Recent Posts - page 64
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Analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel the Fool
Widely regarded as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s masterpiece as well as one of his most frequently anthologized stories, the Yiddish version of “Gimpel the Fool” appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward (1953) before SAUL BELLOW translated it into English for publication… Read More ›
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Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston’s The Gilded Six-Bits
Appearing in Story magazine and traditionally considered Zora Neale Hurston’s most accomplished story, “The Gilded Six-Bits” had a favorable reception that helped call Hurston to the attention of critics and publishers and resulted in the publication of her first novel,… Read More ›
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Analysis of O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi
Although many critics do not view O. Henry’s stories as first-rate literature, some of his many hundreds of tales have become classic. “The Gift of the Magi,” touching as it does a common human cord, is one of those stories…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon
“Flowers for Algernon,” first published in 1959, is considered a landmark work in both science fiction and disability literature. It was expanded into a novel of the same name, which was published in 1966. Both the short story and the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Katherine Anne Porter’s Flowering Judas
In this novella from her first collection, Flowering Judas and Other Stories, published in 1930, Katherine Anne Porter creates a totally rootless character, an American expatriate in Mexico with ties to neither the past nor the future. Laura finds no… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Steinbeck’s Flight
John Steinbeck‘s “Flight” first appeared in his collection of short stories The Long Valley in 1938. It is a carefully constructed coming-of-age tale that chronicles a 19-year-old boy’s ascent to manhood, quick regression to hunted animal, and thence to his… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Cheever’s The Five-Forty-Eight
John Cheever’s story, first published as part of the collection The Housebreaker of Shady Hill (1958), is notable for the way it presents, through an apparently uninvolved, objective third-person narrator, a man’s callous and reprehensible treatment of a female employee…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Bernard Malamud’s The First Seven Years
Bernard Malamud’s “The First Seven Years” was initially published in the Partisan Review (September–October 1950). In 1958 it was published as the first story in Malamud’s first collection of short fiction, The Magic Barrel. In the long opening paragraph Malamud… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anne Tyler’s The Feather behind the Rock
Anne Tyler recalls that as a young child she often made up stories, “Westerns, usually,” in which she pretended to be other people. “So far as I can remember,” she says, “mostly I wrote first pages of stories about lucky,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Andre Dubus’s The Fat Girl
Andre Dubus, a Louisiana native and devout Catholic, created fiction often noted for its psychological realism and gentle morality. His short fiction emphasizes character study and examines moments of affection, violence, and self-discovery in American life. Dubus’s straightforward narrative contrasts… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher
Long considered Edgar Allan Poe‘s masterpiece, “The Fall of the House of Usher” continues to intrigue new generations of readers. The story has a tantalizingly horrific appeal, and since its publication in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, scholars, critics, and general readers… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The seriocomic tale “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” first appeared in American Review in December 1845 as “The Facts of M. Valdemar’s Case.” The revised tale was reprinted with an introductory note by Poe that noted the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Grace Paley’s The Expensive Moment
Although Grace Paley has written a comparatively small body of work, publishing primarily short stories and poetry, she figures prominently among late 20th-century fiction writers. Part of her third collection of short stories, Later the Same Day (1985), “The Expensive… Read More ›
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Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge
As do many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” deals with the Christian concepts of sin and repentance. The specific sin O’Connor focuses on in this story is pride. As a Catholic, O’Connor considered this offense… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use
Probably Alice Walker’s most frequently anthologized story, “Everyday Use” first appeared in Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories by Black Women. Walker explores in this story a divisive issue for African Americans, one that has concerned a number of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Henry James’s Europe
“Europe,” originally published in the story collection The Soft Side, is a useful encapsulation in short story form of the symbolic use of Europe that Henry James had employed so successfully in the novella Daisy Miller and later in a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Philip Roth’s Epstein
Lou Epstein, the eponymous narrator of “Epstein,” is having a hard time. At age 59, he finds himself experiencing a postmidlife crisis. His once-beautiful wife, Goldie, sags and nags; his daughter, Sheila, “a twenty-three-year old woman with ‘a social conscience!’… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Pynchon’s Entropy
Thomas Pynchon’s early short story “Entropy” heralds many of the thematic concerns and stylistic features that were to make his novels The Crying of Lot 49, V., and Gravity’s Rainbow central to the canon of American Postmodernism. Most notable of… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Cheever’s The Enormous Radio
Opening with a description of a New York City couple, Jim and Irene Wescott, who aspire someday to move to Westchester, “The Enormous Radio”— first published in the New Yorker before reappearing in the 1953 collection The Enormous Radio and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s The End of Something
Perhaps one of the most enigmatic of Ernest Hemingway’s stories, “The End of Something” was first published in the 1925 collection In Our Time, Hemingway’s first major literary effort and, as some would argue, his best individual collection of short… Read More ›
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