The Thing In The Forest Analysis

Thomas Foster, in his essay “Is That a Symbol?,” suggests that every concrete object in a piece of literature can be a symbol. Foster supports his claim by describing a scenario and pointing out objects that are symbols. His purpose is to further inform students on what a symbol is in order to help them better understand pieces of literature and their many meanings. Foster establishes a formal but humorous tone with his intended audience for this essay which includes students from various levels of education, middle school and up. Based on my original claim, this essay will help me to further explain my symbols and why they are significant to the story.

Having read, The Poisonwood Bible book, it was both fascinating and interesting. The author, Barbara Kingsolver, was quick with her diction and used quite a lot of figurative language. The objective of the book was to show the true meaning of Africa and show how it was difficult to convert the people of Africa to Christianity religion. The setting was present in Georgia, which later they traveled to a village called Kilanga in Congo, in which they started their journey. The main characters includes, Nathan Price who was the main character, his wife Orleanna Price, and their four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.

In the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand, the forest best represents the idea of individuality. In most works of literature, forests are used as a place of mystery and wonder or even fear. Like a forest, the idea of individuality is very rarely discussed and the mention of it is a capital offense; the result of which is that everyone in Anthem’s society views themselves as not just a person in the community but a cell of one person. The forest itself is regarded as being mysterious and like mentioning individuality is a capital offense, going into the Uncharted forest is rumored to lead to death. One example of the symbol of the forest applying to the concept of individuality is when toward the end of the novella, the main character,

Everybody is frightened by something. From pig heads impaled on a stick to a dead parachutist falling from the sky, in the world of Lord of the Flies, there are numerous reasons for which one should be scared. In the story, a group of English schoolboys find themselves stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The children have no parents to protect them from the mysterious animal of a “beast” that is haunting them. The “beast” is a legacy that is abundant in changing throughout Lord of the Flies.

Thoreau was a prominent and influential transcendentalist which meant that he believed modern society’s institutions, organizations, religions, and politics are all corrupt. He believes that people should go back to their roots in nature and be more simple-minded like our ancient ancestors who lived in nature. To think about it in more modern terms, he was practically a minimalist who believed people should only live with things essential for life, basic life necessities like food, water, and shelter. He quotes, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 66). From the quote, we can tell that he believes that a life without living with nature and essentials only is a life wasted.

The character Penny is a protagonist in Byatt’s story “The Thing in the Forest”, and is presented in two lives or stages: childhood and adulthood. As a little girl, Penny is described as “thin and dark and taller, probably older than Primrose, and had a bloodless transparent paleness with a touch of blue in her lips” (Byatt 3). In the later stages of the story, Penny is described as having a “transparent face that had lost detail – cracked lipstick, fine lines of wrinkles – and looked both younger and greyer, less substantial” (Byatt 12). This later description can be taken as a representation of the battering from life that Penny had taken from the encounter with the thing to separation and placement with strange families, a predicament shared by Primrose who now had the same

In A.S. Byatt’s “The Thing in the Forest”, the author uses the elements of a short story to craft a dark, fairy tale. The title of the story, “The Thing in the Forest”, in the sense that it foreshadows the main idea of the story. The audience expects more than just a "thing", as listed in the title. Byatt emphasizes that the main characters are the two-main protagonist who were girls dealing with more than just a “thing” in the forest that affected them for the rest of their lives. this is the use of symbols that expresses a meaning to focus on the story. A.S. Byatt emphasizes more on the plot and setting, characters, theme and symbols.

People make decisions everyday and each decision they make has an effect on them whether it's good or bad. In the short story, “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant” by W.D. Wetherell the narrator is a 14 year old boy who has a big crush. He has a crush on a older girl named Sheila Mant. The narrator’s crush over Sheila is almost like an obsession because he makes a lot of decisions based on Sheila, and the way he feels about her. The theme of decision making is clearly developed in the beginning, middle, and end of this story.

In Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, characters’ actions demonstrate the importance of finding one’s inner voice and making right decisions even though they go against social prejudice. As the novel suggests, women live in Jackson are expected to play the role of virtuous wives and caring mothers. Miss Celia is one of the characters that suffers from the gender stereotype and is not able to control their own life. Fortunately, she finally overcomes these gender norms and decides to present her true self. After the Benefit, Minny tells Celia the pie story about Miss Hilly, which motives Celia to cut down the Mimosa tree. Minny states her observation by saying,” I heard a groan and see the tree crash to the ground, leaves and dead fronds fly

Sandra Cisneros’, “The Monkey Garden”, uses juxtaposition and personification to provide ominousness to her vignette. For instance, a bit after Esperanza first entered the garden following the family moving, she noted the “hollyhocks perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead”, comparing aromatic flowers to dull colored locks from the deceased, foreshadowing that there must be an upcoming negative event of some sort involving death. The foul use of corpses’ hair color to describe a fragrant plant is placed to accentuate their clear differences. Cisneros also uses personification to establish an ominous mood to this piece. For example, after stating the garden was taking over itself, the “flowers stopped obeying” their designated areas. She

Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a renowned source of political fiction that pioneered the movement of food safety in the United States. The Jungle was first published in a socialist newspaper in 1905 and then later adapted into a novel in 1906 after popular demand. Sinclair initially wrote the exposé as a way to change the unfortunate circumstances of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions that were believed to be unacceptable for any laborer in the industry. Sinclair leaves short references of his political opinions in the novel in various locations throughout the text “As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!” (Sinclair 31). Written as an indirect

The world has yet to know “its” true secrets and dive deeper under the mask of perception. Though we may feel like nature is throwing karma at us at times, we continue to honor nature for its patience. In the poems, “Ode to Enchanted Light” by Pablo Neruda and “Sleeping in the Forest” by Mary Oliver, both of the literary works share an appreciation for nature. Though this is true for both, they express their love and feelings differently. Pablo Neruda’s poem praises light as enchanting, whereas Mary Oliver’s poem personifies Earth as a motherly figure and gives off mother nature vibes. The earth seems to comfort the speaker as they go through a series of gentle, calm events to help them sleep. Although both poems glorify nature, one specifically celebrates light while the other shares the speaker’s relationship with the earth. Both poems perform different methods to evaluate and share its purpose.

Smooth, oval rocks lined the bank of the secretive lake. Discarded and neglected; overlaid with spongy moss and choked by fallen, decaying leaves from the unclothed and withering trees above. As the lake swelled around the ashen boulders, icy, black water lifelessly lapped against the long, thin beams of wood holding up a rickety pier. The structure was covered in splinters and ragged, iron nails, and as it reached out into the centre of the sombre lake, it became more and more distant. Half-cut beams lined the sides of the pier, as nettle patches hissed from the shore when the water drew too near. Small, stagnant puddles, on the uneven planks of timber wood reflected the dark, brooding sky above - rarely disturbed by the callous slices of moonlight seeping through the clouds, creating a specular reflection through a ripple in the languid water.

“Modernism in the play Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca brought out through theme of Fate and Nature.”