Melody Murillo Mendez
Mrs. Lindsey
AP English Literature
Period 3
DEFs
Archetype:
Definition:
An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made, especially a character, an
action, or situation that seems to represent common patterns of human life.
Example:
“…and the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car
into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins
mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less. As I say, we're right in the
middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two banks and the
Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twentyseven old free-loaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again.”
~ “A&P” by John Updike
Function:
Within this short story, the narrator describes the three girls that came in to the store that day in
relation to all of the other shoppers to demonstrate how out of the ordinary that these girls are in
relation to others. This group of girls are somewhat of a spectacle given how the whole town is
basically centered around city hall and the block that that store resides in. Most likely it is a very
conservative place, given how much traffic slows when they finally notice the girls. Among the
archetypes were the “cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones
and no eyebrows,” or the “house-slaves in pin curlers”, even the kind of job he had at the third
register with his back to the door. These kinds of descriptions are almost staple to any store in an
American city, especially given how store brands and other products are much like archetypes
themselves, changing only slightly in character, but otherwise being present in one incarnation or
another. The juxtaposition between the novel and the archetypical sets up a conflict, in this case
one of the equality of classes or at least its perception more than a satire on norms and
individuality.
Atmosphere
Definition:
The mood or emotion that is conveyed by the setting.
Example:
“On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of
rails in the sun.
“…The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It
was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this
junction for two minutes and went to Madrid…
“The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were
fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were
mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through
the trees.”
~”Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
Function:
Hills like White elephants depends widely on the setting itself. The first description of the
station provide the first insight into the relationship between the man and the pregnant woman.
Beside the physical landscape, the tone and the description of the bar and the drinks that they get
while in
HAMARTIA
Definition:
A term from Greek tragedy that literally means "missing the mark." Originally applied to an
archer who misses the target, a hamartia came to signify a tragic flaw, especially a
misperception, a lack of some important insight, or some blindness that ironically results from
one's own strengths and abilities.The idea of hamartia is often ironic; it frequently implies the
very trait that makes the individual noteworthy is what ultimately causes the protagonist's decline
into disaster..
Example:
"It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to
her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her
feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper
top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's
shoulder….
… Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed
in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention
that the house was in Tennessee…”
~ “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor
Function:
The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” had multiple flaws. The story begins with
her going on a family trip with her family to Florida, and through her hopes of getting to a house
in her beloved Tennessee, when gets her son to drive off of the original route and onto a side
road where they are cornered by the Misfit and two other men who subsequently murder the
whole family, Baily, his wife, two kids, and the grandmother. Throughout much of the story, she
judges that people were not like they used to be, and often criticizes everyone for their seeming
lack of respect, whether for social customs, or tradition, or by the way that each character acts.
One of her grandest flaws is her religious or spiritual superiority that she hold above the Misfit
especially.
When Bailey turns off the road and the car ends up in a ditch, that is the moment that the
grandmother begins realizing her flaw, where the cause of the incident was because of her and
adherence to her desires. It isn’t until the encounter with the Misfit that she begins to question
her “solid” authority, where such questions such as “do you pray?” or to ask for Jesus and
forgiveness come apart at the seams. As the Misfit mentions “She would have been a good
woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." The grandmother
never realizes her lack of understanding and compassion for others until her tragic end.
IN MEDIAS RES
Definition: (Latin: "In the middle[s] of things"): The classical tradition of opening an epic not in
the chronological point at which the sequence of events would start, but rather at the midway
point of the story. Later on in the narrative, the hero will recount verbally to others what events
took place earlier. Usually in medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to
create a sense of mystery
Example:
“When Miss Emily Grierson died , our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of
respectful affection for a fallen monument , the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside
of her house, which no one save the old-man servant…
“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon
the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris,…remitted her taxes, the
dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity…”
~ “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner
Function:
“A Rose for Emily” is unlike many short stories simply because it does not assume the regular
chronology of most other stories. This particular tale begins with Emily’s funeral. It begins with
the deals that the Colonel had to suspend taxes, which was a more recent reason for seeking
Emily. However by placing things out of order and revealing the other parts of Emily’s life
gradually, this built tension in respects to what had happened to her father’s corpse and giving
subtle and amounting assured of Emily being in some way ill. For example, the fact that the
Colonel’s body was kept inside the house becomes more sinister and disturbing in nature, simply
because details of the length of time between the funeral and someone noticing other smells were
spread apart. The same is true upon the disappearance of Homer. Structuring a story in a way
that does not follow the original chronology, with Emily’s father, then her taxes and after the
issue with Homer, there is some space for her character to be built up as the southern belle, and
most effectively break that expectation completely. This successfully portrays her as that model
of the gothic southern literature.
Personification
Definition:
Refers to the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects,
phenomena and animals.
Example:
“ The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother--they
must have had perseverance as well as hatred.”
~“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Function:
The wallpaper in this particular short story plays multiple roles. Besides its role as a motif for the
decay and entrapment, it also comes to life a s an antagonist to given that she often describes it
through a series of metaphors and descriptions of the same. Since she is alone and barred from ay
other activities, the wallpaper evolves as a being of its own right, even gaining some interest in it
due to its design and structure, though she also does not enjoy having it there. Much like an
uninvited guest, she does what she can to co-habit with the wallpaper that has gained an entity of
its own and in itself has many complexities. This personification also serves to demonstrate
better her growing obsession with the paper, and thus how it can eventually overpower her own
sense of self and sanity.
TELEGRAPHIC SENTENCE
Definition:
A sentence shorter than five words in length.
Example:
“…I threw the bread away. The bread had gotten wet. …
…Now I had the bread. I had gotten it. I had bought it. I had put it in the refrigerator. I had
earned it. It was mine to throw away….
…Because I could.”
~ “The One Sitting There” by Joanna H. Wos
Function:
This short story deals with a woman who is cleaning out her refrigerator and comes to reminisce
about the value placed on food especially that of bread during war time. Many of the sentences
of the work are short and somewhat simple with as little clauses as possible. The narrator is old
enough to live on her own and have her own job, as evidenced by the line “I had earned it” when
referring to the bread that she was able to buy. However, she demonstrates a kind of childlike
regression and nature despite that independence that she claims upon herself. In children’s
speech patterns, these sentences are often short and have little in the way of literal complexity,
unless put together in conjunction with the tone and overall meaning of the message. Sentences
like “She lived in a time before” are somewhat incomplete as to the question of before what, or
by not referring to the sister by name or title. When the narrator begins to talk about throwing the
bread away, the tone changes due to the length of these sentences and the proximity to each
other , making her decision to throw the bread away one that is harder to do, that she feels she
much justify by adding other reasons, however menial and almost childlike that they may be.
These serve to characterize some implicit regret that the narrator harbors upon throwing the
bread away that was once so scarce during wartime when everything was so rationed and
constrained for everyone in every country. Moreover, telegraphic sentences and their close
relation to a child’s telegraphic speech as a toddler also enforces the later meeting with the sister
as imagined, played out in the theatre of this girl’s mind instead of an actual occurrence, as when
children sit with their imaginary friends for a tea party. This is especially true due to the
fragments that include the description of how she will meet the sister, as a “Polish bride
returning to her home,” not solely as her sister.
PARABLE
Definition
A story or short narrative designed to reveal allegorically some religious principle, moral lesson,
psychological reality, or general truth.
Example:
“Yet she wanted most deeply to see and to know. Having seen, she felt at once as if she had
known all along. The very memory of her former ignorance faded, she had always known just
this. No one had ever told her anything outright, she had been rather unobservant of the animal
life around her because she was so accustomed to animals…
“…Miranda never told, she did not even wish to tell anybody. She thought about the whole
worrisome affair with confused unhappiness for a few days. Then it sank quietly into her mind
and was heaped over by accumulated thousands of impressions, for nearly twenty years…”
~ “The Grave” Katherine Anne Porter
Function:
The Grave deals with a couple children who play in their family cemetery while out hunting,
having killed a mother rabbit which then changed Miranda’s views on life ever since. The
children hunt and have fun in this inverted metaphor of the garden of Eden, where they find a
ring and a coffin nail. These articles serve a purpose in contrasting how this girl begins to lose
her innocence, realizing that hunting may not be the sport that she may have thought of as being
before. After the incident with the rabbit, she begins to take part in her sister’s world, where she
could “take a good cold bath, dust herself with plenty of her sister's violet talcum powder…put
on the thinnest, most becoming dress she owned” no longer staying the way that she once was or
knew. The sight was enough to make her realize her trespass of nature, not only in the hunting,
but how much she upset the balance, as a woman especially. This is reflected later on as Miranda
encounters in the market place the smells that trigger her memory of the event. The story then is
in much a way a coming of age story as much as it is that of the loss of innocence and a
reverence for a natural or imposed order.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Definition
Writing in which a character's perceptions, thoughts, and memories are presented in an
apparently random form, without regard for logical sequence, chronology, or syntax. Often such
writing makes no distinction between various levels of reality--such as dreams, memories,
imaginative thoughts or real sensory perception.
Example:
“ On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a
constant irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern
is torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a
back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon
you. It is like a bad dream.
The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a
toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless
convolutions--why, that is something like it.
That is, sometimes!”
~ “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Function:
The Yellow Wallpaper deals with one woman’s writings while confined to her home. Due to her
deteriorating state and her depression. As such, writing in a stream of consciousness does
multiple things. For one, it makes the writing more personal and characterizes the woman’s state
of mind far better than would if a third person narrator would. Moreover, this adds to the style of
the letters as they become somewhat periodic in nature , and adds to her slowly deteriorating
sense of reality that would not be able to be expressed as tersely as if it had not been done
through this kind of narration. Doing this also reveals and characterizes the paper that helps
develop her madness as she loses herself in her writings much like young children are taken by
their own games of make believe that even they find it hard to escape from that dream
constructed out of the need to stay out of the adults way.