Narrative Form Given that the bulk of Yamamoto’s story is about the letters written between Alden and Emiko, “The Eskimo Connection” is written almost as an epistle—a writing form that presents letters written to someone or written between two or more people. (According to one of the letters, Alden has paraphrased the biblical epistles of…
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The Eskimo Connection – Themes
Loneliness In “The Eskimo Connection” both Alden and Emiko are victims of loneliness, although in different ways. Emiko’s husband is dead, and she describes herself in terms of what she has lost: her husband and her poetry. As “an aging Nisei widow in Los Angeles with several children, three still at home, whose main avocation…
The Eskimo Connection – Characters
Emiko Toyama In the story “The Eskimo Connection,” Emiko is a Nisei poet and a widow living in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Emiko remembers living in one of the internment/relocation camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. Emiko receives a letter from a young Eskimo prisoner, Alden, asking her to critique his essay….
The Eskimo Connection – Summary
1975 “The Eskimo Connection” begins in the late winter of 1975, when Emiko Toyama, a Nisei poet and widow living in Los Angeles, receives a letter from a young Eskimo prisoner-patient at a federal penitentiary in the Midwest. Alden Ryan Walunga has read one of Emiko’s poems in an old AsianAmerican magazine and wants her…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Analysis
Daphne du Maurier’s short story, or novella, “Don’t Look Now” is a tale of the supernatural, full of mysterious premonitions, blind soothsayers, and messages from the next life. Critics refer to it as a fine example of contemporary romantic horror writing, and the film made from the story sent chills up the spines of many…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Setting
Venice Venice is an ancient seaport city in northeastern Italy, famed for its beautiful buildings and art and considered one of the most romantic cities in the world. It is a favorite destination of honeymooners and lovers. The city covers more than one hundred islands separated by 177 canals. The Grand Canal, on which John…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Literary Devices
Foreshadowing Almost mimicking the story’s visions and premonitions, du Maurier has filled the narrative with moments that point to some future event. She uses foreshadowing to indicate that trouble is coming soon, such as when John sees what he thinks is a small child wearing a hooded jacket fleeing danger through the streets and jumping…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Themes
The Supernatural The story is, at its core, a tale about seeing and talking with the dead, as well as about psychic visions and premonitions. Laura and John have lost their daughter but meet up with a blind woman who has visions of the dead child and can hear her warnings to her father. John’s…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Characters
The Blind Twin Sister The blind twin sister appears with her sighted twin sister at the restaurant where Laura and John are having lunch in Torcello, Italy, near Venice. She is from Edinburgh, has a shock of white hair, and often stares toward John as though she sees him. John guesses that she is in…
Don’t Look Now – Daphne du Maurier – Summary
In Torcello ”Don’t Look Now,” opens with John, a British tourist in a small town outside of Venice, noticing two elderly twin sisters sitting at a nearby table. He and Laura, his wife, create wild scenarios to describe the sisters and their possible business in Torcello. The couple joke like this for some time, giving…