"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" F. Scott Fitzgerald

Plot

The narrator tells us at the beginning of the story that he is going to tell us some "astonishing history," and that Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button are expecting a baby. That "baby," however, is not an infant, but an old man, which creates the conflict of the novel. This leads us into the rising action where everyone, including his father, is shocked and appauled by this strange occurance. There is further complication when Benjamin realizes at 12 years of age that he is getting younger. The climax of the novel is unclear, possibly when he meets and marries Hildegarde, when he serves time in the army, or the beginning of his time in college at Harvard. These are all times in his life where he is successful and people appreciate him. After he graduated, everything seemed to go downhill, which would be the resolution. He keeps getting younger and younger, which makes him more dependent on people. His son Roscoe considers him an embarrassing burden. Eventually, the story is concluded when he dies at about 70 years old where he would look like a newborn infant. No questions are really answered about how he dies, whether a woman becomes pregnant, he just disappears, or he dies in his body as a newborn.



Point of View

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is told in the first person point of view. The only real evidence of this is on the first page in the first and second paragraphs where he says, "At present, as so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one" and "I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself." After these two instances, he never uses the first person pronoun of I, so one might assume that it was told in third person limited point of view. Since the narrator knows so much about Benjamin's life, one may infer that he was a friend of the family or something of that matter. However, throughout the story, he seems to keep his feelings out. He never really shows sympathy or disdain, but just tells the story. The narrator seems to be old and not up to date when he says things, such as "so I am told."



Characterization

There are only four main characters discussed in the short story: Benjamin, Roger, and Roscoe. Their roles and personalities shift throughout the story. At the beginning of the story Roger, Benjamin's father, is appauled and embarrassed that his son was born as a 70 year old man. He does everything in his power to make him "normal" or at least camaflouge as best as possible. However, when Benjamin gets older in actual age, but younger in body, his father starts to get along with him and actually enjoy his company. He takes Benjamin with him to social outings where he seems to be proud of his son. At one of these social events, Benjamin meets his future wife, Hildegarde. At the very beginning of their relationship, he is smitten by her, but eventually loses his love for her as she becomes older and more lackluster, and he gets younger and more popular. Hildegarde is one of the minor characters in the story, because not much is told about her. They do, however, have a son together when they were happily married at the beginning. Roscoe is born as a "normal" child, but not much is said about him when he was younger. In the end when Benjamin is in the body of a young child, Roscoe considers him a burden and is mad at him for not acting his age when he has to take care of him. At the beginning of the short story, Benjamin seems content and tries to please his father. As he gets younger, he gets more arrogant and haughty. But as he heads into adolescence, he becomes innocent.



Setting

The story takes place in Baltimore, Maryland from 1860-1930. Therefore, Benjammin was born at the during the Civil War. Although nothing is really mentioned about it, the world is drastically changing just as Benjamin is. On the other hand, the fact that the story takes place in Baltimore is important, because social status is crucial there. It is said that the Button's "held an enviable position, both social and financial in ante-bellum Baltimore." This explains why Roger was so disgraced by the birth of his son as a 70 year old man, because he had a reputation to uphold, and he didn't want this strange occurance to blemish it.



Theme
The main theme of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is isolation and trying to fit in. Throughout the story, Benjamin engages in many group activites that pertain to his age at the time. He joins the army, plays on the football team, and goes to dances. All of these things require interaction with people of the same age group. It seems as though he insists in partaking in these activities to try to fit in, but eventually it singles him out even more. As he grows younger, he is unable to participate in these endeavers, which isolates him. The fact that he is aging backwards makes it impossible to make true friends that he can keep throughout his life. Relationships are crucial in life, and he doesn't even have a healthy relationship with his own son. This fact of the story is quite sad.

"Miss Brill" Katherine Mansfield

At the beginning of the story, Miss Brill thinks about how she is glad that she had gotten out her fur. She touches it admiringly as if she is proud to be wearing it. I think it makes her feel beautiful, and she wants other to view her "character" as this beautiful woman. All of these hopes are shot when she is purposely overhearing a young couples conversation about her. The boy refer to her as "that stupid old thing," and asks why she doesn't keep her "silly old mug at home." No doubt, that was hard for her to hear, but it gets worse. The girl comments on her fu-fur, saying that it is "exactly like a fried whiting." I didn't know what that meant, so I looked it up and it said that it was a type of fried fish. One can only imagine her dissappointment. Upon hearing this news, she heads home and regrets to get her piece of pie that she gets every Sunday, because she is so upset. When she gets home, she takes it off and puts it back in the box that she had got it in and thinks she hears it crying. This crying illustrates how upset she is by the girls comment. It is as if the fur piece is saddened by her newfound embarrassment to wear it now.

"Once Upon a Time" Nadine Gordimer

In "Once Upon a Time," the narrator is told that she must write a children's novel, because every author "ought to write at least one story for children." The narrator does not want to do this, but does so anyway, which explains the reason for the satirical tone of the story she writes. The story starts by explaining how there was a wife and a husband that loved each other very much, and they had a son that they loved very much, and he had a dog and cat that he loved very much, and they all lived happily ever after. This is her way of incorporating aspects of a children's story to her piece. Then she begins telling her story of how this family is afraid of burglars so they keep increasing the security on their house, adding in little parts about the family, such as when the mother reads her son a bedtime story from a book that his grandmother had bought for him. Ironically, in the bedtime story, the brave prince had jumped over a thicket of thorns to save his princess, and in trying to imitate the prince, the boy trys to jump over the wall they had just covered with razor blade coils in their latest attempt to keep burglars away. When the little boy does this, he is caught by the blades and dies.

"A Worn Path" Eudora Welty

The minor characters in "A Worn Path" play an important role in characterizing Phoenix Jackson. Her first encounter is with a young, white hunter. He helps her up and advises her to head home. Upon her refusal, he makes a racist comment about how old colored people would never miss the chance to see Santa Claus and lets her go. Next, she asks a lady on the street to lace and tie her shoes for her. The lady seems a little annoyed by her, but obeys her request. Finally, she gets to the doctor's office and the attendent asks her why she is there and for her information. Phoenix doesn't reply, and the attendent gets angry, asking, "Are you deaf?" Then a nurse comes out and recognizes Phoenix. She calmly tells the attendent that she is there to pick up medication for her sick grandson. But when the nurse asks about her grandson and she doesn't reply, the nurse tells her that she must not waste their time. Phoenix claims that her memory had escaped her, but reassures that she won't forget again when the nurse seems nervous. Still, the nurse gives Phoenix the medication. I think that all of the characters are somewhat irked by her, but let her go on with her life as long as she is capable of doing so, and they are willing to help her out if she needs it.

"Eveline" James Joyce

Eveline leads a busy, work-filled life where she is always taking care of something, and then a sailor comes along and offers to take her away with him. This is her chance to escape, and she has many reasons to accept this offer. Throughout the entirety of her life, her father has been an abusive figure that always has something negativc to say. Her mother died when she was younger; therefore, she is left with the responsibility to take care of the house and family when she gets home from her day job. She works at the Stores with a boss that is never happy and always nagging. When contemplating whether she should stay or go, she begins thinking about the night that her mother passed. Her mother repeated the the phrase, "Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!" In Gaelic, this phrase is translated to either "the end of pleasure is pain" or "the end of the song is raving madness." Either way, this vision haunted her and pushed her to want to leave even more. All of these present circumstances make it desirable for her to leave home.

"Hunters in the Snow" Tobias Wolff 2

I thought that these three men: Kenny, Frank, and Tub are a quite peculiar group of friends. At first, Kenny and Frank seem to have an alliance and gang up to make fun of Tub. At this point, I felt bad for Tub, because I thought that he was being betrayed by his friends. Then later when Tub shoots Kenny, Frank told him he would have done the same thing. I think that this shows that Frank felt obliged to agree with Kenny, because he knew his secret of being in love with the babysitter and did not want him to tell anyone, which gave me the sense that Kenny is not a trustworthy person. While on the way to the hospital, Frank and Tub stop at a bar, then a tavern and just left their bullet wounded friend in the bed of the truck to suffer and slowly but surely die. I found this particularly odd, because I would never do that to anyone I know, let alone, one of my good friends. Then when Tub declares that he lost they directions, they shrug it off because they think they remember, but they are not sure. This further exemplifies my thought that they are terrible friends. Then after they leave the tavern, they take the blankets from Kenny, because he is unable to hold them on top of himself under his conditions, because they are cold. They sicken me. Finally the last paragraph repeats how Frank keeps telling Kenny to say that he is "going to the hospital," but really he is not, because they took a different turn a long way back. This makes me wonder if they consciously took the wrong turn or if it was an accident. Either way it could have been avoided if they had gone back to get the directions or hadn't have stopped in the first place. They are awful friends.

"Hunters in the Snow" Tobias Wolff

Tub may be considered a stock character on the surface: a cartoon-like obese man who is the butt of other people's jokes, but details throughout the story help make Tub into a fully realized individual. First of all, I think that we start to see part of Tub's character when he is upset by his friends' jokes about his weight. Usually the stock character just takes the insults, but Tub gets mad and tells them to stop. Then, I would have never guessed that Tub would shoot Kenny when he has the fear that Kenny was going to shoot him. I would think that he would be too afraid to actually shoot his friend. This shows that he is a round character with feelings and emotions, because I think that he only shot Kenny out of fear. Later, we see Tub having a moment with Frank and finally admitting that he doesn't have a gland problem, but just likes to eat. I saw this as a resolution to Tub's problems; he just needed to be honest and have someone to trust and talk to. We also see Tub's compassion when he accepts Frank's secret of being in love with the town babysitter. Tub is actually a complex, round character when we pay attention to the details of the story.