words  | 1 Pages

    In conclusion, the window helps to calm Mrs. Mallard’s fears about what’s to come in her life, but it also was the death of her. As she sat in the window pondering the news of her husbands passing, she only sheds a tear before feeling slight joy in her heart. If Mrs. Mallard would have taken the time to morn her husband properly, and not been so quick to run away and act selfish about her feelings, she wouldn’t have suffered from a heart attack from the shock when she finds him to still be

    Read More

More about Lost Lady

Open Document