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Linguistic and Stylistic Analysis of Richard Matheson`S Story « Born of Man and Woman »

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Linguistic and Stylistic Analysis of Richard Matheson`S Story « Born of Man and Woman »
Linguistic and Stylistic Analysis
Of Richard Matheson`s story « BORN OF MAN AND WOMAN »

The author of the story under discussion is Richard Matheson, an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.
“Born of Man and Woman”, a 1950 short story by Richard Matheson, is about a young child, born an ugly creature, who is kept chained in the basement by its parents and frequently beaten.
The key of the story is horrific, since the author depicts terrifying and chilling scenes of the child`s miserable life, the hatred and cruelty of adults and the tragedy of a little boy.
The story is written in the form of a "diary" of the main protagonist, a young boy, who is outcasted by a man and a woman who gave him a birth. The author uses indirect methods of characterization through his parent`s description: “you retch she said”, “Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didn't have the nice face”. Being beaten by his parents, the boy excretes green liquid: I spilled some of the drip on the floor from one arm. It was not nice. It made ugly green on the floor, thus we find out that he is not quite s human creature, the facts that he has got more than one pair of legs and can run on the walls maintain this idea: I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn't be nice to me and My legs slip on them because I dont walk on stairs. My feet stick to the wood. The abrupt and broken sentences enlarge the characteristics of the protagonist, for example, such metaphors and similes: water falling from upstairs, the ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown (about the rain) as well as the metaphors: goldness in the upstairs (about the sun), little mother and little father (about children), The big machine swallows them and rolls out past and

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