Contemporary writers arrive on the literary scene with a force of history behind them. They arrive after major literary movements and eras and are sometimes compared to the romantics, the humanists, the southern school, or the Victorians. Sometimes a writer fits neatly into a category or the melding of a few categories. Anne Tyler, in…
Tag: Anne Tyler
Average Waves in Unprotected Waters – Essay
Like most of her short stories, Anne Tyler’s ‘‘Average Waves in Unprotected Waters’’ has been largely ignored by literary critics. Though very little has been written about the text, the story does encapsulate the Tyler reading experience as it focuses on themes of family, self-discovery, and the elevation of the ordinary to writers’ material. Broad…
Average Waves in Unprotected Waters – Setting
When ‘‘Average Waves in Unprotected Waters’’ appeared in the New Yorker in the winter of 1977, it arrived in a climate of economic instability and social sobriety. The 1970s, the post-Vietnam years in America, were marked by feelings of disillusionment. Working-class people lost faith in government, believing that their vote would not make a difference,…
Average Waves in Unprotected Waters – Summary
‘‘Average Waves in Unprotected Waters’’ begins at first light on the day Bet Blevins, the story’s protagonist, is to institutionalize her mentally handicapped son, Arnold. At the age of nine, Arnold has become too difficult for Bet to manage. In the shabby, one-room apartment, Bet wonders, as she prepares Arnold’s things and dresses him one…
With All Flags Flying – Analysis
Anne Tyler’s popular short story ‘‘With All Flags Flying’’ gracefully explores a number of themes in the tale of eighty-two-year-old Mr. Carpenter. One major idea, underscored by symbolism found in the story, is the concept of freedom and the need to be as independent as possible. Carpenter wants to be as free and independent at…
With All Flags Flying – Setting
Changes in American Society In The Early 1970s, Americanswerestilldealingwith and reeling from the massive social changes of the revolutionary 1960s. The rise of the counterculture in the 1960s, for example, led to many aspects of this movement, such as questioning authority and tradition, being incorporated into mainstream American society in the 1970s. The administration of…
With All Flags Flying – Literary Devices
Setting The setting is the time, place, and culture in which the narrative’s action takes place. In ‘‘With All Flags Flying,’’ the setting is contemporary time (the early 1970s) in Baltimore and Baltimore County. Many of Tyler’s works take place in Baltimore, where the author has made her home for many years. She draws on…
With All Flags Flying – Themes
Aging One of the primary themes in ‘‘With All Flags Flying’’ is aging and issues related to the elderly. Carpenter is an eighty-two-year-old widower who has lived alone in a two-room house since his wife’s death. For many years he has had a plan for how he wants to spend the end of his life….
With All Flags Flying – Characters
Mr. Carpenter Mr. Carpenter is an eighty-two-year-old widower who is focused on controlling how he spends his last days. Because he is feeling weaker and believes that he can no longer live alone in his modest two-room home in Baltimore County, he decides to move in with his daughter Clara while waiting for a spot…
With All Flags Flying – Summary
As ‘‘With All Flags Flying’’ opens, an eighty-two-year-old man named Mr. Carpenter lives alone in a two-room house located on the last bit of farm property he owns near a superhighway in Baltimore County. He has felt weaker recently and household chores have been neglected. He has come to the conclusion that he can no…