Short Cuts

has many literary classics such as “The Tell-Tale Heart”. His short stories mainly focus on murder, bloody violence, and even supernatural events. The Black Cat is a short story and there were four main characters including the man, his wife, and two black cats. This story is about the man is a murder who kill the first cat and his wife. He had a large, beautiful and black cat and Pluto was the cat's name. One night, he deliberately cut the black cat's eyes under the influence of alcohol.…

“Life is too short.” These are words that are not said often enough, yet the same theme applies in many quotes. These words are sometimes muttered when something traumatic happens, or when the unexpected occurs, and one knows not what to do. These words are muttered in the most extremes of times, yet, never in the simplest. Life is too short, and while yes, this is true, there is also another side to the story. When life becomes too short, one must see that life also moves on. When a tragic…

little shorter than usual and ended up donating 14 inches of her hair to the “Wigs for Kids” foundation. Jetta wore her hair back to school as a cute pixie cut, not expecting the attention she received. Jetta was harassed with snobby remarks and everyone laughing at her. They called her ugly and said she looked like a boy just because she has short hair. When Mrs. Fosberg told the principal about how her daughter has been being ridiculed because the length of her hair, he simply didn’t care.…

1. In our class readings, verb tense definitely affected the stories for me. The verb tense of Good People, by David Foster Wallace, seems to change multiple times in the story. To me, a lot of this story felt as if it were told in present tense, but at times past tense was used when talking about events from the past, and there even seemed to be a bit of future tense mixed in. “That she will carry this and have it; she has to. With her gaze clear and steady. That all night last night she…

describes how alcohol changes him. He comes home drunk a lot and he acts very differently; the slightest things set him off. His pet cat bites him and he does the unthinkable. “I knew myself no longer… grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket!” (5). As his marriage starts to collapse under the weight of his alcoholism, he tortures and then hangs the cat. A new cat just appears one day who seems to mock the narrator for his past crimes. Unable to…

Madness comes in many forms, and Poe does his best to showcase the flaws in the human brain. In two of his short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe illustrates two men who go mad over small things. The narrator of “The Black Cat” starts down a dark path of alcohol and rage. He believes that his first cat Pluto is avoiding him and retaliates by cutting out its eye. Later he becomes increasingly more murderous when he sees the shape of the gallows on a new…

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut takes place in the year 2081 where everyone is equal with little to no differences. The story explores the idea of the tall poppy syndrome, a social phenomenon where people are called on and criticised in a negative way for their achievements. The ultimate utopian is where every human being is equal. However, it is later on showed in the essay how the terms ‘equality’ and ‘happiness’ can lead a downward path. In the story, Vonnegut provides the audience with…

The short story “The Palace Thief”, by Ethan Canin, is about William Hundert, a history teacher at St. Benedict’s a prestigious private school, and his interactions with the Bell family. Infact his interactions with the Bells and one of his colleges, develops the central idea that one should not judge a book by it’s cover. This idea is exemplified by the characters Sedgewick Bell, Senator Bell, and Charles Ellerby. Sedgewick Bell, one of Hundert’s most troublesome students, shows that one…

“The Gift of the Magi” Literary Devices “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry is a short story about a lovely couple that worry about each other. Christmas is coming and Jim and Della don’t have enough money to buy a gift. They sale their valuable things in order to have a gift for their partner. “The Gift of the Magi”, O. Henry uses tone, mood, symbolism and irony to develop the plot of the story. To begin with, O.Henry uses the tone hopelessness, this makes Della look in a critical condition…

you find it and how much is in everyone?” Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Lottery” represent evil in small town USA fluently. Jackson's stories show you cannot trust everyone, and that everything is not what it seems. Both short stories were surrounded by the idea that evil is in every person or in every town. In “The Lottery”, a small town is having a ‘lottery’ in which the town has a sacrifice yearly in hope for their crops to grow in. The town willingly throws rocks…