 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
The Curse is a 1988 short story by Andre Dubus. It is realistic fiction and deals with the problem of standing by or helping out when chaos occurs.
Mitchell, a man who is clearly an Average Joe, he married a divorced woman and adopted her two teenagers, they are normal. He is perfectly happy with life, but one day five stoned bikers enter his bar, and rape a young women who has entered too. He feels as though he should fight back against them, but instead does nothing except for calling the police. She is sent to the hospital. When he returns to work, the curse takes full effect, he sees everyone differently, and is greatly saddened by the events that have traumatized him.and Mitchell loses his joy in life, the "curse" in the title.
The point of view is third person limited objective: Dubus tells everything from a neutral point of view, he talks about what happens to Mitchell with no interjections. He intentionally withholds information for a dramatic effect. Since this type of narration is the most common, it fits in with the type of story, and the fact that it could happen to anyone.
At the very beginning of the story, the reader is treated with details about Mitchell, mostly physical. One is imbibed with the fact Mitchell is pretty darn normal: he is 49, he is fit and a normal height. He remains this way throughout the book, but Dubus says in the onset that he feels like an elderly, with an "exhaustion that could not be overcome with sleep and rest". He seems to be a kind man, he loves his wife and "children", he clearly cared about the victim in his bar. Dubus used both exposition and indirect characterization to create a likable and realistic character for The Curse.
The setting of The Curse is mundane: the first location is some bar near the boardwalk of a beach.
Dubus' writing style is actually very similar to Hemingway's style. He states facts, which in some ways break the classic rule of "show, don't tell". He lists all the facts about a location, yet he still uses his words to imply details about places or people. "Mitchell looked away, at the front door. He had put the chairs upside down on the table." (Paragraph 2). Here, Dubus tells the reader what is going on, without obfuscating the meaning with needless adjectives or purple prose. This creates an easy read, one that is fit for a short story and will not confuse a reader.
The tone is grim. It is marred by gloom and sadness. Dubus, of course, needed to let the reader know the mental anguish Mitchell feels. To do this, he reiterates the fact that Mitchell feels older and the details of the rape that he witnessed. The tone is absolutely perfect for the story, as it is a gloomy, regretful reflection of past events. Is would not have worked if Dubus described everything in a cheerful manner or with joy in his prose, it has to be grim. This helps play a role into the theme of guilt.
The overarching theme of the story is simply guilt. Mitchell feels guilty because he did not assist the girl until after she had been raped mercilessly. As a result, he can not view anything in the same light anymore, he sees everyone in his bar differently, and he gets the inkling that they do the same unto him. He still has flashbacks to that night weeks after the event, hallucinating that she and the bikers are still in his bar, remembering every puny detail.
Although it may not be obvious at first, the symbol in The Curse is actually the bar in which Mitchell worked. It is a location where innocence comes to die. People come into the bar, gobbling their meals and getting into fights. The victim of the story is a young girl who walked in, not looking for trouble, and was fairly well off. Although she had purish intentions, she ended up getting raped by men who had no respect for women.
Dubus crafted a clever tone where he shows an "average Joe" struggling with guilt after a woman is raped right in front of him. Although he penned this story almost 30 years ago, it is hardly less poignant to this day.
Madonne M. Miner, writing in Studies in Short Fiction reviewed the work and called it a tale dealing with "guilt, inaction, and manhood", greatly praising the work and the effort put into it. [1]
The Children Act is a novel by the English writer Ian McEwan. It was published on 2 September 2014. The title is a reference to the Children Act 1989, a UK Act of Parliament. The book has been compared to Charles Dickens's Bleak House, with its similar settings, and opening lines.
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. It tells the story of John Grimes, an intelligent teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church. The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, and his violent, fanatically religious stepfather, Gabriel Grimes. The novel focuses on the role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African Americans, both as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and a positive source of inspiration and community. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Go Tell It on the Mountain 39th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005.
Helen is a drama by Euripides about Helen, first produced in 412 BC for the Dionysia in a trilogy that also contained Euripides' lost Andromeda. The play has much in common with Iphigenia in Tauris, which is believed to have been performed around the same time period.
Joseph Quincy Mitchell was an American writer best known for his works of creative nonfiction he published in The New Yorker. His work primarily consists of character studies, where he used detailed portraits of people and events to highlight the commonplace of the world, especially in and around New York City.
"The Minister's Black Veil" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by Samuel Goodrich. It later appeared in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1837.
Interpreter of Maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri published in 1999. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in the year 2000 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. It was also chosen as The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year and is on Oprah Winfrey's Top Ten Book List.
Kathy Cotton is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Gillian Taylforth. Portrayed as "an attractive, bright, caring and highly moral woman", Kathy is one of the serial's original characters, appearing in the first episode of EastEnders on 19 February 1985. She is created as the second wife of Pete Beale and mother of their son Ian Beale. Taylforth was originally dismissed for the role of Kathy due to her young age, but was reconsidered when she impressed show bosses. The actress opted to leave the serial in 1997 and Kathy departed on 10 April 1998 after deciding to move to South Africa with her second son Ben. Kathy returned for two separate guest stints in 1999, making her departure on 6 January 2000. Despite reports that Taylforth would be returning to the serial, Kathy was supposedly killed off-screen in a road collision in 2006 to facilitate Ben's reintroduction to the serial. Taylforth reprised the role for a charity special in 2014. In the episode broadcast on 19 February 2015 to celebrate the show's 30th anniversary, Kathy made a surprise return to the serial - despite being presumed dead. It was confirmed that Kathy would be making a permanent return, and - after a guest appearance on 19 May 2015 - Kathy returned permanently on 17 August 2015. Taylforth was initially hesitant about her reintroduction storyline, which was inspired by the John Darwin disappearance case. Taylforth appeared in her 2,000th episode on 22 May 2023
The Dew Breaker is a collection of linked stories by Edwidge Danticat, published in 2004. The title comes from the Haitian Creole name for a torturer during the regimes of François "Papa Doc" and Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual prose texts. Fictional writing often is produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles. Different types of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story writers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.
Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. Widely popular, it has frequently been chosen as a text by community-wide reading programs and book organizations, and for high school and college courses.
"Pilot" is the first episode of the American television sitcom Arrested Development. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 2, 2003. In the episode, George Sr. is about to announce his retirement when he is arrested for using his company's funds for personal expenses. It was written by series creator and executive producer Mitchell Hurwitz and was directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. An uncensored, extended version of the episode was released as a special feature on the DVD home release.
The Water Goblin is a symphonic poem, Op. 107 (B. 195), written by Antonín Dvořák in 1896.
Betrachtung is a collection of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. It was Kafka's first published book, printed at the end of 1912 in the Rowohlt Verlag on an initiative by Kurt Wolff.
Ring is a series of horror novels written by Koji Suzuki. The novels were initially a trilogy, consisting of Ring, Spiral, and Loop. A short story collection called Birthday was released shortly after, introducing extra stories interconnecting the trilogy. Two further books, S and Tide, were published in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
Balthazar, published in 1958, is the second volume in The Alexandria Quartet series by British author Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, around World War II, the four novels tell essentially the same story from different points of view and come to a conclusion in Clea. Balthazar is the first novel in the series that presents a competing narrator, Balthazar, who writes back to the narrating Darley in his "great interlinear".
Roderick the Last of the Goths is an 1814 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem lie in Southey's wanting to write a poem describing Spain and the story of Rodrigo. Originally entitled "Pelayo, the Restorer of Spain," the poem was later retitled to reflect the change of emphasis within the story. It was completed after Southey witnessed Napoleon's actions in Europe, and Southey included his reactions against invading armies into the poem. The poem was successful, and multiple editions followed immediately after the first edition.
My Immortal is a Harry Potter-based fan fiction serially published on FanFiction.net between 2006 and 2007. Though notable for its convoluted narrative and constant digressions, the story largely centers on a non-canonical female vampire character named "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way" and her relationships with the characters of the Harry Potter series, particularly her romantic relationship with Draco Malfoy, culminating in her travelling back in time to defeat the main antagonist of the series, Lord Voldemort. The work takes its name from the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence.
Some of Tim's Stories is a novel written by S.E Hinton, author of the award-winning novel The Outsiders. Published in 2007, Some of Tim’s Stories is a collection of 14 intertwined, short stories that explores the lives of two cousins-Mike and Terry. The title character, Tim, is a bartender and is also the author of these stories.
Black Tickets (1979) is a collection of short stories by American writer Jayne Anne Phillips. The collection was published by Delacorte Books/Seymour Lawrence. In 1980, it won the inaugural Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction.
Bitter in the Mouth is a 2010 novel by Vietnamese-American author Monique Truong. The novel is written in a stream of consciousness narrative structure and follows the character of Linda Hammerick as she comes of age. Linda remembers her childhood in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 1970s and her relationships that follow, through college and beyond. Her present mingles with her past as she learns of her heritage and deals with death, sexual abuse, cancer, adoption, unwanted pregnancies, and family issues. Throughout all of these experiences, Linda lives with a secret extra sense, the ability to taste words, which she later discovers is a form of synesthesia.
