English Short Stories
Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce, Limited Third Person Peyton Farquhar, wealthy slave owner Now we know that the man being hanged at the beginning of the story and the plantation owner from Part 2 are one and the same. Part 3 of the story begins as Farquhar falls through the bridge. Unable to think rationally, he feels himself freeing his hands from their bindings, removing the noose around his neck, and pushing up to the surface. Diving beneath the water keeps him safe from the soldiers' bullets and he swims with the current toward the opposite shore. Narrowly evading a cannonball, Farquhar gets caught in a vortex that eventually flings him on the sand. Celebrating his escape, Farquhar hurries toward home, traveling all day through a wild forest straight out of a horror movie. By nightfall, Farquhar reaches the gate to his home. He sees his wife, but, as he is about to grasp her, he feels a powerful blow against the back of his neck. Bright white light turns to complete darkness. Farquhar is dead, his neck is broken, and his body hangs beneath Owl Creek Bridge.
My Daughter the Racist
Helen Oyeyemi, First Person At the start of this story, the protagonist's eight-year-old daughter announces that, from now on, she is going to be racist — against soldiers, that is, their country being occupied by foreign troops. The woman lost her husband in a bombing, and now lives with his mother in her village, where she is the object of unwanted advances from a villager named Bilal. One day, her daughter stands up to a group of soldiers, which so impresses one that he starts to visit. But the woman's attempts to come to some sort of mutual understanding with the soldier are misinterpreted by the village as lustful intentions. •The scrawny soldier. He is a foreign soldier who patrolling in the country where the women and her daughter live. He is different with another soldiers. He is very kind to the child and very friendly with the women. He even wore a traditional clothes of the women's country when he visited her house. • Noura. She is the women's sister. She often warn the women to stop socializing with the soldier. Noura afraid if the soldier will do something bad to the women and the child. • Bilal. A men who falls in love with the women. He purpose to her but she refuse him. • The mother-in-law
Girl
Jamaica Kincaid, Stream of Consciousness
Where Are You Going, And Where Have You Been?
Joyce Carol Oates, Limited third person Connie, Arnold Friend, Ellie It's summer, and 15-year-old Connie spends much of her time lounging around the house, going out with friends, and meeting boys. One night a strange guy makes a threatening gesture to her in the parking lot of a local drive-in restaurant. She thinks nothing of it until one Sunday afternoon, when the rest of her family attends a barbecue at an aunt's house, leaving her home alone. The strange guy pulls up in her driveway in a gold-colored car, accompanied by a friend. The driver introduces himself as Arnold Friend and asks Connie to join him for a ride. During the course of their conversation, Connie realizes that Arnold is a threat. Arnold's language becomes more sexually explicit and violent, and he threatens to harm her family if she calls the police. Connie makes a last-ditch effort to call the police, but panics and is unable to make the call. In the end, she leaves the house and joins Arnold.
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942
Joyce Carol Oates, Stream of Consciousness
Reeling for the Empire
Karen Russell, First Person A community of girls held captive in a silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms, spinning delicate threads from their own bellies, and escape by seizing the means of production for their own revolutionary ends. The story's concept is this: as Japan has industrialized, it has adopted a new practice for silk production. Women are sold by their uncles, fathers, or even their husbands to a recruiter who offers the women tea. This tea begins the metamorphosis, and the women soon become part silk worm, producing more silk than the old silk worms could, and with better efficiencies. Our narrator is Kitsune. She herself was not sold into this. Rather, she chose it, forging her father's signature. The story becomes more metaphysical as the silk itself begins to represent memories and pain, eventually leading to further metamorphosis and, maybe — just maybe — flight.
Who Am I this Time
Kurt Vonnegut The narrator is the director of A Streetcar Named Desire, the spring play for the North Crawford Mask and Wig Club. It is the director's first time directing a play. Although the director is never named in the story, the author does talk about his personal life and includes that he is a salesman of storm windows and doors. Character Analysis Director- The nameless narrator who tells the story from his point of view. Harry Nash- A store clerk who is an extremely talented actor, but lives a very isolated lifestyle. Helene- A temporary clerk at the phone company who is beautiful , but has no personality. Doris- The previous director who is assisting the narrator in casting parts for the play.
Vonnegut's Sense of Humor
Peter Kunze and Robert Tally "Black" or "dark" humor: A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that employs farce (humor based on buffoonery{ridiculous but amusing} or horseplay {rough housing or cutting up} or crude and ludicrously improbable situations) and morbid (characterized by or appealing to an abnormal ad unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects especially death and disease) humor, which, in its simplest form, is humor that makes light of subjects matter usually considered taboo.Black humor corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor. Black comedy is often controversial due to its subject matter.
Bigfoot Stole My Wife
Ron Carlson, First Person Rick, Trudy, Bigfoot Unreliable narrator
On Hope
Spencer Holst, Self reflexive, Breaks 4th Wall A gypsy has trained a monkey to sneak into the bedrooms of rich women and steal their jewelry. Without being instructed to do so by the gypsy, however, this "demon monkey" steals the "Diamond of Hope" necklace that was brought to Gibraltar for the princess of England to wear at a state function. The gypsy knows that the fabulous diamond is valueless to him because it is much too famous to be sold. He also knows that there is a curse on the necklace and that misfortune befalls whoever owns it, so he mails it back to the princess, warning her to take better care of it. However, the monkey steals the diamond two more times; the third time the animal is shot by a guard and dies at the gypsy's feet. When the gypsy receives the diamond the third time, it no longer seems like an accident. Fate is at work. Because he is a gypsy, he fully believes the curse, so he is pleased that fate has chosen him to remove the cursed necklace from the princess and the English throne. Being a good swimmer, he goes down to the shore of the Mediterranean, takes off his clothes, puts the necklace around his neck, and swims out one mile and drops it. As he begins to swim back, the necklace starts to drop a mile down. The necklace falls faster than the gypsy can swim; when it gets to within a hundred feet of the bottom, it alights on the dorsal fin of a shark. The necklace awakens the shark, who swims up to investigate and begins to follow the gypsy. Eventually Gypsy becomes curious and swims back to shark.
Nighthawks
Stuart Dybek, First Person Divorcee, Nighthawks
