Eudora Welty’s short story opens on a chilly December morning. An elderly African-American woman named Phoenix Jackson is making her way, slowly but surely, through the woods, tapping an umbrella on the ground in front of her as she walks. Her shoes are untied. While she taps along, she talks to the animals in the…
Tag: Summary
The Train From Rhodesia: Summary
A train is heading toward a small, rural station in Southern Africa. The area around the station is impoverished, as are the people who live there. In the station, the station-master, the vendors, and the children prepare for the train’s arrival. The train, from the white, considerably more wealthy area of Rhodesia, approaches the station….
The Swimmer by John Cheever: Summary
“The Swimmer” opens on a humorous note: it “was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, ‘I drank too much last night,’” the narrator says. It is a beautiful summer day, and a large white cloud “like a city seen from a distance” is on the horizon. Neddy Merrill, a slender and…
Fight Club: Story Summary, Analysis
Regarding Fight Club there are two camps: those who consider it a disturbing celebration of homoerotic brutality, and those who have actually seen it. Ostensibly, it’s a movie about the creation of a ‘fight club’, where guys beat the crap out of one another bare knuckled so they can feel real again. Fight Club is…
Dr. Strangelove: Summary & Analysis
The sheer audacity of attempting a dark comedy about nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War and only months after the assassination of President John Kennedy, would have assured Stanley Kubrick cult filmmaker status. When US General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) orders wing attack plan R into operation he sets planes on…
Down By Law (Movie): Summary, Analysis
Jim Jarmusch is one of the filmmakers whose entire body of work – Stranger than Paradise (1983), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) – has garnered a cult following. There is a distinctive ‘Jarmusch style’ running through his…
The Day The Clown Cried (1972): Summary & Analysis
What thread connects the varying projects elevated to ‘cult film’ status? There is no single definition to be sure, but you will appreciate the recurrence of exaggerated fascination developed by viewers for a specific film. At times this enormous interest is inversely proportional to the actual size of the audience. In other words: small audience…
Dawn Of The Dead (1978 Movie): Summary & Analysis
When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) is a low-budget classic, there is no disputing that. His second zombie feature Dawn of the Dead , however, is a bigger and more audacious film. Not exactly a sequel, Dawn of the Dead…
Sonny’s Blues – Summary
James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” opens as the narrator learns from a newspaper that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for dealing heroin. The narrator is taking the subway to his high-school teaching job. At the end of the school day, the “insular and mocking” laughter of his students reminds him that as youths he…
The Rocking Horse Winner – Summary
D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner is the story of a boy’ s gift for picking the winners in horse races. An omniscient narrator relates the tale of a boy whose family is always short of money. His mother is incapable of showing love and is obsessed with the status that material wealth can provide….