This scene is of Meursault receiving a telegram stating that his mother died, but he isn’t sure when. He shows no remorse over his mother dying, just notices the detail that he doesn’t know when she died. This indifference to the fact that his mother died could mean that he doesn’t care about his mother and that he believes that the human life is meaningless. The idea that human life is meaningless is a theme that is common in the novel. In the passage it embodies that Meursault is detached from society and is different from other people.
"She simply had no need for heterosexual relationships, she was married to her art." (Woodress). In her book, Willa Cather : The Emerging Voice, Sharon O'Brien discusses Cather's sexuality. She dwells mainly on Cather's relationship with her best friend Louise Pound and says, "That Willa Cather was a lesbian should not be an unexamined assumption, h owever, but a conclusion reached after considering questions of definition, evidence and interpretation." Yet, after her affair with Pound ended, Cather found "more enduring and supportive relationships," (O'Brien) with Isabelle McClung and later with Edith Lewis, yet she never declared publicly that she was in fact a lesbian.
Reading her poem about preferring to be isolated quickly transited to being a lot more depressing in her latter poems. “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” shows a darker side to Dickinson’s writing. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,/ And Mourners to and fro “ (1-2). Dickinson writes about a funeral and describes it as if it were her own. Her dark tone speaking of death lead her literary mentor Thomas Higginson to “ advise her not to publish her work because of her violation of contemporary literary convention” (Dickinson 1).
Joan Didion’s “in keeping a notebook”, has shown that she writes to suppress bad memories by her expressing the difference between her childhood and he daughters. Although there is not a direct reason as to why Didion writes s, one could imply that because Didion did not have a “perfect” childhood, she writes in order to not remember the bad memories. Didion states that her daughter would never write like her because she is “singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her” (55). This quote presents the idea that Didion has a much different childhood than her daughter. Although she does not talk about how her childhood was, she explains how her daughters’ good life does not compel her to write things down like she has since she was 5 years old.
The conversation then transitions to Jessie’s husband and son. Cecil, Jessie’s husband, left her because of her “fits” and Ricky is Jessie’s delinquent son. The conversation about them emphasizes the rejection and utter hopelessness in her life. In order to relieve herself of the guilt she feels for leaving her mother to spend the rest of her life alone, Jessie presents Agnes as a probable companion before finally saying “’night,
Margaret is very lonely because Brick; her husband, didn’t show any love for her. There are also times when she is looked down upon by Brick while they were having a conversation. In A Street Car Named Desire, the women who portray these characteristics are Blanche DuBois and Stella. Blanche is very lonely ever since the boy she loved died. She desire for love and affection from someone so she can escape from the past she had.
William Faulkner explores Emily Grierson’s life by starting and ending with her death. Instead of telling her story chronologically he tells important tidbits in by breaking up the story into five parts, each one set at a different time in her life. The plot of “A Rose for Emily” focuses heavily on death and loss. Each of the five parts bears some mention of Emily’s loss and this constant reiteration helps the reader to feel some of Emily’s grief. First she loses her father, his death is mentioned throughout the story, then she loses the support of the town, eventually she loses her love and finally she loses her life.
It centralizes on the loneliness of the poet. The house seems to be dead for the poet which can be said by the very first line of the poem, “The house is so quiet now”. The poet has personified the vacuum with his dead wife; so that he can feel her presence in his life and she could take away his loneliness, grieves and the filth he feels in her absence. Personification has been used throughout the poem, which reflects the thoughts and feelings the poet had for his wife when she was alive. This can be seen in the seventh and eighth line of the poem, “But when my old woman died her soul/ Went into that vacuum cleaner.” So to the poet, the vacuum is his personified wife.
The poem “Acquainted with the Night” By Robert Frost seems to have a somber, almost depressed tone. It is no secret that many of Frost’s poems have the same kind of tone to them. Many say that this is due to the unfortunate loss of his son Elliot in 1900 from cholera, his mother in the same year from cancer, daughter Elinor Bettina just one day after birth in 1907, daughter Marjorie after giving birth to her only child in 1934, and his son Carol from suicide on 1940. All of this death in the family contributed to Frost falling into a depressed state where many of his poems immersed from. This poem is set in a sad and lonely city on a sad and lonely night.
The numbness and non-reaction of Mrs Mallard, when she heard the news of her husband’s death shows the conflict with her husband. Somehow this conflict shows the desire of emancipation. Such as, “She didn’t hear the story as many women have heard the same, with Paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (paragraph 3). As one reads this, one immediately begins to think there is something else going on with Mrs Mallard rather than grief. It’s hard to fathom that someone would feel anything other than grief after being told that one’s husband is dead.