As the narrator remembers past scenes, he writes, “Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s/wings cutting across my stare” (22-23). The author recalls memories from the battles, and he retells them as if they are a beautiful piece of art, although the reality is brutal. By envisioning traumatic scenes in a different light, the narrator infers that even the darkest scenes can be viewed with warm energy. When the persona glances into the reflective wall, he explains, “My clouded reflection eyes me/like a bird of prey, the profile of the night/slanted against the morning” (6-8). The author compares night and morning, which puts light against darkness. Although the narrator came with sorrow for all of the lives lost in the Vietnam War, he still sees the hopeful aspect among the grief. No matter what the situation is, hope is always present within one’s darkest…
In the book Into the Wild, the author identifies the theme of McCandless’ elusiveness of his identity leading to the isolation of himself, resulting in costing him his life. Krakauer continuously writes about how McCandless wants to find his identity through traveling and exploring the world and what it has to offer. Though his travels, McCandless finds that in order to achieve in discovering himself, he must dis-attach himself from any relationship he has with anyone and can only stay in places for two weeks at a time. While affable with the strangers he meets on the road, McCandless breaks off all contact with his family. This isolation is a key component in the story, and therefore is also a huge part of the theme. Motifs used in the book…
The Buffalo Soldiers were African American soldiers who served in the United States Army after the Civil War. They were the first African Americans to serve in a peacetime army. They mostly served in the Western territories of the United States where they escorted settlers and worked to protect and help railroad crews and cattle herders. They were organized into all-black regiments with white commanding officers. These men were eager to sign up because the Army offered them a chance to better themselves both economically and socially. The soldiers were paid thirteen dollars a month, they were given a place to live, and were given food and clothing, so this was considered a golden opportunity for these men (Rand).…
The chickenhead only understands wealth, greed, and self-pity. Some of them are hoodrats that make it out of the Inner-city and then turn their backs on the ghetto while others are the product of an overprotective parent that tried to keep them from learning ghetto tactics. They don’t get real love from the hood, though some of them still get love from their people still lost in the concrete jungle. They have some sense of the struggle and get offended when put into difficult situations. They panic when life gets sticky simply because they’re so used to so-called success. Chickenheads tend to act ghetto until it’s time for action. When s—t gets real, a chickenhead is nowhere to be found.…
Every person has been an outsider at one point or another. Many nonfiction writers such as John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, use outsiders as characters in their stories.These type of characters help the writer to convey the argument they are trying to get across to the reader. In these nonfiction novels, outsiders play a critical role in the communities that they enter.…
Isolation is a reoccurring theme used in Peter Skryznecki’s poetry. Isolation is shown through the…
Night by Elie Wiesel provided the world with a deep and painful insight to the horrors within the German lines. Throughout the novel, many lines tugged at the heart strings of audience members because they depicted true thoughts of Jewish captives during this time period. Though most of the novel described life in concentration camps, three lines truly portray the feelings, emotions and mindset Jews had under the Nazi regime.…
“Bullet in the Brain” is a short story written by Tobias Wolff. The story is about a book critic named Anders, while waiting in a long line at the bank he is the victim of an armed robbery and gets shot and killed. The story is divided in to two parts, and this division allows the reader to see a contrast between two parts of main character’s personality.…
In the poems “We grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson and “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, both poems talk about night time in a way that also contrasts to life and its difficulties, and how people are sometimes ignorant to things when they are in the dark.…
The short story “Bullet in the Brain” is a story about a character with a very distinct persona. The main character, Anders, is one who is established as being an odd character from the very beginning. The setting takes place in a bank that is soon to be bombarded by robbers wearing ski masks. Being a book critic, Anders lets his profession override his critical thinking skills during the robbery. This puts the bank robber’s patience to test, ultimately leading to Anders’ death at the end of the story. In the opening paragraph of the story, the author begins by explaining Anders’ character as “a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed” (542). The author begins by telling us this so we can get a grasp on what kind of personality traits the character has. This is a guarantee that everything coming out of Anders’ mouth will be something critical, which helps put us in the mindset for what is to come. Examining Anders’ critical personality traits, the way he interacts with others, and even his dying thoughts, we can begin to understand why his profession of being a book critic has put such a burden upon his life, ultimately placing him on the receiving end of a bullet in the brain.…
Bullet in the Brain" is deceptively obvious. Wolff makes choices that are immediately striking as unusual and key, that leap out from the page, so to speak, waving and shouting, "Look at me! Analyze me to gain insight into the story!" He shoots his character in the head halfway into the story, suspends the fatal bullet in the character's brain in "brain time" so that he can recount various snapshots of his life, and introduces these snapshots not with the phrase "he remembered" but rather with "he didn't remember." These choices are obviously significant. But their obviousness as points on which analysis should focus belies the magnitude of the themes Wolff addresses through them and the subtlety with which he addresses them. In this seven-page short story about a man getting shot in a bank, Wolff engages with themes no less weighty than those of language and literature.…
James Baldwin’s The Creative Process starts with “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone,” (Baldwin 874). Here Baldwin is alluding to the fact that most men avoid being alone by adapting to and adhering to all of the unspoken rules of society. Baldwin goes on to compare man to an artist saying that an artist must be better; he must be brave, honest, and embrace his state of being alone in order to discover his true self, even if it means being persecuted by society. In contrast to Baldwin’s opinion on artists, the characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories’ are alone, worried, and troubled by the way society…
The Dark Night of the Soul The Dark Night of the Soul by Richard E Miller has been written with a main point always in mind, that reading and writing has very powerful influences people and their imagination but, the act of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Richard has created an essay that proves his point by taking five very different short stories and giving each a twist that helps the reader see the power of reading. As the reader is chronologically going through the essay he or she is given many possible meanings of the essay. The meaning and the relationships that the stories share are not revealed until the last page of the essay. The essay begins with the story of two distraught high scholars named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.In this story Miller really shows us the power of imagination. The feeling of being lonely drove them to the point of becoming violent. The boys went on a rampage. Miller also uses the example of Chris McCandless to further prove his point. McCandless threw away his life and went out on a journey to live by himself in the wilderness because of the stories he read. Miller wants to transmit to us that reading and writing have very powerful influences in people and their imagination, but he believes the power of reading and writing is not being utilized as much in the modern world. Through the examples he presents in the Dark Night of the Soul he tries to show different perspectives of reading and writing so that the reader realizes that both are really powerful realities which can have a big influence in someone’s…
Darkness entails various reputations such as evil, loneliness, and anguish. Whenever darkness is mentioned there is likely to be no good in the vicinity. “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”, by Emily Dickinson and “Acquainted with the Night”, by Robert Frost are full of similarities. They both share themes of darkness, but their tones are different. One poem gradually becomes hopeful while the other fills minds with thoughts of despair. The uniqueness of these poems are shown through there tones, structure and point of view.…
The poem “hawk roosting” written by ted Hughes is presented as a dramatic monologue, in which the hawk is the speaker. It is an individual utterance, where the hawk starts the poem with the pronoun “I”. This particular start gives the readers an idea about the poem persona who has a powerful ego but who is at the same time manifesting his identity which stands firm and strong in the poem.…