The Valley Of Childish Things Literary Analysis

Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence offers a distinctive close examination of the Gilded Age's New York high society where critics have the opportunity to study and analyze several aspects of this exclusive American milieu, and as a result, the novel offers a glimpse of this society's social institutions of the time. In Age of Innocence, the elite of New York reside solely in their own sphere; they all live very close to one another, save for the van der Luydens, in a predetermined area, effectively shutting themselves from those outside their social circles. This isolation is shown with the uproar Ellen Olenska caused when she chose to place her home among artisans instead of other well-respected families, and it is further emphasized during

As her family “moved around like nomads” which they did, she tells the story of her stubborn Father and unique Mother, her loyal brother and wise sister all intertwined into her own story as her family struggles

The short fictional excerpt from the novel All the Pretty Horses uses multiple literary devices to help convey its true meaning. The first noticeable literary device in this excerpt is called diction. This is essentially the choice of words the author uses in a paper. In All the Pretty Horses, the author uses words such as wainscoting and pier glass to represent simpler words like wall and mirror. Even though these words are quite advanced, they fit well in the story.

A variety of issues are examined in Dawe’s poetry, most of which, aren’t uniquely Australian. In ‘The Wholly Innocent’, the poet utilises the narrator being an unborn baby to express their opinion on abortion. The emotive language; “defenceless as a lamb” and comparisons of abortion to “genocide”, all turn this poem into a type of activism, for pro-life; a concept that is certainly not uniquely Australian; as abortion is only legal (on request) in 4 states and territories. These issues aren’t always directly referenced in Dawe’s poetry, much like in ‘The Family Man’, which chooses to explore suicide and it’s effect. The man who killed himself had no name - he was just a statistic, that had “all qualifications blown away with a trigger’s touch”.

The society in the novel is built on the premise that individuals will be happier if they are controlled and manipulated to fit into specific roles in society. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the characters in the novel are not truly happy, despite their conditioning. They are empty, lacking in genuine human connections and purpose. This serves as a commentary on the idea that true happiness cannot be achieved through external means, but rather through internal understanding and

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” (Martin Luther King Jr). Love is the invisible force that wakes you up in the morning and puts you back to sleep, hoping to relive the moment again, or in a simpler sense, it might be random acts of kindness among people that makes up happy, selfless communities. Or it might be a deadly trap for the weak when its powers are abused, but whatever the case, love is important for everyday customs and habits.

Newland Archer, the novel’s protagonist, ends up loving the woman who breaks social norms while losing his love for May who has grown into the shape “into which tradition and training had moulded her”. The leisure-class is put under the magnifying glass by Wharton and she discusses the virtues and vices of each. Most notably, the flaws of their social norms that constricted Archer from showing his love towards Ellen are emphasised as he instead settles for May. Wharton provokes pity from the reader regarding the fact that Archer did not end up with his real love due to these constraints.

She prophesizes that he must have come to see their sick child, but was ravaged by the storm. The overall tone of the story seems to be negative, to say the least. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the significance of the story and to determine if it is indeed a story for children. The story is not told by an existent character in the

The House of Mirth, written by Edith Wharton, chronicles the ups and downs of Lily Barts’s life as she struggles to find her happiness, but ultimately ends tragically with her death. Michael Tavel Clarke gave his critical analysis of the novel in his article, Between Wall Street and Fifth Avenue: Class and Status in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. The article was published in the spring of 2016. In his article Clarke points out the limits that marxist criticism has when it analyzes Wharton’s novel, promotes Max Weber’s theory about the distinction between status and class, and how Weber’s theory can be applied to Lily Bart’s quest to find happiness.

This short story shows that the author has been mastered the art of foreshadowing, symbolism and irony by her diction, narration and the shocking revealed at the end. Despite of the joyful tone Jackson tells the story that started with a beautiful summer day in June, the author gave away some foreshadow hints and symbolism throughout the flow of the plot that we can somehow predict what will happen in the future. However, the audiences will not know the moral of the story until the end of the story. For example, the children imitated the adult to collect stones “...the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones” (Jackson pp.279).

It is a convenient and comforting respond to unfortunate and even devastating ‘fate’. The pain becomes bearable to those who suffer because it is all part of a bigger plan, it is more than ‘you’. This concept is also built upon an irrational fundamental attitude, “the surrender of self to the ordering power of society.” (54) The problem of theodicy does not end at that.

The poem “One Boy Told Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye, was told by her son when he was two and three years of age. His comments, thoughts, and remarks were jotted down verbatim by Naomi and pieced together to create the one of a kind free verse poem. Nye assembled the phrases into individual stanza’s where they coherently flow to one another to illustrate the mind of a toddler. Wide ranges of emotions and personalities invoke the inner child and their curiosity. Overall, her son’s interpretations of his surroundings and understandings are represented in how the idioms expressed set the stage for intrusiveness, humor, and poetic devices to contribute to the overall meaning.

Truth and happiness are two things people desire, and in the novel, an impressive view of this dystopia’s two issues is described. In this society, people are created through cloning. The “World State” controls every aspect of the citizens lives to eliminate unhappiness. Happiness and truth are contradictory and incompatible, and this is another theme that is discussed in “Brave New World” (Huxley 131). In the world regulated by the government, its citizens have lost their freedom; instead, they are presented with pleasure and happiness in exchange.

In Duong Thu Huong’s Paradise of the Blind, Hang has been placed on a path of self-sacrifice and duty by her family. Her life unfolds in stages- childhood, young adulthood, and her eventual role as an exported worker in Russia. With each of these shifts in her life comes a shift in setting and a shift in her emotional state. Hang’s changing emotional state depicts her “coming of age” and her growth as a character. Setting is important to creation of shift in the novel, and is often described in detail.

In the poem, “A Hymn to Childhood,” Li-Young Lee talks about having fragmented individuality from childhood due to war. He is lost in perception of a traumatic childhood caused by war and a normal naïve childhood. Lee depicts the two diverged childhoods from his memory through the use of antithesis to emphasize the world perceived by a self fragmented individual. Throughout the poem, he consistently presents two opposing ideas to show what it feels like to grow up with emotional trauma.