Eng 203 Final

Paul's Case By: Willa Cather

"Paul's Case," the only short story Willa Cather approved for anthologies, opens with a young boy called before his high school principal and teachers. They are unable to discern exactly what the boy's problem is but they know that his offenses are many and that, mainly, he annoys them. He is suave and smiling, a bit of a dandy, wearing a flower in his lapel, certainly not appropriately dressed for one expected to be contrite. A slight tremor in his hands is the only hint of nervousness. His theatrical ways make him seem disdainful, which he is, and insolent. Within minutes, the educators fall into a frenzy of criticism, each taking a turn outlining the boy's many faults. Paul makes a great show of indifference. He leaves jauntily, whistling a tune from an opera, hoping that they will observe how little their petty grievances affect him. Indeed, Paul has a fantasy life that, while not protecting him from the reality of "Sabbath School picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life," nevertheless makes his existence bearable. His other world consists of Carnegie Hall, art museums, and theater. His math and Latin are weak, but he knows the world of art and the glamour of performance. His true home is not the stultifying, middle-class house with its "unescapable odors of cooking," but rather the cultural building. At the museum, he teases the Venus de Milo with a hand gesture, makes a face at Augustus Caesar. In the museum he is comfortable, puts on no shows, is himself, neither having to impress nor defend. Willa Cather knew Paul's world. She too was a nonconformist, impatient with society's notions about what constitutes a proper education and upbringing. She believed that students should be exposed to the classics through other means than just reading them or reading about them. Much of her education occurred outside the classroom, in opera houses, theaters, and concert halls. Cather believed that the dream of happiness was the only reality, the true thing unattainable, always slightly out of reach. When thievery enables Paul to fulfill, temporarily, his dream of velvet carpets, fresh flowers, expensive clothes, and fine wine, to become "exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be," one that "it would be impossible for anyone to humiliate," he is destroyed. It is not the threat of punishment that destroys him but the far worse threat of society waiting to rehabilitate him. Cather's epitaph reads: "That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great." The echo of these words from her novel My Ántonia (1918) conclude "Paul's Case," when Paul leaps in front of a train: "Then, because the picture-making mechanism was crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things.

An occurence at owl creek bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is divided into three sections. In section I, Peyton Farquhar is standing on a railroad bridge, twenty feet above the water. His wrists are bound behind his back, and around his neck is a noose that is tied to a beam overhead. He is positioned on loose planks that have been laid over the crossties of the train tracks to create a makeshift platform. Two soldiers from the Northern army, a sergeant, and a captain immediately surround him, awaiting the execution. Beyond them, armed sentinels stand at attention. The bridge is bordered on one side by forest and, across the stream, open ground that gives way to a small hillock on which a small fort has been erected. A motionless company of infantrymen, led by their lieutenant, stands assembled before the fort. As the two soldiers finalize the preparations, they step back and remove the individual planks on which they had been standing. The sergeant salutes the captain then positions himself on the opposite end of the board supporting Farquhar, as the captain, like the soldiers, steps off and away from the crossties. Awaiting the captain's signal, the sergeant is about to likewise step away, sending Farquhar to dangle from the bridge's edge. Farquhar stares into the swirling water below. He watches a piece of driftwood being carried downstream and notes how sluggish the stream seems to be. He shuts his eyes to push away the distractions of his present situation and focus more intently on thoughts of his wife and children. He suddenly hears a sharp, metallic ringing, which sounds both distant and close by. The sound turns out to be the ticking of his watch. Opening his eyes and peering again into the water, Farquhar imagines freeing his hands, removing the noose, and plunging into the stream, swimming to freedom and his home, safely located outside enemy lines. These thoughts have barely registered in Farquhar's mind when the captain nods to the sergeant and the sergeant steps away from the board. In section II, we learn that Farquhar was a successful planter, ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Unable to join the Confederate army, he yearned to help the South's war effort in some significant way. One evening in the past, Farquhar and his wife were sitting on the edge of their property when a gray-clad soldier rode up, seeking a drink of water. The soldier appeared to be from the Confederate army. While his wife was fetching the water, Farquhar asked for news of the front and was informed that Northern forces had repaired the railroads in anticipation of launching another advance, having already reached the Owl Creek bridge. Any civilian caught interfering with the North's efforts in the area, the soldier went on to reveal, would be hanged. Farquhar asked how a civilian could attempt some form of sabotage. The soldier told him that one could easily set fire to the driftwood that had piled up near the bridge after the past winter's flood. The man, who was actually a Northern scout in disguise, finished his drink and rode off, only to pass by an hour later heading in the opposite direction. Section III brings us back to the present, at the hanging. Farquhar loses consciousness as he plummets down from the side of the bridge. He is awakened by currents of pain running through his body. A loud splash wakes him up even more abruptly, and he realizes that the noose has broken—sending him falling into the stream below. Farquhar sees a light flicker and fade before it strengthens and brightens as he rises, with some trepidation, to the surface. He is afraid he will be shot by Northern soldiers as soon as he is spotted in the water. Freeing his bound hands, then lifting the noose from his neck, he fights extreme pain to break through the surface and take a large gasp of air, which he exhales with a shriek. Farquhar looks back to see his executioners standing on the bridge, in silhouette against the sky. One of the sentinels fires his rifle at him twice. Farquhar can see the gray eye of the marksman through the gun's sights. Farquhar then hears the lieutenant instructing his men to fire, so he dives down to avoid the shots. He quickly removes a piece of metal that sticks in his neck. Farquhar comes back up for air as the soldiers reload, and the sentinels fire again from the bridge. Swimming with the current, Farquhar realizes that a barrage of gunfire is about to come his way. A cannonball lands two yards away, sending a sheet of spray crashing over him. The deflected shot goes smashing into the trees beyond. Farquhar believes they will next fire a spray of grapeshot from the cannon, instead of a single ball, and he will have to anticipate the firing. Suddenly he is spun into a disorienting whirl, then ejected from the river onto a gravelly bank out of sight and range of his would-be executioners and their gunfire. He weeps with joy and marvels at the landscape, having no desire to put any more distance between him and his pursuers, when a volley of grapeshot overhead rouses him. He heads into the forest, setting his path by the sun and traveling the entire day. The thought of his family urges him on. Taking a remote road, he finds himself in the early morning standing at the gate of his home. As he walks toward the house, his wife steps down from the verandah to meet him. He moves to embrace her but feels a sharp blow on the back of his neck and sees a blinding white light all about him. Then silence and darkness engulf him. Farquhar is dead, his broken body actually swinging from the side of the Owl Creek bridge.

Miriam

By Capote Mrs. H. T. Miller is a widow who lives alone in a small apartment near the East River in New York City. She dresses simply and wears no makeup. She spends her days cleaning her apartment, fixing her own meals, tending her canary, and smoking an occasional cigarette. One evening, she decides to go to the movies. While waiting in line at the box office, she becomes aware of a thin little girl standing nearby. Mrs. Miller is struck by the girl's old-fashioned clothes and her silver-white hair. The girl hands her some money and asks her to buy a ticket for her. Mrs. Miller complies without really knowing why and even feels guilty, as if she has done something wrong. Inside the theater, Mrs. Miller gets a closer look at the girl and decides that her most distinctive feature is her eyes, which are large, unblinking, and adultlike. During the few minutes before the film starts, they have a brief conversation; the girl says that her name is Miriam, which happens to be Mrs. Miller's first name, and that she has never seen a film before. One snowy night a week later, just as Mrs. Miller curls up in bed with a hot-water bottle and a newspaper, the doorbell rings. She tries to ignore it, but when the noise becomes one unceasing ring, she goes to the door to put a stop to it and finds Miriam on her doorstep. The girl barges into the living room and takes charge. As at their last meeting, her dress is old-fashioned, but this time it is white silk. Mrs. Miller marvels over such a costume on a cold February night. She marvels even more over Miriam's rude behavior as the girl goes around the room pronouncing judgment on various items. Miriam tries to uncover the cage of the canary to make him sing, but Mrs. Miller stops her. When Miriam says she is hungry and demands food, Mrs. Miller agrees to feed her on the understanding that Miriam will eat and then leave. While she is in the kitchen fixing sandwiches, Mrs. Miller hears the canary singing and is furious. When she returns with the sandwiches, she finds the canary cage still covered and Miriam snooping in her jewel case. Miriam says there is nothing good there but a cameo brooch and demands that Mrs. Miller give it to her. At that moment, Mrs. Miller realizes just how much she is at the mercy of this sinister little girl. Once she has eaten, Miriam is about to leave, wearing the cameo brooch, when she asks Mrs. Miller for a kiss good-night. When Mrs. Miller refuses, Miriam seizes a vase containing paper flowers and hurls it to the floor, where it shatters. Then she stamps on the bouquet, walks to the door, gives Mrs. Miller a look of "slyly innocent curiosity," and leaves. Mrs. Miller spends the next day in bed, but on the following day, she awakens to springlike weather and decides to go shopping. She is in a holiday mood until she encounters a deformed old man who stalks her until she escapes into a florist's shop. On an impulse, she buys six white roses, then stops by a glassware store to buy a vase, and a bakery to buy some sweets. Throughout this escapade, she feels that she is following some prearranged plan. At home, she sets things out as if she is expecting someone; promptly at five, the doorbell rings. When Miriam demands to be let in, Mrs. Miller lights a cigarette and refuses to open the door. After the ringing stops and she thinks the coast is clear, she opens the door a crack, only to find Miriam sitting on a cardboard box with a doll cradled in her arms. Miriam interprets the flowers and sweets as a sign of welcome and announces that she plans to move in. The box, she says, as Mrs. Miller obediently drags it inside, contains her clothes. Distraught, Mrs. Miller runs down the hall for help, but when a neighbor checks out the apartment, he can find no trace of Miriam. Fearfully, Mrs. Miller returns to her apartment and, seeing that Miriam and her belongings are not there, begins to wonder if she has ever really known a girl named Miriam. With a sense of relief, she realizes that with the apparition gone, she can reclaim her identity, for she is sure she has been suffering only a temporary lapse. Just as she is giving in to this contented feeling, she is aware of sounds from the next room, of drawers opening and closing, followed by the murmur of a silk dress moving toward the doorway.

Blackberry winter

By Warren "Blackberry Winter" describes one day in the life of a young boy on his parents' farm, but the story is told as a recollection by a grown man, thirty-five years later. Robert Penn Warren has said that the story grew out of two memories—that of being allowed to go barefoot in the summer when school is out and that of feeling betrayed when the promises of summer are forestalled by a sudden cold spell. After beginning with this nostalgic memory, Warren realized that for it to be a story something had to happen. Therefore, he introduced the mysterious stranger who seems, like the cold of "blackberry winter," to be wrong, out of place, incongruous. Indeed, incongruity, or the child's discovery of a cold reality of which he was previously unaware, constitutes the plot line and structure of the story. It begins with the boy's astonishment that he is not allowed to go barefoot, even though it is June because of a fierce rainstorm and the accompanying cold weather. The adult Seth examines the significance of this disruption of his expectations by relating it to the child's perception of time, which is not something that passes and has movement, but is like a climate, like something solid and permanent. The story itself is a memory in time that retains this solidity. The stranger who appears on the farm on this particular morning is as incomprehensible to Seth as the unseasonable cold weather. First, it is strange that he should be there at all, having come out of a swamp where no one ever goes. Seth even closes his eyes, thinking that when he opens them the man will be gone, for he seems to come from nowhere and to have no reason to be there. Seth, with the self-assurance of a child, realizes, as he does about the weather, that the man does not belong, that he "ought" to be other than as he is. The tramp is given the job of burying dead baby chicks killed by the storm, a task he performs fastidiously and with sullen resignation. The adult Seth's comment that there is nothing that looks deader than a drowned chick is the first of several images of death and incomprehensible evil that the story introduces. When Seth goes down to the creek to watch the flood with his father, he sees a dead cow come floating down the stream, bloated and looking at first like a large piece of driftwood. When the son of a poor sharecropper wonders aloud if anyone ever ate dead cow, the more immediate implications of poor crops caused by the storm are suggested, especially when an older man says that if a man lives long enough he will eat anything. Seth goes to the house of the family cook, Dellie, to play with her little boy, and once again is surprised by something that "ought" not to be. Dellie and her husband old Jebb have a reputation of being clean and thrifty "white folks's negroes," and Seth is surprised to see that the storm has washed trash out from under Dellie's house into the yard that she has always been proud to keep swept clean. Moreover, he cannot understand Dellie being sick and in bed, and he is shocked when she gives her son a vicious slap for making too much noise. Dellie's illness is explained to Seth by her husband as being "woman-mizry," a result of the change of life, additional realities that Seth cannot understand. All these clashes with incongruity and the incomprehensible come to a climax when Seth returns to his house and witnesses a confrontation between his father and the tramp. After being paid a half-dollar for his half-day's work, a fair wage for 1910, the tramp utters an oath at Seth's father, who orders him off the farm. The tramp then spits at the father's feet and walks away, with Seth following him down the road. He asks the tramp where he came from and where he is going, but the only response he gets is the tramp's hurling an obscenity at him and threatening to cut his throat if he does not stop following him. The story ends with Seth describing briefly his life since the event: the death of his father and mother, the death of Dellie, the imprisonment of little Jebb, and a meeting with old Jebb, now more than a hundred years old. The last line of the story—that he has followed the tramp all of his life—forces the reader to look back on the memory to try to determine its structure and meaning and thus understand what Seth means.

Royal Beatings

By: Alice Munro Royal Beatings," one of Munro's best-known stories, reveals the bonds of love and hate, brutalities great and small, within a family. Nothing is simple in this story, which features a surprisingly intricate plot as well as convoluted time and tense shifts. It begins late in the Depression years in the poorest section of Hanratty, where Rose lives with her father and stepmother, Flo, behind their grocery and furniture repair store. One day Flo relates an account of a previous thrashing, when three young men attacked the father of the grotesque dwarf Becky Tyde, who sometimes visits the store. The child Rose cannot fit Flo's story together with her present life, for they seem unrelated. Flo's tale foreshadows a second beating, this time suffered by the preteen Rose—a brutal ritual which builds, erupts, and then collapses. When Rose talks back to her stepmother once too often, Flo goads Rose's father into punishing her. The narrative shifts into present tense to render a horrific account of the first "royal beating" that cheeky Rose endures, then switches to future tense to describe the ritual that will follow: a repentant Flo coming to her room to bring a salve for her back, a tray of food, chocolate milk. Years later, the adult Rose sees a television interview with an elderly man from Hanratty, someone from Flo's story, and is finally able to connect the strands of the past to the present Rose, a girl nearing adolescence, lives with her father, her stepmother, and her younger half brother, Brian, in a small town in the Ottawa Valley of central Canada. Her father is a scrupulous furniture restorer who works in a shed behind the family's home and storefront. His earnings barely suffice to provide the most minimal of family needs. Their house in West Hanratty, a section of the town where the social structure "ran from factory workers and foundry workers down to large improvident families of casual bootleggers and prostitutes and unsuccessful thieves," is too cramped to provide any private space. The central action of the story takes place during the Depression, a period recalled as one of legendary poverty, when the clash between the aspirations of the members of Rose's family and the limits of their lives has created a condition of psychic tension that can be relieved only by an explosion of emotion that permits the family to temporarily overcome the frustrations inherent in their situation. Rose's relationship with her stepmother has changed from a long initial truce to a continuously simmering conflict. Her father remains vaguely distant most of the time, an inward man whose poetic range of mind is not disclosed to Rose until after his death. Rose sees the inhabitants of Hanratty and West Hanratty as figures of foolishness, pretense, and casual violence; their antics are a means for Flo to support her own shaky sense of self-esteem through scornful dismissal. The absence of any satisfactory social relationships, the minimal resources available for even modest purchases, and the family's restricted living space compress Rose's family into a tightly wound, tension-ridden cluster of pulsating neuroses. Their anxieties and desires have been concentrated into a number of rituals devised to express their emotional needs and to alleviate the pressures of their deepest conflicts. The beating is prominent among these, a special event shaped into a dramatic exercise in which each person has an acknowledged role. In Rose's eyes, it has been exalted into an event that is both savage and splendid in an attempt to validate its importance and accept its unpleasant aspects. Rose and Flo engage in an ongoing quarrel that escalates into a verbal battle in which each attacks areas of particular sensitivity. Goaded beyond endurance, Flo calls Rose's father, who enters the arena from his workshed. His arrival raises the struggle to another level, the anticipation of a physical encounter arousing both trepidation and a curious kind of anticipatory excitement in everyone. Rapid interchanges of dialogue intensify the mood. The direct application of physical force is rendered with vivid language in an immediate present tense as Rose and her father seem to be caught in a flux of passion and confusion. Rose is driven into a frenzy of recrimination, Flo flutters about expressing concern, and Rose's father justifies his actions before lapsing into silence. The aftermath of the royal beating is revealed as an extraordinary state of calm for Rose, in which things take on a lovely simplicity. Flo tries to comfort Rose, and the whole family gathers for a dinner feeling a "convalescent indolence, not far off satisfaction." The ethos of strife has been transformed through a kind of catharsis. Rose's father, in a rare moment of expansive ease, tells the family about a sighting of the planet Venus. Flo performs an acrobatic feat. Brian, previously a silent spectator, cheers her on. In an unforeseen, but compelling and convincing, reversal, the episode ends with a current of happiness in the room following the release of enclosed psychic poisons in a torrent of wrath. The story shifts abruptly four decades or so into the future. Rose, now living in Toronto, hears a centenarian, Hat Nettleton, interviewed on the radio. She realizes that he is one of three men who horsewhipped a town outcast years before her birth. This was one of Flo's anecdotes, and Rose realizes that Flo would have enjoyed hearing the interview. Flo, however, has been living in the same nursing facility as Nettleton for several years, completely removed from all social contact or conversation. The story closes with Rose in a reflective mood, her affectionate sympathy for Flo a strong contrast with her earlier animosity. Rose's perspective has widened considerably, and she has developed a much better understanding of Flo's behavior, and of her own. Theme "Royal Beatings" is the first story in Alice Munro's collection The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose (1978). While each story is designed to stand as a single entity, the gradual accumulation of information about the two women and the continual intertwining of their lives achieve a novelistic scope. The effects of time's passage across decades of the characters' lives and the operations of memory in selecting details vital to a specific version of reality are two of Munro's essential concerns. "Royal Beatings" uses these motifs to show that a large part of a person's life often is hidden beyond what is immediately apparent to people who are close to them.

An Adventure In Paris By Maupassant

The protagnist wants to be apart of wildlife. she was curious about the wealthy people. she was a family but shes curious about the paris night life. She reads about these peole she wants take a walk on the wild side just a little bit. she arranges to go there without her husband. she at a shop and she assumes the shopkeeper is talking to a writer about a thing she buys it for him but he refuses because of the price she bought the Japaneses figure because she read about him he ask to return the favor so she says she wants to spend the day with him. they go walking and then they drink absent they go to sleep then she wants to go home with him and has an affair with him. after they why go to sleep she wakes and wonders what she had done he asked why she did it and she just wanted a taste of the wild side but it wasn't what she thought.

King of the bingo By Ellison

A young black man sits in a movie theater in New York waiting for the featured film to end. He has come to the big northern city from North Carolina but has been unable to find work because he does not have a birth certificate. His wife is ill, and he is hoping to win the bingo game that is played at the end of the feature so that he can take her to a doctor. He has not eaten all day, and the smell of the peanuts that another viewer is eating increases his hunger. Two men near him are drinking liquor, and he wishes that he had some, remembering how people used to share with one another down south. He drifts off to sleep but has a nightmare, which causes him to shout. The men who are drinking ask him to be quiet and offer him some whiskey, which he takes. After the feature ends, the lights come on, a curtain hides the screen, and an announcer and an attendant come out to preside over the bingo game. Players who get "bingo" climb onto the stage and spin a large wheel by means of an electric switch. If the wheel stops at double zero, a player wins the jackpot, which is now $36.90. The young man plays five bingo cards, wins, and mounts the stage. He finds being on stage confusing. The lights are blinding, he does not understand the jokes and comments of the announcer, and the crowd laughs at him. Even the smell of the announcer's hair oil unsettles him. As he presses the button that controls the wheel, he is drawn into its whirl of light and color. He realizes that so long as he presses the button that makes the wheel spin, he controls it—that he is the "King of the Bingo Game." So long as he keeps spinning the wheel, he controls his fate; his wife will be all right. The young man's thoughts are unknown to the announcer and the audience, who grow impatient. The crowd wants him to finish his turn, and the announcer tells him that he is taking too long, but he brushes the man away, then calls him back and explains that he is going to show everyone how to win the bingo game. He shouts, urging his wife to live, and the audience, thinking him crazy, quiets for a moment, then begins to taunt him again. Two men in uniform approach him from the side of the stage, wrestle him to the floor, and take the button and cable away from him. The wheel stops on double zero. One of the men signals to the other, who hits the young man on the head. Just before he loses consciousness, he realizes that his luck has ended

Gorilla My love

By Bambara Hazel is a reappearing character in Bambara's collection Gorilla, My Love, and in this title story, she is perturbed that her Hunca Bubba is getting married and changing his name back to its original Jefferson Winston Vale. The source of her dismay is delayed until the end of the story when it is revealed that Hunca Bubba had vowed to wait for Hazel to grow up in order for the two of them to marry. Whether the young girl ever took her uncle's proposal seriously is unclear, but the deception has consequences. The sole female passenger in the company of three generations of male relatives, Hazel spends the drive time skeptically reexamining all the promises that adult males make to female children and all their specious claims, including religious ones. She recalls an outing to a movie theater with her brothers in tow, again the lone female in a male group. In place of the thriller "Gorilla, My Love" advertised on the marquee, a film about the life of Jesus is projected onto the screen. Feeling swindled, the children scream their displeasure in the dark auditorium. Caught in the halo of the theater matron's flashlight, they are escorted outside. Unable to recoup their money, a vengeful Hazel sets fire to the concession stand. Threatened with a beating, Hazel talks her father out of administering her punishment by proclaiming "if you say Gorilla My Love, you suppose to mean it." Hazel is assigned the task of guiding the men's drive home after a day of pecan picking, but it is an adult responsibility she rejects. Positioned in the passenger seat beside her grandfather who steers, she holds the map but offers no directions. The adult males call her pet names like "Peaches" and "Scout" in an effort to get her to assist them, but she dismisses their efforts at appeasement. Instead she claims her own identity and independence by pronouncing herself "Hazel" and lets them drive where they will. Trust is a central issue in this story about the disillusionment of youth. When lies are commonplace and deceit practiced openly, adults and their sugar-coated words cannot be trusted. Hazel's extreme anguish at story's end is her response to the news of her uncle's impending marriage and to her perceived abandonment, but it indicates her greater loss of faith in men's honor. Skeptical of their promises, she plots a new course through their world, proceeding cautiously and navigating solo.

Death By Landscape

By: Atwood Main Character: Louis, Lucy Louis- a widowed mother collected art of nature her husband Rob had died the paintings did not give her peace she fears the depiction of the wilderness She recalls her summers from 9 to 13 at camp manitou she remembers camp traditions and camp songs. Cappie was the head of the camp keeping it going during world war 2 and depression She met a girl name lucy and were friends throughout the years until the last year seeming disillusioned by her parents divorce. Lucy became involved with the gardner's assistant. Lucy and Louis separate to go to the lookout point lucy says she has to urinate she hears a scream and never sees lucy again. cappie blamed her but she understood why. she eventually says lucy is in the painting

Gorilla My Love

Hazel, a young African American girl living in a black neighborhood of New York City, describes riding in a car with her Granddaddy Vale, her little brother, and her uncle—whom she has called "Hunca Bubba" since she was very little. As she sits in the front seat, she listens to Hunca Bubba describe the woman he loves. As he talks, Hazel recalls an incident that occurred the previous Easter when she and her brothers, Big Brood and Baby Jason, went to see a film that the theater billed as Gorilla, My Love. As Hazel and her brothers settled down in their theater seats with potato chips and jawbreakers, a tattered, brown old film called The King of Kings (1927) came on the screen. The children yelled, booed, and stomped their feet until "Thunderbuns," the matron, settled them down. Despite their protests, they never got to see the gorilla film. Hazel demanded that the manager give them back their money, expressing her outrage at adults who are "messin over kids just cause they little and can't take em to court." When the manager refused, Hazel set a fire under the candy stand that caused the theater to close down for a week. She later defended her action by saying that a person should keep his word, "If you say Gorilla, My Love, you suppose to mean it." Hazel now asks her uncle if he plans to marry the woman he has been telling her about. When he says yes, she asks him if he remembers that when she was little he promised to marry her when she grew up. Hunca Bubba explains that she was just a little girl then and that he was merely teasing. Realizing that what she took seriously was just a joke to her uncle, Hazel cries. She feels betrayed by grownups who do not keep their word. She finds Hunca Bubba's betrayal much more painful to accept than the false advertising of the film.

Gorilla my love theme

The main theme of ''Gorilla, My Love,'' and the thread that ties the two sections of the story together, is the idea of betrayal. Specifically, Hazel comes to believe that adults, who should have children's best interests at heart, cannot in fact be trusted to tell the truth where children are concerned. In the middle section of the story, which comes first chronologically, Hazel has already learned that ''Grownups figure they can treat you just anyhow. Which burns me up.'' She demands her money back from the theater because ''I get so tired grownups messin over kids just cause they little and can't take em to court.'' But she does not have in mind the adult members of her own family. They have taught her to be truthful and to hold people to their word. As Granddaddy Vale puts it, ''if that's what I said, then that's it.'' In a world where adults routinely take advantage of children, being able to count on one's family (as gangsters can count on their partners) is important protection. But Hunca Bubba has not only changed his name to Jefferson Winston Vale but decided to marry a woman his own age, and Hazel's family seems to be offering only double-talk in his defense. He is not changing his name, but changing it back, they say. The promise to marry Hazel was ''just teasin,'' not a real promise at all. This strikes Hazel as the ultimate betrayal, because now her beloved uncle and Granddaddy show themselves to be no better than the rest of them. Completely unable to understand the adults' point of view, she is frightened and alone, with only Baby Jason on her side ''Cause he is my blood brother and understands that we must stick together or be forever lost, what with grownups playin change-up and turnin you round every which way so bad. And don't even say they sorry.'' Bambara and the reader, looking over Hazel's shoulder, know that Hunca Bubba and Granddaddy are not evil or unkind. They see complexities in the world that Hazel is too young to understand. But Bambara does not mock Hazel; her pain is real. In an essay called ''Salvation Is the Issue,'' Bambara noted that the heart of ''Gorilla, My Love'' is a ''broken child-adult contract,'' one of those ''observed violations of the Law.'' Bambara takes Hazel's point of view seriously, and uses her story (and many other stories) to ask, ''is it natural (sane, healthy, whole-some, in our interest) to violate the contracts/covenants we have with our ancestors, each other, our children, our selves, and God?'' Although ''Gorilla, My Love'' is humorous, and the protagonist is limited in her understanding, the questions the story raises about betrayal and trust are important and real, especially for Bambara.

Themes of Royal Beating

This story is anchored in Rose's consciousness and addresses a question Flo poses in a typical moment of anger: "Who do you think you are?" The query is supposed to keep Rose in her place, but as the query echoes through the stories in the collection and eventually becomes the title of the last story, it is evident that it is a guiding precept for Rose's exploration and establishment of a sense of self. This inquiry into the formative elements of personal identity is centered in the combative manner of communication that marks Flo and Rose's relationship—a mixture of taunting and sharing, probing and concealing, that implies an active dislike but which is actually a cover for fear and suppressed curiosity. Because a mood of contention dominates the story, those moments when the tension is eased are effectively emphasized by comparison. The dispersal of rancor after the beating is the prime example, but two other features are prominent as well. The radical shift at the conclusion when Nettleton is interviewed functions as a framing device, since he is introduced earlier in an extended anecdote that Flo tells Rose. Flo's pleasure in regaling Rose with local lore is evident, and a rough parallel is drawn between families and between two radically different types of beatings. Although no specific insights are stressed, the lack of information about Nettleton's motivation leads to fascinated speculation. Flo had conveyed to Rose her sense of the almost unfathomable dimensions of human possibility.

The yellow wallpaper

by Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper is a semi-autobiographical short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in which she describes the treatment of women during a rest cure prescribed for nervous disorders by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who was a famous physician. The story describes the submissive, childlike obedience of women to male authority figures that was considered typical at the beginning of the twentieth century. The unnamed protagonist of the story is helpless to express her own needs. She is taken by her husband, John, to a country house so that she can recuperate from a nervous condition. The reader is immediately aware of the condescending attitude of the physician husband toward his wife. She is relegated against her will to a third floor room of the house, a room that the owners previously used as a nursery. Symbolically, the room with the yellow wallpaper serves as a prison where the wife is restricted, like a child, from the intellectual activities of reading and writing. At first, the narrator rebels against the constraints by keeping a secret diary. When John discovers her disobedience, she is chastised and her diary is cruelly destroyed. Social interactions are also held to a minimum. The husband lectures in other cities, so the narrator is often left without emotional support for days at a time. When John is at home, his conversations are patronizing, and he dismisses her concerns about her condition. Clearly, her role is to comfort him and trust blindly that her own condition is improving. John's self-absorption does not permit him to see that his wife's condition is deteriorating. Jennie (John's sister), who manages the household, is another example of the restricted role of women. She busies herself with decorating and supervising the kitchen. She unquestioningly carries out John's orders to monitor the narrator's activities, even when her own contacts with the woman make it clear that what the doctor orders is not what the patient needs. She nevertheless obeys blindly until it is too late to reverse the effects of the narrator's descent into madness. The powerful pattern in the yellow wallpaper resembles bars that confine the protagonist in her world of loneliness, helplessness, and infantilism. Deprived of intellectual stimulation, the narrator's imagination conjures up a world behind the paper where captive women wait helplessly to be freed. Ironically, she is one of the women seeking to be liberated. Destroying the paper seems to be the only way she can destroy the hold of stifling mores that demand female subservience to men and free women from male dominance.