Carol Shields

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? By Joyce Carol Oates is the story of Connie, a 15 year old Texan girl, and one fateful summer day. Through characterization and symbolism the author shows that often teenagers rush into the fantasy of adulthood, never expecting how real it can get. By using the summer to represent her fall from innocence, music to show how Connie feels, and her habit of checking her reflection to prove she’s still young and insecure- despite how she may act, Oates…

Many times things that are important to us can represent us. We can find value in objects that are important to us because we can describe the object with characteristics similar to ourselves. Finding meaning in objects throughout stories and connecting them to characters is one form of symbolism. In the William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” the house means a lot to Emily and can therefore symbolize some of her most noteworthy characteristics. The house in William Faulkner’s short…

Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” begins as a benign and familiar tale of a misunderstood teenager: the protagonist, fifteen year old Connie, rebelliously expresses her sexuality, as she painstakingly feints the hindrance devised by mother. Connie as perceived by mother suffers from an overindulgence of one’s appearance – “excessive gawking at one’s self, excessive hair spray, excessive day dreaming”. Though, in all honesty, Connie exhibits the traits of most, if…

Tony Wagner famously says, “Isolation is the enemy of improvement.” It is such an idea that William Faulkner portrays in his short story “A Rose for Emily,” published in 1930. Faulkner, born on September 25, 1897, is often seen using long lists of description and is well known for his poetry and novels set in the American South. During his time, Faulkner earned many awards such as The 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 1955 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and the National Book Award (Biography).…

Connie, the protagonist of a time period where women are seen as objects, follows society’s expectations. Joyce Carol Oates wrote “Where are you going, where have you been?” at a time when women were not respected by men. In “Where are you going, where have you been?”, Connie is approached by a man named Arnold Friend. Friend was very persistent about getting Connie to leave town with him. After Connie refused multiple times, he threatened to hurt her family. Due to the threat, Connie had no…

Short Fiction Analysis: A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner A Rose for Emily is a short story by William Faulkner. This story is about a woman named Miss Emily, although she is already deceased in the story, her life is told from the perspective of a townsman. He begins the short as a curious prospector paying his respects to this “fallen monument”. Miss Emily is perceived as a grumpy ancient lady, who is unwilling to change, her house is the evidence that suffers the most from her stubborn…

ose For Emily” is an interesting story. “A Rose For Emily” is a short story written by William Faulkner. The story documents Emily’s life and how the town has reacted to Emily’s life. The story takes place in the South and documents how Emily has resisted change. Faulkner is often compared to Hemingway due to the fact that they were rivals. Faulkner is a shy but egotistical while Hemingway is extroverted but humble. Faulkner likes to have a complex style while Hemingway likes to have a simple…

Two passages are provided by two anonymous authors, each of the author give a different outlook on the Okefenokee Swamp. To elaborate, in passage one the author only uses facts and evidence about the Okefenokee Swamp in order to get infor his/her readers about the swamp avoiding and sense of a personal opinion. In contrast however, passage two the author uses his/her own personal opinion about the swamp doing so it can cause many of the readers to become persuaded by the authors opinion thus…

Judd Mulvaney is telling a story, recounting his life growing up in a small town in the 1970s. The narrator tells the story of his family life and the tragic issue of his sister being raped and having to move away. In the novel I think that Joyce Carol Oates characterizes Judd Mulvaney as an omniscient narrator but also a public narrator. In the actual novel and movie he is a public narrator because he slips into and out of each characters different voice. In the passage I see the omniscient…

A Rose For Emily is a short story written by William Faulkner. It revolves around a woman who lived her entire life in solitude in a small town. The yellow wallpaper on the other hand, by Charlotte Perkins, depicts the struggle of a woman with psychosis who is deprived treatment due to ignorance of her doctor husband which leads to deterioration of her health drastically. These two stories are interrelated in that both represent plies of women in a sexist society where men impose decisions on…