Symbols And Conflicts In The Blizzard, By David Ives

Everywhere you look in life there are different sorts of symbols and conflicts, especially in literature that’s what makes reading it so interesting, the things these authors can do with words. I have chosen three different works; Survivors by Kim Addonizio, American Gothic by John Stone and, The Blizzard by David Ives. In this paper, I am going to give you some examples of symbols and conflicts in these works and my responses/thoughts on those topics. The Blizzard was written in 2006, in this there were many different conflicts and symbols that made it for an interesting play to read. One of the conflicts I found in this play was with Neil he stated, “Thanks for that. I’m still not used to it. Being so remote. Natures always scared the living …show more content…
This short story has some similarities and differences in its conflicts and symbols. The major conflict in this is death, at the end it reads “dear God, he thought, let me die first, don’t let me survive him” (Addonizio 621). There are a lot of reasons on wanting to die first in a relationship, like not having to deal with survivor’s guilt and let alone of the pain of losing your soulmate. The second conflict is dealing with his lover’s family, “his father who tried to beat his son’s sexual orientation out of him with a belt on several occasions during adolescence” (Addonizio 621). Dealing with family in a relationship can be hard enough to begin with but in a same sex relationship and a father who was the way Addonizio projected him to be would be a real pain in the ass and create a lot more challenging of a time to deal with. The symbols she used in this short story were very interesting, “the small plastic wind up penis that hopped around on two feet” (Addonizio 621). That is a little knickknack that the couple had in their apartment that would in most cases cause laughter and joy, but in the story, the family would perceive it as disgraceful. The other symbol is his lovers parrot, he says “he would let it go, fly off, and he would be completely alone then” (Addonzio 621). In my view of reading the story the parrot is a symbol of his lover, if his lover …show more content…
One of the lines in the poem read, “Arrested in the name of art” (Stone 18). That line leads to the conflict of mortality, the couple in the painting were a husband and wife that lived on a farm who got their portrait done for whatever reason, but it made them immortal the painting was done in 1930 and the 48 years later a poet wrote those words and to this day they are in books and on the internet, being learned about all over the world. On a smaller scale the other conflict is more of a simpler idea the wife in the poem is wondering “whether she remembered to turn off the stove” (Stone 33). That brings you to conflicts of everyday life, there is so much going on around you and even when you are stuck in time you still cannot be at peace because there are always things to worry about. Now on to the first symbol in American Gothic, the gothic window, “here for all time the borders of the Gothic window” (Stone 7/8). Stone writes that the window in the painting is referencing the painting itself how they are locked in the painting for all of time. The second and final symbol is “the tines of the pitchfork repeat the triumph of his overalls” (Stone 11/12/13). That pitchfork and the way he is holding it looks like he has defeated some demon he has been battling, and the way his overalls match the lines of his pitchfork just reinforce