They All Just Went Away Comparisons
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While reading "They All Just Went Away" by Joyce Carol Oates, I was compelled by the fact that she was able to convey such emotion and feeling from something as ordinary as a house. Her use of language and attention to details, even the most minute, showed real creativity. With Oates also being one of America's most celebrated and prolific writers, writing numerous novels, short stories, poems and more, this doesn't surprise me. Within this short story, she tells a tale of her own remembrances of a house that once stood near her own.
Clearly, this is a different approach to conveying an image to someone rather than simply showing a painting or a picture. Edward Hoppers painting of a haunted house can also conjure up feelings in a person, based on that individual's experiences and memories, but both approaches differ tremendously.
"I believe that the great painters, with their intellect as master, have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom" Edward Hopper
Here, Hopper is explaining that he believes great painters are the ones that can paint an image and capture emotions within that image. This is closely related to what Oates has done in her essay.
Oates's essay deals with her childhood and her strange desire to go and visit old abandoned houses...