Mark Twain's Short Story 'What Stumped The Blue Jays'

This quarter I read the realistic fiction book, The Batboy by Mike Lupica. This book is a story about a 14 year old boy named Brian Dudley. Son of a former pitcher and an avid baseball fan, Brian gets his dream summer job: the bat boy for his favorite team the Detroit Tigers. When it seems like his summer cannot get any better, his all-time favorite player Hank Bishop is signed to the team. At the beginning, Hank is cold and yells at Brian a lot, but in the end they become friends. At the end of the summer, Brian is in for the best weekend of his life when the Tigers have a home stand with Hank currently sitting at 499 career home runs. I really liked this book because I could relate well with the main character. Brian is the same age as me and we both like baseball. The plot is very interesting and the end, although predictable, is satisfying.

Freedom is a right that every human should have. Without freedom, the world is a dim and dull place. The poem,“Hurt Hawks” by Robinson Jeffers is about injured hawks that face the issue of no longer having freedom and feeling defeated. Throughout this poem, Jeffers uses symbolism, exposition, conflict, tone, as well as falling and rising action to deliver a poem with character. The second piece of literature, “Silent Protest” by Shadi Eskandani is about the fight for women’s rights in the Muslim religion and culture. The women are protesting for freedom of choice, they want to be able to make their own decisions on what they can do and wear without being scolded for their actions by the men. The author uses symbolism, stereotypes, exposition, irony, and conflict in the short story to develop a well-rounded approach to the issue. The two works of literature are connected by the common theme of freedom and the want for all creatures to have it. Freedom should not be a privilege, freedom should be a right.

In the story “Those Extraordinary Twins” by Mark Twain he depicts the twins Luigi and Angelo and sharing a body but not sharing philosophies. This separation is also evident of the Civil War time-period in the United states during Twain’s Life. The Separation of the twin’s ideology and the sharing of the same body are a symbol of the America and how they share land, but the Union and the Confederacy have different ideologies, specifically about race. This division among a nation as drastic as the civil war is perfectly depicted in its symbolic meaning of the twins and America, as written by Mark Twain. The symbolism of this separation can be shown in “Those Extraordinary Twins” when Twain makes the twins conjoined, their skin color different, and gave them different ideologies.

In the auto-biographical excerpt from Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon, he depicts his intriguing encounter with the wild pigeons of Ohio, while in Annie Dillard's engaging excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she illustrates her thought-provoking observation of the Starling roost migration. Both writers had an overriding passion that showed through in the diction, tone, and syntax of their pieces. Because of these different infatuations both authors use different literary devices that match their feelings of how they view the birds and how the birds affected them.

Flannery O’Connor’s The King of the Birds is a narrative explaining the narrator’s obsession with different kinds of fowl over time. The reader follows the narrator from her first experience with a chicken, which caught the attention of reporters due to its ability to walk both backward and forward, to her collection of peahens and peacocks. At the mere age of five, the narrator’s chicken was featured in the news and from that moment she began to build her family of fowl. The expansive collection began with chickens, but soon the narrator found a breed of bird that was even more intriguing; peacocks.

What makes a person who they really are? This question has been posed by many for a long time. Mark Twain’s novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson, is a solid analysis of how nature and nurture can greatly affect someone's character. Set in a time where slavery is prevalent, it is set in the perfect time to show how greatly the “nurture”, or environment, of a person can greatly affect their life and their character. In Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain uses the role of family to show that the environment in which a person is raised in will often dictate what kind of individual they will become.

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird shows three people that symbolize a mockingbird. Mockingbirds are known as innocent creatures in this novel. The novel takes place in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. It’s about two children growing up to learn the harsh and racist world they live in. Three specific characters show or represent a mockingbird in the story. The kids don’t really understand also why a lot of people are mean or mad at the three characters that represent a mockingbird. In the novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, the three characters that represent a mockingbird are Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Atticus Finch.

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place in the eighteen hundreds when religion and reputation were dominant in peoples everyday lives. It was very rare for someone to believe something different than everyone else. In Twain 's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer and Huck appear to be very different, but their actions, descriptions, and dialogue bring them together to symbolize society in order to show the blind conformity and hypocrisy that humans often display.

Twain states that “Cooper was no architect,” to illustrate how inaccurate his measurements and details were.” For example, how six indians would not be hidden by a “sapling” or how a fifty foot wide river shrinks to 20 foot wide river with no explanation. Twain argues that for a story to be plausible, it needs to effectively apply to “the observers protecting gift,” their ability to believe a story. Twain was able toggle enough evidence to help reinforce his metaphor because the audience can now see where the faults were in Coopers attempt to build a

In the poems “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, both poets portray how different explanations to children pan out. Both poems describe the speaker being dishonest to one or multiple students, however, one is more of a little white lie while the other is a lie on a much bigger scale. The first poem utilizes personification and humor to coax a child back to sleep by easing her fears. The second poem applies homonyms and hyperbole to maintain the innocence of a room full of students. Through the use of these different literary techniques, the poets are able to express how the adults provide an explanation for children.

In his pom entitled “Evening Hawk”, Robert Penn Warren characterizes human nature by a transition between the flight of the hawk during the day and that of the bat, or the “Evening Hawk” during the night. The hawk, as it soars in daylight, portrays how humans appear in clear light of their peers, while the bat, cruising the night sky, symbolizes what humans hide within themselves. Warren effectively expresses the meaning of this poem and its serious mood by the use of diction and imagery to appeal to the reader’s perception of sight and sound.

The scene of Mark Twain’s essay, Two Views of the River, takes place on the Mississippi River where Twain navigated the waters. Throughout the essay, Twain describes the river and the different experiences that affect his views of it. In describing his overall attitude, he provides imagery of the river, shifts his perspective, and uses figurative language to appeal to all audiences.

The black man on the back porch is afraid of the rattle snake because it is bad luck, or the innocent little slave is quick to believe everything one tells them at the drop of the hat. These are just some of the many racist stereotypes of the 1840s. A character named Jim is the star African American whom Twain bestoys the mission of being the stereotypical black man to prove a point. He along with his much more pallor companion Huck go on exciting adventures that unfold the events which expose the racist conduct of the time. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain saturates his novel with potent images of acute racism severe enough as to create a satirical mien that exposes the absurdity of prejudice.

After the death of Boggs, the mob ends up at Sherburn’s house ready to kill him. However, Sherburn steps out of his house with a gun and kindly responses to the mob by humiliating them. Sherburn mocks the mob for not being courageous enough and had to borrow their motivation from the public.

The two poems “A Barred Owl” and “the history teacher” both work to show the innocence of a child, and how the characters in the poem work to try to preserve it. In the first poem by Richard Wilbur, the child is frightened by the owl’s voice. However, the child is told, “All she heard was an odd question from a forest bird….” This shows the person trying to protect the child’s innocence.