In a partial and disorganized set of notes for an essay for her English class at a private school, a sixteen-year-old girl tells the story of a set of events that lead her to a house of correction and to an opportunity to contemplate her life and begin over again. Though the details are not…
Tag: Short Stories
The Grand Inquisitor – Analysis
The central conflict in “The Grand Inquisitor” is between the Inquisitor himself and his prisoner, Jesus. On the surface, it is a one-sided battle. The Inquisitor does literally all the talking, making accusation after accusation while Jesus refuses to defend himself. Perhaps “refuses” is the wrong word, for it implies a level of engagement that…
The Grand Inquisitor – Setting
The Russian Empire Russia in the 1860s and 1870s was in a great upheaval. Its ruler, Tsar Alexander II, had negotiated the end of the Crimean War in 1856, ending four years of conflict between Russia and an alliance comprising England, France, Sardinia and Turkey. Russia, at the time one of the greatest powers in…
The Grand Inquisitor – Literary Devices
Narrator Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when reading “The Grand Inquisitor” is that the long speech is spoken by a character in a novel. It should be obvious, but it is easy to forget, that this is not an argumentative essay by Dostoevsky, in which the ideas expressed can be traced…
The Grand Inquisitor – Themes
God and Religion The fundamental tension in “The Grand Inquisitor” is between God, in the form of Jesus, and religion, in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Grand Inquisitor, the two cannot coexist in the modern world; one must give way because they require different things from their followers. Jesus refused…
The Grand Inquisitor – Characters
Alyosha Alyosha listens to Ivan reciting the legend of the Grand Inquisitor, and twice interrupts the narrative to ask questions. He speaks only eight sentences in the story—all questions—but gives Ivan and Dostoevsky opportunities to explain and interpret for the reader. The Cardinal See The Grand Inquisitor The Grand Inquisitor The Grand Inquisitor, a ninety-year-old…
The Grand Inquisitor – Summary
“The Grand Inquisitor” begins with a set of opening quotation marks. An unidentified speaker says, “Fifteen centuries have passed since He promised to come in His glory, fifteen centuries since His prophet wrote, ‘Behold, I come quickly.’” The uppercase “H” in the word “He” is used conventionally to indicate that “He” is the Christian God;…
The Garden Party – Analysis – Essay
Most criticism of Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party” concentrates on the story as a truncated bildungsroman—a story of the growth and maturity of a young idealistic character. Critics such as Daniel S. Taylor in “Crashing the Garden Party: A Dream, A Wakening,” for example, see Laura’s initiation as a passage from the “dream…
The Garden Party – Setting
Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” was written in 1922, during the period between the two world wars. In many ways it reflects the context of its creation. The 1920s saw enormous political and social disturbance throughout Europe. In the new Soviet Union, for example, the Marxist revolution was nearing completion. The Soviet Union’s powerful leader,…
The Garden Party – Literary Devices
Style Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Garden Party” employs a style that is distinctly modern in its use of impressionistic detail and stream-of-consciousness narrative method. These stylistic features also characterize the works of Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, and other innovative writers of the 1920s and 1930s. The narrative begins in ‘ ‘the middle of things”—…