(2) Responses
Baylee,
In Katherine Mansfield’s story “Miss Brill”, the author uses the theme of loneliness to exemplify the pain loneliness comes with. She uses a public scenery in the park to lead the protagonist, Miss Brim, to realize what her loneliness has caused her to do. She felt embarrassed for going to the park everyday to watch the other people. The tone comes across as very sad and lonely, and it gives us an inside look on the life of a lonely elderly old woman. The story in itself is sad. Nothing about an old woman who is so lonely watching other people for entertainment is happy whatsoever. However, Brim uses the characterization and description of events to show us the pain and despair of how having seemingly no-one can affect a person. The line, “What has been happening to me? said her little sad eyes,” (259) shows us that you can even see the effects of her loneliness even physically. She has noticed what she has been doing and it lead her to see herself in a different way, as well as the people around her.
Courtney,
In Raymond Carver’s short story “Popular Mechanics”, he introduces a sense of separation between a mother and her spouse which reflects in the authors use of tone in this story. The tone in the beginning starts off a little bit on edge as she goes through frustration, which is later developed to an disagreement. The situation becomes more hostile towards the middle of the story. The narrator mentioned ” Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! She began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you” (277)? This moment basically describes a moment of sadness for this women as she goes through a moment of separation from her significant other. In her sense, this could also be a use of diction because she tells him to leave but cries afterwards as if she doesn’t really mean for him to leave, she is just upset. The tone the narrator uses in this story is major hostile disagreements between our characters. Later the narrator developed a statement, “I want the baby, he said. Are you crazy? No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come by for his things” (277). This statement proves that our characters continues to disagree with each other as they begin to debate on who will get custody for their child. As they debate and tried to resolve a solution, this will later be in effect of the resolution of the story.