In the book The Liars Club, by Mary Karr, she utilizes the literary element voice to weave together a story of her unfortunate childhood. This book covers the majority of her childhood years, and the several problems her childhood included. When Karr narrates the book she is the sole voice in the text, however she also incorporates others statements and communication through her own voice. She uses voice to piece together her own, and other’s statements into the story of her childhood.
In 1790, Judith Sargent Murray, a writer and publisher from Massachusetts, published an argument regarding the equality of sexes. In Murray’s opening sentence she states, “our souls are by nature equal to yours.” The statement provides insight of the purpose of her argument, that men and women are equal. The men and women breathe the same breath of God, and that neither is lower than the other. Murray says that from her observations there are “as many females as males, by the mere force of natural powers, have merited the crown of applause.” Therefore, whether female or male, they have both been praised with fame. Secondly, Murray recognizes her opposing argument, the ones who are superior in mind and strength. Since man is the beginning of creation, he holds the strength. However, there have been such females with this strength, and also men who behold the strength specified “effeminate” to females. Therefore, if animal strength proved nature, if there are females with the superior strength equivalent to a man, it is said to be an advantage. However, she asks for equality, and not advantage, over sex.
In the novel “A Long Way from Chicago” by Richard Peak, Grandma Dowdel gets to spend one week for seven year in the summer taking care of her grand kids. Mary Alice visit Grandma Dowdel from the year of 1929 to the year of 1935. In the beginning, Mary Alice didn’t want to visit Grandma and she keep on getting nightmare but, later on, she kind of miss Grandma There are three examples of Mary Alice changing throughout the seven years with grandma. The first example is “Grandma’s missing Mrs. Wilcox and Men don’t have any idea about women” said Mary Alice .
In the novel the Glass Castle Jeanette Walls learns from the mistakes of her parents that being successful in life depends of your characters and the choices you make in your life . Jeanette learns from her parents that if she doesn 't start thinking about her future at a young age , she’ll eventually be following the footsteps of her parents, and having an unpurposeful and an unrewarding lifestyle in her future. The Glass Castle suggests that in order to be successful in life you have to leave some things behinds and move on and that exactly what Jeannette Walls has done. Jeanette 's parents mistake was that they never thought about the future and always tried to enjoy the present. She chose to move away from her parents and live with her older sister and that decision she made was the main reason why she succeeded in life.
In Roald Dahl’s chilling tale, “The Landlady,” he uses the landlady’s character to teach the reader that when something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Roald Dahl uses the landlady to show the moral of the story where Billy is asking about the price per night to stay in her bed and breakfast, ““Five and sixpence is fine,” he answered. “I should like very much to stay here.” “I knew you would. Do come in.””. This illustrates how Billy is enthusiastic about getting to stay in a seemingly lovely bed and breakfast at a very inexpensive price; Billy doesn’t stop to think about why the price is so low for a night’s stay at the bed and breakfast. Dahl also ads suspense by the landlady implying that she knew he would want to stay. This gives the feeling that the landlady has been
In the memoir “The Glass Castle“ written by Jeannette Walls, it talks about how Jeanette and her family overcome the tough times they had in their life. One of the main ideas of the memoir Jeannette talks about is how she achieved her ambition and what were the consequences of the risk she took. “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success” by Henry Ford. This quote relates to Jeanette and her siblings because she and her sibling always worked together and helped one another when in need. Jeanette is the mostly the reason why she and her family had such a wonderful and rewarding time in New York.
In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, Glaspell uses irony to help convey the disconnect between men and women in society, and men’s choice of obliviousness towards women at the time this play was written. For example, Mr. Hale said that “women are used to worrying over trifles.” (Page 303). However, these so called trifles, such as the quilt and the fruit, end up being key evidence towards Mrs. Wright’s guilt and motive that the men in the play are oblivious towards. Another example would be at the end of the play, when the County Attorney jokes that “at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it,” then asks the ladies what they called the technique that Mrs. Wright used, to which the replied she was going to “knot it” in the final line.
David Sedaris’s use of verbal irony achieves the greatest comic effect due to the way he uses it to be humorous and foolish. The irony is the greatest due to the contrast he creates with his words. On page 13, Sedaris states, “Her english was flawless. ‘I really, really hate you.’” (Sedaris 13). The juxtaposition of the word “flawless” being followed so closely with her “hate”, along with the negative connotation in the text, creates a sense of irony that is humorous. Also, when Sedaris realizes he understands that French-speaking teacher, he, “...settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.” (Sedaris 15). He is being ironic, finding glory and joy in being insulted. Insults hold a very negative connotation, while
In the poem "Casey at the Bat" the author uses humor explain Casey's experiences while he is at the bat. He also uses irony. The author of "Casey At The Bat" uses both humor and irony to explain Casey's experiences when he is at the bat. The author uses all sorts of techniques when he wrote this poem. For example he use hyperbole, idioms, irony, humor and many more.
The television series Shameless depicts a dysfunctional family of Frank Gallagher who is a single father of six children in which he spends most of his days on drugs and having misadventures while his kids learn to take care of themselves and survive with doing petty jobs to keep their house. Among the many characters are Fiona, Carl, and Frank. Fiona is the main protagonist who is like the mother of the family and maintains the family afloat but the other siblings have to do their part in the household. Carl is the second youngest boy in the family who has struggles with fitting in society and tries to find who he is by being apart of different groups. In season six, episode three of the series, each characters uses satirical and comedic devices to address social issues of poverty, society, and parenthood that is shown through verbal irony, dramatic irony and understatement.
In Sarah Ellis’s “Gore”, she uses its significance in the story, and evidently creates a compelling dramatic irony. The narrator’s use of a dramatic irony unfairly implies a negative image of the story’s antagonist, Lucas as opposed and when compared to Amy. Lucas began doubting his instincts and “[his] voice [had shrunk],” when he anxiously told Amy to “quit it.” Either way, the narrator provided the reader with a negative image of Lucas which supposedly portrayed him as a foolish, and ignorant man from his actions earlier. The narrator tends to portray his stupidity acknowledging the fact that Lucas is lacking the knowledge of Amy’s act, which was hidden from him for an intended purpose. If Amy’s plan was disclosed, the climax and falling action would’ve never resulted in the way it did, and Lucas wouldn’t have opened the door so easily; making Amy’s plan unsuccessful. In
Later, when Jeannette becomes a preteen, she clashes with her parents’ viewpoints more, but manages to learn valuable lessons from their unreasonable cruelty. When her father has nowhere to go, he decides to take them into a town called Welsh, where his parents live. Erma, Jeannette’s grandmother is racist, hateful to her grandchildren, and is constantly beating them. Rose Mary, Jeannette’s mother, tries to explain that everyone has good qualities but Jeannette refuses to accept this idea and fires back: “Oh yeah? How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality?’ ‘Hitler loved dogs.’ Mom said without hesitation” (Walls, 144) Although her mother is not nurturing and empathetic towards Jeanette, she truly believes there is good in everyone and overtime teaches this to Jeannette. This is critical to her growth, for it helps her tolerate her parents by seeing good qualities in them, keep hope when her opportunities dwindle, and find faith in herself when she cannot place faith in anyone else. Finally when Jennette becomes a young adult, she takes ahold of her life, leaves her impoverished parents, and travels to New York alone for journalism
The stories that Mama told were that of "mortality and cautionary tales" told by the women in their family for generations. In this essay, the story of Maria La Loca that Mama tells the girls specifically related, to Laura, Cofer’s aunt. Laura is getting married at the young age of seventeen and to prevent men from ruining her life, Mama tells how Maria La Loca "is as old as her mother already."
Many different authors have different styles of writing that they use. Styles can vary to an evil, dark story, to a very humorous and funny story. O.Henry's style is very humorous and he is a master of picking when to use irony inside of his short stories. O.Henry's use of irony to entertain the reader, has humorous statements throughout the story, and his use of descriptive language and imagery to better understand the plot line is excellent in The Ransom of Red Chief.
Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse.