The Rattler

In the poem, To a Mouse, Robert Burns states, “The best laid schemes of mice and men/ Go often askew/ And leave us nothing but grief and pain” (Burns). Burns wrote about an incident where he accidentally ruined a mouse’s home while plowing a field. During the early 1900s, the Great Depression, one of the biggest economic slumps in the history of the United States, was taking place. It resulted in many people being unemployed, lonely, and stuck in poverty. In the story, George and Lennie move around looking for work on farms, so that they can one day use their money to buy a house on their own. Unfortunately, Lennie often makes mistakes causing them to leave a job early before making their money. At one farm, they meet a man named Candy who

Irony may appear in difference ways within literature. Irony changes our expectations of what might happen. It can create the unexpected twist at the end of a story or anecdote that gets people laughing or crying. Verbal irony is intended to be a humorous type of irony. Situational irony can be either funny or tragic. Dramatic irony is usually an over the top, tragic form of irony. Both Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” are great examples of an ironic situation. Every expresses the common theme in their own way. Although both of these literally pieces provide us with the theme of irony, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" gives the reader a sense of suspense with the irony that proves to be more effective.

Everybody knows the classic tale of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is most famous for its introduction of the character of Count Dracula into both deep-rooted and contemporary literature and media. One critic claimed,” Bram Stoker set the ground rules for what a vampire should be.” It follows the story of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who visits Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania – soon realising that he is being kept as a prisoner. Dracula forms a liking to the character of Lucy which ultimately leads to her death. Dracula learns that the group are plotting against him and feeds Mina his own blood to control her. In the final fight, humanity wins over the creature as they can kill him and Mina’s mind from his “spell.” The premise

The imagery heightens the effect of danger for the snake when the man had his garden hoe. The clash between the snake and man started

he Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver focuses on both real life and fictional events and tells the story of the Price family’s experience in the Congo. Kingsolver makes good use of foreshadowing to dramatize the tragic incidents that occur in Africa. Orleanna Price is the most reliable narrator in the novel and is used to foreshadow future events and to explain various aspects of the past.

In the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family of six meets their demise on the side of the road in Georgia after a gang of convicts lead by The Misfit brutally murders each member of the family. The story starts off in an upbeat tone and sets up a seemingly happy plot about a family going on vacation to Florida. However, the grandmother does not listen to her son about taking her cat on the trip and her disobedience ultimately leads to all of their deaths. The author changes the tone of the story at the end when the family gets into a wreck and faces a gruesome death by a crazed armed killer on the loose (O’Connor#). The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess.

Bloody, vicious, and gut wrenching deaths occur frequently across the world. Human often contribute to the demise of various living things in order to ensure their own survival. People capture and execute animals for nourishment and protection. In the short story “The Rattler,” a man must decide whether or not to spare the life of a rattlesnake that he encounters during a walk in the desert. He chooses to slaughter the snake, resulting in the snake’s gory death. The author convinces the audience to sympathize with the snake and empathize with the narrator through the characterization of the snake, the descriptions of the tranquil environment, and the perspective of the man.

A narrator: defined as a person who guides or tells the story of events through one’s own experience. As far as we are told, the narrator tells the story precisely and can make the words of the page come to life. Yet, is it possible for the narrator to tell the story incorrectly through their own perspective? This well-written horror shows us anything is possible in the art of literature. From reading “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, readers learn that the narrator is unreliable and therefore cannot be trusted to tell the story completely accurately.

In “The Boys Are Not All Right” by Michael Ian Black, the author uses different powers of persuasion to convince the audience to succumb to his opinion that men today don’t know how to properly express their feelings because of cultural norms that expressing your feelings is associated with weakness and femininity. He starts the article by drawing on the fact that almost all mass shootings have been committed by men. He says that men tend to lash out in anger because they don’t know how to properly express their feelings. He attempts to persuade his reader to start a conversation on how to make it more acceptable in society for men to express their emotions in a way that doesn’t potentially hurt others.

Vicky has recently moved from Keelung to Taipei, where she works doing PR in a nightclub. She has an overly jealous boyfriend, Hao Hao, who tracks her every movement, including her bank accounts, her telephone bills, even her smell. Her days pass by working, taking drugs and constantly fighting with him, at least when they do not have sex. However, she is tired of her situation and finds solace in Jack, a kind-hearted gangster, who also owns a bar. Gradually, she gets more and more comfortable with him while he is in serious trouble, due to his tendency to offer help to whoever needs it.

The story is told from the omniscient first person point of view. The man has come across this snake while he is out on a walk through the desert. Both the man and the snake had no intentions of harming the other at first, “My first instinct was to let him go his way and I would go mine…”. Then the man puts into perspective that he needs to be the protector of the other people that live with him, “But I reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at the ranch, as well as men and women lightly shod; my duty, plainly, was to kill the snake”. The use of the first person point of view helps to portray the sadness and sorrow of the man, and overall to appeal to the pathos of the reader by going after their

For example, in the end of the book when Jim is on the verge of death, Will and Mr. Holloway uses their great love for Jim to help him stay alive. This shows how when in situations where solutions are nearly impossible to find, sometimes love and friendship can help groups stay together. This hope and love is also used as the final death sentence for Mr. Dark, as Mr. Halloway's hug overwhelms him with kindness and kills him. This is one of the many overarching themes in the story and shows how the author’s uses of language and storytelling can show a moral lesson.

In a personal moral conflict, the character portrays his moral value of respecting all living things. Using his point of view on killing the snake, he states, “I have never killed an animal I was not obliged to kill.” The character never intends to kill the snake and respects that life should be valued, a personal moral for the man. The author also elaborates in detail to show the man does not want to kill the snake- “...the sport in taking life is a satisfaction I can’t feel.” Through the man's conflict, the author intends to show the snake had no dangerous intentions explaining

“The Rattler” portrays the narrator’s moral conflict between his sense of duty to other people and his respect for all life through diction and anthropomorphism.

Liam O’Flaherty’s realistic fiction story, “The Sniper” takes place in Dublin, Ireland. The main character is a sniper fighting a civil war. He is on the Republican side who is fighting against the Free Staters. He does not put a lot of thought into his actions and it ends up costing him something big in the end. By using irony and description O’Flaherty shows that action without thought can lead to serious repercussions.