Shirley Ardell Mason

For instance, in ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’, the overarching theme of incomprehensibility and absurdity is explored through the coin-flipping scenes and throughout the play. In the opening scene, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flip a coin, it lands heads-up eighty-five times consecutively. Even then, although Guildenstern is ‘well alive to the oddity of it’, he attempts to make sense of the strange phenomenon, applying the mathematical law of probability to the problem and speculating…

The Fate of Tessie Hutchinson The term lottery creates a vision of winning something of value. In the short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, Jackson took the meaning of the lottery and put a dark twist to it. Jackson gives an everyday feel to the story as if the annual ceremony “the lottery” is a peaceful day for the towns people. The reader infers that this is a positive outcome based on society’s understanding of what a lottery is; however, the lottery takes an unforeseen twist that…

Comparison of “The Most Dangerous Game” and the “Young Goodman Brown” This essay will compare two short stories: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game. Works do not have similarities at the first sight. Stories are about a century apart (were published in 1835 and 1924 respectively), have different plots, types of characters and conclusions. However, it is possible to make a comparison and find both similarities and differences in these stories.…

In reality, a mood is to help the reader get a feel for the story. The mood also helps with the setting and how to get a feel of how the story will evolve. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie, is about ten people who get invited to go to an amazing island. However, they are invited by unknown guests. When they arrive, their host, Mr. Owen, is nowhere to be found. As the days go on, each person gets killed. By whom, is to figure out. The deaths of each person correlate with this poem,…

In the story “The lottery” by Shirley Jackson the point, moral and theme of the story is a dark and cruel because it says that the townspeople stoned her due to the fact that there is overpopulation and it was a brutal way to remove someone from the village which is the irony that this story has. The tone of the story in the beginning of the story seems to be nice and smooth, the mood feels calm and gentle with nothing to fear. For example, in the beginning of the story everybody is happy and…

Rhinoceros, written 1958, and published 1959 is one of Ionesco’s most popularized plays. It opens on a usual Sunday in a town, where abruptly a rhinoceros is sighted twice by the townspeople. Initially some wonderment is expressed about the strangeness of this happening, but eventually a great deal of discussion is devoted to whether the two sightings were of the same rhino or of two different ones, and whether the rhino(s) belonged to the African or Asian species. Soon it becomes evident that…

A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving, tells the extraordinary story of the walking miracle, Owen Meany and his friendship with John Wheelwright. John met Owen because he was the “runt” of their little league team. One tragic day, Owen hits a foul ball which strikes and kills John’s mother. Owen helps John with coping and grieving, which brings them closer together and they form an unbreakable bond. Together they learn life lessons, test their friendship, and discover new things about…

The present study is based on the analysis of diaspora and nostalgia experienced as the major theme by the characters of two selective stories such as, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine and The Third and Final Continent in the short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies” by award winning Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri. The paper begins with a brief introduction about diaspora, Jhumpa Lahiri and the book “Interpreter of Maladies” (published in 1999). The introduction is preceded by defining…

the lottery by shirley jackson is a short story based on a small town conducting a "lotery" that decides on whether or not who lives based on a simple draw from a box. The reason behind this, whether it be to help the crops grow or to prevent overpopulation, is unknown. Thankfully our society has adapted to be rid of thses horrible traditions, but maybe not entirely. Meaning, maybe our society still has eome of those same awful traitions that are based on ignorance, bigotry, and even religion.…

Some books are different but they can also be very similar. The book “The Lottery” wrote by Shirley Jackson is about a rural farming community that is forced to have a drawing every year to choose who is stoned to death as a sacrifice to bay for the other villagers sins. The book “The Hunger Games” wrote by Suzanne Collins is about twelve different districts have an annual reaping every year. One boy and one girl are chosen from each district and all twenty-four people go head to head in a…