Truman Capote often drew on his Southern childhood in finding material for his fiction. He also frequently focused his stories on unconventional, strangely appealing women. ‘ ‘A Christmas Memory” is possibly the best example of a Capote story that exhibits both of these features. Capote described it as his favorite among his stories, and it…
Tag: Analysis
The Bear by William Faulkner: Analysis
William Faulkner is generally regarded as the most important writer to be produced by the American South. A native of Mississippi, Faulkner wrote about the land where he lived for most of his life. The great majority of Faulkner’s work is set in the fictional Mississippi county of Yoknapatawpha (which, in turn, is based on…
Raise The Red Lantern: Summary and Analysis
Summary: China in the 1920s. After her father’s death, 19-year-old Songlian is forced to marry Chen Zuoqian, the 50-year-old head of a powerful family. He already has three wives, each of them living in separate houses within his compound. The competition between the wives is fierce, as their master’s attention carries power, status and privilege….
The Red And The White (1967 Movie) – Summary and Analysis
Summary: It is the year 1919. The Reds and the Whites battle in the plains of Ukraine for the victory in the Russian Civil War, which came in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917. The movie’s action does not follow a main hero, or the causally connected events. Rather, viewers witness a series…
Black Cat, White Cat (1998 Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: The shifty Matko Destanov (Bajram Severdžan) is forced to marry off his teenage son Zare (Florijan Ajdini) to the midget sister of gangster Dadan Karambolo (Srd–an Todorovic´) in order to settle a debt, Dadan having diddled Matko on the heist of a trainload of smuggled oil. In love with waitress-cum-girl-next-door Ida (Branka Katic´), Zare…
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Albert Spica has commandeered ‘La Hollandais’, an exclusive restaurant where the chef, Richard Borst, creates elaborate cuisine. Albert dines there regularly with his gang of unruly associates and his wife, Georgina; he extorts protection money from Borst. During their visits to the restaurant, Georgina, bored and disgusted by her life with Spica, begins a…
The Conformist (1970 Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: Set in 1930s Fascist Italy, Il Conformista tells the story of Marcello Clerici’s desire for conformity. Sexually repressed Marcello is tormented by the memory of a homosexual encounter during his childhood with his family’s chauffeur Lino, whom he believes he killed after Lino attempted to seduce him. Having suppressed his homosexual leanings, believing them…
A Man Escaped – Summary – Analysis
Summary: A man involved in the French Resistance to German occupation during the Second World War, Lieutenant Fontaine, is captured and imprisoned in Fort Montluc in Lyon.1 He carefully and meticulously plans his escape, seeing the achievement of each stage along his journey towards freedom as a personal victory. When Jost, a young teenage prisoner,…
Like Water For Chocolate – Summary and Analysis
Summary: The film is set in rural Mexico near the border with Texas during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–20. It is ostensibly a romance, a tale of love thwarted by rigid tradition. Tita, the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, is prevented from marrying her true love, Pedro, because it is her destiny to care for…
A Clockwork Orange: Story Summary and Analysis
Story Summary: In A Clockwork Orange’s Britain, the thugs who roam the streets raping, pillaging and murdering at will are at once both the savages from whom the civilised need protection, and the protectors themselves. Alex’s psychotic droogs flip from outlaws to guardians of the establishment with the merest whiff of state power. Analysis: It…