In the story of My Kid’s Dog, you find humor in a sad situation and a twist of changed feelings. The lead character, the father hates the family dog but is trying to give the dog a better burial than the yard. Now at first, you may not like the father because he hates a dog, but as the story progresses a likable character starts to evolve.
Among other essays I have read in this book, the essay El Camino Doloroso written by David Searcy seems to have won my heart over the other ones. This story is short; in fact, it only has three pages, but the message Mr. Searcy conveys surpass these simple pages. To be honest, I have to read this essay three times to understand what is going on with the character and what is happening in this story. At last, I come up with this: In this essay, David Searcy wants those who believe dreams are flaws and useless to think that dreams and love are those that motivateki people to live.
In the essay “I’m Jumping Off the Bridge,” Kevin Sampsell argues that life has more meaning to it than what is recognizable in order to convince the audience that no matter what feelings one has inside, assuming that there is no one and nothing to live for is not the truth. Sampsell deals with his struggles of depression and harmful thoughts after he meets a man at his job that expresses his feelings and desires to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge. In this essay, Sampsell uses morose word choices to effectively show insight, heartbreak, and the responsibilities that involve one’s life after death. He is eloquent in his description of pain and desolation and has a rhetorical appeal, oriented around pathos, in his relatability. The reader
The poem, “Eating Together” by Kim Addonizio is about a woman observing a friend at a restaurant. Not only is her friend eating, but she is also slowly dying. There is a hidden message behind the poem to convey a certain message. Kim Addonizio uses tone, personification, word choice, and description to get the message across to the readers. While there are a plethora of tools, restrictions, and conventions for making a poem, a variety of genres can incorporate a similar message.
Throughout life, we all go through rough moments where we think all is lost. However, we as humans always grow from these experiences and turn into beings with a new awakening and understanding of the world. In a passage from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, the narrator describes a striking ordeal, in which a man is coping with the death of a she-wolf. Despite the cause of death being left ambiguous, this dramatic experience has a vivid effect on the main character—causing him to change and grow into a new man by the end of the passage. McCarthy uses eloquent and expressive diction to create imagery which gives the reader an understanding of the narrator’s experience, supplemented by spiritual references as well as setting changes, elucidating the deep sadness and wonder felt by the protagonist.
Thoughts in regards to suicide often include empathy for the dead, and wonder as to what drove the person to end their life. All too often, people ignore a rather important consideration: the thoughts and feelings of those left behind. The loved ones are left with the remorse, despondence, and grieving, while the dead are absolved of their worldly anguish. In “The Grieving Never Ends”, Roxanne Roberts employs a variety of rhetorical tactics including metaphors, imagery, tone, and syntax to illustrate the indelible effects of suicide on the surviving loved ones.
The poem, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe dramatizes the theme of everlasting love. The use of contrasting diction effectively conveys this message. For example, the speaker states, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (26-26). Poe uses the wind to represent a disease, such as tuberculosis. In addition, the choice of the words, “chilling” and “killing” and the use of cacophony emphasize Annabel Lee’s death and the effect it had on the speaker. Later, the speaker declares that neither angels nor demons “Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (32-33). Euphony occurs throughout the entirety of this quote, in phrases such as “my soul from the soul” and “the beautiful
In Sherman Alexie’s short story, “War Dances,” the narrator unravels in thoughts and takes us through events in his life. He picks up by speaking about a cockroach that ends up dying in his Kafka baggage from a trip to Los Angeles. The cockroach still appears many times throughout the story. The narrator spends quality time in the hospital with his father, who is recovering from surgery due to diabetes and alcoholism, all along the way while he, himself, discovers he might have a brain tumor, leading his right ear to talk about his father. Using a style of tragedy and care both incorporate together a symbolic story that would make even a plain reader feel touched, leading to the major occurrence of a theme of the importance of family.
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937) is an intensely-focused novella that deals with friendship, trust, the relationship between good and evil and the role of justice. It is the second book in Steinbeck’s trilogy about agricultural labour, alongside with In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
Literature can be funny, happy, lovely, and dynamic in all its forms, but literature that strikes a chord and evokes deep gut-wrenching feelings is often that of realistic fiction that contains tragic events in which the characters are involved. War is just one of the events that seems to captivate audiences. Literature like the story “The Things They Carried” and the poem “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” paint the truth of events that happen during war. Death appears in both of these works and is the tragic event that changes the theme of the pieces. But what if the theme begins with death and then discussed its effect on the tone of the characters? This very thing happens in “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” This causes the same
The short story, “The Knowners,” is a fictional tale of an alternate reality where mankind has invented a technology which can divine the exact day, upon which a person will die. The story focuses on the impact upon one woman’s life from knowing her own ‘expiration date.’ The story was written by Helen C. Phillips.
Although they lead different lifestyles, Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley both deal differently with death in Before the Birth of One of Her Children and To a Gentleman… the latter in a way that is more optimistic than the former.
In the stories “Gwilan’s Harp” by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The Washwoman” by Isaac Singer, and “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry, the characters experience great loss. Each of these stories’ most tragic moment happens when an important character dies. “Gwilan’s Harp” portrays the loss of Torm, Gwilan’s husband; however, the author creates redemption at the conclusion. The touching washwoman’s demise in “The Washwoman,” though heartbreaking, reveals an excellent moral lesson. Lastly, “The Last Leaf” not only includes good applicable themes, but also the unpredictable fatality of Behrman, of whom no one thinks very highly and yet has a great effect on the reader. Overall, these authors achieve their goals of teaching ethical principles through stories
As long as people have existed, they have wronged one another. They find different ways to harm others. Those who have been wronged tend to seek revenge no matter the situation. They feel as though they must revenge. Because humans almost always seek revenge, William Shakespeare’s statement, “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” holds significant truth. It is the basis of revenge as a whole. Other authors, who have a focus on revenge, also agree with Shakespeare’s comments.
In “The Murder Traveller” poet William Cullen Bryant employs a variety of literary devices such as juxtaposition, imagery, and tone to create an eerie atmosphere, with the continual thought being that life goes on with or without you. The poet begins by using imagery to create a cynical tone that makes the reader feel unimportant. By using strong imagery of how beautiful nature is even after a person has died, shows the death of the traveler didn 't affect anything around it. The nature continues to grow, people 's lives continue, and the world goes on. The contrast between the imagery of the beauty of nature with the bluntness of a dead traveler, creates this sense of unimportance, “And many a vernal blossom sprung, And nodded careless