Identities

Short Stories - Literary Devises Title: Identities

Point of View: **3rd Person View **

Protagonist: **The Unshaven Man (no name given) ** What type of character is the Protagonist?
 * Round/Dynamite **

Antagonist: **Himself **

Describe the setting
 * A man exploring the world since the nice day invites him out. **
 * In the morning to midnight, the given season is fall, a time where there were no cellphones and Grey Mercedes Benz were used for sophisticated people. **
 * Around a peaceful neighbourhood, then a "ghetto" one. **

Type of Conflict:
 * Internal: **
 * Man Vs Himself **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Technically, it could be Man vs Society, since the man is fighting the world, however, when I read over this passage, I felt more as if the man was fighting himself and how he identified others ****<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> more than he was fighting the world. The thing is, there’s no right or wrong answer, because its how YOU interpret what the author says, not how anyone else does. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Describe the main conflict:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The protagonist feels comfort in his neighbourhood, but then he gets bored and decides to explore outwards. He goes into a "ghetto" like neighbourhood, where he starts to generalize everyone based on their looks (which is the main conflict of the story). He gets scared of what he sees, he's so used to his peaceful nostalgic neighbourhood that he is afraid of the other neightbourhoods. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Describe the Climax of the Story:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">He gets overcome with guilt, realizes he needs to call his wife, so he tries to find the nearest store or phone booth to call, little does he know that a policeman is following him. The officer tells the man, who looks suspicious unshaven with blue jeans, to put up his hands, but instead, foolishly, the man reaches to his wallet for identity. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The very part of him reaching for his identity is the climax and from the point where he feels guilt to where he reaches for his identity is pretty much the "final" act of the story. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes this is the ending (or really close to it), however I felt it was the highpoint of the story. The ambiguous ending doesn’t tie up loose ends, but instead brings more questions. It is the part where people feel most suspenseful, and it’s the most interest part. Everything else in the story seems to be leading up to it. Remember, not every story needs to follow the plot provided in the “Element of Short Stories” slide show. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How does the Protagonist change over the course of the story?
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">He's pretty much static all throughout the story until the moment the police officer pulls the trigger on him. That split second, he goes through an epiphany. His opinion changes, he feels betrayed in the fact that someone who would normal help him is the very person who "kills" (there's no proof of him dieing, but I can infer that he does) him. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Describe the relationship between the title and the theme.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The title being Identities implies the story is about who you are or someone else is. The theme is how one identifies others and themselves. Both of them have a sense of prejudice in them, because you can't identify others or yourself so easily, the best you can do is stereotype yourself and others. They both involve stereotyping and basically looking at the outside first, instead of the inside. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> How does the main conflict help to illustrate the theme?
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The main conflict shows us the identity of others and it shows us the identity of the protagonist who is stereotyping what he sees. These ties down to the theme, how one identifies others and themselves. The protagonist isn't identifying himself, but others, while when one reads it, they usually aren't identifying the characters with two sentence cameos, but rather the protagonist. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How does the climax help to illustrate the theme?
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The story, literally ends on the high note of the man reaching out for his identity. Which is ironic because the police officer identifies the protagonist as a threat because of how he looks and shoots when he pulls out his identity (since the officer thinks the protagonist is pulling out a gun or something). It really illustrates the theme in the sense of how one identifies others and themselves in a really extreme type of way. Where the result of someone identifying someone else gets someone killed. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Give examples of each of the following literary terms in the story (use quotes):

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Simile:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Paper clogs the fence, like drifted snow.” **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Metaphor:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “The houses are squat, as though they have been taller and have, slowly, sunk into the ground.” **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Personification:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“a boredom with the sameness - no ragged edges, no overgrown vacant lots.” **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Symbol: **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The man’s grey Mercedes Benz. A car is something used to go places. At the same time, it’s a symbol for a device used for escaping reality and passage to a whole new world (neighbourhood). **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Foreshadowing (give both elements):
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“He does not notice the police car drifted against the curb, nor the officer who is advancing with a pistol in his hand” We know the man is unaware of an officer coming at him with a gun, we can predicted that the officer is going use the gun somehow. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And then “In the last voluntary movement of his life” He gets shot. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Irony:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dramatic Irony. **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “When the officer, who is inexperienced, who is nervous because of the neighbourhood, who is suspicious because of the car and, because he has been trained to see an unshaven man in blue jeans as a potential thief and not as a probably owner, orders him to halt.” So the officer is suspicious of the man. Then “he does not feel fear but relief. Instinctively relaxing, certain of his safety, in the last voluntary movement of his life, he reaches his hands not in the air as he was ordered to, but towards his wallet for identity. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So the officer is afraid of the man and the man feels safe with the officer. That is ironic in itself (since the “criminal” should be afraid of the officer). Its more ironic that the relieved man gets killed by the person who made him relieved. **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Imagery:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The smell of burning leaves stirs the memories of childhood car rides, narrow lanes adrift with yellow leaves, girls on plodding horses, unattended stands piled high with pumpkins, onions, or beets” **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I get an image of a child playing in his front yard during autumn,I get a sense of nostalgia, **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Describe the relationships between the class theme and the story.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Identities make us unique, it distinguishes one from everyone else, one's identity is a part of what makes one human. Humans are the only known species with identities; one's identity is a core part of human nature; it changes how one views the world, how one looks, how one thinks and how one makes decisions. The theme is about identifying others and yourself, which is pretty much what we are doing for our humanity unit. We are identifying the human race and then we identify ourselves by reflecting upon how we, as humans, work. The very act of identifying one another is something all humans do, it's part of human nature. It's one of the many traits of humans that make us different from everything else. Conclusively, identifying one and another is a human trait that makes us who we are. **

Completion: 5/5 Effort: 5/5 Content: 5/5 Paragraph: 5/5

total:20/20