Thursday, June 7, 2012

A Rose for Emily, A Pair of Tickets, Cathedral

A Rose to Emily was a really bizarre story. I'm not really sure what the point of the story was. Yes, as readers we find out at the end that Emily slept next to Homer Barron's dead body, whom she killed by poisoning, but I am not sure what the moral of the story is. It is kind of creepy, although it does keep the reader wondering what is going to happen with all of the bizarre occurrences.
A "Pair of Tickets" involves much pathos. Amy Tan uses much emotional appeal to draw her readers in. The flashback of her visit to China reveals how much emotion is involved with her visit, especially from her father's tearful reactions and and meeting her twin sisters. The reader can't help but be sad when she speaks of her mother, and happy when she meets her sisters. Something about the way Amy Tan writes this short story is very captivating.
Cathedral also uses simple diction, similar to "A & P ." The narrator is also very blunt bout his opinions toward the blind man. For example he says "A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too." Although this greatly emphasizes the change that takes place in the end of the story as the husband chooses not to open his eyes. The reader is well aware that the husband is feeling some emotional connection to Robert, the blind man. When referring back to the husband's statement about Robert being in his house, the change is even more clear. From not wanting anything to do with the man, it is almost as if he appreciates him by the end of the story. I think the moral of this story is that no matter who or what we are, blind, deaf, short, tall, blonde, brunette, man or woman, we all are humans that require friendship, love, and companionship.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Conner! I agree with you that "A Rose for Emily" was a very bizarre story and I too couldn't quite figure out what the moral of it was. In Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets", she did a great job of showing both happiness and sadness as you pointed out. There were both extreme highs, like when the father saw his aunt and the three sisters finally met, and extreme lows like when the mother dies shortly before the twin sisters send a letter to her, and the part of the story where the narrator tells us why the twins were abandoned. In "A & P" you can't help but commend Sam for standing up to his boss for embarrassing the three girls like that but feel bad for him when he runs outside to find that the girls are gone. And probably my favorite of the four readings for this week was "Cathedral". In this short story you see a drastic change in the husbands attitude towards the blind man from the beginning to the end of the story. Towards the end of the story I got the sense that the husband had come to accept the blind man and at the end I believe that they may have even become friends themselves.

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