Clearly, “Straight Pool” by John O’Hara can be interpreted in two distinct ways. I can see why you believe that we should feel sympathetic for Mae, but I think you need to see it from my point of view. At first I thought Mae was just a sad wife in a bad relationship, but as I read on I realized that Mae is a manipulative woman. I need you to know that she is a very devious and scheming wife. Mae’s husband, the narrator in this story, sees that he is having problems with his wife. He explains all of Mae’s madness to his friend, Jack McMorrow at the pool hall. The husband explains how Mae always tells him to not talk to Jack about Mae and how she acts weird when it comes to him leaving the house. Since Mae is so fixated on Jack and schemes …show more content…
I believe that all she wants is to get her husband to leave so that she can be with Jack. Her first idea is to act crazy and cry; however, there are some suspicions when it comes to Mae crying in front of her husband. Mae surprisingly stops crying when her husband says he is leaving the house: “At least I don’t think I am, but Mae gets these crying spells, and honest to God, I can’t stay in the house another minute. And then if I say I’m going out, even if it’s only for a pack of cigarettes, why, she suddenly all of a sudden stops crying and sits there looking at me, not saying a word, and it’s worse than her crying” (32). First of all, it seems to me that Mae can turn her crying on and off very quickly. Second, she stops crying when her husband leaves, which I interpret as being very suspicious. You might think of the end of her crying as her simply being mad at her husband for leaving, but I think of it as Mae wanting her husband to feel comfortable when he is gone. If all she does is cry when he is home, he is eventually going to want to leave the house, which is exactly what Mae wants. If he thinks his wife is fine when she is home alone and he won’t have to deal with her crying, then he will keep
Mae Braddock loved her husband very much, rich or poor she wanted no one other than James J. Braddock. They had three children, James, Howard and Rosemarie. When sickness threatened one of their children’s life, Mae decided to send their kids away to a home where she thought they would be safer. A disappointed and defeated Jim disagreed with Mae’s decision and
3. a- The letters from Walters mother is where she told Walter the truth. When she dropped him off she lied and said she was going court reporting school. Days latter Mae send Walter a letter telling him where she really is and what is going on.
American writer Joyce Carol Oates is an expository writer that provides a successful informative piece about the dangers of boxing. This sport has been shadowed by events that influence athletes to prolong their careers with dangerous intuitions. In “The Cruelest Sport,” Oates implements exposition, narration, modes, and tone to effectively persuade her audience of the threats boxing impose.
Separate Ways” by Ichiyo Higuchi takes place during the westernization in Japan. In the story, there are two main characters. Okyo is a woman in her twenties whose job is making Kimono, and Kichizo is 16 years old boy working at a umbrella store. Kichizo feels lonely that he doesn 't have any family and Omatsu, who is master and saved him. He find contentment from her as she is like real sister for him. When Okyo wanted to leave from his neighborhood in search of a better life and got tired of doing her job. Kichizo doesn’t want her to leave as a result of being lonely again. However, she already decided and doesn 't change her mind. As a consequence, Kichizo was in despaired at the loss of Okyo. On the other hand, “the women’s Swimming Pool” by Al-Shaykh takes place in Islamic country. The narrator of the story is the young Muslim women who was raised by grandmother who has old mindset and grew up in kind of isolated district. As narrator dreamed of going to the women’s swimming pool, narrator could persuade her grandmother to go to swimming pool. In the end of the story, they finally arrived in the swimming pool, but grandmother started to pray which made narrator embarrassed because of grandmother’s traditional action. She realized how important tradition was to grandmother. After seeing passers-by, she realized that she cannot escape the tradition like her grandmother. As a result, they didn 't go to the women’s swimming pool.
guilty about his long absences, but now that he’s home, he wishes that his wife would
Lloyd, for the longest time, holding power over Mae as her sexual partner, loses that power with his illness. His impotency and resulting loss of control, mirrors Mae’s progression going to school and becoming more aware of what she is capable of. With Lloyd no longer being able to control her, Mae is able to exert more confidence and power in the house. When Mae invites Henry in, she tries to maintain her power. This is shown when she instigates a sexual relationship with Henry.
The bass pounded through bodies as a shadowy figure lurked in the nightclub. Sex and alcohol permeates the stale air, the chorus of the patrons’ voices melding together to a single cacophonous noise. Asari and human dancers flounced about, dangerous curves promising carnality, and yet they are to be untouched. The neon sign bearing the nightclub’s name, The Second Circle, continues to flicker, one letter dead, and another off-color. Nothing has been replaced since the nightclub first opened ten years ago, in 2160.
Many of the passages concerning the husband can be interpreted as containing sarcasm, a great many contain irony, and several border on parody (Johnson 528). It is true that the husband’s language is exaggerated at times, but dismissing the husband’s character as caricature seems extreme. He is instead the natural complement to the narrator’s madness and uncontrolled fancy: the character of John is control and “sanity” as defined by Victorian culture and is therefore the narrator’s opposite. Greg Johnson notes that John exhibits a near-obsession with “reason,” even as his wife grows mad. He is the narrator’s necessary counterpart, without whose stifling influence her eventual freedom would not be gained. And he is also transformed at the end of the tale—in a reversal of traditional gothic roles—because it is he, not a female, who faints when confronted with madness (529).
During a journey a person will come across a crisis or it will be an escape from a struggle or an external conflict. In the two short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “Women Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros, the protagonists are faced with similar crisis of limitations. On the contrary, “The Swimmer” by John Cheever describes the protagonist to be someone that has no limitations, which led him to abuse his freedom. Although these three tales show differences they do show a similarity in their ignorance. These two female authors focus on the role women set into a sexist environment where they are not seen as equal upon the male figures. However, the only male protagonist, fictionalized by Cheever, is not faced with the same complications as the female characters. As these protagonist face their problems, begin to realize their fate and their place in the world.
His lack of experience allows him to leave his wife on "this night" despite her pleas:
He is a strong man from the outside, but his long term infatuation with his wife leads him to believe the most irrational plans, like murder, aren’t out of the realm of possibilities in life. When a friend came to me and told me she is planning to live with her
Her crying could also point to liberation by showing that she controls her own desires.
The ex-wife is not like him because she is more of a family oriented person. She showed that by not inviting the Bertram’s to dinner at all because her family situations came first. Even though she was not a wealthy person and was not able to afford the sailboat, she always made sure that their children were provided for, and that they had everything they needed.
Throughout the beginning of the story, the wife continually references the things “John says” (844-5). That indicates to me that she is timid and perhaps frightened of him. “John says this,” and “John says that,” shows me that our narrator doesn’t feel permitted to have a thought that is her own. The story’s unilateral male, as well as unilateral female conversations are friendly and comfortable. However, male to female conversation in the writing is dominant, aggressive, assertive and sometimes dangerous. Female to male exchanges appear delicate, soft and understanding, always agreeing with the male perspective. I would consider women in this time period to be viewed as a pet or toy to the male, dominant figure in her life. The use of the words in this short is very important, and gives you the information to interpret the story. For instance, on page 845 it says, “It was a nursery first, then a playroom and gymnasium. I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children.” This discloses that our woman has post-partum depression. At the very least, she feels as if she is trapped or in an asylum within her own home. Perhaps this feeling of entrapment lends itself to driving her mad. It is no surprise that the woman feels trapped behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Her days and nights are filled with constant repetition of the same nothingness. She is left with little to
With many of the texts that were assigned to us, each one dealt with the relationship between insiders and outsiders differently. The insider and outsider relationship varies between both the idea of inner conflict and outside conflict. I will be explaining these relationships from the texts of Gooboora, The Silent Pool, The Tell-Tale Heart, and Things Fall Apart. Gooboora, The Silent Pool deals with the relationship of the Aboriginal people of Australia and colonialization, while The Tell-Tale Heart deals with an outsider’s effect on the main character’s subconscious. Things Fall Apart, however, is a mixture of both conflicts that were mentioned. Each of the three texts show how the outside negatively effects the inside.