"The Other Wife," Colette

This story's point of view is third person omniscient, the narrator moves the audience between multiple character's personalities.  In "The Other Wife" we are moved between two character's thoughts.  Marc, a recently divorced/ recently re-married man and his new wife Alice a submissive and controlled wife.  This point of view gives me the impression that Marc is a bad husband, by referring to Alice as "darling" commenting about her recent weight gain, and ordering for her at the restaurant.

The setting technique Media Res is used to set the reader down in the middle of things.  Following Marc and Alice to a restaurant where Marc's ex-wife happens to be.  His new wife has never seen her so Media Res places the audience into that same instance of not knowing her.

The controlling idea is that Marc has a past, which is an ex-wife that his new wife gets to see while dining.  This meeting sends thoughts through Alice about Marc's ability to keep a marriage together.  Eventually Alice is envious of the ex.  Perhaps because the ex is free from Marc and his snooty arrogant nature.

"The Necklace" Guy de Maupassant

"The Necklace," by Guy de Maupassant is written in third person limited P.O.V., the reader understands the thoughts, feelings, and actions of one character, Mathilde.  As in third person limited the narrator is not the character.  The audience has intimate knowledge of Mathilde

Mathilde has an internal struggle which is that her only worth is "beauty, grace, and charm," she wants money and she wants to be desired by men in upper-classes.  She also thinks she is too good for her husband and deserves better.

The story uses personification while describing the "mean" walls inside Mathilde's house giving a human quality to an object.

The inciting incident in this story is when Loisel tells Mathilde that they are invited to a formal party.  Having nothing to wear immediately makes Mathilde bitter and angry. 

She solves this problem, during the rising action, by buying when she buys a dress with her husband's savings and by borrowing a diamond necklace from Madame Forestier

The climax of this story is when upon returning home the necklace is missing.  The couple lie to Madame Forestier to buy some time, searching endlessly for the necklace, they eventually give up looking and switch the necklace with a new one on credit for thousands of Francs.  This missing necklace takes 10 years to repay and Mathilde is weathered from the hard times.  Finally after ten years she runs into her old friend Madame Forestier.

The Denoument of the story is when Mathilde admits to losing the necklace and replacing it with a costly look-alike.  Madame Forestier is shocked because she explains that the necklace was a imitation worth no more than five hundred Francs. 

The story is written chronologically.

The controlling idea is that material things were all Mathilde cared about and that her desires for riches cost them 10 years of their lives repaying debts and become old and rough.

Lorrie Moore "You're Ugly Too" 1990

Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly Too" follows a young American History Teacher Zoe Hendricks she is unmarried and feels alienated in the mid-west.  Sexual discrimination issues prompted the college into hiring Zoe.  She is often late for class and through the reading you learn that Zoe sings or tells jokes (often using dark humor) when she feels nervous.  Lorrie Moore is well-known for using this "dark" humor. 

Evan is Zoe's younger sister from Manhattan, she invites Zoe to a Halloween party.  Evan is on the verge of getting engaged and she worries about Zoe's love life.  In the mid-west Zoe goes on a couple of dates.  One of the men even have the nerve to flirt with the other woman while out on a double date.  Zoe doesn't go on many second dates.

Evan invites Earl to the party to introduce to Zoe, he is dressed like a naked lady and he is going through a divorce.  He wants to talk about love out on the balcony with Zoe, but she can't seem to take him seriously.  The story ends  with Zoe pretending to push Earl off the 21st story balcony scaring and appalling him.  Zoe's character is totally developed, she is given the trait of feeling alienated in the mid-west, a trait that Lorrie Moore also has.  She is self-involved and she is true to herself.

"The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" Pam Houston 1999

Wanting something that you can't have is the theme I see throughout this story.  In 1999 the year Pam Houston wrote "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" I was 19 and I was for the first time on my own trying to decide what I wanted; what I thought I needed.  The story's main character Lucy knows what she wants, she wants her friend Leo.  They hang out watching weddings performed outside Leo's window, they talk of poetry and love. 

The only thing keeping these two apart is the fact that Leo loves Guinevere a woman that doesn't know he exists even though they have met several times.  All of Houston's characters in this story want something; some want love; some want money.  A great part about this story is the small details that lead to people getting what they want, namely a beggar holding a sign saying he wants no money only a smile, this heartfelt sign leads to Lucy given him all her money. 

Lucy is strong in some ways and terribly weak in others.  She stays with Gordon, an incredibly smart and incredibly jealous, through many altercations that a stronger person wouldn't have accepted.

Houston's mother was an actress and demanded her daughter be "thin and perfectly made up." I believe actor's are mostly insecure people pleasers who possess many problems the second the camera gets turned off.  Maybe her mother's lifestyle of acting gave Houston the personality that led her to write many stories about self-reliance and love.  

"Proper Library" Carolyn Ferrell, 1994

Carolyn Ferrell's "Proper Library" is centered around an inner city, the story follows Lorrie, a homosexual teenager trying to survive his peers and his lifestyle.  Lorrie skips class often to be with Rakeem, the boy he secretly lusts for. 

This story Lorrie attempts to help his relatives survive poverty through education.  On page 706 he teaches his brothers "math 4."  Lorrie states "I never hate anybody," and "I keep moving, it's the way I learned keep moving."  This shows the reader that Lorrie has plenty enemies including a white girl that calls him "faggot" on the bus, but he still pushes through life. 

This story has characters that are pulling Lorrie in every direction.  Rakeem wants Lorrie to skip school, his mom wants him to study hard, the street lives of gangs trying to target him as a member or a victim.  Mrs. Gabrini's positive reinforcement in school helps Lorrie keep focus.  He is influenced everywhere he goes.

Carolyn Ferrell wrote this piece capturing many different dimensions of a character's life, complicated many times over because of mixed sexual feelings, trouble in school, and having everything falling around him as he tries to climb out of his life's problems.  Ferrrel felt alienated in her younger years growing up in Brooklyn, her own childhood seeps through in her character's own alienation.  In the scene that shows Rakeem getting out of a beating by threatening a gang by saying "I have Aids," stays consistent with her reputation of using AIDS as subject matter in many if her writings.

John Updike's "Gesturing"

John Updike's "Gesturing" uses third person omniscient point of view.  Updike's story tells the tale of a middle-aged couple that have decided to separate because their marriage has grown "stagnant."  The husband Richard through the narrator is shown to still be in love with his wife Joan, but both Joan and Richard had taken on outside lovers.  The narrator jumps between Richard's thoughts of hurt and also his discovery of happiness when it came to his new found freedom in bachelorhood.  Richard's lover Ruth who also is married to another man gets mad at Richard for having sex with Joan in his new apartment even though she continues to have sex with her husband, Richard does not feel guilty telling Ruth about his sexual encounters with Joan.  This story is written for playboy, written about love affairs with no guilt attached, this story's attempted audience is middle-aged men living in the eighties that find themselves unhappy and fantasizing about sexual liberation in a stagnant life.  It also says something about excessive behaviors of the 1980's questioning "Why have one sexual partner when I could have many?"  Followed closely by the widespread outbreak of AIDS ironically.

Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl"

In Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl," the narrator is using the third person omniscient point of view, this point of view is used to jump between the character's thoughts and actions.  Magda is an infant suffering and on the verge of death in a WWII Nazi concentration camp.  In spite of her Mother Rosa's normal desire to not let her child suffer the fact is that she is starving and she cannot produce milk to feed her daughter.  Rosa's other daughter Stella a fourteen year old is jealous of Magda, the narrator uses third person omniscient point of view to show this, "Stella wanted to be wrapped in a shawl, hidden away."  Ozick uses third person point of view professionally, she doesn't overwhelm the reader by "jumping" too much between characters.  This story's narration is absolutely heartbreaking because it displays how each character is suffering individually and also as a family unit, wanting the other to be saved.  Ozick's writing of "The Shawl" is her way to display the struggle of her people, she had to survive her own struggles in America surrounded by anti-Semitic people in her own life.  She does an outstanding job of describing the struggles of her characters to her readers, Ozick's ability to describe thought, worries, smells, torture, despair, and love makes this story extremely painful and powerful.