The Rocking-Horse Winner

"But the boy died in the night." "The Rocking-Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence is a story mainly about greed. Paul's mother did not love her kids, but she loved money. Trying to be a good son, and possibly try and fill in for his father who did not make a ton of money, Paul gave his mother $1000 a year for 5 years; giving her some of his winnings from the horse races. Paul's mother was not happy with the small sums of money each year and wanted the money in full. She was never happy. When Paul finally won a ton of money in the Derby, he left it all to his mother because she needed it. Greed overcame her and in return she lost her son to death. This story has some elements of man vs. the supernatural as Paul struggled to do good by winning his mother money by riding on his rocking-horse where he received visions about who was going to win the horse races.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

""But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment..." This quote on page 909 in the story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is a foreshadow of things to come. Not only is it foreshadowing, that whole page had me laughing. I can just imagine two kids running around screaming "We've had an ACCIDENT" and the grandmother suddenly realizing that the house was in Tennessee. I found it interesting that all the kids had names, her son, Bailey, and Bailey's kids, June Star and John Wesley, but the grandmothers name is never mentioned, nor is Bailey's wife's name. I'm not quite sure why that is. Maybe because the grandmother kind of acts like a typical mother-in-law, trying to be a part of her kid's life, so the author didn't name her because she can be anybody. But then again, not every mother-in-law is shot off the side of a dirt road...

The Lottery

"Nancy and Bill, Jr., opened theirs at the same time, and both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads." Shirley Jackson wrote this quote in her story, "The Lottery". I read the paragraph over and over again because I just couldn't fathom the fact that these kids knew that somebody in their family was going to die and they were beaming and laughing. Even though I knew that my life was going to be saved knowing that my mother was going to be murdered would seriously depress me. When I first read the story the fact that Mrs. Hutchinson was stoned to death came as a shock to me, just for the pure fact that her kids were so happy. It's a contrast to her own emotions though. As soon as she found out that it was her family that got picked by the lottery she immediately began making excuses why it should not be her family to be picked. She said that there was not enough time to have chosen the name.

Hills Like White Elephants

"On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun." In his story, "Hills Like White Elephants", Ernest Hemingway paints very vivid descriptions of his scenery. He really makes the reader feel like they are there with the characters. On the other hand though, Hemingway never gives any real description of the characters. We have no idea what thier situation involves, and Hemingway never explicitly comes out and says that the girls' operation is to have an abortion. I do not like when author's make it a guessing game to try and figure out what the story means. If I had not been in class, I totally would never have guessed that Hemingway was talking about having an abortion.

Young Goodman Brown

"Faith kept me back a while" said Goodman Brown in the story, "Young Goodman Brown". By just reading this sentence, one can easily assume that Goodman Brown was actually talking about faith, not Faith his wife. I think that Nathaniel Hawthorne purposefully named Brown's wife Faith. When you think of Faith you think of angelic things. In this story Hawthorne uses symbols to represent the innocense and angelic qualities of Faith. In the first paragraph, Hawthorne writes, "And Faith...thrust her own pretty head...letting the wind play with the pink ribbons on her cap". And as Brown met up with the traveller in the forest, the traveller held a serpent's staff - symbolic of devilish and evil things. In essence, Brown left his faith and God to meet up with the devil in the forest.

The Yellow Wallpaper

"The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others." This quote in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a good example of how descriptions of colors can set the mood for the whole story. If Gilman had just said that the room was yellow the reader could either take that to mean it was a bright, sunny, happy yellow. In this case, however, since Gilman uses words such as smouldering, sickley and dull, the reader understands how ugly this wallpaper is.

A Rose For Emily

After reading the last paragraph in the story, A Rose For Emily, by William Faulkner, I found that my jaw had dropped in shock. The paragraph reads, "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron - gray hair." This paragraph explains to the reader that Emily was sleeping next to the skeleton/dead body. This reminded me of an episode of Desperate Housewives. One of the characters, an elderly female, had kept the remains of her dead husband in a freezer in her basement. She kept him preserved on ice and talked to him daily. However, the difference is that she didn't kill her husband, while Emily killed Homer.