Dario's Writing

Sweet Reminiscence It is so hard to find fresh fruit these days. Everything, it seems, is from some South American country or another tropical one three-thousand miles away. It is not infrequent that I find myself in the scenario I am in, walking into the produce department of a supermarket only to find overpriced fruits and berries. However, this time I pick one up, a fig from God knows where; it lies in my hand, softer and more malleable it feels than clay. It has a familiar texture, one I have known in the past, one that makes my eyes heavy until I must close them. And only when I do does the light appear. For that fleeting moment, with closed eyes, barely distinguishable in the haze of confusion, what is it that I see? A tree? No, maybe a park or a courtyard. I open my eyes and it is gone. What did I see in my spell of drowsiness, my blink of a sleep? I desperately try to remember; try to visualize the tree, or the park, or the courtyard, or whatever it could have been. In my fra...

Setting: Greasy Lake by T. Coraghessan Boyle In his short story “Greasy Lake,” T. Coraghessan Boyle employs the setting to reflect the state of morality and corruption of a society’s youth, create an appropriate atmosphere, and better develop the characters of the story. Boyle is able to achieve this by centering the story at the Greasy Lake and utilizing the Lake as both a setting and character. Greasy Lake is described by the narrator in a deliberately appalling to the average reader. However, the narrator and his friends see the lake as the most favorable location to spend their days and late nights. The lake itself is described as “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires.” (130) However, as the narrator explains, the lake was not always like this but instead was named “Wakan” by “the Indians”, the name being “a reference to the clarity of its waters.” (130) The complete change of the lake since the ...

“Oh, sure, I just love to have four papers fall due on the same day.” Irony in “To Build a Fire” when the man lights matches instead of fire. Hemmingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” waiter and Heming way are same but at the end are ironically contrasted. A woman sells her hair to buy a watch chain for her husband… her husband sells his watch to buy combs for his wife… both are unknowing. I agree, ironies in stories are definitely memorable. Verbal Irony: • the most familiar kind of irony • we understand the speaker’s meaning to be far from the usual meaning of the words • implies a contrast between what is said and what is meant Sarcasm: • when the irony is found in a somewhat sour statement tinged with mockery Ironic Point of View: • Whenever we sense a sharp distinction between the narrator of a story and the author, irony is likely to occur. Ironic Twists of Fate: • Developments that reveal a terrible distance between what people deserve and what they get, between what is and wh...

Short Story Parody “Flight” It was eight in the morning when the man woke up next to the woman he met. The skies had been clear the night before. Upon landing the man had seen the moon shining brightly, clouds encroaching from the west eventually completely blocking the moon’s light from shining into the terminal where the two met. They were both awake now, listening to the rain beat heavily on the sun baked roof, its strikes synchronized with the rhythm of their light breathing. “That’s really something, isn’t it?” the man says, turning away from her and towards the window. “It really is… It’s been a while ‘fore it rained here, I’ll tell ya.” “It sure has… six years now.” “What ya’ say? The rain?” says the woman, turning to face the window too, admiring the rain. “No… I mean the sun. I can’t remember the last time it rained. I don’t think it ever has.” “It rained before silly. Don’t know where you been livin’ but it’s rained before.” “Never like this.” He quickly rises from t...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet Cut by: Dario Sava To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, …The pangs of despised love, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; Be all my sins remember'd.

5: Tone and Style | Notes Victorian Novels: • Commentator (presumably author) interrupts story from time to time to remark upon the action, offering philosophic asides, or explaining the procedures to be followed in telling the story. • The commentator doesn’t necessary portray the opinions, mood, etc. of the author. • Commentator is himself a character Tone: • Whatever leads us to infer the author’s attitude. • Author’s choice of details, characters, events and situations, and choice of words lead us to infer his or her attitude. • Tone may communicate amusement, anger, affection, sorrow, contempt. • To understand tone is to understand some attitude more fundamental to the story than whatever attitude the characters explicitly declare. Style: • One of the clearest indications of the tone of a story is the style in which it is written. • style refers to the individual traits or characteristics of a piece of writing, a writer’s way of managing words that we come to recognize. • Style i...

Quest in ‘The Remains of the Day’ by Kazuo Ishiguro A journey or trip in a work of literature often holds a meaning deeper than is apparent on the surface. In The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro uses a trip initiated for practical and modest purposes to reveal to the protagonist of the novel a self truth of which he is originally blind to. Ishiguro’s trip in The Remains of the Day fits the criteria of a “Quest” as laid out by Thomas C. Foster in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Ishiguro’s quest contains “a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there” (Foster 3). Ishiguro chooses to send his protagonist, Stevens, on the quest to have him undergo a great self realization from which the reader also benefits from. As all quests require, Ishiguro’s quest has a quester that is blind to some part of his life and who “goes on a quest, whether or not he knows it’s a quest” (Foster 3). The quester of The Remains of...