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Summary Of Brian Evenson's The Other Ear

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Humans can easily be controlled or manipulated by anything with a way of words. People have a habit of being easily controlled by those with the power of persuasion and the wordplay to change a person's thinking and will. The soldier in the story is an average person like any other until he wakes up from surgery with a new body part that isn’t his. There is something unnatural and abnormal about his new body part, which is an ear. The soldier is given instructions to go somewhere by this ear and he sets out to find where it's taking him. In “The Other Ear” by Brian Evenson, the soldier proves or represents how vulnerable people are to being manipulated. Evenson uses character development to show how the motivation of a character and their …show more content…

He starts off like any normal story with a setting, characters etc; but one sudden twist changes the story into something else. For example, “Your left ear was torn off, but the man who brought you in saw it and brought it back as well.” We were able to sew it back on. “My ear?” He said. He reached up and was surprised by what he felt there. The surgeon nodded. But “I didn’t have that ear,” Istvan said, feeling the side of his head. “I lost that ear months ago” (Evenson 134). By starting off with a normal, relatable beginning, it brings the mood to life before suddenly adding a twist to make it mysterious or suspenseful. It sparks questions from the reader and their curiosity and makes them read more. “His body was likely shivering in the trench, caked in freezing mud, but the ear seemed to flex and pulse and then, suddenly, ramify, spreading like a vine up and over the side of the trench. He let it go on as long as he could bear and then reached up with his numb fingers, felt it back into being just an ear. Or his body was up and running through no-man’s land, shells exploding all around, while his ear stretched thin and flat and sharp as if his head was wielding a sort of blade. It was ridiculous, he knew it couldn’t be happening, but yet in a way it was and there seemed nothing he could do” (Evenson 136). This quote exploits the author’s use of mood. The mood he uses in the quotation above is intense and hazardous,

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