Microtheme Author Points and Sample Papers

(2008)

Short Stories and Student Choices

ROMANTICS Washington Irving—“Rip Van Winkle” Ryan Banning Washington Irving found in the local customs, traditions, folklore, and legends of English life a different kind of history from the wars and conquests he had often mocked.” For example, in the story of Rip Van Winkle, Nathaniel Hawthorne —“The Minister’s Black Veil” Nick Sanchez Hawthorne’s works frequently focus upon the darker side of human nature. Many of his stories are set against the rather grim background of Puritan New England. His ancestors had helped shape that society, and one of his forefathers, Colonel John Hathorne, had been a judge during the infamous Salem witchcraft trials. Hawthorne characterized his writing as "romantic," but to him the term means confronting reality rather than escaping from it. Morality and redemption are themes that run through virtually everything he wrote. Mark Twain —“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” Greg Cejas Local color is captured by including the customs, dress, speech, and other local differences. For example, although Twain himself serves as the narrator of this selection, the story of “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is recounted by a storyteller, Simon Wheeler, one of Twain’s acquaintances in the mining camp, thus giving Twain the ability to interject regional dialect into the story. James Fennimore Cooper: from “The Prairie” Matt Scarry Throughout James Fenimore Cooper’s Leathterstocking Tales, the setting plays a vital role. The novels portray the life of Natty Bumppo, a character molded by the wilderness. During Bumppo’s lifetime the American wilderness is being eroded by the westward expansion of civilization. Bumppo continually moves westward to escape the growth of society. Set on the fringes of the constantly moving frontier, the novels explore the effects of expansion on the American wilderness and people. REALISTS O’Henry— “The Gift of the Magi” Earnest Carter O’Henry often chose to translate tragedy or misfortune into an emphasized regard and tenderness for the unlucky or the underdog. He never cared for the so-called higher classes, but preferred to cull his characters, and his sympathies, from watching ordinary people on the streets and in the shops and cafes. This perspective on the world around him is highly visible in "The Gift of the Magi," where, to enforce his quasi-religious message, he counterpoints the elements of love and caring with those of poverty and sacrifice.” Rhona E. Zaid Jack London—“To Build a Fire” Brian Haenchen Many of London's best short stories and novels depict a person's struggle for survival against the powerful forces of Nature. For example, "To Build a Fire," tells the story of a man's fight to survive the harsh cold of the Alaskan winter." The man underestimates the cold, when at the very outset of his journey, he foolishly believes "the cold doesn't matter. Sherwood Anderson—“Adventure” Brian Schaper Anderson presents a different portrait of small-town life that is strikingly different from those portraits presented in mostearlier works of literature. He captures the sense of isolation and despair hidden beneath the surface of the characters' seemingly uneventful lives. THE LOST GENERATION Ernest Hemingway — "A Soldier’s Home" Kevin Kammien Using a concise, direct style , Ernest Hemingway wrote about peoples' struggles to maintain a sense of dignity while living in a seemingly hostile and confusing world. For example, in the short story, "A Soldier’s Home," Hemingway captures the growing sense of uncertainty, disjointedness, and disillusionment of soldiers returning home post World War I. F. Scott Fitzgerald —“Winter Dreams” T. Earle In his short stories and novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald captured both the gaiety and the emptiness of the time. For example, in "Winter Dreams" F. Scott Fitzgerald reveals an important aspect of Dexter Green's personality directly, when he comments that Dexter "wanted not association with glittering things and glittering people—he wanted the glittering things themselves." For Dexter, Judy Jones becomes the ultimate “glittering” ideal and obsession. Thomas Wolf—"The Far and the Near" Drew Smegner "The Far and the Near" details the story of a railroad engineer in the 1930s who passes a certain cottage every day for more than twenty years, waving to the women who live there but never actually meeting them or seeing them up close. Upon his retirement, he goes to see the women, but they treat him badly and destroy the idyllic vision that he has built up around them. Within its few pages, Wolfe's short story emphasizes the potentially devastating effects on a person who is forced to confront the reality behind a vision. CITY LIFE Ring Lardner —“Haircut” Will Behrens “The real meaning of "Haircut" is conveyed as the reader begins to understand the situation in the small town as told, but not understood, by the barber” (Roger Geimer, Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Salem Press, Inc., 1986) Raymond Chandler —"Nevada Gas". Or —focus on one event in The Big Sleep Jake Schneider “The case of "Nevada Gas".. is a chilling view of life in the amoral twentieth century. Unlike Raymond Chandler's later famous creation, the knightly Philip Marlowe, Johnny DeRuse is not interested in seeing that justice triumphs or in helping people” (James Baird, Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Salem Press, Inc., 1986) Alternate Criticism: for any story Philip Marlowe is at the center of the action, as he is in all seven of Chandler’s detective novels. Chandler said, in “The Simple Art of Murder” that “a fictional private eye should be a kind of knight amid the grim decay of the modern city, a conscientious man who tries to right the wrongs of society.” Dashiel Hammett—focus on one event in The Maltese Falcon Thomas Kerans In a discussion of Dashiell Hammett’s character Sam Spade in Critical Survey of Long Fiction, one of the editors states, “Tough-minded if occasionally softhearted, [Sam Spade is a] professional detective who remains true to [his] personal code of honor and skeptical with regard to everything and everyone else Langston Hughes—“ Feet Live Their Own Life” Michael Hilgemen By eloquently chronicling the heritage of the black people and expressing their pride and determination, Hughes provided his people with a link to their cultural roots and a promise for a better future. For example, in a series of newspaper sketches about a character named Simple, Hughes recreates the voice and view-points of the young, urban black America of the Twenties and Thirties. Richard Wright—“Big Black Good Man” Stephen Zaegel Richard Wright was one of the first writers to portray—often in graphic, brutal accounts—the dehumanizing effects of racism on African Americans. His stories usually center on alienated and impoverished black men who, denied freedom and personal identity, lash out against society Mickey Spillane: I, the Jury Michael McDonald Spillane is best-known for his early novels, which reflect the gestalt of the Cold War in the U.S., and for his unabashed self-promotion, which made him a public figure. Reviewers deplored I, the Jury (1947) for its "vicious … glorification of force, cruelty, and extra-legal methods," not to mention sexual stereotyping of women and violence against them. However, as scholar Frederic D. Schwarz has written, the novel is also one of the first signs of "the darker side of postwar America." POST WORLD WAR II Kurt Vonnegut—"Harrison Bergeron” Nick Marlo In much of his work, including the story "Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut uses the techniques of science fiction and social satire to take a moral stand. Flannery O’Connor—“A Good Man is Hard to Find” Nick Pereira In O’Connor’s exaggerated, tragic, and at times shockingly violent tales, she forces us to confront such human faults as hypocrisy, insensitivity, self-centeredness, and prejudice. 1960 — PRESENT Sam Shepard—“The Self-Made Man” or “The Real Gaby Hayes” Patrick Kelly In his criticism of Sam Shepard’s The Buried Child, Richard Gilman says, “The family is permanently altered by their secret, which becomes a growing moral cancer to them, leaving each impotent in their own way.” Shepard often depicts dysfunctional families struggling with destructive secrets. Tim O’Brien—“The Things They Carried” Chad Vessell A major theme that this story explores is the initiation of young men in wartime, when youths must become men. Pranksters must become killers, dreamers must become realists—or someone dies. The world of the intellect (Lieutenant Cross is a college graduate, Martha’s letters express her admiration for Geoffrey Chaucer and Virginia Woolf) is of little relevance here; neither is romance or idealism. Courage becomes a concept without meaning…The trick is to survive. Essay by: Joanne McCarthy Joyce Carol Oates—“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” Tim Gerringer Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, (1974), considered by many to be her best work, concern themes of violence and abuse between the sexes. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," for instance, tells of the sexual awakening of a romantic girl by a mysterious man, Alfred Friend. John Updike—"A & P" Ed Ignaczak In his short stories and novels, John Updike vividly captures the essence of life in contemporary America. For example, at first glance, John Updike's short story "A & P" seems to be another coming-of-age piece. But a deeper look reveals the many ways in which the A & P grocery store can be viewed as a generally negative microcosm of 1960s North American society. Through the store and the people, Updike paints a picture of an oppressively conservative, narrow-minded system based both on policy over people and on class consciousness, as well as actions taken against such a system. Larry McMurtry—from Lonesome Dove Robert Jackson In his work Larry McMurty captures the changing flavor of life in the American West. For example, in this selection (from Lonesome Dove) the characters are forced to cope with extremely unpleasant conditions caused by the climate as they attempt to take on the new challenge of driving cattle across the country to market. Special Topics H.P. Lovecraft—“The Dunwich Horror” Jack Wojcicki “All of my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race, who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this Earth again.” H. P. Lovecraft Ray Bradbury—“Night Journey” Dan Gunn Bradbury’s tales of horror and the supernatural feature ordinary people who stumble upon the fantastic in the course of their mundane lives. International James Joyce (Irish)—“Araby” Kyle Coggins James Joyce’s “Araby” is a story of the loss of innocence and the frustration of first love. The young boy’s exaggerated expectations about the emotional rewards of his devotion to the little girl are cruelly deflated. He interprets the disappointing circumstances of his journey as a sign of the hollowness of the ideals with which he undertook that quest. He thus connects the frivolous banter among the young people and his own earlier brief conversation with Mangan’s sister and thinks that he has perceived the banal reality behind the romantic image. Yet his perceptions in each case are unreliable: His immaturity causes him to overreact in each direction. The story, then, shows that the temptations to both the romantic inflation and to the cynical devaluation of experience are but two sides of the same false coin. Franz Kafka—--"A Hunger Artist" Thomas Spearing "A Hunger Artist" explores the familiar Kafka themes of death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure, and the corruption of human relationships.

Student Examples--2007

"Truly American: Woody Guthrie the Voice of Dustbowl" This land is your land this land is my land From California to the New York Island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me. These are the words of the famous folk singer Woody Guthrie. Raised on the dusty plains of Oklahoma, Guthrie believed that the true Americans were the farmers, field workers, and laborers, much like himself, who made up the foundations of the country. American democracy had been devised so that these hardworking men and women could have decent lives and enjoy the vast beauty and freedoms the United States has to offer. Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” is an anthem of the American working class—a personalized journey across America, told in the first person by a witness to America’s enduring fight against oppressive circumstances. Folk music critic Manfred Helfert said of the songs of Woody Guthrie, “There is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit.” Woody Guthrie wrote the famous American folk song “This Land is Your Land” amidst America’s darkest hour, the Great Depression. In this song, Guthrie expresses ability of the average American farmer, downtrodden by economic decline, to endure and survive. In Guthrie’s eyes, the farmer’s fight against the oppression of poverty and depression can only be won when the farmer has realized that sacred national rite of owning a piece of the American countryside, can provide for himself, and is truly once again a part of the nation. Throughout the song “This Land is Your Land,” Guthrie’s words resonate with a single theme: How can these men be truly satisfied, indeed, be truly American if they cannot lay claim to a single acre of the vast and shining nation they call “home”? Woody Guthrie’s proclamation that “this land was made for you and me” is an incarnation of the call and desire to own land and to survive voiced by the American farmer—the same American farmer on whom the nation’s economy was first built: on wheat to a starving Europe, on cotton to clothe the world, on John Rolfe’s first tobacco cash crop. In the early years of American democracy the right to vote was only extended to American landowners. Owning a piece of land was a matter of pride, of status, and even in some instances a religious calling. Through the power of freedom and superior American ideals and democracy Manifest Destiny swept over the nation and God carried the American farmers from the Atlantic shores of New York to the Pacific streams of California. Now this same land that had been promised to them by God was being ripped from their calloused fingers. The beautiful diamond deserts, golden valleys, and redwood forests belonged to these first American farmers both in the wars that kept the nation free and as they tilled and worked the land. The land became an extension of these men; and, likewise, they in a sense became part of the land. Contemporary author John Steinbeck wrote on the farmer’s point of view: It’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it. . . . If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it’s part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he’s big with his property. That is so. Guthrie wrote of the time:   As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."   As the Great Depression trudged on through the 1930s, the American farm economy fell to pieces. Farmers in the South and Midwest found themselves unable to produce any sustainable crops. Even farmers with wholesome harvests found themselves homeless as mortgages rose and the prices of many farm traditionally profitable agricultural products came crashing down to nearly fifty percent of the previous value. Farmers were forcibly removed from the land that they had loved and worked for so many years. “No Trespassing” signs kept these loyal Americans off the property that they had maintained, had fought for, and had belonged to them, their fathers, and perhaps even their fathers’ fathers—the ultimate sting of oppression. Guthrie wrote of these seemingly God-forsaken farmers traversing the countryside living on government assistance:     In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?   These farmers, desolate and hopeless, grasped out for God and to the government to provide for them in their fight to survive and endure the terrible woes of the Great Depression and restore their pride. Without their land they felt a loss of that distinctly American spirit of independence and self-reliance—a loss of self, a loss of value, a loss of God, and a loss of their American pride. With nothing left to hold on to, many of these poor Americans lost faith even in the almighty American democracy which had expanded the nation to its vaunted majesty. Driven off their land and into relief offices and onto welfare and government assistance merely to survive, poor Americans made a drastic turn towards socialism in their cry for justice and agricultural reform. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, realizing the dependency of the United States market upon the American farmer, initiated action to end the oppression of poverty sweeping the nation by pulling farmers out of the relief office and restoring the farmers to their land and dignity by means of such congressional acts as the Agricultural Adjustment Act and farm mortgage refinancing in the late 1930s. The fight against economic decline and depression would not end until land had been put back into the hands of true Americans and America had once again become united in its cause to maintain freedom and democracy in a second world war.

Student Examples--2006

“In Another Country” The discussion about grammar between the narrator and the major is a good example of “a young man confronting the world, growing up, and developing a code”. In the story, the young man, or the narrator, and the major spend much time in the machines at the hospital. They talk to each other in Italian and the major compliments the narrator, who is an American, on how he speaks the language. But when the major introduces the narrator to grammar, he finds the language much more difficult. The American narrator is confronting the world in a sense that he is trying to learn an unfamiliar language in a foreign land. At first, he is naive and believes that speaking Italian is simple. “One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say.” This statement reflects how little the narrator knew about the language and how much he needs to learn, not just about Italian but life in general. In the story, it is the major who possesses the code of ethics. He introduces the narrator to the code of grammar, forcing him to grow up. The major also shows the narrator how to act by going to the hospital everyday, even though he knew the machines were worthless. Later in the story, the major gives the narrator advice on getting married and on how the death of a loved one can be devastating. Eventually in the grammar discussion, the narrator develops his own code of how to speak Italian illustrated by when he says, “… soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind.” In conclusion, the grammar discussion is a good example of Hemingway’s theme of “a young man confronting the world, growing up, and developing a code.” Eventually, the narrator develops a code of grammar, learning from the major. This is similar to several other occasions in the story in which the narrator learns from the major. “In Another Country” parallels Hemingway’s other works in the sense that it contains a character who has a code of ethics that the other characters can learn from. The narrator starts out young and naïve, but by the end of the story he has grown up considerably and starts to develop his own code from the major.

 

Student Examples--2005

“Capturing the Dream: Langston Hughes” Langston Hughes was best known for lyric poetry whose main theme served as commentary for African-American race relations and culture. In The American Experience, an introduction to Langston Hughes states, “By eloquently chronicling the heritage of the black people and expressing their pride and determination, Hughes provided his people with a link to their cultural roots and a promise for a better future.” In his work, Hughes constantly reminds African-Americans that it is their heritage that has been such a pivotal part in United States history and will continue to remain beautiful through the oppression from the past and present. By boldly stating the facts, without reservation, he has attempted to create a more positive outlook for tomorrow in the eyes of his people. Certainly in the lifetime of Hughes, before his life, there has been much doubt in what the future holds for a person of color in America. By bringing dignity to the culture and past of African-Americans, Hughes brought pride through words in the midst of anger and prejudice in a time where his people could have easily folded to the pressure of being different. Numerous poems from Hughes speak of the topic of African-American history and pride in their heritage. His short poem, I am Negro, powerfully embraces the subject of black history while emphasizing the dignity in the roots of Africa. In the poem he states, I am Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa. I’ve been a slave: Caesar told me to keep his door-step clean. I brushed the boots of Washington The symbolism in “black as night is black,” connects the beauty of a black person to the beauty of a starry, black night. The depths of Africa, be it dark and confined, just as the history of Africans, hold an outlasting beauty which both bring out. The role of slave, which the color of ones skin has held captive for centuries, means much more than the derogatory term surrounded by hate and prejudice. He promotes the dignity, although an unjust role, in being a slave. The slave was part of the Caesars great Empire and now carries on an important role in America. The constant reminder which Hughes reinforces, is that, his people have a history of being a part of big things, which they should pride themselves in, but at the same time have greater aspirations. Continuing the roles of black people and history, Hughes concludes with that of the victim. It is evident that he is not trying to receive sympathy for any of the wrongdoings, but rather giving a basic chronicle of the past and present. These facts of history carry anger but also pride. Hughes doesn’t encourage people to regret being a victim but rather accept the history with a clear conscious and hope for a better tomorrow. I’ve been a victim: The Belgian cut off my hands in the Congo. They lynch me still in Mississippi. I am Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa. The injustice of being the victim has carried on for centuries and will continue. As with all aspects of history, Hughes simply promotes that gaiety through these trying times will only push the pain away more easily. If a Negro continues to dwell on the fact that their ancestors lived in a world of mistreatment, then tensions can only rise and things get worse. By proclaiming these events as part of the pride in their history, Hughes boldly lays their roots in words while demonstrating how far his people have come over the years. The situation was still bad when the poem was written but steps had been taken for equality and a brighter tomorrow. In I am Negro, Hughes has made apparent to his people that their history touches their lives as well as the rest of the world. This link to their past creates a sense of unity in the beauty of the history and culture of the Negro. The depth of the roots of Africa coincides with the heritage of black people. The richness, darkness, and beauty of the two have been essential to the history of the world. The connection of the two, along with the underlying facts, reassures his people of their importance in society. Through the hardships pride urges strength for his people, as light is being shed on the darkness of African American history by Langston Hughes.