One of the unique things about Jason Brown’s “Animal Stories” is the inclusion of animal and nature videos, watched by Jamie’s mother and others in her hospital room. The videos provide a bit of comic relief in the story of Jamie’s mother’s impending death, as well as something Mom can react to. She is continually…
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Animal Stories by Jason Brown – Setting
Brown wrote this story in the early 1990s, a period of great social and political change in the United States. For example, personal computers and everyday use of the Internet were becoming more commonplace. By the early 1990s, the number of deaths from AIDS began increasing at an alarming rate, and calls became louder for…
Animal Stories by Jason Brown – Literary Devices
Use of Time Brown freely switches back and forth between different years in the story, even within the same section. For example, one section begins with Jamie referring to the summer of 1977, when “we stayed inside and drew the shades.” A few paragraphs later, but still in the same section, he is back in…
Animal Stories by Jason Brown – Themes
Memory and Forgetting Both Jamie and his mother wrestle with their memories of the past in a way that almost minimizes present time. Although the scenes in the hospital are told in present tense, Jamie frames the story of his mother’s stay in the hospital as if it were being told as a memory. Near…
Animal Stories by Jason Brown – Characters
Alice Alice is a former girlfriend of Jamie’s, who once agreed to marry him if he would change. During the summer of 1977, Alice moves in with Jamie, Jamie’s mother, and Tom. According to Jamie, she has an IQ of 165 and, while they lived together in his mother’s house, she needed to have sex…
Animal Stories by Jason Brown – Summary
“Animal Stories” opens with Jamie rushing to the hospital because he has just found out that his mother has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He notes that he drives recklessly, which he gets from his mother. “Any man’s mother is a source of grief until she dies,” he says. Jamie arrives at the hospital…
Hamlet As a Tragic Hero – Revenge Tragedy
(Detmold addresses the question of why Hamlet delays taking revenge on Claudius by assessing his status as a tragic hero. According to the critic, a tragic hero has three prominent characteristics: (1) a will-power that surpasses that of average people, (2) an exceptionally intense power of feeling, and (3) and unusually high level of intelligence….
Hamlet – Critical Analysis
(This essay discusses imagery and symbolism in Hamlet, beginning with an examination of what he considers the most apparent image pattern in the play— disease. The critic suggests that images of disease are not associated with Hamlet himself, but a sense of infection surrounds both Claudius’s crime and guilt and Gertrude’s sin. Muir attributes Hamlet’s…
Hamlet – Psychological Analysis Essay
(This essay applies Sigmund Freud’s techniques of psychoanalysis to Hamlet’s character, asserting that the prince is afflicted with an Oedipus Complex. This psychological disorder involves the unconscious desire of a son to kill his father and take his place as the object of the mother’s love. According to the critic, Hamlet delays taking revenge on…
Hamlet – Historical Background – Setting
Children’s Acting Companies Hamlet speaks about children’s acting companies with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in act 2, scene 2, when they explain to him that the players who are visiting Elsinore have been forced to travel because of the popularity of the newly emerging children’s acting companies. In fact, beginning in 1598, after a decade of…