The Marchesa The Marchesa is an old woman who lives in a tiny villa attached to a garden. Her lot is the last remaining piece of undeveloped land in the quickly growing downtown area, and she is surrounded by high-rise buildings. She is a mysterious figure seldom seen in the neighborhood. Passersby and neighbors have…
Category: Literature
The Garden of Stubborn Cats – Summary
‘‘The Garden of Stubborn Cats’’ is one of a series of related stories in Marcovaldo, or The Seasons in the City , that detail the experiences of a poor worker named Marcovaldo and his family over the course of five years. Each of the twenty stories is set during one season of those five years,…
The Fence by Hamsad Ringkuti – Analysis
In ‘‘The Fence,’’ Rangkuti explores how artificial boundaries affect humans. In this simply written story, the author poses important and thought-provoking questions about fences— artificial boundaries built with the purpose of protecting something. Rangkuti questions whether a fence is truly protective or offers a false sense of security. He suggests that the principles of faith,…
The Fence by Hamsad Rangkuti – Setting
Indonesia as a Setting for Literature Indonesia is made up of over seventeen thousand islands that span the Pacific and Indian Ocean and bridge the continents of Asia and Australia. As such, it is the largest archipelago, or island chain, in the world. Sumatra, where ‘‘The Fence’’ is set, is one of the five main…
The Fence by Hamsad Rangkuti – Literary Devices
Allegory ‘‘The Fence’’ can be read as an allegory, a story with a moral, ethical, or religious lesson in which the characters represent things or abstract ideas. Mother and Father represent two opposing attitudes about society’s responsibility toward those who are different or less fortunate. One attitude is a clear ‘‘us and them’’ division between…
The Fence by Hamsad Rangkuti – Themes
‘‘Us and Them’’: Divisions Between People In this story, the fence built by the family is an actual barrier that divides people. In erecting a fence, Mother is saying to the vagrants, ‘‘This is my property. Keep off. You don’t belong here.’’ Before the fence is erected, the vagrants feel appreciative of the family. They…
The Fence by Hamsad Rangkuti – Characters
Father Father is a generous and kind soul. He sees no reason to keep vagrants off his property. He wants to share what he has, though he has very little. He objects to building a fence, but he is not very strong-willed. He allows Mother to convince him they need a fence in case they…
The Fence by Hamsad Rangkuti – Summary
The story begins with heavy rain, a common occurrence in Sumatra during the rainy season. Through the window, the Narrator spots an old man taking shelter under the eaves of the house. The old man is hunched over. Mother turns out the light and peeks through the curtain, trying to keep the old man from…
End of the Game – Analysis
‘‘End of the Game’’is a story about the end of childhood innocence and thereby an end to the rich imaginative, colorful world that the children live in. The reader meets the characters, Letitia, Holanda, and the Narrator as they are in transition between living almost exclusively in their childhood world of fantasy and having to…
End of the Game – Setting
When ‘‘End of the Game’’ was published, Cortazar lived in Paris, where he enjoyed a rich cultural life among other writers and artists. He had left his native Argentina in 1951, five years after Juan Domingo Peron became president of Argentina for the first time. In 1944, while Cortazar was teaching at the University of…