Throughout the passage, narrator expresses an attitude of bitter contempt and disdain toward Mr. Dombey’s egotism and self-centeredness and an attitude of sympathy and pity for Mrs. Dombey and the newborn child through use of several literary devices. By conveying such attitudes, the narrator shapes the reader’s perceptions of the characters.
Utilizing diction, imagery, personification and repetition, the narrator expresses an attitude of scorn toward the conceited and arrogant Mr. Dombey. The narrator initially describes Mr. Dombey as a man incapable of being “prepossessing;” he was “too stern and pompous in appearance.” The narrator insults Mr. Dombey so blatantly that his disdain for the man is quite apparent to the reader. The speaker’s claim forms a bad impression of Dombey to the reader; a man’s self-importance must be so extreme so as to destroy any physical appeal. If, as the speaker claims, a man’s attractiveness can be completely obliterated by conceitedness, the reader is already cautious of the man they have yet to learn about. Dombey’s outfit on his son’s birthday only adds to his supercilious demeanor. Mr. Dombey “jingled and jingled” a large “gold watch-chain” that dangled from his “trim blue coat” that was decorated with “buttons” that “sparkled.” The narrator portrays Mr. Dombey as a man so pretentious that he would dress extravagantly even on the day of his son’s birth so as to focus and steal attention away from the newborn child. He also draws attention to his expensive and luxurious gold accessory which seems like a vain attempt at flaunting his wealth even when no one is watching. Mr. Dombey was “exulting in the long-looked-for event” rather than appreciating and feeling grateful for his newborn son’s firs...
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...ther and he will have to follow in the footsteps of his father. The narrator gathers the readers support especially when he describes the baby “squaring at existence” with his “fists curled up and clenched.” The baby seems to try and resist the father’s overwhelming authority over his life. It seems like the child will continue to fight his inevitable fate once he grows older, and in the meantime the reader roots for him. The narrator and reader sympathize with the newborn child for having to submit to Mr. Dombey’s selfish desires.
The narrator depicts each of the characters in different lights so as to elicit certain perceptions from the readers toward Mr. Dombey, his son, and the seemingly irrelevant Mrs. Dombey. After the author establishes Mr. Dombey as a contemptible character, a man worthy of scorn, he invokes sympathy for Mrs. Dombey and the newborn child.
This passage defines the character of the narrators’ father as an intelligent man who wants a better life for his children, as well as establishes the narrators’ mothers’ stubbornness and strong opposition to change as key elements of the plot.
3. The novel represents the world and its inhabitants on a miniscule level, by conveying the differences between the characters and how they act towards one another.
... middle of paper ... ... The two characters give a sense of despair by their appearances. Yet in the passage above, the reader is made aware that their immense agony is only for themselves and not for what they have done.
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
There are some literary devices or methods that can be applied in analyzing a given story that can either be short or long. Other aspects include literary devices, contrast, repetition, and anomalies (Wallek and Warren, 1956). In this task, I will use the short story, The First Day, which is written by Edward P. Jones. I will provide a summary of the story and later analyze it by identifying the devices used and how they have been applied to bring out the meaning of the story. The story is about a little girl seeing her mother as a flawed woman. The first day of school or the young girl, she found out her mother is not perfect. It’s not easy when you grew up expecting something, but after a while you find out the opposite is completely right.
In order to represent that the narrator's pride caused him to act with ill manners towards Doddle, Hurst creates the internal conflict which portrays the narrator’s struggle to choose what is more important, his pride or his brother. As the narrator confessed his past to the reader, he described a memory about how Doodle walked and he announced to the family that the narrator was the one who taught him. The narrator thus responds with: “They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all their voices; and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother” (Hurst 419). It is important to note how the author compares the narrator to a “slave” of pride, the word slave connotes that the narrator is imprisoned by pride and creates the appearance that the force is inescapable. Throughout the story pride dictates the narrator, if
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
At the end of the novel, the narrator has finally recognized his own invisibility; therefore finally able to redesign himself completely into a person able make a change in society. His experiences will aid him in his fight for power and acceptance in society. The narrator’s previous choices had been those of people around him urging him to define himself based on their standards. By rising above the assigned definitions of himself, the narrator is able to gain a new insight and new persona on and ultimately recreate his fate.
...rom the elite rich, who possess old money. Tom also claims that Gatsby “threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisy’s”, (142) and can be said to be using his false wealth to mislead and confuse Daisy and Nick into thinking he is someone of their standards, which shows that Gatsby is not recognised as one of their class. This undercuts the glamorous wealth associated with Gatsby, and the ideal of equality in the American Dream.
...st person. The narrator is looking back on this story and remembering things from a child’s point of view. The reader only sees the narrator’s opinion in the story, but that allows the reader to have his own opinions as well, questioning the literary work constantly. This makes the story more complex and permits the reader to wonder what is going on inside each of the characters’ heads.
...hut the child out of their lives. Rather than dealing with the mistake or misfortune as a parent should do and stand by their child’s side, both parents ran away and tried to hide from the problem. The feelings of each character were completely forgotten and lost. Each were treated as some sort of object that could be thrown away and replaced. And ultimately, the outcomes in their lives reflected their poor parenting. The choices they made unfortunately came from the lack of skills they were taught when they were young and impressionable. Neither character knows what it is like to be a part of a loving family because they were both used as objects for money or fame. Sadly, the lack of parenting led to the demise of each and we are reminded, from over a hundred years ago as well as today, that successful parenting today will lead to successful adults for the future.
... is not at all that he imagined. It is dismal and dark and thrives on the profit motive and the eternal lure its name evokes in men. The boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist except in his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception. He feels he is “a creature driven and derided by vanity” and the vanity is his own (Sample Essays).
The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic nature, as seen in chapter 17, “in rousing his rage a pitch above his malignity” there is hyperbole and melodrama as the cruelty that stemmed from his abuse in childhood has been passed onto Isabella in adulthood.
The novel opens with a scene of a desperate, aggravated child being sent away from his home due to a contagious disease. Tom Long’s brother Peter has been stricken with a case of the measles and to protect Tom, his parents have decided it would be best for him to spend the upcoming weeks with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen as Peter recovers. From the onset, it is obvious to the reader that Tom is extremely displeased with the notion of leaving not only his family and home, but also the ...
The study of infanticide is connected to a visual drama of a family corruption. Tilden, a burnt out has been a failure in life and banned from New Mexico due to some trouble has come home. His incestuous relationship with Halie his mother caused the child to be born and the incident was the catalyst of the crime. Dodge who knew that the child was not his destroyed it. This infanticide though committed by Dodge was a sin shared by the actions of all these three characters. It weighed upon the family as a whole leading to alienation and dissociation.