Few books have the ability to astound readers with their portrayal of austere social conventions and ludicrous mores as Jane Austen’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice does. Written a good many decades ago in a time that seems so far removed from ours that we question the logic behind wanting to read it in the first place, this 400-page novel is considered a novel of manners whose simple plot exposes more than the romantic story which it is clothed in would have readers believe.  

This is the fourth part of the overview to Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing" which covers the story's themes: body image, assistance, silence, and acknowledgment. If you want to read an introduction which includes a link to the story, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it, click here .  Part two deals with the plot and the "growth" process through which Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development (to read that, click here ).  Part three about the story's point of view and symbolism can be found here .

This is part three of the overview to Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing". It covers the story's point of view and symbolism.  If you want to read an introduction which includes a link to the story, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it, click here . Part two deals with the plot and the "growth" process through which Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development (to read that, click here .)

This is the second part of the overview of Monica Wood's short story "Disappearing". Before reading, please take a look at the introduction I've written here which includes a link to the story itself, a short biography of the author, the setting of the story as well as the characters that interact in it. This second part will cover the plot and deals with the "growth" process the story describes. Through this process, Wood intimates how destructive others can be and how -- as traumatizers -- they can permanently stunt development. In part 3 ,  the point of view and sym bolism are discussed.

People's cries for help often go unnoticed because as a society we have either become immune to other people's plight or we have become too self-centered to notice others at all. Monica Wood captures this feeling of insignificance, a kind of nullity of human existence imposed by others by dint of their disregard for their fellow man (and woman, naturally), in her short story "Disappearing".  The title says it all. The passage from one existence to a non-existence is depicted in a matter of pages. Twenty-eight paragraphs is all it takes to erase one's physical identity. Yet how much longer it takes to erase an individual's entire existence -- both body and mind -- is what lies at the heart of this story. The answer to this question is a terrifying "few people, a few comments, several reactions" rather than a specific time period. In fact, I would contend that this is not a story just about anorexia --  anorexia is simply a by-product of a great...

Read part 1 of this overview which includes a brief introduction, includes a link to the full text of the story, some details about the author's life as well as an analysis of setting and plot. Part 2 contains an analysis of the characters that appear in the story and the point of view. Part 3 discusses the symbolism found in this complex short story while this final post deals with the themes and the title of the story. 

Read part 1 of this overview which includes a brief introduction, includes a link to the full text of the story, some details about the author's life as well as an analysis of setting, plot. Part 2 contains an analysis of the characters that appear in the story and the point of view.  This part discusses the symbolism found in this complex short story. Part 4 follows to discuss the themes and the title of the story.

Read part 1 of this overview which includes a brief introduction, includes a link to the full text of the story, some details about the author's life as well as an analysis of setting, plot.  This second installment contains an analysis of the characters that appear in the story and the point of view.  Part 3 discusses the symbols found in the story. Part 4 deals with the story's title (how it foreshadows the ending) and themes.

Many read "Like a Winding Sheet" and conclude the drama that ensues has to do with race. Yes, that indeed would be the obvious conclusion. However, details pertaining to lipstick, tossing one's head back, lifting hair away from one's nape tell a different story.  This story is Ann Petry's primary narrative, I feel, as more care has been given to leave a trail of feminine breadcrumbs against the manifest backdrop of racial inequality and heartless behavior by those in a position of power, which happen to be the destructive forces behind further victimization. Petry manages to show just how everything comes full circle in the worst possible way when people try their damnedest to be the brutes they shouldn't be in their dealings with others.

Before reading this post, if you haven't already done so, please read the first part here . It has a very brief note on t he story's author , covers the plot, characters and setting. You can find the story itself here . This second part will deal with point of view, themes, symbolism, irony, the story's ti tle , and will t ry to give some explanations as to the reasons why Mrs. Sommers g ave in to temptation.

If I were to say that the typical love triangle is substituted for a different one in the opening paragraph of  Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings", few students would believe this is possible. In fact, when students give me feedback on this short story, it usually is negative, not because they didn't get it -- it's written plainly enough -- but because there's nothing going on in it, as they say. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is a symptom of the disease rampant in the 21st century called 'boxofficematerialitis', an epidemic conjoined with 'keeptheirinterestbyusingquicksuccessionofimagesitis', which has given rise to what has been conveniently labelled attention deficit disorder. The fact of the matter is that if there's no real action, that is, action which contains a number of spectacular car chases, shoot-'em-up scenes, explosions, or dirty underhanded scheming (that results in one or all of the aforementioned chases, sc...

If there were ever a more trite statement made about literature, it would be that r eading stories from different literary cultures enriches p eople's experience of the world. However, " b ooks take you places " isn't just another platitude rehashed by publishers, Reading teachers or something you'd find pasted on a cardboard sign in a Fox Books megastore from Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail . It's a n o b servation , albeit somewhat hyperbolized due to its dependence on personifying books , founded on readers' e scapades with every book cover opened.  This feeling of being transported to a new kind of reali ty is what I sensed after reading Hwang S un-won 's "C o nversation in June about Mothers", a short story born out of the Cold War which present s facets of the m ystery that is motherhood. 

Some stories you know will be great the minute you read their title. Combine this fact with the name of their author and the result is a fireworks display.  Roald Dahl has written some of the most memorable stories in the last century because of their quirkiness and deep sense of raw reality disguised in simple, straight-forward prose. And like any good classic short stories, his behave in a way that make readers search for an alternative reality that will explain the whys and wherefores of human behavior. Patrick Maloney tells his pregnant wife he's leaving her. "What will Mary do about it?" is the question in a reader's mind and how is this tied to the title of the story? As is plain, from the get-go, questions arise that grow in number as the story progresses and leave us either giggling at the end of it alongside Mary or wriggling uneasily in our seats.

Poetry is an acquired taste. The more you sample it, the more flavors you extract.   -- Elle Greco Reading a Kashmiri poet for me is a first , and first impression s when it comes to poetry mean the world to me.  A li's poem troubled me . N ostalgia and lo neliness exuded from the poem as a whole, but I had trouble realizing this until the very end , when in a worl d full of paper, the p oem's persona has yet to hear news from a loved one . The trouble was decoding the choice of words in the firs t six verses. Read in g and re-reading still couldn't provide me with definite motives that would help me build a definitive story which brought on such nostalgia. And then , when you think the poem e ludes you, you remember the one universal law embracing it : poetry is felt, and when f eelings enter into the picture , the picture becomes subjective for each person.  I suppose t he biggest question is w ho "you" refers to.

Native American culture had become synonymous with axe-wielding, bow-and-arrow-carrying savages chasing after homely pioneers to scalp them, as early Hollywood productions of the 20th century would have us believe.  Fortunately for the world, those days are long past, and Native American writers have reclaimed their cultural heritage much in the same way as other writers from colonies struggling  for independence successfully did whilst "writing back to the Empire" through works we now come to categorize under the term post-colonial literature. Louise Erdrich has captured the torturous existence of individuals trapped within themselves and stripped of their very foundations in this story. To top it all, one of these characters is further stripped of his serenity as he is used by politicians and warmongers to fight in their stead, then cast aside to suffer the harrowing effects of modern-day warfare unassisted by a system willing to ship his remains back home in a b...

Ferris Wheel is an unexpected play in that it seems too simple on the surface, but when you sit to analyze it, more things become evident about the characters, their background and the lives they lead: all this in the space of 10-15 pages. One could say this is a short story disguised as a play. The plot is basic, the dialogue is uncomplicated, the setting minimalist. But like the surface of a calm sea, what lies beneath is more than the eye can see at first glance.  So dive into the depths of this play and discover the lives that reside among the seaweed and coral reefs. This play is the new land and funfair version of ships th at pass in the night, fleeting , meeting, on their way again.

You hear "Joyce" and something in you cringes or ruptures or you sense retroperistalsis in its inception. You've had a hor rendous e xperience reading Ul ysses and would rather not pick up another Joyce novel in your life.  Well, "Eveline", thank God, is not U lysses. It is a short story, to begin with, meaning that whatever torture Joyce would have us experience, it wa s intended to be a short one. It is a 'normal' short story , to continue, meani ng that it follows in the vein of the other outstanding stories found in Dubliners .  Cr itics have demoted th is collection of short stories in that the y have chara cterized it as simplistic , ignoring the fact that simplicity is not always as simple as it seems. Spelling the wo rd "cat" for instance is simple if we are to comp are it to the word "gneissoid", but the cognitive processes involved in spelling "cat" are no less complicated than those employed by the bra...

Relationships between parents and their children are never easy. All families have their ups and downs, their moments of crisis, periods of serenity, intervals of strife and discord. Children's development sees to it that nothing remains static for too long. In My Oedipus Complex , O'Connor portrays precisely such a moment in a child's life when awareness grows and the canvas of life begins to acquire dabs of disappointment . P oor Larry realizes he has a father and a baby brother to contend with.  Unlike what one might expect from a coming-of-age tale, t he maturity of the story is not found in its characters but in O'Connor's ability to leave aside his traumatic childhood and focus on a constructive message. He could have easily depicted the father as the drunk in his life who couldn't keep a job but was supported by a wife who cleaned houses so the family would not starve. He could have idolized the mother or fashioned her after his own, suffering in...

The short story An Intruder was incorporated in Nadine Gordimer's short story collection Livingston's Companions, published in 1970. As such, it must be read and viewed through the prism of her somewhat earlier works which dealt with South African society's inequality and the problems arising from the diseased status quo of the times. An Intruder focuses on relationships between characters and how perceptions of a situation differ in the eyes of each individual based on a combination of nature and nurture, or at the very least that is what Gordimer would have the reader gauge. What made James Seago what he is? Why is Mrs Clegg, Marie's mother, such a typical depthless wishful socialite with an exaggerated respect for higher social status? Couldn't Marie judge the merit of the man who treats her like a child or is she turning a blind eye to his behavior because it suits her? Whatever the answers to these questions, the one certainty we have is that the noti...

Night is a heavy book to read.  You believe you know the events that took place in WWII because you learnt more facts and dates at school than you would have liked, watched over a dozen movies related to the war that came after the one that was supposed to end all wars, visited museums and seen artefacts linked to atrocities on one side and bra v ery on the other . And yet, Night strikes deeper into the heart of readers because it balance s the m between real fiction and fictitious realit y, toying with the ir mind which is unable to grasp the horror of the book they hold before them as they read.  "How? How is this possible?" repeat s itself like a mantra as your eyes fly over the words on ea ch pa ge, so simply written , so briefly expressed, so full of pathos. Characters develop ef fortlessly, the tragedy of an entire generation un fol ds like a bloodied gauze that's left its mark on charred skin.  This book must be read. Buy it. Teach it. Share it wit...