Summary Sonnet 5 compares nature’s four seasons with the stages of the young man’s life. Although the seasons are cyclical, his life is linear, and hours become tyrants that oppress him because he cannot escape time’s grasp. Time might “frame / The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,” meaning […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 5Summary and Analysis The End of Something
Summary A teenager now, Nick Adams has been dating Marjorie, a girl who has been working during the summer at a resort on Hortons Bay. This evening, the two of them row to a beach on the bay. After a picnic supper, Nick tells Marjorie that he wants to break […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The End of SomethingSummary and Analysis An-mei Hsu: Scar
To June Woo, the mothers who treasure the evenings that they spend together at the Joy Luck Club seem little more than elderly, middle-class women in their “slacks, bright print blouses, and different versions of sturdy walking shoes.” Yet we know now that the life of June’s mother, Suyuan, was […]
Read more Summary and Analysis An-mei Hsu: ScarSummary and Analysis Sonnet 4
Summary The themes of narcissism and usury (meant here as a form of use) are most developed in this sonnet, with its references to wills and testaments. The terms “unthrifty,” “legacy,” “bequest,” and “free” (which in line 4 means to be generous), imply that nature’s generosity should be matched by […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 4Summary and Analysis The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife
Summary Dr. Adams hires two American Indians to cut some logs that broke free from a shipment bobbing downstream toward a large sawmill company. They are glad to make some extra money and are in a good mood, good-naturedly teasing the doctor about stealing the logs. The doctor becomes furious […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Doctor and the Doctor’s WifeSummary and Analysis Sonnet 3
Summary Drawing on farming imagery, the poet focuses entirely on the young man’s future, with both positive and negative outcomes. However, the starting point for these possible futures is “Now,” when the youth should “form another,” that is, father a child. The sonnet begins with the image of a mirror […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 3Summary and Analysis Jing-mei Woo: The Joy Luck Club
“Before I wrote The Joy Luck Club,” Tan said in an interview, “my mother told me, ‘I might die soon. And if I die, what will you remember?”‘ Tan’s answer appears on the book’s dedication page, emphasizing the novel’s adherence to truth. How much of the story is real? “All […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Jing-mei Woo: The Joy Luck ClubSummary and Analysis Indian Camp
Summary One night, Dr. Adams is summoned to help an American Indian woman who has been in painful labor for two days. The doctor takes his young son, Nick, and his brother, George, to the American Indian camp on the other side of a northern Michigan lake. There, the doctor […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Indian CampSummary and Analysis Sonnet 2
Summary Sonnet 2 continues the argument and plea from Sonnet 1, this time through the imagery of military, winter, and commerce. Time again is the great enemy, besieging the youth’s brow, digging trenches — wrinkles — in his face, and ravaging his good looks. Beauty is conceived of as a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Sonnet 2Summary and Analysis Part I: Feathers from a Thousand Li Away
A brief parable introduces one of the novel’s primary themes: transformation. An old woman remembers purchasing an unusual “swan” in a Shanghai market; the swan had originally been a duck, but it stretched its neck so long — trying to become a goose — that it eventually looked exactly like […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part I: Feathers from a Thousand Li Away