¶ … Man of Ideas
In the short story "A Man of Ideas," author Sherwood Anderson tells about a young man named Joe Welling. Joe is just another citizen of Winesburg, Ohio and is neither especially talented nor especially intelligent. He works for Standard Oil but does not have a high position in the company. Joe Welling is just a regular working man and this is a situation which bores him. The only thing that makes him stand out at all is his ability to exaggerate, to tell convincing stories, and to involve other people in his fantasies. Welling's story fits into the larger theme of Winesburg, Ohio, that despite living in a small town and performing a service which does not make them special, the people have to become grotesque caricatures of regular people in order to feel unique. The reader sees through Joe's imaginings the difference between how he views things and reality.
Joe has all these big ideas which he explains to anyone who will hear them, including his mother and...
Lottery" by Shirley Jackson The meaning of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' "It isn't fair, it isn't right." These are the last words expressed by the victim in Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery', which provides a unique but shocking perspective of the innate evil that is part of human nature. The story starts off by describing a town scene that could not be more commonplace or predictable. The descriptions provided by
Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves The short story as a literary form has the power to convey ideas as complex and nuanced as longer-form fiction. As King (2007) notes, short stories often struggle to find an audience, despite being on the surface easier to digest. Their length makes them perfect for brief reading, but the audience seems constantly dwindling. Yet the short story medium has precisely the power to
English Literature - Introduction Minimalism -- John Barth's Description Minimalism certainly means using fewer words to express thoughts, plots, ideas, quotes and action, but there is more to it than that, according to John Barth. By using Henry James' mantra of "show, don't tell," Barth covers the subject very well. Barth also quotes Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote that "…undue length is…to be avoided." The short story itself is an example of
Brownies is a short story showing the importance of point-of-view. The racial point-of-view of the young black girls in the narrator's Brownies troop is important because it influences how they interpret and respond to situations. Each group member's point-of-view within the group is also important because it influences them as leaders, intimidators, followers, allies and independent thinkers. Though "Brownies" could be read as a simple short story about a childhood
Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" explores a number of different social and psychological issues including stereotyping and prejudice. When the blind male friend of the narrator's wife enters their home, issues related to self-esteem, sexuality, and racism also arise. The blind man, Robert, helps the narrator to "see," serving a symbolic function of enlightenment. Cannabis provides the means by which the two men bond on an emotional and intellectual level,
Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is about a young man who becomes mortally obsessed with an old man's creepy eye and ultimately kills him. Thomas Hardy's 1902 poem "The Man He Killed" is about a soldier who has become used to killing people just because they are on the other side of the war. Both of these narratives lend insight into guilt related to death, told
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