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Satire In Elizabeth Bishop's The Hanging Of The Mouse

581 Words3 Pages
Every person that has ever lived has felt the sting of being punished. The degree of the punishment is directly affected by the degree of the crime. The guilty often feel as though they have done nothing wrong or that the punishment is too severe. Once the crime has been committed, judgement is in someone else’s hands, but to what extent. Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Hanging of the Mouse” is a short story that capitalizes on the brilliant use of symbolism, the ability to appeal to emotion through imagery, and the power of point of view to express Bishop’s own opinion about the power of the social pyramid. The protagonist of the satire is a criminal mouse that is making his emotional approach to the gallows as the town watches attentively. Bishop’s
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