Language and Tone Analysis Essay

Analyze specific language elements in a selected story. You can choose any of the following stories.
Keep in mind that you will be required to identify a specific amount of allusions, so that should be the basis for selecting a story. You do not want to select one that does not include the amount of requested allusions.
Focus Description: You will identify the following specific language techniques:
1. Symbols (at least 10-15 different symbols). If you list 2 or 3 phrases, objects, words, etc. and indicate that they represent the same idea, then, technically, the 3 objects count as ONE symbol. All symbols should have different interpretations.
2. Allusions (at least 5 different allusions). Please review the lecture notes and videos about allusions. If you are unsure if you are identifying allusions correctly, you can send me an email with the list of five, and I will verify if they are allusions.
3. Ironies (at least 2 different ironies). Please review the lecture notes and videos about the different types of ironies.
4. Simile/Metaphor (at least 2 similes OR two metaphors OR one of each). Again, the lecture notes offer clarification for a simile and metaphor.
5. Your choice (at least 2 examples for your choice of language technique). Keep in mind that language elements also include imagery, foreshadowing, diction, syntax, personification, hyperbole, repetition, dialogue, etc. You can select one of these and offer two examples for it, OR you can select two of the additional elements and include one example for each.
6. Tone shifts—identify the overall tone for the story. Then offer indication of when tones shift. Clearly identify how the tone shifts.

 

List of Stories to choose from:

 

Conrad Aiken-Silent Snow, Secret Snow**

 

Dorothy Allison
Jason, Who Will Be Famous**

 

Sherwood Anderson
I Want to Know Why

 

Margaret Atwood
Death By Landscape

 

James Baldwin
Sonny’s Blues

 

Toni Cade Bambara
Gorilla, My Love

 

Richard Bausch
Letter to the Lady of the House

 

Ann Beattie
Snow

 

Ambrose Bierce
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

 

Jorge Luis Borges
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

 

Truman Capote
Miriam

 

Raymond Carver
Cathedral

 

Willa Cather
Paul’s Case

 

John Cheever
The Enormous Radio

 

Anton Chekhov
Gusev

 

Kate Chopin
Story of an Hour

 

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness

 

Stephen Crane
The Open Boat

 

Ralph Ellison
King of the Bingo Game

 

Louise Erdrich
Machimanito

 

William Faulkner
Barn Burning
A Rose for Emily

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Babylon Revisited

 

Richard Ford
Communist**

 

Mavis Gallant**
Ice Wagon Coming Down the Street**

 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper

 

Nathanial Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown

 

Ernest Hemingway
Hills Like White Elephants

 

Zora Neale Hurston
The Conscience of the Court

 

James Joyce
Araby
The Dead

 

Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis

 

Yasunari Kawabata
The White Horse

 

Jamaica Kincaid
Girl

 

Jhumpa Lahiri**
Hell-Heaven

 

D.H. Lawrence
The Horse Dealer’s Daughter

 

Ursula K. LeGuin
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

 

Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party**

 

Bobbie Ann Mason
Shiloh

 

Guy de Maupassant
An Adventure in Paris

 

James Alan McPherson
Why I Like Country Music

 

Herman Melville
Bartleby, The Scrivner

 

Bharati Mukherjee
The Management of Grief

 

Alice Munro
Royal Beatings
Miles City, Montana**

 

Vladimir Nabokov
Signs and Symbols

 

Joyce Carol Oates
How I Contemplated the World…

 

Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried

 

Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Good Country People

 

Frank O’Connor
Guests of the Nation

 

Tillie Olson
O Yes

 

Grace Paley**
The Used-Boy Raisers**

 

Jayne Anne Phillips**
El Paso**

 

Katherine Anne Porter
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

 

Annie Proulx**
What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Buy?**

 

George Saunders**
Victory Lap**

 

Danzy Senna
Admission

 

Isaac Bashevis Singer
Gimpel the Fool

 

John Steinbeck
The Chyrsanthemums

 

Amy Tan
Rules of the Game

 

Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Illych

 

John Updike
A&P

 

Helena Maria Viramontes
The Moths

 

Alice Walker
Everyday Use

 

Robert Penn Warren
Blackberry Winter
Eudora Welty
A Worn Path

 

William Carlos Williams
The Use of Force

 

Tobias Wolff
Bullet in the Brain**

 

Virginia Wolf
Kew Gardens

 

Richard Wright
The Man Who Was Almost a Man