Loss of Innocence

Life is made up of expectations.  Whether they're others' expectations of you, or your expectations of yourself, they have the ability to mold you into who you are- even if it's someone you don't like.  

Let's talk about society for a second.  Society is a major league player whenit comes to what's considered acceptable and what isn't.  Fortunately, the society we currently live in is significantly more improved than say, 40 years ago where the lives of w...

Harry Potter on yet another magical romp between the lines, let’s find a unicorn this time guys! Alright, in all seriousness(What did someone call for me?-Sirius Black), we’re gonna be looking at “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway this time around. Cool story about Hemingway, according to the world wide web, though it isn’t substantiated, he made a bet once that he could make a man cry in six words. And so the &...

Darkness of other days

Bob shaw’s short stories are nothing but overlooked masterpieces of the past. These forgotten short stories are crafted extremely well and open a whole new dimension and aspect of thinking and analyzing short stories.

I came to this realization when reading the Light of other days, one of Bob shaw’s best short stories in my opinion. The story starts off with a couple looking around for a new house...

I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen is a simple story of a mother’s regret for neglecting to always be there for her daughter. Reading this made me wonder about how Emily must have felt. AS the oldest sibling she had to grow up the fastest so as to help out her mother and watch the other children. Emily had to give up part of her childhood to her younger sister Susan. While she was a toddler she received a lot of love from her parents, but eventua...

"Ah, young love!"

Isn't that what they all say?  Just the words "young love" create an immediate response of swooning and nostalgia.  Maybe you yourself experienced something categorized under young love, or perhaps you've come to be fond of it as it is frequently romanticized and idolized in the media.  Unfortunately, this blog post won't follow that aura of young love that you're used to. Don't get me wrong, it can be beautiful, but with the story Araby by James Joyce, ...

Whelp, Harry back for another scintillating conversation about yet another short story. Although, to be completely honest, this one is probably one of my new favorites of all time. Quite an honor, really, considering it’s standing among the likes of the Dresden Files, Howl’s Moving Castle, and, of course, you can’t forget Harry Potter! Anyway, I’ve just realized I haven’t even said which story we’ll be talking about thi...

The Bet

Can we be the cause of our own loss of innocence? Theoretically yes because the amazing aspect of literature is that you can create and innovate anything you want to. Realistically, however, it would take a lot of action, change, and depth of insight in order to cause our own innocence. This idea can be seen applied in a very intuitive way in the short story “The Bet” which was masterfully written by Anton Chekhov.

A big theme that dr...

Bonjour all! C’est moi, Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen. Today is Tuesday, so you’ve probably already guessed it. Yep that’s right I am going to be talking about something related to innocence. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid was a very perplexing story to me. I didn’t quite understand it at first. It’d seemed like it was a mother scolding her daughter and sternly telling her what she needed to be doing. It kind of reminded me of my moth...

Hey! Number Six here with a new blog and a new take on loss of innocence with “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This short story is not only an interesting read, but it’s a riveting tale of a woman who slowly loses her sanity.

Interestingly enough, as the readers, we see the story through Jane’s (the protagonist) eyes and experience her interaction with a yellow wallpaper throughout the story. As her conflict with thi...

Heya, it’s Harry, again. It’s only been a day but here I am for, you guessed it, Araby. Joy, complete, utter, flipping joy. Alright sorry just needed to get that out of my system, but I guess I’ll just pick off from yesterday and say whatever come to mind?

Well Mrs. Devo, my lit teacher, cleared up those first two paragraphs for us, so that’s one bullet we dodged, thank the lord. I’...