Popular Mechanics By Raymond Carver Essay

Irony is the most powerful literary device used in the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. First, a good example of irony in the story is “They were burdened with sashweights sand bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.” (P,2 Line, 11-13) This quote is Ironic as it tells how this system was designed to hide beauty, yet beauty was still shown by the amount of restraints on the person. Second, another good example of irony is, “The spectacles were intended to make him not only half-blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.”(P,11 Line,4) This is an example of how gifted people’s lives were harder than

Hope Edelman, a writer and mother, discusses her thoughts and experiences of the reality of marriage in, “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed to Be. How It Was.” Edelman details how at the beginning of her marriage her husband was starting an internet business and had to take long hours causing Hope to cut hers in order to care for their child. Hope describes how she expected marriage to be a place where the spouses split homemaking and breadwinning equally. She quickly realized that that was not the case. Hope details how she became a primary housewife quickly and ended up becoming angry not doing what she wanted to do. Throughout, Hope asserts her anger and the situations she was put in that caused her frustration. By the end of

Men are essentially rendered useless when it comes to helping women in the kitchen. The average male in American society is viewed as the bread winner of the family. He comes home and does nothing but relax, while the wife handles all the business in the house such as cooking dinner, cleaning the house, and taking care of the kid. In Dave Barry’s, “Lost in the Kitchen”, Barry analyzes his recent Thanksgiving experience and realizes that the stereotypes about men and women in the kitchen are indeed true. He tries to show that men who try to be helpful in the kitchen usually fail. Barry effectively uses humor to connect with his audience by using a light hearted tone to try to make it more relatable to the audience, while repeating differnt styles

The one thing that any author must do when writing any sort of essay is to make it comprehensible to the reader. In order to achieve this, the author must utilize anything to get their point across or else the writing would be futile. In Turkeys in the Kitchen , Dave Barry gives his own personal stories about his Thanksgiving and how he feels that men aren’t as useful as women in the terms of the culinary arts (kitchen), Barry’s flippant tone and his use of rhetorical devices such as similes and irony bring forth a light hearted explanation of stereotypes between men and women as well as describing how men are useless in the kitchen.

The first sentence of the short story is: “Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water.” Snow is a great example of symbolism, because snow is pure or it could be cleanliness. But the snow is melting and turning dirty. It is possible that Carver was

In her novel Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton uses a country setting to establish the values of morality and duty against the lonely and isolated backdrop of the “mute melancholy landscape” of 1881 Starkfield, Massachusetts (Wharton 13). In a snow-covered New England village, protagonist Ethan Frome, with his wife Zenobia and his love Mattie Silver, searches for a life of fulfillment. The reader senses Ethan’s struggles by observing the harsh winters in Starkfield, the bleak state of Ethan’s farm, and the poor conditions of his home.

Soto uses repetition and motif to describe how weather can depict the mood of a story and how little things can have great effects on people. Gary Soto includes a motif of weather throughout the poem to illustrate the mood and setting of the poem. Soto begins with “December. Frost cracking,beneath my steps, my breath before me. Her house the one who burned yellow night and day, in any weather” (5-8). This motif describes what is going on in the beginning of the poem and hints what the story will be like based on the mood that it sets. Soto uses the motif throughout the poem and he uses it a second time as he leaves the store “Outside, A few cars hissing past, Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees”(44-47). This time, Soto displayed the

The short story, Chef’s house, is written by Raymond Carver in 1983. This essay will include an analysis of the short story, a summary but mainly focus on the themes in the text, the style of writing and the effect it has. In the short story, we are introduced to Wes, a middle-aged man, and he has rented a house from another man called Chef.

I define my family more like Robert Hayden than Linda Hogan; I define my family as my mother, my sister, my grandparents, and house where I grew up. Linda Hogan’s family was a nomadic tribe that moves from place to place, and she wrote about problem of perception of herself as a part of one race; Robert Hayden in his poem describe don’t understanding of parents’ love in a family; while I can describe my family issue as a misunderstanding the role of the father in the family because I grew up without the father. My mother got divorce when I was a child, and couple years late my father was killed. Like Hayden I can say about my house that I felt “fearing the chronic angers of that house” because my dad was alcoholic, and I saw a lot family violence

While both sex and sibling behavioral issues aren’t often related to cooking, both Elaine Magarrell and Sally Croft are able to integrate these themes into their poems. In both of the poems “The Joy of Cooking”, by Elaine Magarrell, and “Home Baked Bread”, by Sally Croft, the authors use different types of imagery and figurative language in order to convey a completely different idea through the art of cooking. Both authors use rather explicit ideas and themes in their writing, and use remarkable figurative language and imagery in order to convey their themes.

According to traditional gender roles, the father is the provider for the family. He is

The setting takes place the majority of the time in the kitchen of Mrs. Wrights home which is described as “dirty” and “gloomy”. The men see the dirty and gloomy kitchen as a sign that Mrs. Wright wq as a bad housekeeper, which in their mind translates to her being a bad woman in general. “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies? There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm…I’d hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticizing” (page 820 and 821). The women, however, can relate to the hardships and responsibilities that are to be done and stand up for Mrs. Wright as the men are judging her without any understanding at all. “Nothing here but kitchen things” (page 819). This reveals how oblivious the men are to the female perspective, and that they do not even take into account the fact that Mrs. Wright had no time to tidy up her kitchen before she was taken to jail. To me, it seems obvious, and makes a lot of sense, that all the clues would be found in the kitchen because in the 1900s the kitchen is symbolic of women and where most spent all their time in the house. The men also take light of the small details that the women take note of, in particular as to how Mrs. Wright was contemplating the construction of the quilt. As the women converse and share experiences of their own and those of Mrs. Wright, they begin to form

In his early life, hunger is a constant companion for Richard Wright. After his father left, Wright suffers from severe malnutrition and becomes thin. However, through his literal hunger, Wright implies a metaphorical hunger for family and support. Later on, Wright’s hunger changes into a desire for knowledge. Wright constantly talks about how hungry he is when he lives with only his mother. But when he moves in with Aunt Maggie, away from his grandmother, Wright notices that “Aunt Maggie’s table was so loaded with food that [he] could scarcely believe it was real” (Wright 50). Back at his grandmother’s house, Granny and Grandpa scold him and whip him. But now, he lives with his aunt and uncle who are kinder and more supportive. Wright symbolizes this difference by describing the table, which is filled to

Hope Edelman’s “The Myth of Co-Parenting,” focuses on Edelman’s marriage falling apart when her husband spends the majority of his waking hours at work. Edelman describes the hardships she faces while raising her daughter for almost two years with an absentee husband. She is left assuming the role of a traditional wife; cleaning the house, stocking the fridge, and taking care of her daughter. Co-parenting is not only hard for the woman in Edelman’s instance, but is also difficult for the husband in Eric Bartels’ “My Problem with Her Anger.” Bartels examines the scrutiny he is under from his wife for performing seemingly easy tasks incorrectly. He feels attacked by his wife when she criticizes the improper manner in which he loads the dishwasher and sorts the laundry. These references to kitchen appliances reveal that after they have started a family, spouses

Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing,” is an essay that closely resembles contemporary life and captures the excruciating anguish of a parent’s sense of helplessness and overall isolation. Elements of empathy, compassion, and understanding entice readers into thinking about their own lives--and even their own mortality and familial relationships.