Creative Writing Final (text and literary elements)

Rara Avis; T.C. Boyle

• theme: people often fear what they don’t understand

• symbolism: femininity— bird

  • “it looked like a woman perched there…”

• microcosm: the bird held the interest of the whole town; therefore its a small town and the people there are probably bored and nothing new often comes to town

  • unreliable narrator: young child, doesn’t know father’s having affair

Night Women; Edwidge Dandicat

• archetype: general idea of something…

  • prostitute being a caring mother...there’s more beneath what meets the eye

• climax: is her boy going to wake up during her work?

• resolution: no, he’s going to sleep another night

A Family Supper; Kazuo Ishiguro

• allusion: to the Last Supper

• motif: tangible—light/darkness and shadows seem to linger

  • maybe the father has an evil plan

• topic: #fugu#deadly#famgathering#toxic#sus

The Immortals; Martin Amis

• unreliable narrator: maybe mental…

The Lifeguard; Mary Morris

• motif: “holding” onto something

  • Lovenheim might’ve had a maybe and lost it at some point

• tragedy: felt as if he doesn’t deserve to be a lifeguard; fell from his superior state

• epiphany: comes to realize he’s not fit for the role, nor is he glorious

• catharsis: Crys on Lovenheims shoulder

The House Behind; Lydia Davis

• unreliable narrator: views the scene from in her room, doesn’t know full context of the conversations they had

• microcosm: maybe an affair happened?

  • why else mention he’s married…

• gratuitous: murder was unnecessary…

  • why murder a nice lady? maybe jealous of her money and lifestyle?

The Courtship of Mr. Lyon; Angela Carter

• magic realism/ allusion: Beauty and the Beast

• In Medias Res: starts slow and in the middle of things, and unfolds slowly too

Are These Actual Miles?; Raymond Carver

• symbolism: Toni’s stretch marks are actual “miles”— what the two have been trhough together, from when they first met

• static character: the whole story was focused on Leo’s thoughts of his wife and doubting her faithfulness

The Elephant Vanishes; Haruki Murakami

• magic realism: elephants can’t “vanish”

• symbolism: elephants vanishing= wisdom of the world vanishing as well

• catharsis: main character vents abt the elephant scenario to his date

• unreliable narrator: he’s lonely and has no friends

The Old Man Mastiff and the Slave; Patrick Chamoiseau

• Symbol: Mastiff, big dog= power and fear, yet in this story, it also represents the oppressed and survival in society because it’s also a slave too

• dynamic character: the old man finds courage in the end to escape his captive situation

Happy Endings; Margaret Atwood

• theme: there’s not always a happy ending in every scenario

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; T.S. Eliot

• epigraph: a piece of text from another source that’s put in the beginning of a poem that refers to the theme of the poem

  • Dante’s Inferno

• tone: nervous, anxious, stressed

• unreliable narrator: disassociated form society, lonely—on the outside, looking in at an unfamiliar world

Girl; Jamaica Kincaid

• tone: anger, humor; lecturing her daughter

• unreliable narrator: is stern and detached/ biased too—based off the mother’s childhood

• static character: the narrator (mother) doesn’t change her tone, or train of thought

Logic in the House of Sawed-Off Telescopes; Jeffery McDaniel

• motif: repetition of “I was a good boy once”

  • something made him turn bad?

• tone: alter between humor and melancholy/ anger and longing for love

• symbol: Sawed-Off telescope= loss of innocence/ clarity? —-why his mom left

This be the Verse; Philip Larkin

• tone: sarcastic, Ironic (takes on a nursery rhyme scheme, but the content is not child-friendly)

• theme: die so you can’t reproduce

• motif: family trauma passed down

the mother; Gwendolyn Brooks

• not the archetype mother

  • this one aborted her children

• her unborn children will never experience childhood, love, anger, happiness, a bond with its mother

Adolescence II; Rita Dove

• allusion: Waiting for Godot—Waiting to grow up

• simile: “…three seal men with eyes as round as dinner plates”

  • compares to an Eating disorder

• sensual language: “sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert”

[I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant…]; Joshua Beckman

• tone: unserious

• microcosm: mentioned “Katie” twice so maybe he likes her? and wants to give her the “karate chop of love”

Kindred; Octavia Butler

• archetype: Rufus—White, son of slave owner is generally going to grow up in his fathers footsteps…

• Dana’s clothes are noticed first

• theme: identify and power