In A.S Byatt’s “The Thing in the Forest”, the author uses the elements of a short story to craft a dark, mature fairytale. The title of the story, “The Thing in the Forest”, in the sense that it foreshadows the main idea of the story. The audience expects more than just a "thing", as listed in the title. Byatt emphasizes through figurative language that the main characters, Penny and Primrose, are dealing with more than just a creature in the forest that affected them for the rest of their lives, and that with this use of symbols to express a larger meaning to objects in the story. A.S Byatt emphasizes more on plot and setting, characters, theme and symbols. The setting of the story is essential in terms of context. The story begins in the early 1940s during the blitz of World War II, when British cities where bombed by German war planes. The story first starts in urban Great Britain where two little girls were evacuating from the city. Then they find themselves at a large mansion in the country. they decide to go into the woods a bit with a younger girl tagging along after them. It is in the woods that they encounter what can only be described as a living horror dragging itself through the greenery, leaving a path of destruction and decay in its wake “When it had gone, Penny and Primrose, kneeling on the moss and dead leaves….then they stood up still silent, and stared together, hand in hand, at the trail of obliteration and destruction, which wound out of the
Sandra Cisneros’, “The Monkey Garden”, uses juxtaposition and personification to provide ominousness to her vignette. For instance, a bit after Esperanza first entered the garden following the family moving, she noted the “hollyhocks perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead”, comparing aromatic flowers to dull colored locks from the deceased, foreshadowing that there must be an upcoming negative event of some sort involving death. The foul use of corpses’ hair color to describe a fragrant plant is placed to accentuate their clear differences. Cisneros also uses personification to establish an ominous mood to this piece. For example, after stating the garden was taking over itself, the “flowers stopped obeying” their designated areas.
Julie Trip’s short story “The Fall” depicts the story of a young girl who spends her summer exploring the area around her house and collecting some of her findings. One day, Tara’s explorations lead her back to the woods behind her house, where she discovers a darkness to life, which brings an end to her childhood days. Trip’s clever symbolism, and description of the setting reinforce this.
Do you ever remember being scared of monsters under the bed? If so, then you will relate to the young child in “A Barred Owl.” An owl hooting in the night scares a girl, but thankfully her parents are there to comfort her. In “A Barred Owl,” author Richard Wilbur uses imagery, tone, and personification to show how powerful words can subdue any emotion. Imagery plays an important role in relaying the message of the poem.
Stumbling about among all those creepers. More grave nodding; they knew about nightmares.” Little children were frightened because they had no mothers to comfort them and protect them from the “beast” because they were stranded on an island in the middle of
The speaker of Maxine Kumin’s “Woodchucks” begins the poem as passive only describing what everyone is doing, but then transitions to a place of power describing all the things they have personally done. After careful examination of the poem, the poem seems to be about the Holocaust. The speaker describes how “gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.” (Kumin). This then leads to the speaker describing what him and others were doing to the “woodchucks”, the speaker says, “both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,” (Kumin).
In the novel, trees are a prevailing symbol, as it represents the life and growth of the protagonist mental recovery after being raped. The reoccurring use of trees allows readers to understand Melinda feelings beyond the words, as readers are able to visualize her feelings literally. Readers of YA readers use symbolism as a way to understand the mood of a novel; at the beginning of the novel, Melina selects a tree as her yearlong art project, where she is asked make her “object say something, express and emotion, speak to every person who looks at it” (Anderson 11). As struggles to express emotion through her tree, she is equally incompetent with sharing what occurred the night the police was called.
Excerpts from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Document Analysis The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!”
There was undergrowth—a mat of brambles and bracken. There were no obvious paths. Dark and light came and went, inviting and mysterious, as the wind pushed clouds across the face of the sun.” (355) The "thing" in the story was symbolized as the terror
“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed. Things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches”(pg 8). At the beginning of the book, the main character(Janie) is greeted by her best friend at her house. Her curious friend asked Janie what did she do while she was away.
The short story “The Thing in the Forest'' by A.S Byatt is a story full of mysteries and mysterious events two young girls go through together. The author Byatt makes use of imagery and symbolism to convey strong underlying meanings and help develop the plot. The main purpose of the story is to use imagery and symbolism through beings and places the two main characters Penny and Primrose encounter and the life events they experienced respectivly. Over all the symbolism gives a perspective on how war might be seen by a child and everything associated with it. The first instance in which we see imagery and symbolism used to convey wartime is the “thing” in the first.
Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.
The Thing in the Forest by A.S. Byatt is a fairytale like story that takes place during World War II. It captivates its reader with a mysterious lack of detail, keeping the fairytale aspect up to the imagination. Through symbolism, metaphors, and juxtaposing character development, Byatt shows how war and trauma kills childhood innocence. This story is about two young girls, Penny and Primrose, who are sent away from home during World War II for safety.
Thoreau was a prominent and influential transcendentalist which meant that he believed modern society’s institutions, organizations, religions, and politics are all corrupt. He believes that people should go back to their roots in nature and be more simple-minded like our ancient ancestors who lived in nature. To think about it in more modern terms, he was practically a minimalist who believed people should only live with things essential for life, basic life necessities like food, water, and shelter. He quotes, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 66). From the quote, we can tell that he believes that a life without living with nature and essentials only is a life wasted.
Growing Up Through Experience Readers of The Monkey Garden view the short story in many different ways. They interpret the monkey and the monkey garden as many different things. The monkey garden physically stays the same, but changes from the narrator 's mental aspect from the beginning to the end of the story. Interpretations on what exactly the monkey actually represents varies. Youth and innocence represent the best symbols of what the monkey really is from the point of view of the story .
There was no chattering or chirping of birds; no growling of bears and no chuckling of contented otters; instead, the clearing lay desolate and still, as though it never wished to be turned into day. The only occupants were rodents and spiders who had set their home in the dank, forgotten shack. From its base, dead, brown grass reached out, all the way to the edge of the tree-line, unable to survive in the perished, infertile soil that made up the foundations of the house. Bird houses and feeders swung still from the once growing apple trees, in the back garden, consigned to a life of