Analysis Paper Step 4: Outline

Analysis Paper Step 4: Outline

Outline for Analysis Paper

Topic: Three balances in the story

Thesis: The balance between elephant and keeper, citizen and government, reality and the mental world are broken after the elephant vanishes.

Part 1: Balance between elephant and keeper

Sentence: “It wasn’t what they did that was different. It’s the way they looked. Something about the balance between them. In size of their bodies. The elephant’s and the keeper’s. The balance seemed to have changed somewhat. I had the feeling that to some extent the difference between them had shrunk ”

Analysis: The writer mentioned the broken balance directly in the story. The size of them changed and they became more similar. The relation ship between them also changed. In the past, they were breeder and animal, now they are friends.

Part 2: Balance between citizen and government

Sentence: “While they did not say it in so many words, they hinted at the possibility of some secret deal between the mayor and the developer.”

Analysis: The mayor wants to keep the elephant, but some people hold the opposite opinion. They think the mayor accepts bribes so he insists in keeping the elephant.

Sentence: “Riddled as it was with such perplexities and labored circumlocutions, the newspaper article as a whole left but one possible conclusion: the elephant had not escaped. It had vanished.”

Analysis: According to the article that was published by the government, they could not find any useful information about why the elephant are vanished. The comment shows the displeasure motion of citizens. They questioned the government’s ability.

Part 3: The balance between reality and the mental world

Sentence: “The more pragmatic I try to become, the more successfully I sell-our campaign has succeeded beyond our most optimistic forecasts-and the more people I succeed in selling myself to.”

“When magazines gave us publicity, we rewarded them by placing ads in their pages. They scratched our backs, we scratched theirs.”

Analysis: The reality of the writer can also reflect the normal life of citizens. In order to be success, they need to become pragmatic. They cannot follow the way they like. He will join social activities to get benefit from others. However, this may not be the thing he really likes. It is only accepted by the highly developed capitalist society.

Sentence: “I had had my own private interest in the elephant problem from the very outset, and I kept a scrapbook with every clipping I could find on it.”

“Whenever I had a spare moment, I would visit the house where the elephant no longer lived.”

Analysis: The narrator’s pure expectation in sincere relationship between people without any interest driven.

Conclusion: The three balances in the story are all broken and this may cause a lot of problems. Those broken relation ship finally found a new balance. The vanishing elephant creates conflicts, but gradually, the conflicts are all solved. The ending of the story is unusual. We don’t the where are the elephant and its keeper, what are they doing after escaping from the town. The story remains a large room for readers to imagine.

Response to “The Elephant Vanishes”

Response to “The Elephant Vanishes”

   

    The short story “The Elephant Vanishes” talks about a man who lives in a small town in Japan. An old elephant disappears overnight, together with its keeper. Citizens fears mount and some call for probe. This remains a mystery because no one knows how the elephant can escape from the house. However, the narrator thinks that he is the only witness. From his sight, the balance between the elephant and the keeper is broken at that time. The size of the bodies of elephant keeper changes and he believed that the elephant keeps shrinking until it is small enough to escape.

    At the end of the story, the papers print almost nothing about the elephant anymore. People seem to have forgotten that their town once owned an elephant. The elephant and keeper have vanished completely. They will never be coming back.

     I think this ending is different from most of the story. Usually, the story will tell the truth of this event, but this story, on the country, writes nothing about the following plot. We don’t the where are the elephant and its keeper, what are they doing after escaping from the town. The story remains a large room for readers to imagine. Everyone can have his or her own opinion of the ending.

   As for the relationship between elephant and citizens, from my point of view, it also represents the relationship between the reality and narrator’s mental world. Citizens are secularized. For example, some of them hold the opposite opinion of keeping the elephant, because it will take a lot of cost. The narrator needs to care about his jobs, the more pragmatic he tries to become, and the more successful he will be. On the other hand, the narrator also wants to chase peace. He admires the old elephant and will always go to the back of the hill, where he can see into the elephant house.

    In conclusion, this short story is an interesting story and I enjoy reading it.

Analysis Paper Step 3: Determine Element

Analysis Paper Step 3: Determine Element

The story mentions a lot of balance in the text including the balance between citizen and government, elephant and keeper, reality and mental world.

So the element in this analysis paper will be balance.

Analysis Paper Step 2: Literature Review

Analysis Paper Step 2: Literature Review

     The short story “The Elephant Vanishes” talks about a man who lives in a small town in Japan. An old elephant disappears overnight, together with its keeper. Citizens fears mount and some call for probe. This remains a mystery because no one knows how the elephant can escape from the house. However, the narrator thinks that he is the only witness. From his sight, the balance between the elephant and the keeper is broken at that time. The size of the bodies of elephant keeper changes and he believed that the elephant keeps shrinking until it is small enough to escape.

     At the end of the story, the papers print almost nothing about the elephant anymore. People seem to have forgotten that their town once owned an elephant. The elephant and keeper have vanished completely. They will never be coming back.

[1] In my opinion, Murakami did an amazing job embedding themes throughout his short story The Elephant Vanishes. He used his abstract writing to convey important societal messages like imbalance, perception, and the views of modern living.

[2] Murakami intermingles reality with fantasy, memory with illusion, and the physical world with metaphysical contemplation. His characters are ordinary people. Their ontological relationship with reality appears to be defined by their ability to create unreality.

[3] The complete vanishing of the elephant with its keeper indicates that all the warm, romantic, and sincere parts of society unavoidably give way to the pragmatism and realism.

Work Cited:

[1]"The Elephant Vanishes Haruki Murakami English Literature Essay." UKessays.com. 11 2013. All Answers Ltd. 05 2015

[2] "The Elephant Vanishes" Literary Masterpieces, Critical Compilation Ed. Frank Northen Magill. eNotes.com, Inc. 1991 eNotes.com 31 May, 2015

[3] Li, Xinyu. "The Loss of True Intimacy In the Realistic World" SBC blog pag. Web. Nov 28th, 2011

Response to I Bought a Little City

Response to I Bought a Little City

    This short story is a story about a little city. Although it was bought by the narrator, people there were not. At first, the narrator wanted to govern the city democratically, so he went to ask his moving citizens’ opinion about their new living place. Gradually, he found that other things also needed improvement, thus, he decided to kill six thousand dogs. However, after a few times, he discovered that what he bought was only the city, but not the citizens. He could change the rules, change the structure of it, but not the people’s mind. 

    From my point of view, the narrator was more likely to organize the city, rather than control it.

    Another plot can improve my opinion. The narrator fell in love with a woman, who was already married. When the narrator expressed his feeling to this woman, she refused him directly, because she had husband. This implied that bought a city could not represent the fully ownership of this city. Comprehension and support of the people are also essential parts.

Response to A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Response to A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

   This is a short story wrote by Marquez and his stories are always strange and hard to understand. This one is about an old man with enormous wings and Pelayo’s families. Pelayo thinks this old man is an angel, but they do not treat this man friendly. All the people here just show curious about a stranger. Because of this angel, Pelayo earns a lot of money. 

   From my point of view, the aim of this story is to criticize society. From the beginning of this story, it writes, “on the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house”. This reminds me of the Bible. The god uses flood to kill human beings. And then, the angel comes. However, people’s reaction towards this angel is strange. At first, they are scared of him, but in the end, they just treat him as a tool of entertaining. The story describes that the old man looks sick and is badly injured, instead of healing him; people choose to play on the angel. I think Marquez uses irony to describe the situation. This reflects people's numbness and shows no sympathy to strangers. I think Marquez wants to change this society so he wrote this story. 

Response to The Middleman

Response to The Middleman

   The genre of this short story is short story. This type of genre is much shorter than novel and the plots are not as complicated as novel. Normally, it is form of narrative prose fiction.

   The Middleman is a story about a man named Alfred Judah, but is not only about him. Alfred is a middleman in America because he has no nationality, and he describe the society from his point if view. The Middleman and Other Stories is the name of this book, thus the book will include many other stories. As the first chapter if this book, The Middleman gives a brief introduction to this book. It writes that the narrator meets a lot of people in America, such as Maria. I think that in the following chapters, the book will talk about the stories these people suffered.

   As far as I am concerned, the conflict exists between the Western and the Third World. People are treated unequally in this society, just like Alfred. He is regarded as Jew or India in different people’s eyes. But I still wonder why so many people want to go to that place. Is there something attract them?