James Joyce

To begin with, symbolism played a huge role in helping Joyce Carol Oates get her purpose of writing “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” out to the reader. The character’s name Connie was shown throughout the passage to represent the word ‘concubine’, which is defined as a mistress. One way of supporting this claim is when Oates announced that “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home…” (pg 1). She could be called a concubine for her…

In the story “A Rose for Emily”, Emily allowed her father to have total control of her life which ended up determining the course of her life. She was a well-respected person in her town to a certain extent. Emily knew when her father passed away there was no hope of her reviving her life to get back all the moments she missed because of him. Faulkner presented clear evidence on why Emily shouldn’t have allowed her father to corrupt her life in such a way, because it only brought upon pain,…

William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily is about Jefferson, Mississippi during the post-Civil War era. It focuses on the life of Emily Grierson and the conflict Emily has with her father, the townspeople, and Homer Barron. In this story, Faulkner explains the emergence of the industrialized South and how the old agrarian South resists transition to the more modern, industrialized world. A Rose for Emily is narrated by the townspeople who look back on the life and death of Emily Grierson and the…

Maria in her family drama novel, “ Where’d You Go Bernadette” meticulously portrays that disappearing does not solve anyone's problems, especially when it comes to family. Semple supports her assertion through her character's direct emotional feel towards one another, “ This isn’t cancer’, he said…. ‘Instead of facing reality, she escapes’…. ‘ Because she wants me to know.’Know what?’’ The truth”. The author’s purpose is to entertain the audience by pointing out an unordinary and unique family…

Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” has been discussed, at length, throughout the literary and academic community since it was first published in 1966. Literary critics have discussed a variety of analogies between fairytale, or mythological, characters, and the characters in Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates uses subtle, and sometimes obvious, references to a variety of childhood fairytales and…

The story of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han takes place in a small town in the East Coast, and is told by the protagonist, Lara Jean. Lara Jean is a 16-year-old Korean-American who lives with her dad and two sisters, Margot and Kitty. She is a hopeless romantic who writes letters to all the boys she has fallen for--five in total--as a goodbye and as an act of forgetting her feelings for them, but she never sends the them out. One of the boys she has written a letter for is Peter…

William Faulkner experienced firsthand how the South desperately tries to hold onto the past. And that kind of refusal for change is seen in “A Rose for Emily”. According to the biography of Faulkner from the Nobel Peace Prize website most of Faulkner’s works have the central “theme [of] the decay of the old South”. And most of his works are all connected through being set in the made-up county of Yoknapatawpha. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is also set in this county and it similarly deals with…

There are many instances of symbolism in William Faulkner's short story A Rose for Emily. Though there are many to choose from, I have selected what I found to be the most insightful to write about. These include Emily's father's corpse, Emily's house and Homer Barron's horse drawn buggy. In my opinion, these things symbolize Emily's reluctance to adapt to a new and quickly “modernising” south, one that is radically different from the home of her childhood. After her father's death, Miss…

Obvious Success "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story was about a 15-year-old girl named Connie who "knew that she was pretty and that was everything" Oates pg. 308. The story mostly focused on Connie's regular teenage life, but the story took a turn when Arnold Friend, a boy that Connie saw on a parking lot of a restaurant, appeared in front of Connie's house when she was alone. Arnold Friend was inviting Connie out for a ride,…

Death has a remarkably powerful sway in the tale and its onset is at the very beginning. The narrator mentions the death of Emily and the description given is of the life that she is compelled to lead but with the possibility of dying tormenting her all the time. Notably, this theme is one of the most prevalent in the story besides change versus tradition. Thus, the essence of this essay is to give a critical analysis of the theme of death in A Rose for Emily. Miss Emily Grierson is an…