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Free Critical Reflection Essay

“Aren’t you Happy for me?” by Richard Bausch presents the story as a form of dialogue, mainly between the father and the daughter. The dialogue mainly encompasses the dad’s perception of the story, which is predominantly negative. Although Melanie tries to portray her point of view to her father, Ballinger is not that happy for her daughter. Several lines convey this fact, where he even gets sarcastic, teasing Melanie’s fiancé saying that he is much older than her own father is. “Daddy.”/ “Is that what you call him? No, I’m Daddy. You have to call him Granddaddy.” This sarcastic approach is mostly persistent on the dominating aspect of Ballinger in the dialogue with her daughter. Ballinger is insistent on his own perspective, not seeing things the way his daughter has. The Anonymous narrator, limits his perspective on the story, giving one character, Ballinger the voice to portray his thought about the incidence. The structure of the dialogue is a little bit skewed, with the father expressing most of his thoughts and opinions about the matter without giving the daughter a chance to express her perspective.“Stop it,” she said. “Please, Daddy. I know what I’m doing.”/ “Do you know how old he’s going to be when your baby is ten? Do you? Have you given that any thought at all?” She was silent. He said, “How many children are you hoping to have?” (Bausch). The key part of the dialogue POV is to express the author’s opinions, which are more about how such an arrangement is not good. Secondly, it also expresses the stand of a father in such a matter. Bearing in mind that he is the worst affected, giving him a dominating personality is an excellent approach illustrate his frustration.

“People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk” by Lorrie Moore uses the anonymous narrator more predominantly to express the views of the mother. Although the story is narrated widely through the mother’s perspective, the narrator uses dialogue, between the mother with several characters such as the doctor, her husband, or her friends to relay her worries. Nonetheless, most of the story is narrated from the author’s perspective of the entire story, conveying some of her innermost fears through a storyline approach. The anonymous narrator also conveys the mother’s thoughts to the audience, allowing her to express them verbally in limited instances of the story. One part of the dialogue The Husband is trying to console the mother, “We’ll just take all the steps, move through all the stages. We’ll go where we have to go. We’ll hunt; we’ll find; we’ll pay what we have to pay. What if we can’t pay?” “Sounds like shopping.” “I cannot believe this is happening to our little boy,” he says, and starts to sob again (Moore 220). In this part, you can see that although the husband is trying to be optimistic, the mother’s perspective remains negative persistently. Although dialogue between the Husband and the mother are the most prevalent throughout the story, Moore uses dialogues extensively throughout the story to improve the plot. “We’re going to need the money.” /”To say nothing of the moral boundaries of pecuniary recompense in a situation such as this-“/ “What if the other kidney goes? What if he needs a transplant?/ Where are the moral boundaries there? What are we going to do, have bake sales?”/ “We can sell the house. I hate this house. It makes me crazy.”/ “And we’ll live-where again?”/ “The Ronald McDonald place. I hear it’s nice. It’s the least McDonald’s can do.” (Moore 223). For instance in this dialogue, the author indicates the mother’s value for her child, seeing it even necessary to sell the house if it saves the baby. The mother’s POV is that the baby is of utmost importance, beyond anything else.

“Miss Brill” is a 1920 classic story written by Katherine Mansfield that explores the life of a woman, Miss Brill, and the excellent day she was having in her new fur coat. The story explores Miss Brill’s observation of other people, narrating what she saw and how she thought of other people. For a predominant part of the story, Mansfield, the narrator presents Brill’s observation of other people’s fashion, taking note of the kind of clothing they have worn and the type of attitude they displayed in a form of monologue. This story does not adopt any type of monologue or dialogue point of view for describing the story, but rather the anonymous narrator expresses the thoughts going through Miss Brill’s head throughout the story. However, in limited parts of the story, the author lets other characters in the story offer their thoughts through limited dialogue, such as the old man who asked Miss Brill, “An actress are ye?” to which she replies that she was once an actress (Mansfield 3). The POV is narrated as a monologue of Miss Brill’s thoughts. For instance, “Oh, how fascinating it was! How she enjoyed it! How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play” (Mansfield 2). This POV indicates what Miss Brill was thinking.

“In the Gloaming” by Alice Elliott Dark, the anonymous narrator’s POV is the most dominating perspective throughout the story. He broods during the days, but on the first summer night, when they eat outside, Laird talked to his mother, Janet /His father, Martin had hurriedly left the table to delve into his work (Dark 88). This excerpt indicates an anonymous narrator giving the audience a picture into the life of the three characters. However, the narrator allows for rhetorical dialogue in characters expresses their thoughts or asks questions to the other character, but receives no response.

Laird said, “I always thought it hurt you somehow that the day was over, but you said it was a beautiful time because for a few moments the purple light made the whole world look like the Scottish Highlands on a summer night,”(Dark 88). For instance, in this excerpt Laird expresses his thoughts to his mother who does not respond. Using the same rhetorical approach, the story ends with Martin, Laird’s father asking his wife, “Please tell me–what else did my boy like?” (Dark 88). The use of the anonymous narrator’s POV works in giving the audience an overall view of all the characters without bias.

References
Bausch, R. (May 27, 1995). Aren’t you happy for me? Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/arent-you-happy-for-me-1621301.html
Dark, E. A. (May 3, 1993). Issue in the Gloaming. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/03/in-the-gloaming
Mansfield, K. (1920). Miss Brill. Retrieved from http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/assets/KM-Stories/MISS-BRILL1920.pdf
Moore, L. (1988). People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk. Retrieved from https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-459-spring2014/files/2014/01/Lorrie-Moore.pdf

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