Only a Girl
Alice Munro’s short story, “Boys and Girls,” chronicles the life of a young girl
who struggles to understand what it means to be a girl. At the time the story is set in,
women’s roles were primarily focused on household work; however, the narrator prefers
to help her father with physical labor. Throughout the story, the narrator attempts to
resist becoming what is socially defined as a girl, until she ultimately becomes more
comfortable with the stereotypical role. The narrator is initiated as a girl after she lets
down her father, the only person who had not previously disagreed with her role in the
family and society. Through the use of imagery, speaker, detail, and tone Munro defines
what it means to be a girl.
Sample One: Identifies author, title, theme. Explicitly identifies literary techniques.
Provides minimal context. Analysis is underdeveloped. Too brief and undefined.
Style is clear, but not exceptional.
Man’s Individual Journey Past Grief
Amidst a technologically advanced modern era of psychologists, psychiatrists, and
psycho-scientists, of standardized tests, statistical engineering, and stupendous quotas,
people strive to classify, to push everything neatly into categories. For years, doctors and
researchers have attempted to grasp and control grief, an inevitable emotion all humans
face and struggle to overcome, creating books and television programs on the processes
through which one should move away from tragedy. But, unlike Pythagorean’s theorem
and the chemical composition of chlorocalcite, there exists no one simple formula
explaining what grief is and, likewise, no universal method providing for the elimination
of such emotions. Suffering from loss, humans can experience paralysis. Others fall
victim to depression. Still, there are people who go through medication, denial, or
suppression; the possibilities are endless. Bharati Mukherjee’s short story entitled “The
Management of Grief” seeks to illustrate the innumerable directions of grief. Through the
eyes of Shaila Bhave, an Indian women residing in Canada who suddenly loses her
husband and two sons in a plane crash, Mukherjee explains the personal struggle
individuals face, addressing common cultural generalizations and, at the same time,
casting doubt on the narration as Shaila’s personality and feelings act to filter the
information to the audience.
Sample Two: Identifies author, title, theme. Style is clear, descriptive, and
exceptional. Great connections to life. Open, interesting hook.
A bit unbalanced. More energy seems to be made on the opening; less focused on
story.
Fails to explicitly identify literary techniques.
Ineluctable Mysteries of Love in “The Lady with the Dog”
“L’amour n’a jamais connu de loi”; as French playright Georges Bizet declared in
his opera Carmen, love has never known any law. Anton Chekhov’s short story “The
Lady with the Dog” tells a tale with this very theme in mind. Dmitri Gurov, disenchanted
with his pedestrian life, vacations to the resort-town of Yalta to escape from the tedium of
Moscow. He meets Anna Sergeyevna, a timid lady on vacation from her husband,
unaware that this encounter will redefine his outlook on the fairer sex and on life. The
brief relationship that they develop in Yalta -their escape from reality- shows them the
simple beauty of living in love. Anna became everything to Dmitri, “filled his whole life
now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that he now desired for himself” (par.
86). Driven by passion for the first time in his life, he grows determined to seek out Anna
in the months after they part ways. Chekhov’s conclusion leaves the reader with the same
possibilities as the story’s beginning; the mystery of what is to come. Instead of
definitively ending this story, he leaves it unresolved to illustrate his notion that love has
an uncertain nature. The author relies on reinforcing elements such as diction, imagery,
and dialogue to convey this theme more eloquently. Furthermore, the plot structure he
employs and the transformations undergone by the characters mirror his story’s message:
love is uncertain, but so is life.
Sample Three: Stylish. Good opening; a hook. Context provided. Explicit
identification of literary devices.