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Quotes from "Roman Fever"

“It always will be, to me,” assented her friend Mrs. Ansley, with so slight a stress on the “me” that Mrs. Slade, though she noticed it, wondered if it were not merely accidental, like the random underlinings of old-fashioned letter-writers. “Grace Ansley was always old-fashioned,” she thought. Mrs. Slade waited nervously for another word or movement. None came, and at length she broke out: “I horrify you.” Mrs. Ansley’s hands dropped to her knees. The face they uncovered was streaked with tears. “I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking—it was the only letter I ever had from him!” These two quotations, both from Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” portray the theme of denial that is prominent in the story. The first quote is spoken at the beginning of the story, as Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade are enjoying a view of Rome together from a restaurant terrace. The second quote takes place shortly after Mrs. Ansley learns that Mrs. Slade tried to undermine their friendship the l
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The Unwanted and Excluded

A new title that I would give to Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” is “The Unwanted and Excluded”. I believe that this phrase is a sufficient title for the story because it accurately describes Twyla and Roberta’s lifelong journey that we observe. St. Bonny’s, where the pair live as children, essentially represents the theme of social alienation that is repeated throughout the story. Simply being at St. Bonny’s is a reminder to the girls that they are unwanted. Furthermore, Twyla and Roberta are outcasts within St. Bonny’s, an institution that is meant for "outcasts". The extreme exclusion that Twyla and Roberta experience in their childhood is a factor of the title “The Unwanted and Excluded”. The theme of exclusion follows Twyla and Roberta into their adult lives, as the girls find themselves on opposing sides of a protest over school integration much later in the story. Roberta says “they want to take my kids and send them out of the neighborhood.” She is objecting to school

Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" in Today's World

Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” portrays several issues that can be seen in today’s society. The story consists of advice given by a mother to her daughter, scolding her at the same time. The mother tells her daughter how she will have to maintain a home of her own one day and lead a fulfilling life, while simultaneously calling her a “slut” and criticizing her promiscuity.  She scolds her daughter for incredibly simple, everyday things she observes such as the way she walks. This heavily relates to aspects of today’s society when it comes to female sexuality . The mother sees her daughter’s sexuality as dangerous, and as a gateway to a promiscuous life, the life that she fears. The mother’s constant emphasis on this theme shows how much she wants her daughter to realize that she needs to act in a certain way that will make her community respect her as opposed to shaming her. Today, there is a certain stigma associated with sexuality, particularly among adolescent females like

"The Lottery" Sentence Analysis

“The original paraphernalia for the lottery has been long lost ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.” (Jackson 292) “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson tells the story of how a terrible tradition unfolds in a dystopian society. The Lottery, occurring annually, results in the murder of one “lucky” winner who is pelted with stones by the rest of the town. With these sentences, Jackson uses a basic concept to draw attention to a universal flaw of human beings. She describes how humans fear nonconformity, and how detrimental the power of tradition can be to civilization.  Tessie Hutchinson is murdered by the rest of the town because she is “marked” by the Lottery. These sentences describe how the town blindly follows the tradition th

How can dystopian fiction make us fear technology?

All works of dystopian fiction that we have read so far take shots at the presence of technology in society, imposing the claim that it isn’t necessary, and even going so far as to claim that it will become dangerous in the future. A story that heavily presses this is E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” In this story, Forster describes a society where all humanity lives underneath the surface of the Earth, and every individual is completely isolated from all human connection and emotion. The story ends with the Machine’s collapsing, killing almost all human life, except for the people who went against the rules and lived above the Earth’s surface. Many aspects of this story forced me to constantly question technology’s existence, and even made me fearful of it. In the society of “The Machine Stops”, the Machine creates a community of pure isolation. No one sees each other, leaves their rooms, or interacts with anyone. No emotions are felt, the closest thing to human feelings people