ESSAY CEMETERY

This short story is summarized in bullet points for no good reason. Events ·        It's a hot dry summer. Tony's friend Leon comes back from the army. He is drinking. ·        A state cop punches Leon in the face ·        Leon is admitted to the hospital with broken teeth and get stitches ·        Tony dreams about the cop who has white round eyes on a ceremonial black mask instead of a face ·        Leon gets better but wants revenge and Tony tries to dissuade him ·        Tony sees the cop in a gas station store and Leon says he is just as good as the cop ·        The cop follows them and they pull over. He makes them get out of the car. ·        Tony knows he can't look at the cop's eyes. He tries not to but then looks at ...

"The Swan" is a short story by Roald Dahl. It tells the story of Ernie, a teenager who receives a rifle for his birthday, and his friend Raymond. Ernie and Raymond go hunting in the countryside with the new gun. There they encounter Peter Watson, a 13-year-old whom the two boys often bully in school. Ernie and Raymond want to kill a swan sitting on her nest. Peter defends the bird, and this enrages the boys. They shoot the swan, sever her wings and tie the wings to Peter's arms. They force him to climb a tree and "fly".             It is not clear whether Peter actually takes flight, or rather jumps from the tree. There are several clues in the text which can help the reader decide on an explanation. However, the answer is by no means clear-cut. This uncertainty is precisely the subject of Tzvetan Todorov's essay, "Definition du Fantastique", where he defines the fantastic as a literary genre. According to Todorov, "the [fanta...

Jackson, Rosemary. "Chapter 2: The Fantastic as a Mode."  Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion . London: Methuen, 1986. 13-60. Print. Fantasy is a genre which is hard to classify. Critics use the term to signify any literature which is not realistic, or possible in our world, including but not restricted to allegory, horror stories and myths. As a genre, fantasy breaks a lot of conventions of realistic literature. Space, time, philosophies, ideologies are all different. Language and syntax are also changed. Fantasy deals with existential issues through this breaking of conventions. Fantasy spans all themes, including erotic, criminal, psychological and macabre. Fantasy also breaks conventions of character, and many times characters within fantasy have multiple identities. According to Sartre the function of fantasy changed with the shift of society from religion to secularity. In the religious tradition fantasy was a form of escapism, but in secular society fan...