Turn Of The Screw Analysis

Improved Essays
The story begins with the description of the ‘sad city’ (’the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name’) where lived 'Haroun' together with his father, the well-known storyteller 'Rashid', ‘whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis’ and his mother, 'Soraya', who then runs off with their neighbor, ‘Mr. Sengupta’. Thereafter Haroun finds it impossible to concentrate on one thing for more than 11 minutes (his mother left at 11 o’clock), and Rashid loses his ability to tell stories because of Haroun’s harsh words . After being hired by the local politicians ('Snooty Buttoo') the storyteller and Haroun spends the night at the so-called Arabian Nights Plus One houseboat, where the young boy …show more content…
But it is also the paintbrush of expressing our thoughts through art, an expressive element of songs. Just like in Rushdie’s story (the two sides and groups of the moon), even words have a double side: it creates beauty, but it can also destroy it.
3. ‘The Turn of the Screw’
As it was mentioned at the beginning, stories have the power to attract, gather people. A perfect example would be Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’ short story. An anonymous narrator remembers a Christmas gathering, where he listens to a friend, Douglas, read the manuscript of a former governess. The manuscript tells the story of how she is hired by a handsome man to be the governess of his young nephew and niece after their parent’s death. He lives in London and is uninterested in the education of the children. As Douglas begins to read the manuscript, point of view shifts to the young governess as she recalls her strange experience at Bly, where she meets the handsome bachelor’s niece, Flora and Mrs. Grose, the housemaid. Later they find out from a letter that the boy, Miles is expelled from his boarding school, but it is not specified why: ‘They simply express their regret that it should be impossible to keep him.’ (Chapter

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    While analyzing The Joy Luck Club and researching the question: How and why does Amy Tan use storytelling to portray thematic elements in her book,The Joy Luck Club? It has become clear that this novel known as the story within stories uses storytelling to portray the themes of this work, and by doing so the author is able to appeal to the audience's pathos meaning their emotion and value. This appeal of emotion is shown in almost every story as the story is a first person dive into the past of the character which contained diction and stylistic devices that riled up emotions. Also another effect of storytelling is how it helps the readers understand the situation of the characters therefore leading to a deeper understanding of the themes…

    • 169 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The female narrator, tells the story of her husband Vic’s teenage obsession over a girl named Strawberry Alison, with a bright red birthmark which covered half her face and neck, like a mask that couldn’t be removed. The narrator tells her husband’s life story from her perspective. ‘During the day he dreamed of pulling her into a car and tearing out of town and heading north. He’d rescue her, love her and marry her…’(page range 60-61) It’s a strange mingling of first and second person points of view that places the reader into the lives of Vic (as an adult and teenager) and his wife.…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Music plays an instrumental role throughout our lives. Before we’re born, many of us are exposed to music in the womb. Upon death, music greets us once again to mourn and celebrate a life filled with music. Music is truly there in every part of our life. Despite this constant exposure to music, we rarely step back to ponder how music impacts us.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stories, a form of communication found throughout time and in different cultures of human history, passed down from generations to generations, some telling tales of the past, some teaching important lessons, and some just for entertainment. Needless to say, stories are an important part of human existence. To begin, stories help readers see through the eyes of others and experience what it's like walking in their shoes. For example, when reading “The Indisputable Weight of the Ocean” by Darryl Berger, readers see through the eyes of Edmund, a boy who was brought up and home schooled by his mother, not interacting with other children growing up. In the story, Edmund, a young gentleman from a small seaside town must move to the big city.…

    • 356 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    - Author and Background Zora Neale Hurston was a key American writer during the mid-1900s. Although she wrote many popular novels, short stories, and plays, Hurston is well known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (TEWWG). Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama but grew up in Eatonville, Florida. Her father was a preacher, while her mother was a teacher.…

    • 1611 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Literature sometimes embeds secrets in the narrative of a text. What remains unreachable for the reader produces the desire for them to find the truth about something). Bennet and Royle call this “the process of unfolding and revelation” (271). Brontё’s Jane Eyre accounts to “telling [the reader] the plain truth!” (111) indicating that narrators in Literature can be ‘all-knowing’ and ‘all-telling’.…

    • 1341 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The history of horror is an interest of some, but not all. It is a genre seeking to rattle a negative emotional reaction by playing to the audience’s fear. Henry James became fascinated by the horror genre and used the fear tactic to craft many of his writings. One of his tactics is the usage of Ambiguity in his writings which included mysterious horror stories. In the Turn of The Screw, Henry James uses ambiguity in his writing to try to convert readers to critical thinkers based on his use of structure, diction, and tone.…

    • 1366 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Music lyrics express emotions, experiences, and tell stories. They are used to communicate with other people and for the artist to express themselves through song. “Music is what feelings sounds like” (Georgia Gates). The lyrics of popular music shouldn’t be censored because they aren’t harmful to children’s development, lyrics have meaningful content, they help people through rough times, and they teach about the world. Many favorite artists come from unique backgrounds, “some had to deal with their friends dying … others had to deal with their mothers being prostitutes, and maybe they had to deal with not having their dad around” (University Wire).…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Racism had made Robinson’s fate of dead inevitable. “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed”. In the particular place and time, it was simply because Tom was black and Mayella was white. In the era of 1930s, the whites had overwhelming power over the blacks who were seldom protected by law. Although Atticus did a brilliant job to expose Bob Ewell and his daughter’s lies and convinced most people that Tom Robinson was closer to innocence than sin, and it took extra effort and time for the jury to make a verdict, the sentence was still guilty, due to the predominance of racist opinion at that time.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    ABSTRACT As all of us now music nowadays has become an important part of our society and culture and most of the people are conscious about it so many musicians try to leave a message through a song making people have a more deep understanding about their surroundings. The song “Wing$” show us a society where to be cooler than another person has become the first goal. That people think that you are what you buy or what you consume, if you don’t buy expensive things it means that you are nobody, people act like they must have to buy an expensive thing to be more important.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Close Reading Of Araby

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The story portrays the loss of innocence and the frustration of first love. The boy’s extravagant expectations of rewards he hopes to gain from his commitment to the girl of his affection are ruthlessly disappointed. The narrator unravels the disappointing circumstances from his trip as a symbol of the emptiness of the ideals from the journey he undertook. Accordingly, the boy relates the senseless conversation between himself and Mangan’s sister and realizes that he perceived the trivial reality behind the romantic image he fantasized. Nevertheless, his perception is unreliable because of his immaturity.…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    They often ignore Matilda to the point they forgot she was old enough to start school, but both parents do not bother to pay attention to their child’s need. Knowing how the family is, the parents are not capable of providing their children with experiences necessary to ensure their kids developmental readiness for school. Mr. Wormwood and Mrs. Wormwood do not see education as being something important in a child’s life. They care about getting rid of their children by sending them off to school in order for them do whatever they…

    • 1553 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everyday, American teenagers, along with many others, are troubled with these issues. Many authors and writers have used examples in their literature however, it has failed to change all of the people’s views on tolerance and acceptance. So many authors and writers apply an example to their character or story to try to inform the world about how this is starting to overtake the world. This is important because not everyone has a voice to speak up for themselves or another. Social inequity is serious problem that has been continuing to rise since the beginning of mankind.…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Turn Of The Screw Passage

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A critical passage can reveal a great deal about a book. In Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw”, there a quite a few critical passages. One that is particularly critical is the passage where the governess is conversing with Mrs. Grose before the governess meets Miles, Flora’s brother: “You will be carried away by the little gentleman!” “Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I’m afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m rather easily carried away.…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Stories are a powerful way to get a message across. In the TED Talk, "If a Story Moves You, Act On It" by Sisonke Msimang, she talks about the limitations of storytelling and how storytelling can help make the world a better place. Msimang claims that justice is what makes the world a better place, not stories. The reason why she says that is because stories usually fail to paint the bigger picture. Although stories don’t make the world the better place, the audience can help by being more curious, and more skeptical about the subject of the story.…

    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays