The New and Lonesome Normal Joyce Oates’s “Hi Howya Doin” depicts the violence that has captured and encapsulated today’s culture. The un-deemed murder of an innocent jogger in the end of this story validates and justifies the fear that so many individuals feel. In Oates’s short story, “Hi Howya Doin”, the protagonist is depicted as a “Good-looking husky guy six-foot-four in the late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male…..solid built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete” (214). Through the police report, giving the description of the protagonist, Oates foretells his surprising fate at the beginning of the story which in turn, creates tension and suspense for the reader as the protagonist goes about what …show more content…
The theme of the story is about the happiness in life so many people have numbed themselves to or feel as though they are forbidden to feel. Through the surprise and ironic death of the protagonist, Oates shows how easily that joy and happiness can disappear or be ripped away. The setting and theme of this story relates to our current society and how individuals within society feel entitled to extreme privacy and personal space and are unable to cope with stress, anxiety and the struggles of everyday life. Oates also depicts and how an invasion of this could trigger irrational reactions to something as small as a …show more content…
This creates the anticipation of danger for the readers through the story. When the protagonist encounters his final runner, the reader begins to gain the sense that this runner is different than the others that the protagonist has come across so far. This runner is experiencing extreme emotional turbulence which is shown through his desire of avoidance and introverted instincts. Through this, Oates exposes how a friendly greeting could be viewed as an invasion to some, especially when suffering from copious amounts of stress. Oates helps the reader understand this through a glimpse of his internal thoughts and feelings when the young man thinks “instinctively, you turn your gaze downward, no eye contact… you’ve been lost in thought... the very pain, anguish (and) futility of your thoughts”
Unsurprisingly, this article discusses the emotions in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” S.S. Jamil shows the irony in stereotyping women as overemotional, when the conventional roles Louise Mallard lives in force her to suppress her emotions. Jamil suggests that this is the cause of Louise’s heart trouble, since psychological health does affect physical health. The self-assertion that Louise discovers is permission to be herself, since emotions are a substantial part of who we are. The narrative of this article paints Louise as the victim and society as the culprit.
All of these provide us with the fact that the protagonist suffered guilt, helplessly and vulnerable by the fact that he couldn’t erase the memory of Alan Mannering’s death. The ideas of freedom, independence and friendship are outlined in the story “Big World”, by Tim Winton. The story follows two young men, the narrator and his best Biggie, escaping their ordinary past, to go on a journey and ironically it is a “Big World”. The story explores the idea of a person’s perspective, how moments can change things and how their friendship continues as they mature into adults, to make their own decisions and having freedom.
We Believe You is a collection of stories by survivors of campus rape, written by Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, they focus on the heartache and heroism that many students face, including themselves, after becoming victims of sexual assault, some victims speaking out and loud about their stories, while others choose to stay quiet and anonymous.
Renewed perceptions of ourselves of the world we live in is significantly entailed by discovery. Discovery may be unplanned, unexpected and confronting, as efficaciously demonstrated in Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowing Evening’. The pessimistic tone, correlating with prospective suicide, accentuates his loss of identity and value, behaving as a foundation upon which self-discovery can be achieved and thus offer new understandings of ourselves and the world we live in. Furthermore, this notion is vehemently exhibited in James McTeigue’s film ‘V for Vendetta’. The imprisonment of Evey, an epiphanic moment, acts as a catalyst for self-discovery, renewing her perception of herself and the world she lives in.
The IAT Harvard survey consisted of multiple topics regarding race, genders, thoughts on sexuality and so on. One topic was if one prefers European Americans over African Americans. Surprisingly, the results were that most people strongly prefer European Americans over the other. Why is that? Maybe it’s because many people place stereotypes and other ideals towards another individual, whether they have a different skin tone, whether they are male or female, as well as other characteristics one may notice.
This shows the negative effects of the dystopian society. People have become depressed because of their lack of creativity and interaction with people and their confinement to their televisions. The frequency of suicide attempts in this society clearly points to a massive of
By creating characters in the novel who are excluded and labelled the author demonstrates how cruel society can be to people. The purpose of this essay is to show how the author reveals the experiences of marginalised characters in society. Joseph Davidson is an introverted, fourteen year old boy who feels that he is trapped within his own world of chaos, and he too is a marginalised character in the book. It is suggested by the author that other characters believe that Joseph’s mother smothers him too much and his father has
It might surprise readers to know that, by the use of this lens, traces of these subjects can be found in almost any work despite the original nature and intent of the tale. A prime example demonstrating the power of the Marxist lens can be seen when the lens is applied to Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”. This short conte depicts the brief sentiment of freedom felt by the fictitious character Mrs. Mallard as she learns that her husband has been killed in a railroad accident. However, her blissful reverie is put to death by death itself when her husband, alive and well, walks through the doors of their home to meet her. On the surface, this would appear to be a tale void of social, political, or economic association; how could such logical themes develop in such an emotional tale?
Gilman also highlights a lack of identity of the narrator through the setting of the novella which reflects the narrator’s societal confinement. The protagonist is surrounded by “hedges and walls and gates that lock”, which create a sense of separation that the narrator feels from others and the outside world. In addition, the room in which she is confined contains a “heavy bedstead, and… barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”. These physical and ‘prison-like’ restrictions imposed on the protagonist clearly demonstrate her lack of freedom. Additionally, Gilman’s use of syndetic listing to describe the narrator’s physical entrapment is perhaps reflective of her feelings of suffocation and her inability to escape as the list feels never ending.
In Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” the main protagonist finds herself in a very hostile situation. With an all most fateful encounter with a man known as Arnold Friend. Forcing her to choose whether to run off with him or taking her by force. This man known as Arnold Friend to the reader comes off as almost a demon. A person who uses many temptations, word play, and threats to take advantage of the young protagonist Connie.
Exemplifying the horrific relationship that is between the protagonist and the society since she was an outcast and no one wanted to understand her health issues she would rather be free than worried about her appearances. As the protagonist is faking her death, she is now becoming even more isolated from the society because of the choice that she had made for her family to become a part of the society. Consequently, it also foreshadows the ending of the short story in which the protagonist of the story killed herself due to the town’s people who wanted her to become nonexistence. In the poem of “Richard Corey,” the protagonist, however, was conflicted with the fact that he had no social life even though he had
He disagrees with the society’s way of living and is arrested for it, but he takes a step forward to change it. The author takes on different varieties of tone throughout the story such as gloominess, despair, and joy, which clarify the idea that he disagrees with this society’s
Ultimately resulting in her death. In Margaret Atwood’s short story, she asserts that being discriminated and isolated causes the narrator to have deep mental issues that lead to signs of depression through the protagonist’s unorthodox way of accepting her fate without any hesitation to prevent her life being taken away. In this story, the narrator has been lead to believe that she has no part in her community. Throughout her life, she has been isolated by her entire town even by those who she called family.
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” demonstrates the personal growth of the dynamic protagonist Louise Mallard, after hearing news of her husband’s death. The third-person narrator telling the story uses deep insight into Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts and emotions as she sorts through her feelings after her sister informs her of her husband’s death. During a Character analysis of Louise Mallard, a reader will understand that the delicate Mrs. Mallard transforms her grief into excitement over her newly discovered freedom that leads to her death. As Mrs. Mallard sorts through her grief she realizes the importance of this freedom and the strength that she will be able to do it alone.
This shows a balance between gender roles, as well as the embracing progressive changes within culture and society. In the story “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, a third-person omniscient narrator, relates how Mrs. Louise Mallard, the protagonist, experiences the euphoria of freedom rather than the grief of loneliness after hearing about her husband’s death. Later, when Mrs. Mallard discovers that her husband, Mr. Brently Mallard, still lives, she realizes that all her aspiration for freedom has gone. The shock and disappointment kills Mrs. Mallard.