Loss Hawthorne’s story illustrates how a person’s response to death and loss reveals true character. Both women mourn the loss of their husbands. However, Mary’s “mild, quiet, yet not feeble character” and her faith enable her to endure the emotional torment of her husband’s death with more equanimity than Margaret. She prepares a meal and…
Tag: Themes
Winter Dreams by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Themes
Success Dexter’s vision of success involves a pursuit of the American dream of wealth and status. As Fitzgerald traces Dexter’s movement toward this goal, he becomes, in essence, a social historian of his generation, chronicling the dreams of the men and women of the 1920s who saw unlimited opportunities in the new century. Even as…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Themes
Rivalry The story pits an aging Barbadian grandmother against her youthful American granddaughter. Upon their first meeting, the two sense a similarity in each other that far outweighs the differences presented by the seventy years between them. Most importantly, each has a stubborn strength of will and a confidence that her way of regarding the…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Themes
Communication and Miscommunication Nabokov’s France is a place where attempts at communication routinely break down. For example, when the narrator and his wife write to her uncle in New York, they receive no reply. After finding his wife (and the train) gone at Faugeres, the narrator engages in a “nightmare struggle with the telephone” trying…
The Replacement by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Themes
Knowledge The main theme in “The Replacement” focuses on the attainment of knowledge. The story is about how people perceive the world and how they often become confused when they try to interpret it. Robbe-Grillet reveals this theme through the interweaving of three plot lines. The central story, that of the interaction between the teacher…
The Interlopers by Saki: Themes
Enmity Ulrich and Georg are enemies who have brought a family feud over a piece of forestland to a murderous point. Since the original court settlement, which ostensibly ended the dispute, members of both families have participated in ‘ ‘poaching affrays and similar scandals.” Instead of dissipating over the years, the feud has strengthened throughout…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Themes
Individual versus Machine Any number of critics have noted that one of Ellison’s favorite themes is the relationship between humans and the machines they create. Certainly, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” explores what happens when people create machines “because our time was badly spent.” Like other dystopian writers of the 1950s and…
How to Tell a True War Story: Themes
Memory and Reminiscence Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is written by a Vietnam War veteran, and because Tim O’Brien has chosen to create a narrator with the same name as his own, mosl readers want to believe that the stories O’Brien tells are true and actually happened to him. There are several…
The Harvest by Tomas Rivera: Themes
Materialism The young boys who speculate about Don Trine have a limited, materialistic vision of life. Although they work on the land, they have no real connection to it. This may be understandable since they are migrant workers often on the move, but it is clear that they can conceive value only in terms of…
The Green Leaves by Grace Ogot: Themes
Traditional Life versus Modernization The major conflict of the story revolves around the traditional ways of Nyagar’s clan as represented by the clan leader, Olielo, and by Nyamundhe, both of whom defy the condescending views of the European policeman who epitomizes the rational, modern subject in his need to charge one individual with the murder…