These are not just any clouds, but sinister, threatening clouds that represent Alcee who is approaching. In this description, Alcee is portrayed as a threat to Bobinot and Calixta’s marriage. The reader is then taken by the third party, omniscient narrator, to Calixta, our protagonist, who is busy at home “sewing furiously… She did not notice the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on which the perspiration gathered in beads” (122). This line pairs heat and humidity with the storm to suggest that even though Calixta doesn’t know it’s coming, she is subconsciously aware of the threatening storm approaching her, and is enveloped with a heat of desire.
Susan hill creates tension in many ways. Hill refers to the weather quite frequently in the novel, it is used to set the tone of the story and to provide teasing hints which build up the tension. This changes the mood of the novel at the time. At the beginning the weather is described with “We had had rain, thin, chilling rain and a mist that lay low above the house,” which implies that something should be happening soon but it doesn’t reveal the events. The weather at the start of the horror story is much worse, and it begins with an exaggerated description of the fog in London.
Literary Analysis of Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” Kate Chopin writes a short story about a storm and also the events surrounding the “storm”. She uses a family that includes Bobinot, husband to Calixta, Bibi, Calixta’s son, and Alcee who is a past love of Calixta to unfold the story. In Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” the story works as a central symbol paralleling the plot and developing Chopin’s theme that people’s emotions & reactions are as volatile as a violent storm. Kate Chopin also writes about Calixta’s suppressed passions and urges that she has but keeps secret within her marriage. They are like the storm in which when unleashed, they take over.
Jim Stevens “Schizophrenia” is about a house that is afflicted with mental illness. The house is a representation of the illness and mirrors the family as a whole. The entire poem is a metaphor comparing the house to a family. Jim Stevens creates such a vivid image in the readers mind of what this house sounds, looks, smells and even feels like. There is no reason a reader should read this poem and not have a better understanding of the mental illness of schizophrenia and how it affects not only the person but the family as a whole.
While these descriptions cause the reader to be able to imagine the cold, dark, dreary weather, it is the raven that causes the setting to really set itself into the reader’s mind. In the first stanza the reader is introduced to the tapping and rapping that is made by an unknown source, but it is not until the end of the fourth stanza that the protagonist finally opens the door to face what is making the noise. Upon opening the door the protagonist sees only darkness: and Poe writes, “But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token†(27). These sounds, which the reader assumes are made by the raven, helped to set the eerie and ghostly setting of the piece. Without the raven, the mysterious force at play would have never been realized.
The theme of isolation plays a very big part in this story. Susan Hill uses several things in the novel to make a sense of isolation. These include places like El Marsh House itself, and Monk’s Piece. However, she also uses characters to make Arthur seem isolated, people like Mr Jerome, and Mr Bentley. As well as isolation in those senses, Arthur Kipps is also very emotionally isolated from his family’s happiness at the start of the novel, and is separated from other men by his traumatic experiences.
The poem goes on to explain little about his life at home. It shows that the cop might not see his wife again because of the violence in his job. It then focuses on the aggression that is involved in the job and on the cop and how part of him liked the aggression involved. It then ends with a question that leaves the reader wondering how aggressive the cop really is. The title of the poem establishes the setting and tells us a little bit of what the poem is about.
The conflict of the story arises when Alcee arrives at the home of Calixta, his former love. Using the storm as symbolism Chopin foreshadows the impending storm of their relationship. Kate Chopin’s word usage and the descriptions of the characters lead the reader to feel sympathy for the two lovers and that their passion is something that cannot be helped. As the storm approaches Calixta is at home working while her husband Bobinot and son Bibi are out at the store. Bobinot points out the storm to Bibi by calling his attention to “certain somber clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar” (288).
The storm is described in simple, direct language: it sets in early, it tears down tree limbs, and its force disturbs the calmness of the lake. The storm is also personified in a way that anticipates the mood of the speaker. The wind, the speaker explains, is “sullen”; it destroys the trees out of “spite”, and it deliberately tries to “vex”, or anger, the lake. Later in the poem the speaker is sullen and he uses his sullenness to elicit some type of reaction from Porphyria. Porphyria enters the speaker’s cottage, and immediately the tone of the poem changes.
Boy at the Window Loneliness is like a cold winter day. Loneliness IS a cold winter day. A cold winter day is a dark, grainy day. It is the kind of day you’d imagine if you were by yourself and all alone. “Boy at the Window” is the kind of poem that takes place on such days.