Five Literature Pieces

David Foster Wallace's "Good People" is a story about a couple that finds themselves in a situation of having to decide if they want to deal with a pregnancy that is not wanted. The story is told from the third person and it is a religious one. The writer's main point with the story is to ask the reader what he or she would do if they were presented with a situation like this given their beliefs.

Flannery O'Conner's "Everything that Rises Must Converge" raises the issue of prejudices that took place between black and white people. While the story starts off with a college graduate, Julian, taking his mother to her weekly class, as the story goes on, it becomes easier to understand what O'Conner is trying to get the reader to know and that is that we are all the same even though we see ourselves as different. The attitudes of the graduate, Julian's mother was typical of how history captured America. While prejudices have eased over time, much of what the attitudes the characters have is still going on in today's society.

William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" is a story about loyalty and the conflict that we all have from time to time about what the right thing to do is. The character, Sartoris, has to make the decision of being loyal to his family or reveal that his father, Abner, started a fire in a barn. Faulkner seeks to portray a story about finding peace in the midst of conflict and succeeds.

David Mamet's "The Rake" has a very deep meaning as Mamet uses the rake as both a symbol of the contrast between light and dark. We normally think of the rake for cleaning, but we almost never think of the rake as a tool to cover up the problems that we have in our yard. The rake is symbolic of the family’s problems that are occurring in the story and the family's effort to keep them hidden. Mamet asks us to look at ourselves in this story and perhaps begin cleaning up what we have been hiding and doing. 

T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a story about time and how precious it is. Through the character of Prufrock, the writer says that while we are all aware that we will die, we sometimes have regrets for not doing things when we had to chance to do them. Regret is a big thing in the story as Prufrock feels sadness about the many chances that he let slip by them. This poem is very interesting as it shows the frustration that we humans often have with lost opportunities and not being able to get them back.