More handpicked essays just for you.
How the great depression had an impact on american literature essay
How the great depression had an impact on american literature essay
Water for elephants novel analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The tone of chapter 11 in John Steinbeck's, “The Grapes of Wrath,” is sympathetic, sad and hopeless. His word choice and syntax show how the sad houses were left to decay in the weather. His use of descriptive words paints a picture in the reader's mind. As each paragraph unfolds, new details come to life and adds to the imagery. While it may seem unimportant, this intercalary chapter shows how the effects of the great depression affected common households.
Character development is a crucial element to a story, especially in Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Jacob Jankowski, a dynamic character, undergoes a significant change in his attitude throughout his time at the nursing home. Through the remembrance of old memories from his life at the circus, Jacob Jankowski develops a sense of happiness and rediscovers his independence. While stuck in the nursing home with a family who forgot about him, Jacob Jankowski felt like he did not belong. He was closed off from the rest of the people at the nursing home, including his friends whom he ditched after they sat with “an old coot,” (Gruen 10) one who supposedly carried water for elephants.
Ray Bradbury's “The Pedestrian” is a short story about a man and his wife whom lose their endearing connection with their children to the grip of technology. Ray Bradbury helps readers comprehend the setting in “The Veldt” by using similes throughout the story to create a vivid image. Bradbury incorporates similes throughout the story in a detailed manner. The story begins with including the graphic simile, “It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon” (Bradbury 1).
“Water for Elephants” a story by Sara Gruen, about a man named Jacob telling his life story. The themes of this story are old age, love, and the two literary devices that reveal these themes include character and setting. The narrator Jacob Jankowski is a really old man that can barely walk. He’s stuck in a nursing home and talks about his life way back in the 1930s when many events occurred at a circus. The character of Jacob and the setting in the past and his love for a women named Marlena and her pet elephant Rosie illustrate the themes of old age and love.
This book mostly takes place in a flashback of Jacob on the traveling circus. The setting is very important because one of the major conflicts they face is money due to the depression, which ultimately leads to the downfall
Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants describes self discovery of life, love, and the struggles of living in the middle of The Great Depression. She paints Jacob Jankowski's as a miserable elderly man in a nursing home telling the adventures of his youth in the circus; full of grief, abuse and love. There are two quotes, “When two people are meant to be together, they will be together. It’s fate.” and, “Life is the most spectacular show on earth.”
The Pedestrian Thesis: In a short story titled “The Pedestrian”, written by Ray Bradbury, Bradbury uses the setting to display a lonely, sad mood and person vs society conflict as he battles the lonely streets. Bradbury shows the lonely mood by having the character walk alone in the empty streets. Bradbury wasted no time describing the streets as silent and misty making for a very lonely mood. Mead, the main character, walks along the streets alone with no sign of life, saying “he would see cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where the faintest light is a flicker of a firefly” Bradbury’s quote shows how empty and lonely the streets are by referring to them as a
Throughout the short story (1), “Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway is speaking about a seemingly unwanted pregnancy and a woman’s uneasiness with going through an abortion. However, Hemingway never explicitly says in this work of fiction (2) that it is about abortion or that the woman, Jig, is uncomfortable with it, but uses symbolism (3) to present this to the audience. At the time “Hills like White Elephants” was published, in 1927, abortion was illegal in most places and a very taboo subject that wasn’t to be openly discussed in public. Thus, Hemingway relied greatly upon the use of symbolism to get his message across for this reason as well as the third person narrator (4) that did not give insight into the character’s thoughts within this piece of literature (5) . He uses symbols such as the train station, white hills, the baggage, and the drinks to point towards the underlying internal conflict (6) of Jig’s decision that is being heavily influenced by the American man, who wants Jig to get the abortion.
The movie The Elephant Man is about a man born with massive deformities on his body and face. They call him “The Elephant Man”, but his real name is John Merrick. A doctor named Frederick Treves, wanted to examine him so he removed him from the freak show and took him to the hospital. As the movie goes on, he takes care of John and learns that he is much more than just a freak show. Throughout the film, the director, David Lynch, conveys a theme of inner and outer self and uses motifs to reinforce this theme.
Relationships are the core of everything we do in life. We love someone, so we do something for them; we value someone 's opinion, so we respect them; we dislike someone, so we avoid them. Relationships cause people to act on their emotions which impact how and why they do the things they do. Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is about a couple trying to come to a conclusion on a delicate matter. While the man strongly promotes his opinion the girl is hesitant but wants to do whatever will make him happy.
The dialogue in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” reveals a man’s and a woman’s incongruent conflict on abortion, and the author’s fundamentally feminist position is visible in the portrayal of the woman’s independent choice of whether or not to keep the baby she is carrying. The plot is very simple in the story which is less than 1500 words long. A woman and a man spend less than an hour on a hot summers day at a Spanish train station in the valley of Ebro as they are waiting for a train heading for Madrid. Their dialogue takes up most of the space and only few major actions take place.
If taken literally, Hemingway’s story is one in which very little happens. The story takes place in a train station in Spain where a couple argue about a vague event over drinks. From the very start of the short story, there is an overbearing uneasiness felt in the text as the unnamed male and the girl, Jig, hold what seems to be—on the surface—an innocent conversation. By using a limiting third person point of view that consists mostly of dialogue, Hemingway creates an obstacle in the way of understanding as there is no clear insight to what is going on inside of either party’s head. The conflict that the pair seem to be discussing is never named and it becomes the metaphorical elephant in the room much like the white elephants that Jig sees in the mountains.
The science fiction works of “Harrison Bergeron”, by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Pedestrian”, by Ray Bradbury are sarcastic portrayals of futuristic societies that are controlled by authoritative governments that have completely made their communities equal. Each of these stories take a look at the prospect of promoting sameness and conformity among all people, and questions the effects of the forced elimination of citizens’ individuality in order to maintain equality. In “The Pedestrian” Mr. Leonard Mead faces extreme consequences for his nightly stroll in the city. In the year 2053, Mead’s society has become completely taken over by televisions and the media.
The desire for love can break the bonds of confinement sometimes leading to positive occurrences and other times to negative ones. Freedom is always wanted, but when it is not available, constraints will be broken. One’s personality in the novel analyzed will decide whether they break the rules or follow them. In Water for Elephants, the main characters are either confined or free, and they deal with and create this underlying theme depending on their personality and character. Jacob, Marlena, and August conflict with each other in the fight for freedom and love.
The last subject that is highlighted in The Elephant and the Dragon is how America is being effected and if China and India will
