Yoko Ogawa’s “Revenge” was an entertaining but frustrating puzzle. These eleven stories loosely relate. However, to the extent that the stories relate, they relate only in pieces. It is hard to see coherent link. However, there are a few notable links that this paper analyzes. As Ogawa says through one of her characters, her work has the power to make the reader, “plunge” into the “icy current running under her words.” It is impossible for readers to thaw her “icy current”. However, it poses the kind of challenge that absorbs readers as they try chipping away at the icy details that connect her work. Mama The most profound way that Ogawa comments on her own experience of her work as an artist is through the character “Mama.” Mama first appears in the “The Little Dustman” as the former stepmother of the narrator. She reappears much older as a character in the subsequent story “Tomatoes and the Full Moon.” In both stories we learn about her career as a writer. Ogawa adds an important and revealing twist when we learn that she was also the author of “Afternoon at the Bakery” and “Old Mrs. J.” By making her the author of these two stories, she is able to comment on her own work and possibly reveal details about her personality as a writer. Mama/Old Lady Wrote “Afternoon at the Bakery” To make this connection, Ogawa reveals that “Old Lady” who is “Mama” wrote “Afternoon at the Bakery.” The main character in “Tomatoes and the Full Moon” we is an older lady and author who never had a child of her own, but had a stepson for two years. The second clue that helps link the two characters is the story the older lady tells about her son commenting on the absurdity of giraffe’s long necks. This is consistent with the part of “Little... ... middle of paper ... ...eme in the book is a respect for elders. In “Fruit Juice” it is amazing that the narrator, an illegitimate child, is so polite and civil when she meets her politician father for the first time. She was reserved, quiet, and polite. Similarly, when Mama and her stepson are at the zoo in “The Little Dustman,” the son reports, “not wanting to disappoint her (Mama), I tried to appear as though I were enjoying myself.” Even, by calling the stepmom “Mama”, so quickly the narrator was showing respect for her desire to feel like a grown-up, despite the age difference between she and the narrators biological father. Finally, when the Uncle in “The Man Who Sold Braces” shoddily put together a model plane for narrator, she replied, “ ‘It’s great,’ She then went on to clarify that “It looked nothing like the photograph on the box, but I was reluctant to disappoint him.”
The analysis showed that Shirley’s and Thomas’s work matched in a way that both the stories reflect identity crises and the psyche of a killer. The notable use of typical fictional horror elements such as tragic backstories, harbingers, unseen forces causing chaos and dreadfulness, terror and above all unrealistically portrayed personality disorders makes the stories a baroque blend of supernatural fantasy and moral reality.
Why does it seem like humans always hurt the ones they love the most? This is a question faced as the Seventh man tells his story. In “The Seventh Man”, a young ten year old boy loses his best friend from a giant wave and carries the guilt until he learns how to reconcile from the tragedy. The story provokes curiosity to see if anyone can truly rebound from a life altering tragedy. In “The Seventh Man”, Murakami uses foreshadowing, strong word choice, and symbolism to develop the theme of tragedy and the quest for recovery.
Much about Kogawa's novel makes it difficult not only to read but also to classify or categorize. First, Obasan blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction. Kogawa draws from actual letters and newspaper accounts, autobiographical details, and historical facts throughout the novel, but she artistically incorporates this material into a clearly fictional work. In addition, Kogawa's narrative operates on multiple levels, from the individual and familial to the communal, national, political, and spiritual. Stylistically, the novel moves easily between the language of documentary reportage and a richly metaphorical language, and between straightforward narrative and stream-ofconsciousness exposition. This astonishing variety in Kogawa's novel can, at times, become bewildering and unsettling to the reader. But as many readers and critics have noted, Kogawa's style and method in Obasan also constitute the novel's unique strength. Kogawa writes in such a way that ambiguity, uncertainty, irony, and paradox do not weaken her story but instead paradoxically become the keys to understanding it.
“A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” take place in an era that favours male hierarchy and ordains women by implying inferiority. In “A Rose for Emily”, the male is represented as very powerful and dominating, and in Emily’s case, it is her father. There is a brief description of him next to Emily that the narrator reveals, “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” (Faulkner, 142). This imagery of the father with the whip next to a fragile Emily against a white background helps the reader visualize the dominating nature of their relationship. Similarly, “The Yellow Wallpaper” conveys the inequalities that exist between men and women, the mistreatment and lack of respect women receive from the society. However, the discrimination of women is seen as a “condition” through the eyes of the narrator. Thus, she begins to belie...
Although her father got her interested in storytelling it was Goodwin’s mother that got her interested in books. She goes on to tell that if her mother was not doing anything else she would always be reading no matter what time it was. Goodwin writes that every night before bedtime her mother would come and read to her. Goodwin’s favorite times with her mother though were when her mother would tell her real life stories about when she was younger. During this time Goodwin liked to believe that her mother forgot about the pain that she went through constantly due to her bad health.
Because the mother is living in a world of depression a dark wall has wrapped itself around her. Worrying solemnly about the life of her daughter, the mother is neglecting to appreciate the positive attributes her daughter is presenting. Emily is a gifted comedian, "Where does it come from, that comedy?" (p.159) being a comedian during the Great Depression is almost as rare as finding water during an extensive drought. If the mother wasn't as depressed she would be able to appreciate the comedy that Emily is passionate for. The mother's character is left in a state of helplessness reaching out beyond depression to view the comedian inside her daughter.
When Maggie finally smiles ‘a real smile’ at the end of the story as she and her mother watch Dee’s car disappear in a cloud of dust, it is because she knows her ‘mother holy recognition of the scarred daughter’s sacred status as quilter is the best gift if a hard-pressed womankind to the fragmented goddess of the present.’ (Piedmont-Marton)
Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...
In Big Mama's Funeral, we are told the story of the death and funeral of Big Mama. In the events of her life and the days proceeding and proceeding her death we find events and stories of the past that are truly fantastical. In the annals of her past we find that in her family the "uncles married the daughters of their nieces, and the cousins married their aunts, and the brothers their sisters-in-law, until an intricate mesh of consanguinity was formed." Here, García Márquez takes the simple act of incestuous relationships, which do occur, and elevates them to an extreme level. This is the writing style of García Márquez and the two aforementioned writers, Cervantes and Voltaire.
In life, people experience different situations and live different realities. It is not illogical to say that the different journeys in life sometimes give us different ways of viewing the world. This was evident upon a closer examination and analysis of Wu Cheng’en’s “The Journey to the West”, and Mary Shelly “Frankenstein”, where the two main characters of the book, a Monkey and a creature, each have a different way of viewing life. The monkey see’s life as a journey that should be explored, while the creature has no way of exploring and sees life as something he cannot enjoy. In the end, what can be taken away from the works of literature is that no matter the journey taken, it is important to remember that one’s subjectivity, built on our experiences, determines reality.
By investigating the emotional resonances of historical narratives, the Gothic novel questions how we as readers might arrive at a particular version of history. If the Gothic novel locates authentic historical representation in the archive, however, the act of interpreting the archive is almost never fully realized; interpretation in the Gothic novel is always a partial, interrupted, obscure process. This tendency indicate...
Readers become focused with the intensity and strength of the writer. Margaret Atwood pulls the reader in by bring her art and words to visual life. She makes you think about what she is saying and it then becomes a picture. Pictures lurk your mind as you read the award winning books such as, “The Blind Assassin,” a Booker Prize winner in the year 2000. Her books are bought and read all around the world. Her work has been published in more than thirty-five different languages including; Japanese, Turkish, Finish, Korean, Iceland, and Estonian. (Atwood, “Negotiating With The Dead”) She is an amazing person and shows her strength threw her work. Atwood is an award winner of stories and poems’ like, “Morning After in the Burning House,” and “Murder in The Dark” (Atwood, “Negotiating with the Dead”) She was born to write, and a writer she became.
Effectively using these elements in a piece of literature enhances the reader’s curiosity. One prime example of such usage of these elements is seen in Kate Chopin's writing. Her use of foreshadowing and use of emotional conflicts put into few words in the short piece "The Storm" adds an element that is alluring, holding the reader's interest. In this short piece of literature, a father and son, Bobinot and Bibi, are forced to remain in a store where they were shopping before the storm, waiting for the storm to pass over them. In the meantime, the wife and mother, Calixta, whom is still at home, receives an unexpected visit from a former lover named Alicee. The two have an affair and the story starts to come together. The story shows us how we tend to want what we beli...
What inspires her to write the story? As I read her biography I concluded that her personal life and experiences. she mentions that she started to write after her husband’s death. Which indicates that she was not allowed to write before and when in the story her husband
The two novels prove the claim of the research, which is working on the female characters; and that is why these novels are chosen and made a comparison between them. Both of the writers make their protagonists the victims and from another side send to them the one who will help them to overcome their ordeal. Finally, their life has completely changed and reached what they want.