What Is The Juxtaposition In The Ambitious Guest

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Dreams vs. Reality in The Ambitious Guest In the story, “The Ambitious Guest,” it uses the literary device juxtaposed to help with the technique of different aspects of the story. In this story it is about a family and a traveler who comes and stays at the family's house and provides shelter. He talks about his dreams and wanting to be known in life. The family disagrees and explains how they are perfectly fine with their life. In the end, a landslide came and killed them all. This is where the juxtaposition comes into the story. The family lived a humble life and the traveler was overly ambitious, but they both had the same fate in the end. Even further, no one remembers the traveler from this story, but everyone remembers the family. The author’s use of juxtaposition in the story makes the reader feel unfair, it underscores tragedy for effect, and it helps with the plot. …show more content…

According to an online dictionary, the definition of juxtaposition is, “the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side, often to compare or contrast or to create an interesting effect” (Merriam-Webster para 1). Juxtaposition is an important word and is used many times in, “The Ambitious Guest.” It also says in the story, “The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror of the catastrophe”(Hawthorne 7). This quote shows how unfair this story is. What happened to the family was unutterable and horrible. Juxtaposition is comparing or contrasting something to create effect and the different uses of it in the story evoke the reader to feel unfairness, as many unfair depictions happen in the story. The literary device of juxtaposing underscores tragedy for effect. In an online video it states, “The dangerous and beautiful location of the home represents the risk of proximity to nature”(The Ambitious Guest. para

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