Is There Order in Chaos? Many people suffer from OCD, a mental disorder that causes the patients to habitually clean or organize in the hopes to lessen anxiety. This disease can be found in "about 1 in 40 adults and 1 in 100 children" across all lifestyles (1 "Beyond OCD"). This malady causes a need for order out of chaos, such as a need for clear reason out of the anarchy of nature. One creature, who could never satisfy OCD patients, is the black widow spider. Consequently, this is the subject of Gordon Grice's nonfiction piece, "Caught in the Widow's Web." In his essay, Grice speaks on the reactions people have had to the spider, as well the clear disorganization of its habits and its venom. Using careful word choice, elevated literary devices and an array of literary modes, Gordon Grices spins a tale of the fickle black widow spider in all her anarchic glory. Grice's eloquent language leads the reader on a clear map through his modes of both process and narration. Juxtaposed to his topic of disorder, the author presents many processes in his essay rather orderly. The first example contains a small explanation of the widow's perplexing eating and hunting habits. He explains the many uses of the widow's, "remarkable web" (4 Grice) as well as its insatiable appetite, while …show more content…
His calm explanation of the spider leads the reader to expect a simple commentary on spiders comparative to other commentaries found in textbooks. This tone, however, contrasts starkly against his more brooding phrase choices such as "husks of consumed insects" (2 Grice) or "devouring her tenth victim" (5 Grice) that create a deplorable image of the spider. Yet somehow, between these conflicting voices, an even more confusing undertone surfaces. In such phrases as "remarkable" (4 Grice) or "mystic reverence" (9 Grice) the reader can hear the echoes of the awe-inspired
In Annie Dillard’s “The Death of the Moth” essay, she discusses the death of a moth that symbolizes death. She is curious about her own and the impact of it so she wrote this piece using a moth to represent the value of life. She uses the moth as a symbol to indicate no matter the size of an organism, large or small, it still has an impact on those around it and still has a role to complete after its death. She uses very descriptive details to give a vivid mental image of her surroundings and the burning of the moth in the fire.
In Yevgeny Zamyatin ’s We, nature and animal imagery portray the suppression of irrationality, as well as the authoritative power of OneState, which emphasize D-503’s difficulty in choosing conformity over rebellion. Animal imagery depicting unity demonstrates D-503’s compliance to the Benefactor, which conveys his willing acceptance of State control. The Benefactor exerts his control over the entire OneState – an ideal that was willingly accepted by D-503 at the start of the novel, as depicted by his admiration of the State, which persuade him to remain loyal.
The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Raven” have a sullen, baleful feeling throughout each of them, but Poe’s writing is more dreary and melancholy while Jacobs is enticingly suspenseful and eldritch. “...and a horrible fear that his wish would bring his mangled son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found he lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way around the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.” With the usage of words such as horrible, mangled, seized, sweat, unwholesome, etc., Jacobs produces an eerie image of the monkey’s paw and its power. It shows the characterization of Mr.
“Spider only wanted to know, “What is the price of the stories?” This quote from “How Stories Came to Earth” is an example of anthropomorphism found in both “How Stories Came to earth” and “Coyote steals fire.” There are multiple similarities and differences in both of these tales, the similarities being use of anthropomorphism, characters personality, appearance of gods, and use of the stories to explain natural and cultural events. The differences are the way women are portrayed, the attitude of the gods, the way in which the trickster goes about achieving his goals, and why the trickster is chasing their goal. “How Stories Came to Earth” and “Coyote Steals Fire” Have many similarities.
Not many people actually care about the life and death of a moth. An even smaller percent of people actually care enough to write something about it. However, this is exactly what Don Marquis, author of “The Lesson of the Moth”, and Virginia Woolf, author of “The Death of the Moth”, did. Both of the authors feel wonder towards the moth, but in “The Death of the Moth” Woolf also feels pity while Marquis feels envy in “The Lesson of the Moth”. The two authors also both describe the moth’s death as triumphant and its life as living in the
Edgar Allan Poe, the author of many short stories and poems such as A Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, and much more, uses imagery, irony, and parallel structure in order to convey a common dark truth. Poe was an American writer who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809. By the age of two years old, his family had been abandoned by his father and his mother died the following year. After his mother’s death, he had been orphaned. Later on, when he became a writer, he used his warped past to make meaningful pieces of literature that are still and will continue to be, treasured.
Due to the famous rest treatment in which the narrator is told to follow, her interactions with other individuals is severely limited. Most of her social interactions are between her and her husband John. The narrator’s relationship with her husband is considered to
Impulsive: “The edge of my hand was touching the golf club, and with a single motion I swept the club over and down, struck it a savage and accurate blow and killed it. ”(paragraph 6, page 151) Mr.Morgan killed the large without thinking, he couldn’t control his emotion. At that moment, he didn’t think too much, he just wanted to kill that “terrible” ant in order to keep himself safe. He even did not think about whether that large ant was evil or not.
In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Johnathan Edwards uses rhetorical devices such as metaphors, similes and personifications. He uses these in order to scare his audience about Hell and to obey God and his message. In order to get people to follow his message and take his warnings, he uses tactics to scare people into in believing their unfortunate fates if they aren’t obedient to God and the Bible. Edwards uses descriptive images such as metaphors to compare his people to loathsome spiders.
The essay by Gordon Grice called, “Caught in the Widow’s Web”, provokes the reader to consider the question: why is there evil in a that was created in a good image? Grice examines the black widow and compares it to a evil, merciless creature. The black widow has many evolutionary traits that are not necessary for its survival. Grice’s description of the spider creates a sense of symbolism that the black widow represents a unneeded evil in a world full of good.
In N. Scott Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, the speaker recounts his journey back to Rainy Mountain after the death of his grandmother, Aho. Momday deeply portrays his feelings, attitudes, and emotions toward Rainy Mountain and his grandmother through descriptive language. He depicts a nostalgic and bittersweet tone throughout the story whilst reminiscing about old memories. In paragraph ten, the author emphasizes diction, the rhetorical mode of narration and description, and syntax to truly reveal his respectable and admirable feelings toward his grandmother.
“The Masque of the Red Death” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that is portrayed through limited omniscient narration. This is a narrator who can identify everything throughout the story and recognize how a character’s thought process works. Poe presents the story in an elegant manner and his writing style is composed and dignified. The tone that is used throughout the story gives us a medieval perception. However, Poe approaches the reader by representing the actions, words, and other aspects of a character without including their cognition.
The Wife’s Story Ursula K. Leguin is a short story describing a wife retrospective of her husband who she thought of as a loving and caring father and husband a somewhat perfect person always gentle. Yet he had a fatal flaw that led to his death that the wife failed to recognize until it was too late. Throughout the story, the wife recounts important events that led to his deaths events that should have been clues to aid her to recognize the flaw within her husband. In the story, Leguin shows us how the wife’s perception was deceiving her. She was looking at her husband but couldn’t see him for whom he really was.
“The Death of the Moth”, by Virginia Woolf, is an essay centered around the phenomenon that is life and death, a wonder that results in the same conclusion for every being on this deceptive and unjust world. Woolf uses variations in tones, unpredictable milestones, and a plethora of metaphors to evoke emotions within the reader so that a sympathetic parallel is formed between the pitiful moth and the emotionally susceptive reader. Descriptive observations, such as in amplifying the “pathetic” life of this creature, whose abilities are limited to that of an inescapable box, applies a hopeless tone and outlook on the insect that only few can read without pitying such a meaningless life. However, Woolf is able to beautifully take advantage of our society’s fascination with underdog narratives in using statements such as, “what he could do he did,” or “he was little or nothing but life,” that not only elicits a sense of respect for the moth’s abnormal “zest” for life, but also makes readers unconsciously root for the pitiful creature.
While there are many types of ‘more than friends’ both shallow and intimate, a pair can take a friendship in whichever direction a couple chooses to. Through the narrators’ infatuation with a peacock in The Heart of Peacock by Emily Carr and the compassionate, loving romance between Dr. Reefy and the tall dark girl in Paper Pills by Sharon Anderson, both connections take on different approaches before developing a strong nurturing type of friendship. From looks, personality, and a growing relation, a base is what both duos need to get started. On one hand, the narrator has a love affair with the peacock.