Quiroga’s literary pieces have been undoubtedly influenced by tragedy and death encountered in his life. His devotion for Edgar Allan Poe’s caliginous style enforced him to delve into gothic themes in his works; such as death. The element of the ‘fantastic plot’ also persists in his literature, as explored in ‘"El almohadón de plumas" – In this passage, Quiroga conforms to illustrate the characterization and setting of the short story.
The characterization of this short story is compelling. The passage depicts the character of Alicia as ‘’angelical y tímida’’, a character solely dependent of her husband – sensitive but a dreamer. The narrator only adverts one physical appearance – she’s blonde. The author uses a desperate tone to induce a
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The house in which they live in is described as ‘’… silencioso —frisos, columnas y estatuas de mármol’’. The features that distinguish the house, corresponds to the characterization of the character of Jordán – the looming walls with his height, the marble statues with his insensitiveness and coldness, the silent patio and the echo ‘’…los pasos hallaban eco en toda la casa’’, entails the solitude and the emptiness not only of the house but in the charters, influencing the physical and psychological hardships of the character of Alicia. One can learn from the passage the lapse of the story happens during the winter, the couple had married in April and had lived three months of joy, ‘’ Durante tres meses —se habían casado en abril— vivieron una dicha especial.’’ The fact that it was winter coincides perfectly with the frigidity of both the house and Jordán in contrast with the character of Alicia. Quioga does not use much colour, only mentions ‘’…el brillo glacial del estuco’’, making reference to the monotonous surroundings, the reader therefore makes a clear comparison to for example a prison. Furthermore, with the features mentioned, the author intents to create a dark atmosphere deliberately utilising features of the fantastic in such a way to indulge the reader into questioning what is real and what fiction
By doing this, the reader calls to attention subordinate nature of the inhabitants to the authority of the Borderlands. Moreover, readers can see the effects that the Borderlands has on the individual clearly listed below the first line. This scheme creates a cause-effect pair allowing for one to view these effects as a clear result of the Borderlands condition. In addition to this, the author makes use of enjambment to offer contrasting ideas that simultaneously exist within the mind of the inhabitants. As one can see in the first stanza, the inhabitants “are neither bispana india negra española / ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed” (2-3).
From Mexico to the United States, a very dangerous journey some take to have a better life or to reunite with their family. Even people who are as inexperienced, such as Enrique, go through this dangerous path to reunite himself with his mother. In the novel, Enrique's Journey, author Sonia Nazario uses literary devices such as theme, characterization, and POV to show us how events change a character along the way and reveals how a character truly is. Sonia Nazario uses theme to show us the drastic change in character, characterization to show us how the dangers of this journey has an impact on someone, and POV to show us how the character is someone else’s perspective.
The family shows signs of being part of either a low or poor class based off the conditions of the household they are living in and the bareness of their apartment. For instance, the dining room is extremely small and the kitchen seems old and worn out. Correspondingly, the family members seem to lack personality due to to the simple clothing they are wearing. However, the bright colors found interior of the home create a contrast between the dreary environment of the household. This helps convey the message that although the family may not be as economically stable and live a dull life, they still happily interact among one another and come together every evening to have a meal together.
Márquez’s novella ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ tells the story of Santiago Nasar’s murder. It is based on the real-life incident that occurred in the 1950s in a small Colombian town, Sucre. Cayetano Gentile was murdered by the brothers of Margarita Chica for having allegedly stolen her virginity. This was revealed when she was returned to her family after her newlywed husband had discovered that she wasn’t a Virgin. In his novella, Márquez displays the influence of the social mores and shows how these supersede the law of the statute books and the authority of Catholicism, which was otherwise so important and therefore how these social mores affect the characters and their actions.
Lola takes advantage of her deteriorating mother whose illness represents the declining hold of the norms over Lola. Since her mom “will have trouble lifting her arms over her head for the rest of her life,” Lola is no longer afraid of the “hitting” and grabbing “by the throat” (415,419). As a child of a “Old World Dominican Mother” Lola must be surrounded by traditional values and beliefs that she does not want to claim, so “as soon as she became sick” Lola says, “I saw my chance and I’m not going to pretend or apologize; I saw my chance and I eventually took it” (416). When taking the opportunity to distinguish herself from the typical “Dominican daughter” or ‘Dominican slave,” she takes a cultural norm like long hair and decides to impulsively change it (416). Lola enjoyed the “feeling in [her] blood, the rattle” that she got when she told Karen to “cut my hair” (418).
Alvarez and her family have a lot of trauma considering there lives in the dominican republic and living under the dictator,through it all alvarez's parents raised a daughter who would share their story in a fashionable matter that told the story how it was.
This example of her personal life creates the visual of the neighbors being animalistic and continues the construction of the effects of the storm. The sentence about the neighbors is strategically structured as a loose and complex one, just to exaggerate the effects on the fellow Los Angeles citizens. Adding her own personal example of the effects, helps capture the connection between the audience, their emotions, the writing, as well as the
Written by Gabriel Garcia Márquez in 1958 as part of Los Funerales de la Mamá Grande, Un Día de Éstos is a short story addressing a vast theme; that of power and how it is balanced. By constructing the narrative primarily around the two characters of Don Aurelio Escovar, an unqualified dentist, and the mayor who is suffering of toothache, Márquez uses their reactions towards each other to guide the reader into understanding how easy it is to become vulnerable, notwithstanding their social class. CHARACTERISATION The theme of power is explored through the characterisations of the two men in the story and it could be said that this done primarily through continuous contrasts between them. To start with, the vocabulary that surrounds Escovar
Discuss and analyze how and to what ends fantasy and reality are intertwined in stories you have studied. In this essay, we will discuss how magical realism uses elements of real and of magic to create the literary style. At first, we will try to give a background of what magic realism, where it comes from, and how a story can be labelled as such. Alejo Carpentier’s “Viaje a la semilla” and Julio Cortazar’s “La noche boca arriba” will be our focus.
Marco Pérez Dr. Rony Garrido The short novel, Aura, by Carlos Fuentes creates a mythical reality to reference Mexican history. He uses Aura, Felipe Montero, and Consuelo as a reflection of the past and the present, where for example, Consuelo represents the past and Felipe the present. In this paper I will explain how the love story of Felipe, Aura, and Consuelo represent Mexican history. In addition this paper will explain how myth breaks down into different elements, such as religion, legends, traditions, and beliefs, all of which are manifested in the different characters and their actions within this novel.
In the poem, the speaker and his father “argue about the price of pomegranates” (Salinas 4) and he tries to convince his father that “it is the fruit of scholars” (Salinas 7). Conversely, his father believes that his son should simply “eat more oranges” (Salinas 11). Pomegranates and oranges have absolutely different features which symbolizes two types of lifestyle, one is complex and well educated as a writer, the other one is simple and poor educated as a worker. Meanwhile, in the short story “A Secret Lost in the Water”, even though the narrator’s father has a strong desire to pass on his traditional skill, using an alder bough to find “spring beneath the earth” (Carrier 2) as a portion of vital household wealth through generations, the narrator has a great passion for literature and much later, he becomes a writer. This underground spring is a significant clue in the story which symbolizes an old wisdom, a part of family heritage and a close relationship between two generations.
Esperanza’s house on Mango Street is not the house she dreamed on when she lived on Loomis Street, not the kind of house her parent’s talked about, not the house she wanted. Her house on Mango Street is a small, red house with even smaller stairs leading to the door. The brick are falling out of place and to get inside, one must shove the door, swollen like Esperanza’s feet in later vignettes, open. Once inside, where you are never very far from someone else, there are small hallway stairs that lead to the only one shared bedroom and bathroom. This house is just, “For the time being,”[5] Esperanza claims, for this is nothing like the house she longs for.
In Isabel Allende’s short story “Two Words”, readers follow the story of Belisa Crepuscalario, a woman who was born to an extremely poor family and sell words for a living. Colonel, a really tough and closed man who does not show his feelings easily and had spent his life serving homeland in the civil war. Late in the story she meets Colonel where the tough and closed man become a totally different person. In “Two Words,” Allende emphasizes the power of words through Belisa’s work to develop both Belisa and Colonel’s character, helping him realize that life is beautiful and enjoyable. To understand the power of words in Belisa’s life, it is important to know a little bit about her background.
When Santiago Nasar dies, his death had to be determined. In the Catholic religion, it is forbidden to do anything with the deceased. Nevertheless, Father Amador results on performing the autopsy of Santiago. Such autopsy can be interpreted as a “second killing”, taking away Santiago 's honour and his identity of a rich man; where Santiago 's “lady-killer face that death had preserved ended up having lost its identity”(Marquez 76), unrecognisable inside a luxurious coffin. Irony plays the role on criticising the church, it questions religion and illustrates the hypocritical values and role of priests in Latin American society.
Throughout Miguel de Cervantes novel, Don Quixote, there is a fine line between reality and illusion that seems to vanish portraying a prominent theme in the novel. Don Quixote de La Mancha, a fifty-year-old man, has an insane obsession in reading chivalry books; he is so absorbed in reading these books that he decides to become a knight-errant himself that will set off on adventures for his eternal glory. These books of chivalry have left Don Quixote so deep within his fantasy that there is no risk of him perceiving true reality. There are a plethora of examples where Don Quixote 's perceived reality is his idealistic fantasies. Cervantes expresses these complexities so much that we begin to notice the social criticism Don Quixote receives from people he encounters.