Sleep-over by Bonnie Jo Campbell is more than the usual teenager maturity story; between the lines, and behind the symbolism there is an underlying meaning. I believe the author is speaking from experience when telling this story. This story may be the authors depiction of the event of how she remembers it. From the title to the last sentence, Campbell expresses literary devices, natural languages, and involves her personal life into the story making it more than a teenage tale.
Bonnie Jo Campbell titled the short story with a hyphen in the word, Sleep-over. This was the first use of literary devices, foreshadowing. Normally the word is spelled without the use of a hyphen. By definition, hyphens are used to connect, or separate words. In this case, I believe Campbell used the conjoined meaning of the hyphen. The conjoining of the words, sleep and over, signifying that no sleep will be done, which supported by the text when pammy falls asleep, but the narrator is still awake. Campbell uses the literary device of symbolism plenty in this story. In writing authors use symbols for meaning, but also for emotions in the topic(Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). Vanity, can be shown in this text, as in most, by comparing oneself to another character in terms of beauty (Greenfield Web). In Sleep-over the narrator compares her chest to that of Pammy’s being that hers is smaller. The author starts her symbolism with this comparison, and moves on to the parts of the body. She lists in order: mouth, throat, collarbone, pelvis, and tongue. The mouth and throat are used for the fundamentals of interaction of other beings. Bone in general often signifies eternity because they are the last part of the human body after death. As for the tongue...
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.... Web. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=2e36cbfd-f496-4ee5-be9a-8b953318bd82%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=128 Portas, Allison. "Dictionary of Symbolism." Ed. Eric Jaffe. University of Michigan: Fantasy and
Science Fiction. Webcrawler, 1997. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. http://www.umich.edu/~umfandsf/symbolismproject/symbolism.html/index.html Simley, Jane. "Bonnie Jo Campbell's Rural Michigan Gothic." Sunday Book Review. The New York Times Co., 22 July 2011. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/books/review/once-upon-a-river-by-bonnie-jo-campbell-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& "Symbol." Columbia Electriconic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. (2013): 1. Literary Reference Center. Web.
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Southern gothic is a type of literature that focuses on the harsh conflicts of violence and racism, which is observed in the perspective of black and white individuals. Some of the most familiar southern authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. One author in particular, Flannery O’Connor, is a remarkable author, who directly reflects upon southern grotesque within her two short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” These two short stories are very similar to each other, which is why I believe that O’Connor often writes with violent characters to expose real violence in the world while tying them in with a particular spiritual insight.
Tate, Allen. “A Southern Mode of the Imagination.” In Essays of Four Decades. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1968; (Third Edition) Wilmington, De: ISI Press, 1999.
With the scene of Nebraska prairie where the fresh, tender, wind blowing over the green fields; dew falls down from the leaves with the first golden ray of summer sunshine, children smiling under the blue sky as the wind tickling their face, I’m brought back to the old time that Jim Burden and his friends has spent in their childhood together. Willa Cather, the author of My Ántonia, makes this novel nostalgic because it reminisces the childhood life bound with different characters, life and the picture the midwest landscape.
Tibbetts, John C. The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Mighall, Dr. Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares. Oxford University Press, 1999. 166-209.
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Southern literature, specifically southern Gothic literature, is distinct with its perceptions and observations on the American South. Death, mental illness, and oppression are just some of the common themes found in Southern Gothic literature, making it quite different from other American literary texts. Two celebrated authors, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, put the themes of the Gothic South to great use. Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which tells about the quietus of a Southern family at the hands of a killer, and William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, an elderly woman found to have her lover’s body rotting in the bedroom, are both commendable examples and show the antiquated views on southern culture and expectations. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and A Rose for Emily share many views on the brainwashed mindsets of the south, southern archetypes, and morbid outcomes.
Colburn, Steven E. Anne Sexton: Telling the Tale. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1988.
...erican Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
In James Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Cora Munro is marginalized and forced to endure the violence that ensues from masculine struggles, while in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, Katrina Von Tassel is reduced to being a mere commodity and means for Ichabond Crane to obtain success and wealth. Cora Munro and Katrina Von Tassel however, redefine their own roles in the American frontier by challenging conventional gender roles and expectations. Cora is characterized as being courageous in the face of danger, independent, and intelligent, which is a stark contrast with her sister, Alice, who is described as having a dependency that is akin
I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. (Collins, 2008, p. 6)
Shannon heard her stepfather coming up the stairs and quickly raced for the closet where she had already prepared her hiding place. Huddled under a pile of clothing, she listened as he came closer. He stopped as he entered the room and she knew he would be surprised to find her bed empty. He must be trying to figure out where to look next. Her heart pounded so hard she thought he must surely be able to hear it and she scarcely breathed as he stopped outside the closet door. Opening it slowly he looked inside but seemed unable to see her as he closed it and walked into another room. He called her name but she lay motionless until she heard him on the stairs. After a few more drinks he would pass out in front of the TV but afraid he might come back, she waited until she heard her mother come home from work. She slowly and quietly opened the closet door and tiptoed back to bed. Sleep did not come.
Hogle, Jerrold E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Print.
When she entered her bedroom, and her back hit the wonderful soft bed, she mentally groaned. Why couldn’t she just stay in her bed all day long? She learned from this whole experience that you have to be careful with everybody. Be careful with what you say and or think. She did let out a noise the emitted from her throat. Which was a laugh. Her 3 children, 2 girls and a boy older than the 2 girls jumped on the bed. Craving for their mothers attention. After all that happened throughout the whole day, it wouldn’t hurt to give them a little attention? So that’s how her day began and
To begin, when I recorded my sleep it was obvious that there was no pattern, no habits and that I have been sleeping very inconsistent. Sleep is like anything in life, it needs a routine. This is the reason that when I recorded how I felt for that day most of the time it was not refreshed. In college it is hard to set a bedtime and to wake up the same time every day, but one of the main things that I noticed while recording my sleep is that I went to bed at different times every night and woke up at different times every morning. From this information I concluded that my body was not in a rhythm and this is one of the main reasons for not being refreshed. Another thing that I do not do is take naps. It sounds silly to say that naps are needed,