After reading the novel, O Pioneers! it was hard to judge whether it was a tragedy or a triumph. The only way I see it as a tragedy is that Emil and Maria died. I knew, since page six of the book that they were going to be together. It kind of broke my heart to see later on that she had married someone else. But when her and Emil got shot, I thought it may finish as a tragedy. But overall, I would see it as a triumph in the way that the Bergsons finally got what they wanted out of their land. It made them rich. Also, Alexandra and Carl finally married. And being that the whole novel was basically based on the land, they were triumphant in getting what they risked, what they longed for.…
With her words “to the hard of hearing you shout, for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures,” Flannery O’Connor explains her literary style (O’Connor). She feared without the bold approach of grim situations and ridiculous characters, her audience would miss her true messages which she felt vitally needed to be understood. She wrote during The Modern literary period and through common speech and ordinary settings, O’Connor presented comically unrealistic circumstances in hope of somehow portraying her concerns (1-2).…
" The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Ann Porter explores themes such as denial, regret, and most of all grief, centered around an eighty year old woman, Granny Weatherall. Her very name Weatherall is a symbol of what she has endured through life. She had to weather all she persisted and carried on. For her first love, George left her at the altar. Her husband, John died young in their marriage. And even God didn't show up to the time of her death. Consistently Granny has been jilted or abandoned by whom she loves and it caused her much grief.…
In Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” an old woman’s light is slowly fading out and memories from her past are phasing in and out of her head as she lives out her final moments. The times she was “jilted” are poring out of her memories, releasing themselves and allowing her the peaceful death she so desires. She has good memories: memories of her children, memories of her husband, and memories of her silly father: “Her father had lived to be one hundred and two years old and had drunk a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told the reporters it was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to that” (Porter). But it is the bad memories she is letting go of, the memories of her jilting. Her children surround her as she dies, floating about like balloons above her, but she does not want to go yet because she has so much she still wants to do. In the medial of “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” in paragraphs twenty-seven through twenty-nine, it constitutes the struggle of the memory of her getting jilted by the man she loved.…
The most common advice given to novice writers is to ‘write what you know’. Although cliche, and sometimes unappealing to authors who want to expand and diversify their writing, this tip holds its credibility. When an author draws from personal experience, it not only makes her writing more genuine and convincing, but also allows gives her an outlet to express her unique struggles, desires, and beliefs. Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a poignant romantic novel about westward expansion, following the story of recently orphaned Jim Burden and his childhood in Nebraska. The parallels between the most impactful events in Jim’s life and that of Cather’s become glaringly obvious when the two are compared. Willa Cather shapes Jim’s story in My Antonia…
Zach Meyer 3/9/2018 Lora Devereaux Composition II Willa Cather Willa Cather, was an American author, whose fame was achieved fame through her writings about pioneer life on the Great Plains. Cather grew up in Virginia and Nebraska as a kid, and then moved to Pennsylvania and ultimately New York as an adult pursuing her career. She was renowned as “clever” and “skillful”, especially in the writings of her short stories. She was praised by many for her works, including the New York Times, who praised her for her first novel. Over the course of her life, Cather would go on to write many different short stories, novels, and even a biography.…
In the essay, “From the Poets in the Kitchen,” Paule Marshall talks about a time when she listened to a novelist who said that women possess the ability to talk with ordinary and typical words, which some expert writers use. This novelist also said that women, who use everyday words, converse mostly in the kitchen, and this experience plays an enormous role into them becoming a skillful writer. In addition, Marshall goes on to agree with the novelist by saying that “the proper measure of a writer’s talent is his skill in rendering everyday speech” (Marshall 139).…
Willa Cather has long been known for her extraordinary short stories, poems, books and more, specifically, she is known as a romantic realist. The term romantic realist in and of itself is relatively controversial, as the two terms are generally thought of as antonyms. In Cather’s life, this description is very appropriate, as she lived through both the realism and realist periods. The combination of hardships Cather experienced, and the transition from the romantic period to the realist period, shaped her into the realist author she is known as today.…
Cather creates characters who often leave the places she so lovingly describes because she herself left her home. This tendency of writing about scenarios where people leave is something close to home for her, and thus she can write more easily about it and put true meaning in her words and descriptions. Most often, the best writing is that which is pulled from life experiences and events which have touched the heart. Quite possibly, that is why Cather has proved to be so successful and a master of literature. I know that I personally always try to relate what I’m writing to my life, otherwise I can’t really get into it so it appears uninteresting and unrelatable.…
In Willa Cather's A Lost Lady, Captain Daniel Forrester is a gardener at heart. His lifetime is spent encouraging growth, whether of railroads, personal lives or flowers. His philosophy is to dream "because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean is already an accomplished fact" (44). Close friends described the Captain as clearly looking like " pictures of Grover Cleveland. His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and a conscience that had never been juggled with" (39). Because of his clear conscience Captain Forrester became a rich soil for many around him to take root in. As this soil, he could always be in the background and many never noticed how important he was until he was missed. Once the Captain's career outside his home ended he truly opens up to the peacefulness of nature, including his flowers, which eventually illustrate the phases of his life.…
An author can use language to convey their message by their choice of diction throughout a story. An extraordinary example that demonstrates the economic usage of constructive words in order to express meaning can be observed in Elie Wiesel’s…
“In fact, all writing is an attempt to transform ideas into words, thus giving order and meaning to life” (The Longman Reader, 13). Moreover, The Longman Reader reveals, “You might also have noted that figurative language, energetic verbs, and varied sentence patterns contribute to the essay’s descriptive power” (The Longman Reader, 83). Good writing communicates emotion to the reader, evokes figurative language, and uses reoccurring themes. These strategies are exemplified in stories such as: Maya Angelou “Sister Flowers,” Gordon Parks “Flavio’s Home,” George Orwell “Shooting an Elephant,” Virginia Woolf “The Death of The Moth,” Langston Hughes “Salvation,” and many more short stories.…
4. How has each writer used language to express his or her perspective and to influence the thinking of the reader? Which language…
He recognizes that reading is non-discriminative. Everything contains words that can form ideas, sentences, opinions, and etc. It was a relief from understanding that words can be a source of pleasure and an escape from hatred. He determines that the love of literature had a purpose on his life, to try to save his life. He paints a picture of himself speaking to kids who remind him of the struggle to be Indian in the non-Indian environment. He points out the different peers of that class that strive for distinction or fade into the shadows that culture created for them.…
When Adisa was growing up she was taught that her country had no history, had no literature, and that her native tongue was not the proper way of speaking. She was taught to speak in the “Queens language” and any author she read was almost always a dead, white man. Adisa even admits that she herself believed that a writer was “a synonymous with death” (185). She also felt the history she was being taught in school was “erroneous or at best lopsided and suspect” (185). She truly believed to become a writer you had to pass three qualifications. You had to be white, you had to be a man, and you had to be dead. Three qualifications that Adisa herself, was not. She admits that she would write for her own eyes only. It was a form of release for her. It was only after Adisa went to New York City that she began to see her own self-worth.…