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Analysis of John Steinbeck
Analysis of John Steinbeck
Analysis of John Steinbeck
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The author use of the simile, “The cat sneaked away toward the open barn shed and passed inside like a shadow” (48), is significant because it reflects the difference between life now and life as it was before the Dust Bowl. The shadow symbolizes the past because it is an optical illusion which always follows its object. By comparing the cat to the shadow, the author shows how everything about the farm is now apart of the past. Even the cat which is still with them, is seen as a fragment of Tom Joad’s
Many poets use different types of figurative language to express themselves and convey a message, theme, or idea. In the poem The Day Brushes Its Curtains Aside, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, he describes a man in prison by using figurative language. Reading this poem has helped me grasp a deeper understanding of different ways an author can incorporate figurative language to make the reader feel as if they are in the story right next to the character.
Jackson in her story, “The Lottery”, describes how society and villagers preserve the tradition of lottery without even knowing its origin. Hawthorne, in his story, “Young Goodman Brown” describes the presence of corruption and evil in the society. Both stories have common ideas such as corruption in our society, continuation of barbarous and unethical old traditions, and failure of people in handling those barbarous actions. Both stories have a common theme of evil and darkness but they are presented in different manners. This paper discusses similarities and differences in “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown” by analyzing different literary elements. Jackson, in her story, questions beliefs of individuals, their actions, and blind faith towards old barbaric traditions by using an evil theme and symbolism. Hawthorne adopted a different approach to show presence of evil in our society by showing the inner struggle of the lead character.
As a child you do many things that are horrible but you do them because you either do not care or do not know the consequences to their actions. Percy was a teen who lived in Bend, Oregon and he was happy to live there. He started to see people from California, Seattle, and Portland come to his town which he felt they were invading his territory. Percy and his friends would do many bad things to the rich people because they hated them and wanted them out. Bend was a place where there was a lot of empty land usually grass field. “ When I go back to Bend now, I don't recognize it. I get lost driving around. There are roads where there were none before. There are roundabouts where there were once intersections. Acres of sagebrush have given way to big box stores”. Percy left Oregon for a long time, but when he came back he saw something he had never expected to occur. As he drove around Percy got lost because this was a new...
The narrator's precise observations allow the reader to find insight in small moments of village life. Jewett presents a world seemingly unchanged with a mixture of remoteness and a “childish certainty of being the center of civilization” (1). The narrator's nostalgic recount of village life has about it the mood of a dream, a life remembered and not put down until long afterwards. Jewett's pictorial conventions create a feeling of impermanence akin to nostalgia assembled into long, gracefully rambled sentences authenticating her own regional style.
During the story the author often uses foreshadowing to give hints to the reader of things that will happen in the future. When the story starts, a storm is coming on a late October night. The storm symbolizes the evil approaching the town. Usually it seems a storm would resemble something dark and evil, because a stormy night is always a classic setting for something evil. At the climax of the story, Charles Halloway reads a passage ...
In Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” he attempts to portray the idea that perspective can be skewed by another’s story, personal experience, and other factors that lead people to have these expectations of a sight or study that lessen the experience. He demonstrates this when he makes mention of the tourists at the Grand Canyon, and the Biology student getting compared to the Falkland Islander. The facts he presents are true, but Percy does not go into detail about individual cases leading to a generalized essay that does not show that each individual account is different, and not all expectations are changed from other information given to people will taint the learning environment or the experience, and because of this the points that are not mentioned as well as Percy’s thoughts will be explained and expanded on.
...d his own ruin. His family is gone, and the thunderstorm that he headed towards has knocked a gutter “over the front door,” (Cheever 12) blocking his entrance.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the drought-stricken farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a covering everything, smothering the life out of anything that wants to grow. The dust is symbolic of the erosion of the lives of the people. The dust is synonymous with "deadness". The land is ruined ^way of life (farming) gone, people ^uprooted and forced to leave. Secondly, the dust stands for ^profiteering banks in the background that squeeze the life out the land by forcing the people off the land. The soil, the people (farmers) have been drained of life and are exploited:
The fire that Joe and his father sit around represents the burning endurance of their relationship. Later, the fire is extinguished after Joe realizes that the trip with his father would be the last one of his kind; the smoking coals symbolize the end of his naive childhood. The bed in which the two lay at night is described as a floor of pine needles with “little hollows for their hips” calling forth the image of a bird’s nest. This inspires deeper meaning when Joe has his epiphany, relating his actions to a juvenile bird flying from the nest. This act represents the shift in the nature of Joe’s relationship with his
Otis sat at his tattered corner booth, the pale pink and teal upholstery ripped and worn by all those who had rested there before him. His charcoal-grey hair was oily and unkept as if he hadn’t known the pleasure of a shower or a comb since his early days in the war. His once green army jacket, faded to a light grey, covered the untucked, torn, and sweat-stained Goodwill T-shirt under it. He wore an old pair of denim blue jeans that were shredded in the knees and rested three inches above his boney ankles; exposing the charity he depended upon. His eyes, filled with loneliness and despair as if he had realized a lack of purpose in his life, were set in bags of black and purple rings two layers deep. His long, slender nose was set above a full crooked mouth with little lines at the corners giving his face the character of someone who used to smile often, but the firm set of his square jaw revealed a portrait of a man who knew only failure.
Similarly, the furniture in the house is as sullen as the house itself. What little furniture is in the house is beaten-up; this is a symbol of the dark setting. The oak bed is the most important p...
Like William Blake 's return to the Chimney Sweeper after five years of experience passed him by, this too is the second incantation of this analysis. After further delving into the parallel stories it seems another approach could be similarly effective. The more one contemplates on the juxtaposition of the two sides perspectives of the story, the more one realizes that it could be seen as a struggle between two opposing views of separate class ideologies.
In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake, the author attempts to educate the reader about the horrors experienced by young children who are forced into labor at an early age cleaning chimneys for the wealthy. The poem begins with a young boy who has lost his mother but has no time to properly grieve because his father has sold him into a life of filth and despair. The child weeps not only for the loss of his mother and his father’s betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and innocence. Blake uses poetry in an attempt to provoke outrage over the inhumane and dangerous practice of exploiting children and attempts to shine a light on the plight of the children by appealing to the reader’s conscience in order to free the children from their nightmare existence.
This is expressed through the artists expression of the elderly woman 's haggard appearance. The exhausted expression in her face, how her attire is worn and hanging off her, the baskets she is carrying that clearly are almost dragging on the ground, and her poor posture. This elderly woman was of good socioeconomic status due to the ivy in her hair and her attire. Although despite her status and the fact that she was elderly she was haggard from a long day of working at the market place. The chickens and fruit represent life as it once was, from a more simpler time. The fact that she had to work in the marketplace to earn money was an indication of the changing times and desire for