Christmas Memory by Truman Capote:

Plot:

Their family is poor, but Buddy is excited for Christmas. Then Sook (his elder cousin) decides to make a fruitcake because of the time of the year, so both Sook and Buddy collect pecans and then go buy whiskey for the fruitcake from a man named Haha Jones who is an American Indian. With the many fruitcakes that they make, they send them to people they have only met once in their life’s. After they finished making the fruitcakes, they both start preparing for days on both Christmas decorations and on getting presents for the family. Buddy has hard time thinking for a present for Sook, so at the end, he gave her a kite and she gave him a kite, as well. After opening their presents on Christmas morning, they both go out and fly their kites. Then it goes on saying that this was Buddy and Sook’s last Christmas together because Buddy was going to be sent to military school. At the end, because of old age, she forgets all about who Buddy is and dies.

The protagonist character:

Sook: kind at heart, friendly, funny, childish :<< The other Buddy died in 1880’s, when she was a child. She is still a child>>, adventurous.

Buddy: responsible, friendly: <<we are each other’s best friend>>, helpful, kind, adventurous.

Theme:

A main theme from the last story, A Christmas Memory, is the childhood innocence and being a child again. In the story, Buddy's poor family life does not seem to affect him at all while he hangs out with her elderly cousin, Sook. As for Sook, even with her old age, she still has a mind of a child. Also another theme is the joy of friendship, in which both Sook and Buddy care so much as friends and they have fun with everything that they do, from flying their homemade kites to making the many fruitcakes for people that they have only met once.

Settings:

Christmas,Washington,New York  and the fun and freak museum.

 

The lottery by Shirley Jackson:

Plot:

It’s a warm day, the 27th June; villagers were sitting all together in the square to participate in a lottery run by Mr. Summers, who officiates at all the big civic events. The children were collecting stones like every summer until their parents call them to order. Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late and chats briefly with her friend, Mrs. Delacroix. People start looking at her because she had forgotten that today was the day of the lottery. Mr. Summers calls each head of the house forward to a black wooden box, where each selects a slip of paper. Once the men have chosen, Mr. Summers allows everyone to open the paper and see who has been selected. It is Bill Hutchinson. His wife immediately starts protesting – so we get the sense that they're not about to win a couple million dollars. There are five people total in the Hutchinson family. Mr. Summers places five slips of paper into the box and each member of the family draws. Tess (Mrs. Hutchinson) draws a slip of paper with a big black dot in the center. Not good. The villagers advance on her, and it becomes crystal clear what the prize for the lottery really is: a stoning. Tess protests in vain as the villagers attack her.

Theme:

The rituals and traditions we unthinkingly follow as members of our society. Beyond critiquing the ways in which custom obscures right and wrong, the lottery also becomes a way of analyzing "traditional" social and gender divisions.

Tradition that appears to be as vital to the villagers as New Year celebrations might be to us. Yet, subtle hints throughout the story, as well as its shocking conclusion, indicate that the villagers' tradition has become meaningless over time.

The ritual of the lottery appears to be so naturalized that the villagers can't think rationally or critically about what they are doing. It is only we, as outsiders, who can really confront the madness of this ritual. In fact, it's the earnestness of the villagers that's so particularly frightening.

Also, the short story discusses family, in different: Their behaviors, the members that they lost in their family. So Jackson is clearly drawing a line between the social place of families (with their male heads of households and unfair distribution of luck) and the emotional importance of family ties, which is a private matter.

Character:

Mr. Summers:

Unlike many characters in "The Lottery," we find out a lot about Mr. Summers. He's married to "a scold" and has no children, so the villagers feel sorry for him – even though he runs a coal business and "[has] time and energy to devote to civic activities (like the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program, and of course, the lottery". This tells you something about the priorities of the villagers: they appear to place more emphasis on a traditional family life than on the kind of worldly success that Mr. Summers has achieved. Mr. Summers is quite the innovator: he wants to make a new black box because the old one is getting shabby (a suggestion the villagers don't take to: "no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box" [5]). He has had more success getting the villagers to use strips of paper instead of chips of wood when drawing for the lottery. He introduces this notion in the name of progress, pointing out that chips of wood may have been fine when the village was small, but now that the population is growing, they needed to use something that would fit more easily into the box. Mr. Summers is generally a wizard of efficiency: "he [seems] very proper and important as he [talks] interminably to Mr. Graves and the Martins".

 

House of flowers by Truman Capote:

Plot:

The story is called, House of Flowers by Truman Capote. The short story is about a young girl named Ottilie who lives with a group of friends (baby and Rosita) in an elegant place called, Champs Elyseés. They enjoy their time together. One day, Ottilie meats a man named Royal at a nearby cockfight. She starts falling for him, even though ignoring the wealthy man named Mr. Jamison who wants her. At the end, she and Royal marry. Then they move together in to Royal’s home, which is located at the hills where they both live with Royal’s grandmother, Old Bonaparte. Old Bonaparte wants Ottilie to leave \ Royal alone , so she does some cruel things to her, such as, putting a dead cat’s head inside Ottilie’s basket to poisoning her food and others mean tricks. Ottilie becomes clever and then kills the grandma by putting different things into her food, for instance putting spiders to lizards. At the end, because of believing that Old Bonaparte is haunting her, she has been tied to a tree, all night. At the end, she decides to scare Royal while being tied to the tree.

The protagonist character:

Ottlie: Naïve, not materialistic ,nice because everybody loved in Champs Elyseés, elegant:<<I have five silk dresses and a pair of  green satin shoes […]maybe Mr. Jamison or someone else will give me another bracelet>>,she don’t forgive people easily.

Baby and Rosita: Helpful :<< the proprietress gave Baby and Rosita a piece of advice: leave me alone, let her go, a few weeks and she will be back>>, outgoing: <<she listened to the whistling and the laughter and felt no desire to join in. Somebody would think you were thousand years old said Baby and Rosita said: Ottlie, why don’t you come to the cockfight with us? >>

Royal: Loyal, two-faced, brave, impatient.

Old bonapart: Ugly, evil, aloof:<<the old woman bruised her here  and there with vicious little pinches and informed her grandson that this bride was too skiny:she will die with her first.>> and <<A charred, lumpy creature, bowlegged as a dwarf and bald as buzz, Old Bonaparte was much respected  for miles around as makers of spells>>

Theme:

We have to think before we make big decision in our lives. The way you treat others is the same you are treated back. , the theme of that story is that if you do something wrong to someone, it will haunt you. In the story Ottilie kills off Old Bonaparte by putting different animals into the older woman's food. With that, Ottilie believed that her life would return to normal and that she would not have to deal with the older woman. The only problem was that the older woman was still haunting Ottilie, to the point where she believed that she was crazy. And with that, she gets tied up to a tree because of what she believes she is seeing.

Setting:

Champs Elyseés, Royal’s house :<< Royal’s house was like a house of flowers; wisteria sheltered the roof, a curtain of vines shaded the windows, lilies bloomed at the door. From the windows one could see far, faint winking’s of the sea ,as the house was high up a hill; here the sun burned hot but the shadows were cold. Inside the house was always dark and cool, and the walls rustled with pasted pink and green newspapers. There was only one room; it contained a stove, a teetering mirror on top a marble table, and a brass bed big enough for three fat men.>>

Tone:

The tone has to be loud, out spoken, lively, quite because of the beautiful Ottilie. She was very patient about everything that happen in the house at first, it was Old Bonaparte then, Royal.