Abraham Lincoln delivered “ The Gettysburg Address” in response to The Battle of Gettysburg. Over 51,000 casualties on both sides in the course of 3 days makes it the bloodiest battle of The Civil War. The Union won the battle, but Lincoln’s speech focused on uniting the country, not the victory itself (“Battle of Gettysburg”). His speech has remained popular due to its brevity and effectiveness.
The discovery of a new “communication” technique for the longing “couple” is captured in a very sensual way to show the lengths love can make you go, “With that meal, it seemed they had discovered a new system of communication, in which Tita was the transmitter, Pedro the receiver, and poor Gertrudis the medium, the conducting body through which the singular sexual message was passed”(52). Hyperbole is an exaggeration of speech, describing or saying something you have done, will do, or has happened that is not meant to be taken in a literal sense. Esquivel uses the literary device to describe a sensual moment between her and the person she loves, Pedro, to describe the lengths they have gone to continue a forbidden relationship. Their new way of communication through food is powerful as it shows the lengths they will go to get to each other, but also as it gets you to think about their love and how the desire to partake in something they have not yet experienced with each other is causing them to go through these lengths to experience love. Esquivel uses the scene of a wedding to depict the extreme wanting and longing of love and desire and its effects, “The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great longing”(39).
In the short story “the devil and Tom walker” written by Washington Irving, he likes to poke fun at marriages. Irving uses the marriage of Tom and his wife as an example of how much he looks down upon marriages. Irving uses satire to criticize the existence of marriage and people who marry. Through observing the walkers, Irving demonstrates the way he sees marriage in a negative way, Tom won’t sell his soul and he even feels he should cheat, as well as at the end his wife is missing and he becomes happy about it and praises the person who did this.
In the world of theatre, a place which tends to be reserved for liberal expression and socially progressive content, Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake appears to be somewhat of an anomaly. This is not to say that the play condemns or lacks representation of the social matters which are so commonly highlighted in contemporary theatre. In fact, The Cake very thoroughly explores the unceasing debate surrounding the topic of marriage equality. However, Brunstetter’s thoughtful characterization forces audiences to consider a perspective that is rarely supported, or even acknowledged, on the stage.
Although Janie worked in the store when she was married to Joe, she never worked side by side with him because he was the mayor and was always above her in some capacity. Janie’s grandmother would have expected Janie to never dress like a man or to work alongside them because of the practices and values she taught Janie as a young child. This final relationship with Tea Cake defies everything Janie was told and taught as a child. For example, this marriage was based on love all the way to Tea Cake’s death and this marriage also allowed a lot of freedom from gender roles and expectations for both Janie and Tea
This incredibly humorous idea, of the stag and hen night before the wedding, gives the audience a clear and simple over view of the lifestyles present in the 1980s, as characters throughout the play give out continuous hints regarding: sexual references, alcohol and sexism, which could have been a personal choice by Rourke to present
During this marriage Janie found true love and happiness when being with Tea Cake. This was the first time Janie felt respected and equal in a relationship since the last two men ended up treating her very poorly. After spending time with Tea Cake she realized that the horizon she once dreamed of reaching was possible and all had to do with the man she chose to be with. Janie was given another chance from God to relive her golden days, and she saw it as a rebirth in which she had the chance to experience the fun and adventurous side of herself. After Tea Cake decides to take Janie's money and throw a party behind her back, janie is more mad at the fact that she didn’t share those memories with her. "
Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” is an enthralling memoir about a young girl’s peculiar childhood, which involved her family’s funeral business, infatuating trips, family turmoil, solitude, and her befuddling relationship with her masterful artificer of a father; in which similarities ranged from obsessive compulsive disorders and literature to sexuality. The most profound being homosexuality. Bechdel utilized duo-specific, speech bubbles, as well as, subject-to-subject paneling to illustrate the complex father-daughter relationship where Alison and Bruce Bechdel perpetually attempted to compensate for each other’s eccentric gender behaviors. Initially, both Bechdals yearned for different genders, imposing expected behaviors upon the other.
While Janie is at work in her store, Tea Cake happens to stumble across the small shop looking for some cigarettes. Instantly, they both feel a connection between each other. Janie feels as though she has finally found her rightful partner. Hurston describes him as if “he looked like the love thoughts of women” (Hurston 106). Blown away by Tea Cake’s good looks and flirtatious behavior, Janie leaves herself with no choice but to get married to this mysterious, wonderful man.
Marriage is usually perceived as a momentous event that finally unites man and wife as equals. However, in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, faces the contrary. Although her second husband, Jody, treated her as an equal during the beginning of their relationship, she eventually is treated as a lesser part of their union as he asserts his dominance over her. After the death of Jody, Janie eventually found Tea Cake, who treated her fairly throughout their relationship, as shown through his natural willingness and patience to teach her how to play checkers. With their relationship, Janie experienced a marriage where she had the right to make her own decisions and express herself.
The narrator is sitting on the banquet opposite of a couple and states, “they looked unmistakably married.” The third person’s point of view conveys that they are watching the couple and the diction in unmistakably married conveys that the men and women must be apparently close or affectionate. Furthermore, it describes that their marriage was recognized, it couldn’t be mistaken for something else. In addition to the diction the narrator introduces a shift when they state, “nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of the meal.” This shift introduces the birthday surprise the wife has planned.
After Tea Cake’s death, Hurston wrote “She had come back from burying the dead.... The people all saw her because it was sundown” (Hurston 1). This quote illustrates that the brightness of change died with Tea Cake, but the memories and lessons lived on forever through each new sunrise of every forthcoming morning. Janie learned that although marriage consists of a relationship between two people, marriage must contain individuality to a particular extent. Janie finally experienced satisfaction in a marriage when Tea Cake allowed her personal freedoms and individuality through inviting her to be equal to him in such activities as playing games and hunting with guns.
You'd think something happy as getting a birthday cake and having someone sing happy birthday was so exciting at first than it turned bad because the husband is a rude person who doesn't seem to appreciate his ”fadingly pretty" wife. The wife started to cry because she got her hopes up for something that seemed so nice and meaningful but it turned out to be bad as her husband saying something under his breath and him feeling embarrassed at the fact that the wife surprised him for his birthday in public. I'm sure that the couple didn't have the best relationship, I believe the man is abusing her, not physically but mentally. I believe the author’s purpose of writing this short story was to make the reader have empathy for the wife or basically
The Wife’s Story Ursula K. Leguin is a short story describing a wife retrospective of her husband who she thought of as a loving and caring father and husband a somewhat perfect person always gentle. Yet he had a fatal flaw that led to his death that the wife failed to recognize until it was too late. Throughout the story, the wife recounts important events that led to his deaths events that should have been clues to aid her to recognize the flaw within her husband. In the story, Leguin shows us how the wife’s perception was deceiving her. She was looking at her husband but couldn’t see him for whom he really was.
Birthday Party by Katharine Brush can be categorized as an ambiguous short story. According to Webster’s Dictionary ambiguous means, “able to be understood in more than one way,” shows that Brush’s narrative can be taken as many different ways. In Brush’s short story she uses symbolism, point-of-view, and characterization to make the narrative one that leaves the reader trying to find the underline meaning of the text. Symbolism in the passage is used by the cake “with one pink candle burning in the center” (Brush 7). Brush uses the small candle to make the reader go into deep thought about what the candle really symbolizes.
