Reading Analysis

Mark Twain wrote a short story about a character named Aunt Rachel. She was a former slave who now worked as a cook for a family. Twain used realism in his writing by writing Aunt Rachel’s speech in vernacular. However, the speech pattern he used seemed to also be identified as how Blacks spoke or how White people heard Black speech. The speech pattern seemed very close to how a “step ‘n fetch it” character would talk. It may not have been how Aunt Rachel really spoke, but it is how Twain portrayed her dialog.

Aunt Rachel told readers how her life was as a slave. She was treated fairly until her master had to pay off his debts and had to sell all his slaves to settle them. Aunt Rachel lost all seven of her children and her “husband.”  She managed to see one of her children during the Civil War, but she never saw the others again. Her story is heartbreaking but because she survived slavery and its aftermath, she is a hero of the story.

Realism in writing is very detailed and Twain’s story about Aunt Rachel is very detailed. The woman seemed happy outwardly, but when she told her story, readers understood the woman had a depth of character. She seemed resigned to her life even though she missed her children. Her situation reminds one of the words, “my soul has grown as deep as rivers” (Hughes n. p.)  While that is a Langston Hughes poem from the Harlem Renaissance, it is a fitting description of Aunt Rachel.

Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” relays a story about four men who are in a row boat off the coast of Florida trying to reach shore but not having much luck in getting there because there is a storm and large waves. Eventually, they try to get to shore when the boat is completely destroyed by the waves. One of their company does not make it to shore alive. The theme of the story is that men cannot control nature.

The storm is the center of the story. The characters are all focused on the waves and getting to shore safely. The storm makes the men in the boat seem insignificant as they have no power to overcome the obstacle the waves make. There are sharks in the ocean as well, so the men really are in danger. Crane portrays the danger in his story by the way he uses words. There is not a wasted word. The writing gets the reader engrossed in the story as the action is rapid.

Ultimately, Crane’s story fits in nature writing before there was such a genre. Susan Fenimore Cooper, Mary Austin, and Henry David Thoreau as just a few authors who wrote about nature in American literature. American nature writing show the grandeur, the sublime, and the awesomeness of the continent. Writing about a storm at sea and survival is a deeply American theme.

“White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway is a very vague short story. The setting is in Europe, most likely around the time of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The people seem to be near Spain as they are in a train station where the trains stop and pick up passengers to Barcelona.

The main characters might be married and are unhappy. Their marriage has not fulfilled them, but left them empty. The man tried to tell the woman that he loved her, everything about her, but she seemed to not believe him. Perhaps, he has been unfaithful, and he thinks she does not know about it.

Modernist writing is supposed to be vague to spark people to discuss what the story might be about. It also tackles formerly taboo subjects such as infidelity and relationship issues between mates. The story is relatable to all classes of people. The couple is bored with one another and did not have enough courage to say so.

Works Cited

Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

speaks-rivers. Accessed 3 July 2018.

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