The Influence of Literary Criticism - Essay Example

Literary Criticism The death of John is follows the Alcott’s bedside viewer of a lat night of mortality wounded soldiers. The writer also brings out the rose family as her second vision book which is a moral tale accounting to the education of three fairy girls who learn how their mistakes can harm others. Majority of her stories are based on dynamic young woman who realizes that she is engaged to the wrong man. The woman is married to a man she does not love. In her literature, much is discussed about aspects of marriage, relationships, gender and societal pitfalls that young females face.

In most cases, the novel meets unfavorable criticism about the limitations faced by females. She describes her role as the mother and does her best to portray the best motherhood and wife of the family. I this situation, the place of women in the American society is taken as care givers and housewives whose mandate is to take care of their children. In another occasion, after the death of John, Alcott is faced with difficult responsibilities. She takes in a full responsibility to provide for the family.

This is taken as deviant within the society. Women became victims of the patriarchy society. However, in the story, Loisa felt much distressed by her poor family and felt responsible to play her part. She is considered a heroin in the way she went against the feminism and played her role as the only family bread winner. The death of her husband gave her much humility which later helped her in the fight for feminism in America (Knellwolf et al., 2001). In “the things they carried”, the cast is comprised of soldiers with the narrator being one of them.

Different soldiers are distinguished through out the story by the items that they carry. O’ Brien points out the things carried by the soldiers who include both emotional and physical, whereby they all carry major military items (Knellwolf et al., 2001). The ambiguity of war and the tenuousness of morality demonstrate how exposure to the carnage of the nations at war leads to soldiers developing twisted perspectives on what is right and wrong. The ambiguity that consumes the narratives of the things they carried is displayed with much irony for the moral.

In such stories, it is depicted that there is no moral at all. O’ Brien is much affected by the theory of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. Soldiers are said to walk around the fire in a state of much boredom and tension. This tension drives them crazy. In this situation, O’Brien describes the way they cover their fear in a rational manner. The defense mechanism applied in the situation is seen in the way they cover their fear with tough talks about “pussies” shooting off their own toes and fingers so that they can be discharged from the army.

Te narrative is so descriptive in the way he portrays the characters of the soldiers. He explains their behaviors as controlled by the situation of war. The author uses ancient and familiar trope in the story which provides the title for the collection (Knellwolf et al., 2001). References Knellwolf, C., Brooks, P., Kennedy, G. A., Selden, R., Nisbet, H. B., Norton, G. P., Litz, A. W., . Minnis, A. J. (2001). The Cambridge history of literary criticism: 9. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

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