Oates uses symbols such as color imagery and music, and Connie's familiar world to illustrate how Connie is caught between two worlds: adolescence, understood to be innocence and adulthood, understood to be the consumption of her innocence. ... For example, when Arnold first appears at Connie's home, he talks about his car and how it has new paint, but just to illustrate how evil he his, Arnold's name appears on his car in "tar-like black letters"(11). This example is specific in its nature because evil is implied as being something physical, in this case it is Arnold Friend...

• Word Count: 1509
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The text exhibits interesting clues such as word choice, tone and mood, reappearing symbols and references that enrich the story and intensify its underlining message. ... She no doubt saw mixed ancestry in the black communities and realized the cause of it. ... This would also mean certain social destruction for Desiree having given birth to a black child. ... One of La Blanche's quadroon boys was near the baby when Desiree noticed the resemblance of the skin color between the boy and her baby. ... The quadroon boy is one quarter Negro ancestry and so his mother La Blanch is also of mixe...

• Word Count: 1926
• Approx Pages: 8

The young boy and Rebecca meet at a cottage, where there is a group of eight or nine people. ... She is a Jewish girl from the exotic Bronx and, to the boy, this "vast borough seems a Cythera." ... The boy thinks of The Bronx as a Cythera, since it can "house such fantastic creatures as Rebecca. ... This foreshadows what the love relationship between the boy and Rebecca is destined to go through. ... For instance, one day the boy buys Rebecca a ring, which to him implies an "innocent symbol that tortures his blood. ...

• Word Count: 2096
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Indeed, it is a symbol of human punishment and torture in the primitive times. ... In addition, the black box is another crucial paraphernalia for the lottery. Black color usually has a metaphor meaning of the evil and the death. Such black box, Jackson prominently depicts the origin, the evolution and the present situation of the black box in particular. ... Even so, the present black box "had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born; the black box grew shabbier each year. ...

• Word Count: 2165
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is pregnant with religious symbols and metaphors, and fearing that leaving out such violence to protect the squeamish would alter the message of grace and redemption that she was trying to convey, she opted to gradually set the reader up for it by placing clues of the family's demise throughout the work. ... The grandmother, Bailey, his wife, June Star (the little girl), John Wesley (the little boy), and the baby make up five or six people, depending on how you view the baby. ... At the very instant one learns of the car headed toward the family, "a big blac...

• Word Count: 2114
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School