Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury chronicles the story of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding and the residents of Green Town, Illinois during the summer of 1928. The book explores a variety of subjects, including happiness and death. These topics are connected to the overarching theme of handling with loss. Through this idea, Dandelion Wine has many correlations with the Greek myth “Orpheus and Eurydice”. Douglas goes through many losses, including Green Town’s Green Trolley and his best friend John. Douglas experiences different emotions in regards to each situation. When he discovers that the Green Trolley is shutting down, he cries “‘Last day?’…‘They can’t do that!’” (Bradbury 98). Douglas’ reaction is of one who is in denial. After John and …show more content…
Douglas say their final goodbyes before John moves away, Douglas screams into the night that John is now his enemy. Douglas reacts this way because he is angry that his friend is gone. Denial and anger are the emotions related to experiencing grief. Similarly in “Orpheus and Eurydice”, Orpheus suffers immeasurable sorrow after his wife Eurydice dies from a venomous snake bite (Myth). There are many characters in Dandelion Wine who resolve to handle their loss by trying to hold on to what was lost.
One notable character who does this is Mrs. Bentley, an old woman who saves old memorabilia, including “tickets, old theatre programs…all the tags and tokens of existence” to preserve evidence of the past and her life (Bradbury 68). In the chapter devoted to her, she meets a group of young children. When Mrs. Bentley describes to the children how she was once as young as they were, they accuse her of lying and run off. She later uses her collection in an attempt to prove that the past existed. After the children run off with her some of her childhood items and accuse her of lying once more, Mrs. Bentley becomes more desperate to prove her past. Orpheus comparably cannot get over Eurydice’s death, so he decides to retrieve her from the depths of Hades …show more content…
(Myth). Despite their losses, Douglas and the Green Town residents find ways to cope and move on with their lives.
The first way that Douglas comes to terms with is loss is that he realizes that nothing lasts forever, and he writes in his summer journal “SOME DAY, I, DOUGLAS SPAULDING, MUST DIE” (Bradbury 190). After he accepts that fact, he becomes more content. Afterwards, when summer is about to end, Douglas has a discussion with his grandfather about the eponymous dandelion wine. Grandpa describes that with dandelion wine, “‘you get to live the summer over for a minute or two…when the bottles are empty the summer’s gone for good and no regrets and no sentimental trash lying around’” (Bradbury 236). With this idea, Douglas realizes that he can still recall the past, but dwelling on it too much causes pain. Similarly, Mrs. Bentley recalls a discussion she had with her late husband, who told her that her habit of saving things will only hurt her in the long run and how Mrs. Bentley can either be “‘in a young now or and old now, but there is no other now to be seen’” (Bradbury 75) Afterwards, Mrs. Bentley throws out all of her old things and accepts her identity as an old woman. In “Orpheus and Eurydice”, Orpheus is allowed to bring Eurydice back from the dead, but he cannot look back towards her during the journey back to the surface, or else Eurydice will return to Hades once more. When Orpheus almost succeeds in this task, he looks back towards Eurydice moments before they
leave. As a result, Eurydice descends into Hades again and Orpheus is left alone. In one version of the myth, Orpheus isolates himself and wanders around the wilderness with his lyre. This way, Orpheus copes with his loss with the aid of his music and the wild. However, the story takes a downturn when Orpheus gets ripped apart by a group of Maenad women (Myth). Despite the different stories, Dandelion Wine and “Orpheus and Eurydice” share many qualities when it comes to the theme of loss. From initial hurt, to trying to hold on to what was lost, to finally letting go, the characters in both stories illustrate the universal process of grieving.
There is a destructive nature of man is shown in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon through the absence of family. Sci...
For example, Corrigan said, “Sometimes he claimed the scar along his thigh indicated he was actually the biblical figure of Jacob. Jacob, the brother of Esau? Jacob, who wrestled God’s angel and lived” (80). Corrigan, in this excerpt from the novel, alluded to the bible story in Genesis. One who knows the story of Jacob and Esau would be able to make connections between those from that story and the characters in the book. This biblical allusion caused some readers to be able to make deeper connections in the novel but yet does not hinder the understanding of someone who does not recognize the reference. Corrigan also wrote, “You so easily remember the times I was Eurydice, when the ward’s locked door slid closed between us. Do not forget I also have been Orpheus, on my knees in the boat, asking all the devils for your face in the trees” (100). This allusion to Greek mythology aided the reader in understanding one of Corrigan’s central themes in her novel. In the story Orpheus was a poet who was able to entrance enemies with his singing and lyre playing. After his wife, Eurydice, was killed, he traveled to the underworld to rescue her. Corrigan writes that she and Danny took turns being both Eurydice and Orpheus in that one was doing the rescuing and one was being rescued. They were there for each other through their troubles and
Throughout this novel, the reader is left with the task of putting the pieces together to a highly complex puzzle. While solving this puzzle, the reader learns valuable information about Mrs. Ross’s harsh past, which greatly influences her entire life. The root of Mrs. Ross’s troubles ultimately lies within the shocking death of “Mrs. Ross’s only brother, a boy called Monty Miles who had been killed while walking home…A wayward trolley left the tracks to strike him down” ( ). According to the narrator “The mourning had gone on for years”() and this event truly traumatized Mrs. Ross as “the world was full of trolley cars and Mrs. Ross ...
In the excerpt from A Few Notes For Orpheus, the narrator experiences an distant relationship with his father due to his father’s lack of attention and care for him in the past. Because of his father’s lack of understanding of his own son, the narrator had not visited his father in two years and as a result, had “forgotten what he looked like.” This infers that the narrator has not forgotten his past conflict with his father, causing him to be unwilling to reconcile with his father. As a result of his lack of communication and association with his father, this further deteriorates their relationship, emphasizing the increasing isolation between his father and him. Upon visiting his father with his daughter Cathy, the narrator attempts to have a quiet, peaceful conversation with his father. However, his efforts are instantly downgraded by his father upon as his father spoke in an abrupt, callous manner with him while taking Cathy and the both “walked away, him holding her hand and talking.” This illustrates the extreme severity of the lack of closeness
“I thought she would die right along with him,” (Flagg, 37). How would it feel to lose a sibling or close friend? Would one feel depressed and keep to themselves or would they emerge as a stronger person? In Tears of a Tiger, the author, Sharon Draper, exposes Andy as a depressed teenager who lost his best friend, Robert, in a car accident with the use of alcohol. The author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, Fannie Flagg, exhibits withdrawal through her character, Idgie, after she loses her brother, Buddy, in a train accident. Following the death of two people very close to Andy and Idgie, in two separate novels, the authors depict the two characters comparably.
Although at face value the poem “dandelion” by Julie Lechevsky may appear to just be about dandelions, after taking a closer look at the metaphors, personifications, and other literary devices that are used, it is clear that the poem is about how attention isn’t always a good thing. Lechevsky does this by showing how dandelions are well known but not in a good way, and how her parents give her too much attention.
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums”. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw, 2008. 459-466. Print.
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V Roberts and Robert Zweig. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 416-422. Print.
The characters in the movie, Black Orpheus, are significantly altered from the Greek myth. In the myth, Orpheus and Eurydice are together from the beginning and are completely in love. Everyone is happy for their love and the only thing that stands in their way is death. In the movie, however, this is notably changed. Orpheus begins as a streetcar conductor that was engaged to Mira, giving the idea that Orpheus was in love with another woman. We quickly see that this is not the case as Orpheus is always very curt and rude with his fiancée. They are slated to get married, but there is an eerie feeling in the air that something is about to go wrong.
Although imagery and symbolism does little to help prepare an expected ending in “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, setting is the singular element that clearly reasons out an ending that correlates with the predominant theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing a grim realism from the cruel world. Despite the joyous atmosphere of an apparently beautiful world of abundant corn and cotton, death and hatred lies on in the woods just beyond the sharecropper cabin. Myop’s flowers are laid down as she blooms into maturity in the face of her fallen kinsman, and the life of summer dies along with her innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to the innocent children.
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums.” Fiction 101: An Anthology of Short Fiction. James H. Pickering. Twelfth Edition. Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 1162-1168
Smith, Gary. "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: Cognac, Roses, and Edgar Allan Poe: A Graveyard Mystery." Life July 1990: 48-54
In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the two get married but Eurydice quickly perishes. Overcome with grief Orpheus convinces Hades to let him bring back Eurydice to the world of the living. He agrees but on one condition; Eurydice has to walk behind Orpheus and he cannot look back to see if she's following. Orpheus agrees, but when the couple are just about to leave Erebus, Orpheus looks back to see his lover. With a final "Farewell" Eurydice
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Orpheus (Greek Mythology)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
A flowering garden in the spring crafts conceptions of fertility, beauty, and bliss. Certain people are similar to plants: some are functional, others radiate beauty, while the worst are those that kill. Not all plants are welcome such as the purple flowers from the Judas tree that should be kept at bay from the hearts of the tender because of their morbid connotation. The symbolic flowers represent death or betray in literature, as is the example of the character Engino in “Flowering Judas”. Laura in “Flowering Judas” by Anne Kathrine Porter is the seemingly sweet character, but on a deeper analysis, the true intentions of this dynamic character are exposed. Porter conceived the ideas in “Flowering Judas” from her time in Mexico during the