In Thomas Wolfe’s “The Child by Tiger,” the character Dick Prosser is clearly more credible than General Zaroff in Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game.” This plausibility is due to each character’s lifestyle, murder motives, and personal morals. The difference in the characters is very dramatic.
Foremost, how and where one lives tell much about a person. General Zaroff appears to be living in an almost make-believe world. He has bought an island and made his home there. When Rainsford, another character in the short story, reaches the island, he begins looking for lights. Connell describes, “He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, for there were many lights” (11). Today, it would be ludicrous for a man to own an island all by himself. Conversely, Dick Prosser lives more realistically. He lives in a basement room of a home belonging to a white family. Wolfe explains, “The bare board floor was always cleanly swept, a plain bare …
Symbol of the Bull in Greenleaf
Symbol of the Bull in Greenleaf
Animals are often used by authors of novels and short stories as literary symbols. In “Greenleaf,” a short story by Flannery O’Connor, a bull is used to represent Jesus Christ. O’Connor does this according to how the bull looks, how it is rejected, and how it seems to offer grace to Mrs. May.
The first way O’Connor uses the bull to represent Christ is by appearance. A few times in the story the bull seems to be lit up like the sun or by the moon. This is comparable to Jesus because many people imagine Christ as a person or a spirit with rays of light flowing from Him. Also, to believers, Christ is their light as He leads them in life. Another time the bull looks like Christ occurs when it has the wreath stuck on its horns. O’Connor writ…