“A Modest Proposal” & Angela's Ashes Compared In the memoir of Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt in chapter VII he reads to a nearly blind man named Mr. Timoney, Jonathan Swift’s masterpiece “A Modest Proposal.” It is ironic due to the fact that the memoir as a whole can relate to the the passage of “A Modest Proposal.” Both of these works can compare and in the aspects of Irish poverty, yet they contrast very much due to the fact that one of the authors actually lived through it and the other just discusses things about it. Both authors use narration, tones, and imagery in their writing to convey their ideas and shape their work.
It’s never just rain.” (Foster 70). As Foster explains, rain in novels is much more than just rain; it can symbolize a cleansing. The opening sequence of 1984, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” (Orwell 1) describes a generally odd occurrence. At midday in the heart of spring, having cold weather instills a colorless tone that sets up the novel to be a dark and dreary tale, shaping the reader’s view of the dystopian society as grimly depressing.
The excerpt begins with Petry introducing the wind as a main antagonist through the careful use of personification. The cold wind “[drives] most of the people off the street”, “set[s] a barrage of paper swirl[ing] into the faces of people”, and even “make[s] it difficult to breathe.” These unpleasant and abrasive acts of the wind succeed in their goal of discouraging the residents of the city. They respond with frustration
Maggard 1 Cole Maggard Johnson English 1 6 November 2014 Character compare and contrast Esperanza from House on Mango Street, Melinda from Speak, and Jean Louise from To Kill a Mockingbird, are very interesting characters that seem to not share many characteristics in each of these novels. These three girls were the main characters of their own books, and in each of these books we learned that they don’t have a lot in common. The personality that these three have just shows how different they are. Here are just a few examples that make these three girls different.
A hardship that many people have to endure is poverty. The characters in the short stories, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank Mccourt and The Street, by Ann Petry, both experience living in impoverished conditions. In the story The Street, Petry shows the life of a single mother who lives through the struggles of being poor. In another story portraying poverty, Angela’s Ashes, the author uses kids to paint the image of indigence. These kids are burdened with the task of caring for themselves.
Characters in novels can have obsessions with people, the same as in the world readers live in today. In the book, The Great Gatsby, the main, male character, Gatsby, is obsessed with a woman named Daisy Buchanan. In the passage Winter Dreams, Dexter, the main male character, is obsessed with a woman, Judy Jones. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote both of these novels/ passages. The Great Gatsby is a story about a man revolving part of his life around trying to achieve his American dream by conforming to a woman and society 's standards.
Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby and Dexter Green from Winter Dreams both encounter the dangers of being driven by their desire to achieve the American Dream and the pursuit of their unrealistic infatuations. However, while Dexter’s ambitions for success are driven by his own desire to work hard and attain financial freedom, Gatsby’s ambition for success is derived entirely from his infatuation with Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful and charming girl he met and fell in love with in his late 20s. Dexter’s values and willingness to take initiative for his own life before the life of others is what differentiates him from Gatsby’s delusional characteristics which ultimately lead to his death. Comparing the characters of both Jay Gatsby and Dexter Green
Weather in The Great Gatsby is a very important element andconveys more information than just telling the reader aboutthe setting. In the book, Foster said, “weather can be used as aplot device, it can be used atmospherically, it can be used as amisery factor, and as a democratic element.” Foster also said,“Fog almost always signals some sort of confusion.” In thebook, when the night after Nick met Tom and Daisy the firsttime in the novel, it was a foggy, and at that point, Nick sawGatsby’s shadow, and indicated some sort of confusion in theair. Also, in the book, at Gatsby’s funeral, it was rainingharshly, because it was a time of grief, a miserable time.
In the poem, “The Street”, author Ann Petry uses a variety of literary devices to describe an antagonistic relationship between a girl named Lutie Johnson and 116th Street. Petry’s use of imagery establishes a real environment that is filled with paper, trash, strong winds, and dust. To further engage the reader, personification and other figurative language elements are used to describe the urbanized setting and the characteristics of the wind while a woman is finding her way of staying on this street. Throughout the poem, the November weather is established as a war zone while personifying the wind as it battles with the urbanized society.
In novels and books, weather and season can be more complex than just scenery or lighting; they can show conflicts and relationship dynamics between two characters. The reader can use Thomas C. Foster’s book How to Read Literature like a Professor and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby as examples of how authors use the weather and seasons to show character dynamics and reveal the emotions between characters Gatsby and Daisy. Since weather and seasons can reveal character relationships, the changing weather correlates to the emotions that Gatsby feels when he meets Daisy; the intense sun exposes the tension between Tom and Gatsby when Tom finds out everything between Gatsby and Daisy, during lunch; and finally, Gatsby and Daisy’s
In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Tom Robinson and Arthur “Boo” Radley are two characters who represent the mockingbird. In the midst of finding who Boo truly is, Atticus Finch explains to his children, Jem and Scout, that it is a sin to kill the bird because they don’t do anything but make music. As the story progresses, and the two “mockingbirds” are being accused and attacked both verbally and physically, the identity of the mockingbirds surfaces. Tom Robinson was a crippled African American man whose left arm was a foot shorter than his right, where it was caught in a cotton gin.
Anyone can make a difference, and they may not even know it. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros talks about growing up as a Mexican in an American neighborhood and the challenges that come along with it. The main character Esperanza talks about people who made a difference in the neighborhood and her life. It only takes one person to make a difference, but others would argue that it takes many people, each with different qualities, to make a difference. A person can make a difference even if they may not know it.
Sinclair Ross commonly uses symbolism and allusion to outline and portray his writing, and “The Lamp at Noon” is no exception. The title of this work refers to the need of Ellen having to light a lamp, despite it being midday, because of the aggressive fog that has completely entrapped their house. “The dust was thickening to an impenetrable fog. She lit the lamp, then for a long time stood at the window motionless.” (pg. 26)
The impact of the weather scene is a way to indirectly relate to the murder of Victor’s young brother, William. The author, Shelley utilizes weather to convey the Victor’s emotional feelings about the murder of his bother William. Through imagery in the quote, Shelley is able to utilize words to describe the weather relating them to both the storm and what has happened to our protagonist. To me, the flashes of light illuminate the lake which is his brother. William’s illumination is the light of his life is soon quenched when the author describes the “pitchy darkness”
Many more books show a usage of weather in their story, this combined to give an audience a profound piece of literature. The weather development predicted many conflicts of the
