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Truman Capote's Short Story 'A Christmas Memory'

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One universal theme in the short story “A Christmas Memory” is poverty. It is a story of two friends that live together and prepare for Christmas. Their tradition for the holiday is to bake fruit cakes, decorate a tree, and exchange presents, but the friends are very poor and at the end of all the celebration they are left close to being broke.The first tradition is that they make fruitcakes. When they go to buy the whiskey from the gloomy, tall, and scared Indian man and he sees them paying with pennies he feels bad and barters with the the whiskey for the fruit cake (Capote 4). They had to mail some of the finished cakes to their friends, and that cost them most of their money. The decorations for the tree were,”coils of frazzled tinsel
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Holidays celebrate an area’s culture and/or the day(s) it commemorates with various festivities and traditions. In Theodore Geisel’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas, the light-hearted denizens of Who-Ville are preparing to celebrate Christmas. For the Whos, it is a time of fun and merryness, in which they sing and play with one another. This is a time of camaraderie and fellowship between everyone in the town. Apart from this is the antagonist, the Grinch, who dreads the holiday along with the singing, feasting, and other festive activities that the holiday inspires.

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This is a summary of “A Christmas Story” by Annie Dillard. Every Christmas there was a massive dinner held in a seemingly never-ending dining hall. It was lavish and spacious with a table that was as long as a river and was decorated with many different table cloths and decorations. The ceiling of the hall was covered in chandeliers and the floor was filled with different groupings of people: the sick and injured, the children, to those who wanted to dance or participate in games or various others who gathered in separate sections throughout the hall.

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Once upon a time, a Grinch had stolen christmas from the town of Whoville. The Grinch stole christmas to make the town suffer, but the Grinch found out maybe he misinterpreted Christmas. The Grinch thought Christmas just meant giving presents to each other and singing songs, so he decided to steal the presents and throw them into the abyss. At dawn the Grinch expects to hear the cries to Whoville, but The Grinch hear singing(Seuss). The Grinch figures out maybe Christmas does not mean just giving presents and feasting, maybe Christmas means spending time with family.

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In our lives we see loss every day, it can be death, losing something, or something more then what we see. In the three passages we have they all show an example of loss from different situations, and from those we see how it affects the individuals involved in the passage In the passage “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens one example of loss is when Scrooge and Fred fight and don’t get along because Scrooge believes that poor people shouldn’t celebrate christmas. A quote to explains this is their interactions are negative because it causes bad feelings to one another and hurtful things to be said. ““Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

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“Uncle Scrooge,” it was Tiny Tim, “I found your wallet but why must you look so sad?” Scrooge explained how he had gotten everyone a gift except for Tiny Tim and how he forgot to pick up the dollhouse which was the gift for Tiny Tim and just how awful he felt. As if this didn’t mean anything everyone started to giggle. So when Bob Cratchit and Fred began to talk they reminded Scrooge that Christmas was not about the gifts but spending your holiday with your loved ones and gave Scrooge a reassuring pat on the back. Before the night came to a close Tiny Tim nor any of the guests took their gift instead they all went out to the village and gave the boxes of chocolate to the poor without family with the kind words

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It was a gloomy day in the city of london, and Mr. Scrooge is finishing up his dinner in the cold, dark, melancholy tavern. As he was about to head to the outhouse, a beggar came up to him and pleaded, “Sir, would ye’ be kind enough to spare me a few pence for a small Christmas dinner,” “Humbug! The prisons have plenty of food, so go there!” Scrooge countered.

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The school method of criticism that I will use to analyze the poem "How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is a Marxist critic. It is a theory, the consciousness of a given class at a given historical moment derives from modes of material production that were demonstrated through the relationship between the Grinch and the people of Whoville. The poem is about the Grinch who hates Christmas so he wants to ruin it for people in Whoville, in which he achieved by stealing the presents from them. The Grinch’s hatred towards Christmas was directly shown in the poem, “The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!”

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“A Christmas Carol”, written by Charles Dickens, is a short novel, known as a novella. Dickens gets the reader’s attention by illustrating that a person can change over time. In this story of a miserable man, by the name of Scrooge, the readers are shown that he gives his life for money. He wants to be wealthy rather than enjoy life with his friends and family while being happy. Until he gets a visit from three different spirit guides.

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My entire life has changed due to my kindness. Therefore, should I no longer be kind? Why offer my assistance to others if the outcome is penalization? These questions torment my mind; do I acknowledge what's happening around me, or should I just drive by? All I wanted to do was help people, and now, all I do is suffer.

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The Grinch Who Stole Christmas The Grinch who stole Christmas is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books and one of my favorite Christmas movies. I found 3 things similar to one another in the book and the movie which had the Grinch who hated Christmas, the Who’s who loved Christmas, and the Grinch stole all of the presents and food. One identical thing I found in the movie and book was that the Grinch hated Christmas. If they didn’t put the Grinch’s hate for Christmas in both the book and, he would have no reason to steal Christmas and it wouldn’t have been a very good movie.

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“The righteousness of the blameless keeps his ways straight, but the wicked falls by his own wickedness”(Prov. 11:5). The story, “A Christmas Carol”, is about a cold-hearted man named Scrooge who transforms himself into a jolly, kind man when three Ghosts teach Scrooge about the spirit of Christmas. In the story, Charles Dickens illustrates the theme of how no one is past redemption through the transformation of Scrooge’s personality by the lessons of the Spirits. At the beginning of the story, Scrooge’s selfish personality is revealed, and the Ghost of Christmas Past comes and shows him the memories and truth of his life long ago.

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Dr. Seuss’ poem, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” can be analyzed using many different schools of criticism, however, the psychoanalytical school of criticism holds allows us to truly understand the “true meaning” behind the poem. The poem begins with a socially isolated character, the Grinch, who loathes Christmas and wishes to completely destroy it. He wants to completely eliminate Christmas from “Whoville.” The Grinch gets irritated whenever when he hears the singing from the children and sees families feasting together in the holiday season. However, as the poem progress, the Grinch starts to feel the love and happiness involved with Christmas and ends up correcting his wrongdoings to ultimately enjoy Christmas with the “Whos.”

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Charles Dickens argues in his writing A Christmas Carol that the poor was being treated cruelly and the rich does not care for the poor. Pg 34 “We should make some slight provisions for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at this present time”. This statement shows that the poor and destitute were not provided with anything and they suffered a lot. ”If they would rather die they better do it, and decrease the surplus population”.

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In the book, Christmas Carol happiness is one idea that beautifully connects each theme in the story together. Set in the Victorian era (1837-1901) Charles Dickens creates a character named, Ebenezer Scrooge who navigates through some this era. In the book, the themes that are carefully connected with the idea happiness are social injustice, Scrooge’s transformation, and childhood innocence. Social injustice represents how poor

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Christmas Carol Literary Analysis Have you ever wondered if someone can change overnight? In this book Scrooge changed very rapidly with the ghost appearing and changing him completely . In the beginning of the story Scrooge was hateful and in the end he was very loving. But once he started to change he changed very rapidly.

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