Category Archives: Clue

Use this tag for posts that explain how a passage offers a clue to interpreting the story as a whole.

Clue “The Management of Grief”

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During my reading of “The Management of Grief” by Bharati Mukherjee, I was able to connect so deeply within every passage written, and the dialogue between characters. As I read, I tried to imagine myself during the time of our tragic event on 9/11. It was not the exact tragedy that Bharati was describing, but it was the closest way for me to connect into the solid world she was trying to create within her style of writing. The passage that I pulled out for this blog post is the last one that ends the reading on page 985.

As we have learned in Charters’s “The Elements of Fiction” plot is the sequence of events in a story and their relation to one another as they develop and usually resolve a conflict. In the last passage of “The Management of Grief” it’s as if all the events including the bombing, the loss of relatives, the new reports, the identifying of the lost lives, the constant reminders of such a tragic moment had all come to a calm ending. The last passage certainly resolved the inner conflict that this young woman was facing throughout this tragic story, her inner being was being tested and finally she was able to bring it to an end. Bharati writes as “Your time has come”, they said. “Go be brave” , the style in which she writes this small mental and realistic dialogue shows us how the events of the plot led to us the audience understanding the main character in so much depth. We have all dealt with situations we may not have known how to deal with whether it may be a loss of a family member, or friend, and the events that take place before and after the loss takes a toll on one. Bharati allows us the audience to see that there is no rush or time frame for when it is time to move on. It’s the plot of events that allow us to determine how we will go on and how we will continue our lives once we have come to terms with what has occurred. “The Management of Grief” certainly allows us to get into more than just the plot to show Bharati’s great use of literary elements throughout this reading.

Clue for A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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While I was reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find the question that come to my mind was why the grandmother does not have a name? The little girl June Star has a name, but the mother and the grandmother does not have a name. T

he grandmother plays a big rule in this story, she is the one who want the kids to see this house and she is the one who scared the cat when she realized she has directed Bailey to go the wrong way and causes the accident and got the whole family killed by the Misfit, but she does not have a name. O’Connor purposely not giving this major character a name because he believe a hypocrite and racist character like grandmother is common. It will be more significant to leave her unnamed and focus on the way this character would speak and dress.

The grandmother have the most dialogues in the story. O’Connor make sure the grandmother to express all her opinion to show the kind of shallow and mean person she is. “Little n___s in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture.” the grandmother said when they pass by the shack with an African American child standing by it. She is surprise and pointing at the child like he is an animal at the zoo and using offensive word to describe him.

Before the family leave for their trip, O’Connor describe the grandmother’s attired very throughly ,”the grandmother had a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print…in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This is a very strange metaphor to use for describing someone who is dress very nice and this line also foreshadow what is coming for the grandmother. She is a very vivid character, but with no name, O’Connor wants his reader to have a clear picture in their mind of this character, her characteristic is more important, the title of the person is not important.

O’Connor Clue

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The question that hit the moment, I began to read the story was what effects does the Misfit have on the family? From the moment the Misfit was mentioned and the fact that Bailey payed no mind to the grandmother talking about him, really got me thinking what role will the Misfit play in the story.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more” was a statement by the owner who was having a conversation with the grandmother about the Misfit who had just escaped from prison, gives a clue of what kind of influence the Misfit is going to have on this family. A family who seems to always go vacation to Florida coming to face with a man who had just escaped prison and was heading the same way. This man just buy hearing his name could be no good of a man just like the owner states. He would have to be one of the reason why in those days you would not leave your screen door unlocked anymore. Even in the mist of an accident where one would believe that someone would be helpful and kind to the person or people in trouble but what the family got was not what they expected. They had the worst of luck to face criminals who were not good men and help the family out of the accident. Showing that a good man really is hard to find.

Clue in “Indian Camp” by Hemmingway

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After reading and analyzing the short story “Indian Camp” by Hemingway. One of the most appealing element to me was Hemingway’s narrator style. The story centers around a point of view from young Nick who have never been to an Indian camp. The style of storytelling Hemingway tells us here is through third-person limited omniscient. For example, “Nick watched his father’s hands scrubbing each other with the soap” (17). Here, we have third-person limited omniscient point of view. we don’t get much point of view from the Nick’s perspective. If it’s a first-person point of view from Nick’s then the Author would write something like this, “I watched my father scrubbing his hands each other with the soap”. The style of Hemingway tells us this story is through a very limited perspective. I think the author does not want us to go through all the details of what’s happening next. Hemingway wants to tell the story through his way by using the third-person narration.

“Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him” (16). Hemingway starts out in the second paragraph by telling the story from narrator’s perspective other than nick. This gives us clear clue of how the story structures through nick’s point of view but in very limited way. The limited omniscient really makes this story tedious with not much detail. If Hemingway told this story from a Nick’s third person omniscient for example, “The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making circle…he felt quite sure that he would never die” (19). Then Nick would detail how the sun came up from the hills, how the bass looked when it jumped from the water. There will be a lot of more details in the story that can make this story much more effective and comprehensive for the readers.

“Rip Van Winkle” Blog Clue

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“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker are two unique stories with different point of narration. In “ Every Use.” The narrator of the story, Mrs. Johnson (Mama) gives information about her life and the difference between their daughters. The narrator used first person narration to provide a unique experience about this story, reading and understating the story from the prospective of the narrator (Mama). “Rip Van Winkle” The story was written in the third person narration (omniscient). The narrator is not a character in the story. However, he provides and comments information of all the characters thought and actions. This story has layered narrators, the omniscient voice of the narrator present us with the first person report of the fictional historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, who has explore and recorded the events of Rip Van Winkle’s stories. The difference between third person and first person narration makes “ Rip Van Winkle” a different kind of reading experience form “Everyday Use” as a result of how the narrator from each story tries to portrait their work to the reader. For example, in “Everyday Use” as a reader you can only experience the story through the main character eyes, from one point of view in this case from Mrs. Johnson (Mama). Indeed, you won’t know anything about the other people or events that this character has not personally experience. However, in the story “Rip Van Winkle” the reader has a wide image of every character in the story. In other words, as a reader you will see and experience the events and conflicts from each character’s point of view, thoughts and feelings of that moment. As an example, “Snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open “ Take one or two of the other “ I said to Dee. But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber. “ You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.” (7) Clearly you can see the first person narration limits the narrator to one perspective. However if these quotes were told in the third person narration the reader will portrait a complete image of all the thoughts and feelings of each character (Dee, Maggie, Mama). Writing from a third person point of view, the narrator provides the reader a better understanding of the story.