Critical analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Critical analysis - Essay Example At the end of the story, we find two stances being provided to the presence of the girls in the store. Ironically, both Lengel and Sammy have been looking at the girls with the same male stare, but end up performing very different actions as a result. While Sammy stands up for the girls' rights, the manager falls back on a conventional disapproval of their attire and embarrasses them for it. In Faulkner's short story, the crime is not rape - in fact, Minnie's friends even wonder if she was actually raped at all. The crime is that the men believe that a black man dared to rape a white woman. While the men punish him by killing him, the women are seen as gossipy and wanting to know details about the rape rather than trying to provide their friend with comfort. Point of view may be used as a thematic device when the author or narrator of a short story seems more concerned with presenting a perspective on the themes of the text, rather than telling a story or drawing attention to conventional aspects of character or plot. Virginia Woolf revolutionized the technique of presenting points of view with her use of stream of consciousness and the interior monologue. In "Kew Gardens" the point of view is that of the flower bed, while the bed and the insects and other features in it are presented in sharp focus, we only see a 'slice' of the lives of the people who are walking by. The first couple's passing by shows that they are estranged from each other - he is walking several steps away from her. Even the traumatic memory of losing his first love is a fragmented one, as it is revealed that he can remember insignificant things about it much more distinctly than he can - or wants to - recall the event itself, where his girlfriend turned down his proposal of marriage. His wife and children and his whole life seem insignificant in comparison to the small, trivial details magnified in the story. Russell Smith's short story uses point of view to juxtapose what people are and what they want to be. His protagonist finds life in the urban world oppressive, and the narrative point of view seems sardonic about life in such metropolitan centers as Toronto, where superficiality is the norm and true meaning is often forgotten. #3. Discuss irony as a strategic element in the story "The Age of Lead" by Margaret Atwood and the story "The Gospel according to Mark" by Jorge Luis Borges. In Atwood's "The Age of Lead'' the irony seems to be that two people who did not want finality in their lives end up with nothing but death and a 'frozen' existence. The body of the dead sailor that is frozen and being talked about non television is a strong metaphor for the lives that the narrator and Vincent have been living. Of particular significance seems the fact that the sailor has been dead for long, but that his body is perfectly preserved since he died in the Arctic. The body exemplifies a dead existence where one remains stagnant and may as well be dead. Vincent dies of an unnamed disease at a relatively young age, signifying that