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Literary critique of the garden party by katherine mansfield
Literary critique of the garden party by katherine mansfield
Literary critique of the garden party by katherine mansfield
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The Theme of Death in The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield explores profoundly the world of death and its impact on a person in her short story, "The Garden Party."
Enter the Sheridans, a wealthy, high-class family who live in England. They are your everyday rich snobs who think themselves better than the common person. There is, however, one person who is quite unlike her family, and that is Laura Sheridan.
Laura started off in a bubble, and has lived in it all her life. She has been protected from the real world, so she has never experienced the effects of betrayal, poverty, or labor, let alone death, which she does get to experience, by the end of the story. Laura meets face to face with death, and the results of it will change her look on life forever. It is a wonder she ever had a chance to be a caring, sensitive person with a sibling like Jose. Jose is an unfeeling, heartless and self-absorbed person who is completely clueless to those around her who don’t have lots of money or expensive assets. She sings songs with mock passion:
This life is wee-ary
A Tear – a sigh
A Love that Chan-ges
This Life is wee-ary
A Tear – a sigh
A Love that chan-ges
And then…good bye!
This is the song that Jose sings before the garden party is held. It’s ironic how she can sing a song about life being weary, a tear-a sigh when she cannot-could not, even remotely relate to ever being in the position of being weary. She is singing about something that she doesn’t understand, something she can’t feel. She can’t sing it with any real compassion, because she has none. This shows when she breaks into a brilliant smile at the end of the song, which is supposed to be full of sadness. This is what gives the effect of...
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... She knows her hat is grossly inappropriate. It brags to these poor people that she is wealthy and they are not. It is a party hat, but also it is everything Laura was. It represents her narrow-minded upbringing, such as the way she was taught to treat others of "lower class" and it represents a person who doesn’t care much for the well being of others. "Forgive my hat" is truly the heart of this story.
When Laura sobs, "Isn’t life, isn’t life-" she is trying to explain how she feels now about life, how the experience of seeing the dead affected her. She can’t put it into words though, because it was a feeling that she experienced-an understanding. It could be concluded that she had the words all along, only she had them mixed up. What Laura was really trying to say, is "life isn’t." That is the effect Mansfield wished to create, and she succeeded beautifully at it.
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
"Anabolic steroids is the familiar name for synthetic substances related to the male sex hormones (e.g., testosterone). They promote the growth of skeletal muscle (anabolic effects) and the development of male sexual characteristics (androgenic effects) in both males and females”(National Institute on Drug Base).First, the benefits of steroids are very obvious to see. The user gains strength, mass, and speed in a short amount of time. Also, the user has a more aggressive attitude, which is good for football players. However, there are more bad side effects than good. The side effects include hair loss, acne, liver damage, kidney damage, increased breast tissue and becoming very aggressive. These are just some of the horrible bad side effects by using steroids.
There are many types of steroids abused by athletes in order to increase their muscle mass and strength. Though steroids have a negative reputation, there are some that can be beneficial to athletes and certain patients. There are types of steroids called corticosteroids that have more medical uses to them and another type called anabolic-androgenic steroids that have a more limited medical use. The anabolic-androgenic are usually the steroids that are being abused by athletes (Bigelow, par.10). The use of steroids goes back to the end of World War II around the 1940’s. Doctors were giving the freed prisoners from the Nazi concentration camps that were at risk of death anabolic-androgenic steroids to help gain back their muscle mass and weight faster. From this knowledge, steroids began to be used by body builders and athletes to get more fit than they already were. It is believed that the abuse of the steroids started in the late 1940’s by weight lifters and bodybuilders, and by the 1950’s, it was spread to the Olympics (Bigelow, par.11). Any type of steroid should not be used if they are only going to be abused by being used in large doses with the intentions of increasing lean muscle mass and strength (Bigelow, par.11). After years of abuse of anabolic-androgenic steroids in the Olympics they were added to the list of banned substances and random testing of athletes were announced to start taking place (Bigelow, par.35).
Death is often displayed in literature, showing how people would react towards it. Whether it's in "The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, or even "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield, death appears to be unavoidable. Although these are different short stories, death is applied, but the author's interpretations differentiate.
Towards the beginning of this poem where Laura gives the goblins a piece of her hair for this fruit, basically she’s giving a piece of herself for this fruit which kind of like the first time you have sex. You give up your virginity to Experience that, and for some their virginity is a big thing for them especially religious people who want to stay pure for marriage. After this Laura goes on a complete down turn and begins
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
Anabolic steroids have been involved in the world of sports for quite some time. Their scandalous presence has brought many debates about whether or not they should be allowed. There has been countless amounts of research to find out what they do to your body, if they are safe and if they are healthy. Steroids have been shown to bring unhealthy side effects and various health risks. Not to mention, they give unfair advantages and are considered cheating. Steroids do not belong in the sports community. Steroids are unfair, unhealthy, unjust, and should not be allowed or accepted in sports.
Many arguments have been made for legalization of steroids in sports. One of these arguments is that even with rules making steroids illegal, athletes will not stop trying to get the advantage. Athletes may play their respective sport for the love of the game, but all athletes understand
Common among classic literature, the theme of mortality engages readers on a quest of coping with one of the certainties of life. Katherine Anne Porter masterfully embraces the theme of mortality both directly and indirectly in her story, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Understanding that all mankind ultimately becomes subject to death unleashes feelings of dread and anxiety in most people; however, Granny Weatherall transitions from rushing to meet her demise in her sixties to completely denying she is on her deathbed when she is eighty. Readers have seen this theme of mortality reverberated over and over in literature, but what makes this story stand the test of time is the author’s complexity. In Katherine Anne Porter’s
Steroids are a big problem and can cause many different issues. “Steroids can have long-lasting and sometimes irreversible side effects on the body. Steroids have been linked to increased cholesterol, stroke and blood clots.” (“Steroids use among high school students”) Blood clots, strokes and other deadly health problems are not worth being a little stronger. “Flooding the body with any hormone at ten to twenty times greater strength than normal is dangerous”. (“Steroids in baseball”) Steroids are not worth hearing your body forever and never being
In sports, everyone wants to be the next Lebron James, the next Derek Jeter, or the next Peyton Manning. The problem is, athletes will do almost anything to get to that point. That includes Anabolic Steroids. An Anabolic Steroid is a drug in the form of a pill or an injection, that increases the level of testosterone in the body, which in turn allows muscle tissue to grow faster and stronger than it would in a normal persons body. A normal male produces 40-50 milligrams of testosterone per week. A male using steroids could produce almost 4,000 milligrams a week. That is about 40 times the testosterone of a normal male. What most people don’t realize about these drugs, they hold serious health consequences which in most cases eventually kill
Anabolic steroids are chemicals that are similar to testosterone, the male sex hormone. Steroids are used by a number or young people to enhance their muscle mass and increase their performances. While anabolic steroids are successful at building muscle, they can damage many human body organs, such as the heart, kidneys and liver. Steroids are taken by injection or in pill form, after steroids enter the bloodstream; they are distributed to organs and muscle throughout the body.
..... the hat is yours, It’s is made for you. It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!”(6). Furthermore, according to Mrs.Sheridan, this hat is claiming Laura into her upper class life and proving to her that she has dominance and superiority over all others not in her class. However, Laura isn’t too sure if she is comfortable with this. The hat is placed upon her and she isn’t able to look at herself, she feels uneasy and troubled which is showing her embarrassment of the class she is in. When Laura arrives at the house of an impoverished family, to give her condolences because of their recently deceased family member, she again begins to feel awkward because of her hat. She even says to the homeowner, Mrs. Scott, “forgive my hat”(8). Moreover, this shows Laura isn't very comfortable in her privileged, upper class life.
Laura suffers from an "inferiority complex," much like how Jim described. She feels burdened with
Laura Wingfield is described by Williams as having “failed to establish contact with reality, [and] continues to live vitally in her illusions.” Laura is unmotivated to move beyond the daily life she has with her family. She seems comfortable and content, in the sense that because she has always been taken care of, she believes that she always will be. She is not concerned about her future unlike her mother who vocalizes her concerns to Tom, “nothing has happened. She just drifts along doing nothing. It frightens me terribly how she just drifts along,” (34). Amanda has Laura attend Business College to help her in the future. However, Laura drops out the day after she “was sick to the stomach and almost had to be carried into the washroom,”