JGB's ENG 104

It was like love, she thought. Something you thought you should have until it was right there in front of you and you realized you were committed to it whole. (20) Throughout this story the reader can grasp the sense that Ronnie is not exactly happy in her relationship with Jeremy. It seems as if […]

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Belle Boggs’ “Deer Season” takes the reader through the minds of all of the characters in the story, and portrays what the first day of deer season means to each of them. What is so beautiful about this story is that the reader feels a personal connection to each individual character due to the switch […]

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The point of view lets the reader see the thoughts of the staff and the remaining students on the first day of deer season. Each person seems to be lost in their thoughts: The principal thinking of tomorrow’s conversations, Jenny thinking about her charcoal drawing of dried roses, Mrs. Hayes thinking about the sinkhole in […]

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Haruki Murakami’s “The Elephant Vanishes” is written in first person point of view; the perspective we are given is of a man who works at a magazine company who is interested in the elephant. From his point of view, we are not able to find out exactly what happened to the elephant or his keeper, but the narrator […]

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I felt like this a lot after my experience with the vanishing elephant. I would begin to think I wanted to do something, but then I would become incapable of distinguishing between the probable results of doing it and of not doing it.(465) This story represents anxiety and closing yourself off to the world. The […]

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The most reasonable explanation for this would be that the keeper had unlocked the ring, removed it from the elephant’s leg, and locked the ring again… despite the fact that the keeper had no key. (457) This story is told from the first person, retrospective point of view. The narrator holds a factual retelling of […]

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For example, the article used such expressions as ‘the elephant escaped’ but if you looked at the entire piece it became obvious that the elephant had in no way ‘escaped.’ It had vanished into thin air.” With the peculiar disappearance of the town elephant, the main character becomes almost obsessed with the event. There is […]

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“The elephant and keeper have vanished completely. They will never be coming back.” “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami was not as complicated as it appeared to be. It is exceedingly intriguing; like a mystery novel in a short story except there is no resolution. Various possible themes have crossed my mind but the only […]

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“The chain coiled around the door of the elephant house reminded me of a huge snake set to guard a ruined palace in a thick forest. A few short months without its elephant had given the place an air of doom and desolation that hung there like a huge, oppressive rain cloud.” (459) Haruki Murakami uses figurative language, […]

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While reading the story “The Elephant Vanishes,” we as readers never get the answer to the questions of why the narrator is so interested in the elephant and how it started initially. He mentions on page 454 that he had his own “private interest in the elephant problem from the very outset. . .” but […]

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The narrator of this story tells the readers about an elephant that has mysteriously vanished from its home, along with its keeper. The readers never understand why the narrator is so in to knowing about the elephant or why he keeps a scrap book with all of the articles about the elephant. Towards the end […]

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In “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami, the narrator is obsessed with an old elephant that his town comes in possession of. Strangely the Elephant mirrors the narrator and the parallels can be seen in a couple of ways. One of the ways is in the way he describes his job. He says it’s “not the kind […]

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Murakami brilliantly captures the complexities of human happiness and suffrage in his story “The Elephant Vanishes.” The way in which the narrator reveals his obsession with the elephant and its caretaker is nuanced and eloquently told. As the narrator tries to make sense of the vanishing elephant and caretaker, and their relationship to each other, […]

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‘The Elephant Vanishes” is told in first-person. The narrator relays the events that involve the elephant: how the elephant vanishes, how he saw the elephant shrink, and how the disappearance affects the narrator. “The elephant’s absence had first been noticed at two o’clock on the afternoon of May 18–the day before–when men from the school-lunch […]

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In “The Elephant Vanishes,” Haruki Murakami expresses depression and dissociation through the impossible disappearance of an old elephant and its keeper. The narrator, a thirty-one year old businessman, is immediately revealed to be a very precise, pragmatic, and careful man as he recounts the events leading to the disappearance of this elephant, while also acknowledging a […]

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  In Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog,” love plays a crucial role in the relationship between the narrator and the sister and how their love for each other has affected the ones around them. Due to them being siblings, there is sibling rivalry, as we see in the following quote:“At the moment I understand that men would […]

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“I ate roast beef and watched him charm everyone but me.” (507) Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” is written in first person point of view with a omniscient narrator. The narrator is the younger sister of a girl who acts as if she can speak to animals. While the reader knows what the narrator is thinking, they […]

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Out in daylight he needed special glasses, like twin tiny antique cameras, and he ducked his head as he put them on, as if burrowing under a cloth. I was ashamed for anyone to see and ashamed of being embarrassed.” The main character is ashamed of her father’s illness because it shows weakness that she […]

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Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” is told from the point of view of a grieving younger sister, who struggles through several traumatic events over the course of a short period of time. Through this, we are able to better understand how grief, love, and regret color the narrator’s perspective and prevent her from truly accepting loss […]

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“But I couldn’t say–for example, that I had waited for him, and my sister hadn’t.” 510 Love is the main force at work that drives the narrator throughout the tale of grief and moving on. The moment she meets her sister’s boyfriend, Jimmy, is a confusing experience for her as he scares her but also […]

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No one yet saw the connection between my father dissecting dogs and my sister talking to them. (502) “Talking Dog” by Francine Prose portrays the challenge of envy, or someone having something that you want. Through the first person perspective of the speaker, she looks back into her life about the time when she thought she was […]

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The narrator in Prose’s “Talking Dog” is an adult woman who reflects back to her life as an adolescent. The narrator is unreliable due to her conflicting emotions towards her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, Jimmy. Throughout the story, the narrator battles with her immense love and jealousy she feels towards her sister. She wishes […]

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“I wanted to say she’d lied to us all, she’d faked it about the dog, as if it mattered whether the animal spoke, as if love were about the truth, as if he would love her less—and more—for pretending to talk to a dog.” This story is about the narrator’s coming-of-age. Her older sister invites […]

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In Francine Prose’s “Talking Dog” the central symbol of the story is a white dog. The dog represents a messenger or a guardian angel figure. This can be seen in several places, but the most noticeable is when the narrator’s sister claims that “the dog,… had come to [me] after Jimmy died and personally guaranteed […]

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This short story is told in the narrator’s perspective but she seems to focus on telling the timeline of her sister from Jimmy’s death until her own death at the end of the story. It is clear that this story is written about the narrator’s sister. Throughout the short story, the readers can sense that […]

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