13-55-2-3

Modern American Literature: Rise of Realism

Choose one of the stories to apply feminist criticism to the reading. Identify the protagonist and antagonist and describe their relationship as it relates to the theme. How does the relationship to the foil, if there is one, reflect the theme? Identify whether the protagonist is round or flat, dynamic or static. Support your response with examples from the text.
 * Chopin’s “Story of and Hour” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”**

In the “Story of an hour” Louise loses her husband. He dies in a train wreck that burns her husband to a pile of ashes. Her sister Jennie and her husband’s friend Richards are afraid to tell her because of her heart condition. But they tell her as gently as they can. At first, she is to overcome with grief, and then she realizes how free she is without him. When as it turns out, he is alive and he comes home, he has a heart attack and dies. Louise is the protagonist. We see this because she was the person trying to be stopped. She is the main character. This is who the story is about. The story is about how she finally got her freedom. And the Antagonist is Jennie. Jennie is the antagonist because when Louise realized that she was free; Jennies took //that moment// to tell her that she is killing herself. It can’t be completely more than a coincidence, to most readers, but everything in this writing is put in places specially made by the author. The author wanted Jennie to come in at that moment. So, unknowingly, she (Jennie) took part in what the patriarch view is on women. Jennies is the complete opposite of Louise. So, the opposite bring out how Louise wants t o be free, while Jennie is happy where she is. So, this is also where the foil is. That said, Jennie in a flat character. That means that we only saw one side of her the entire story. That side was to protect her sister. But we saw more than one side from Louise. We saw that she was sad when her husband died, and then we saw that she became happy when she realized that she can be her own person. She was free to do as she pleased.

whoa -- where'd you get the "pile of ashes" bit? stick to the story. Sister is Josephine ... not Jennie. She has a heart attack, not him. It seems like you read this, but these mistakes are making me wonder ... Interesting interpretation that it is the sister who is the antagonist. I love your assertions that the author does nothing unintentionally. Your foil example seems very unclear to me. I need you to make sure that you have a solid grasp on the story -- it makes it really hard for me to assess how well you know these terms if you are applying them to parts of the story that didn't happen.

Select an example of imagery that creates the mood of the story? How does the mood of the setting reflect the character’s motivations driven by their id, ego, and superego?
 * Crane’s “Mystery of Heroism”**

In the short story //Mystery of heroism//, by Stephen Crane, the main character (Fred Collins) goes and gets water in the middle of a battle during the Civil war. The water is clear in the middle right by the house they were fighting at. He says that he was going to get the water, and no one believes that he will and pressures him into doing so. So, he goes to the captain and the Colonial to ask if it’s alright. They say he can if he wants to, and to get some for everyone as well. But he feels like maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. But he goes under more pressure from his peers. As he is going, he gets shot at by the enemy, of whom we never know. On his way back, a different captain, who’s dying, and stuck under his horse, wants some water. Fred ignores him at first, then goes back to give him some water. When he goes back to his peers, the bucket of water is empty. The story takes place in the middle of a battlefield. All around him there were many things to see, hear, smell and feel. He saw people with guns, and the dark uniforms of the soldiers. He saw the well with the water in it. He sees that there was a beautiful meadow that was destroyed by the battle the grass was torn up and dirt was everywhere as if it had been purposely taken out. He hears shells when he going to get the water. The sound is a loud sound. He feels the bucket at the well and the well itself. The bucket isn’t smooth, it’s a bit rough and the well has a bumpy fell to it. There were a lot of things that went along with how he chooses to do what he did. This is called motivation. His id wants to go and get water. Id is all about me, me, me. His superego wants to give the dying man the water. This is called doing the right thing. And his ego wants to find a balance. In the end he gets the water and helps the dying man. So he did all three.

How does the author indirectly characterize the protagonist through the use of dialect? What does this tell us about the character? How are they influenced by their id, ego, or superego? The short story //April showers// is about an upper middle young girl named Theodora. This girl wants to be a writer. But, since her mother is sick, she doesn’t have enough time to write without sacrificing her family. She turns in her manuscript and gets a letter saying that she was going to be published. But, when she sees the writing, it wasn’t in her name. When Theodora says, “Miss Sophy is a bitter pill!” she went out of her upper middle class standing. Middle class people back then made an insult seem like a complement. And she said ‘miss’ instead of ‘Ms’. No one said that. It was miss or Mrs. Her ego wants to write and this drove her to go to Boston and ask what was up and why was someone else’s story where hers was supposed to be. And her superego wants to do the right thing and take care of the family while the mother is sick. So, with her ego, she says that she will continue to write and when she is published, she will make up for it by buying the things that the family needs. The //Invalid’s Story// the narrator, never given a name, has to take his friends dead body to his parents in his hometown. But on the chaos of the train travel, the boxes mixed and he ended up with really bad smelling cheese and a box of guns. Then a man named Thompson get in and talks a lot about the bad smell. The worse the smell got he received a higher rank of the military. An example would be when he says, “Do you reckon we start the Genrul any?” He had had a southern swank in his words lie when he said Genrul. His ego wants to just push what he thinks is the body out of the box. And his superego knows that he has to bring his friends body to his parents and need to watch it. And his ego finds a balance between those two and he does by taking turn watching the body with his new friend.
 * Wharton’s “April Showers” and Twain’s “The Invalid’s Story”**