|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
Obsessions in O’Connor’s “First Confession,” Parker’s “A Telephone Call,” and Updike’s “A & P”
Obsession is represented in the following three stories: “First Confession” by Frank O’Connor, “A Telephone Call,” by Dorothy Parker, and John Updike’s “A & P.” These three stories portray obsessions that are in conflict with social conditions. ... With the character’s beliefs are demonstrated their obsessions.
The obsession in “First Confession” is that an Irish Catholic seven-year-old boy is under pressure with the obsession of a dreadful moment of making his first confession. ... This made Jackie feel like he is a sinner because he feels that he was not honoring his grandmother and feels that he coveted Nora’s penny that she gets every week from their grandmother. ... Ryan affects Jackie by making him feel that confession is chilling. After telling her story about the man who made a bad confession, Jackie becomes afraid of going to confession. ... Ryan is using fear in order to frighten Jackie so that he won’t make a bad confession but instead she caused him to become too afraid of going to confession. Jackie becomes so obsessionally afraid that he starts to think,”[…] I would make a bad confession and then die in the night and be continually coming back and burning people’s furniture” (616). ... He understands Jackie’s thought of being a sinner. ...
With “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker the woman obsesses over a man she knows not well and who never calls at the time she wishes. Since she struggles with waiting for his call this turns to an obsession she cannot overcome. The call never comes through, and unmistakably she cannot handle getting over her obsession and instead of making a decision she stays in the moment of the fixation. She is unsure of how to respond without a call coming through. When she realizes the true situation she decides “If he hasn’t telephoned the, I’ll call him. I will” (Parker 20). ... […] Oh, what do I care what’s going on all over the world? Why can’t that telephone ring? ... The result of the woman’s attention to the telephone through the obsession is that the woman still cannot accept the obsession as being the final end. The woman weighs her new feelings about the
obsession when she begins to want to stop punishing herself with the persistent obsession and wants to smash the telephone with its “smug black face in little bits” (16). Through this obsession with herself to the telephone she has made some progress. ... Sammy’s obsession with this other reality keeps the possibility of a better future for him since he resigns from his position after his boss Mr.
Approximate Word count = 2250
Approximate Pages = 9
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|