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In Hiding By Joyce Carol Oates Summary

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In the short story ” In Hiding” by Joyce Carol Oates is about inner conflicts. As an individual you will probably at some point of your life have an inner conflict with yourself. Our emotions, thoughts and needs get effected by the conflict we have. There is often a conflict between what we want and need against what we actually can and are allowed to. In this short story we are introduced to the main character, who doesn’t have a name, yet we know that she is a single mother and a poet. She had started some kind of online relationship, but on friendly basis with an inmate at Kansas State Penitentiary for Men in Fulham, Kansas. He loves poetry and sends her many of his poetries to her. His name is Woody and it seems like she gives him hope …show more content…

The narrator is omniscient, because it seems like it knows everything about everyone and in that case it seems more objective, but when we are in the head of the mother it gets a bit more subjective. The characters are described directly by the author and they are round. “She was a poet, translator, part-time college teacher, and divorced mother of a fifteen-year-old son. For the past seven years, since the divorce, she’d lived in Olean, New York” (page 1, line 9-11). When woody sends some snapshots he is describes as well. “A black man of about thirty-five, with faint Caucasian features, curly dark hair parted on the left side of his head, and plastic-framed glasses with lenses so thick they distorted his eyes. Woody was smiling hopefully, but his forehead was deeply creased. He wore a shirt open at the throat, and a jacket”(page 1, line 23-25). The description of the characters gives the reader a more clear and detailed image of them and makes it more reliable. The narrator uses many descriptions of the characters, settings and actions. He uses direct speech when her son talks to her. “Hey Mom − beau-ti-ful? Cool!” (Page 3, line 100). (spørg

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