.... Using these interpretive elements helps to give basis to my interpretation. Kingston's novel abounds with imagery, from the ghosts and barbarians, to the different colors (black, white, and red). Every “talk-story” has a place and meaning and every character is presented in a way to clarify Kingston's motives for writing. His model also presents seven evaluative criteria to which my interpretation applies: consistency, proportionateness, adequacy, completeness, depth, sensitivity, and integratedness. Of these, my interpretation best fulfills the evaluative criteria of consistency, completeness, and integratedness. It is evident that the narrator, Kingsto ....

.... Mama and Maggie continue to live together in their humble home. Mama is a robust woman who does the needed upkeep of the land, I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter, I wear overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. I can work outside all day, One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. (Walker 289) And Maggie is the daughter, "homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs," (Walker 288) who helps Mama by making "the yard so clean ....

.... reputation one of the nation's best psychiatric hospitals, let off her family the difficulties of having to live for two years with this "borderline personality." As diagnosed by the clinician's bible, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," this condition could be the human condition, for it consists of "uncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image, sexual orientation, long-term goals or career choice, types of friends or lovers to have" - what one of Caisson's therapists called "people whose lifestyles bother them." Certainly, Caisson suggests , such uncertainty is the normal state of teen-agers. Especially the smart ones, such as Caisson h ....

.... gone to war to fight for their country and explore the world. But as they yearned and sought the outside and how it was, they lost their innocence in the process. Being in war they saw death and destruction which soiled their once virgin eyes. Although they gained knowledge and experience they were becoming no longer young and gay, but were becoming mature and knowledgeable. Growing at such a fast pace was a regretful process, that even Andrew advised Tony to not grow too fast but that would not happen as we know. Another example of loss of innocence in the book would be Tony’s friends. The gang seems to be fairly innocent enough but they go through the lesser part o ....

.... can no longer speak like a human. The child is hastily fed a half bowl of corn meal and grease each day making its belly protrude and its legs so thin that there are no calves. The child has become mentally and physically deformed by this malnutrition and neglect. This is a representation of our very own sometimes gross existence. Think about our own homeless people and how they are treated. We ignore the except to make fun and laugh. We find it repulsive how they are dirty, smelly, and often beg from us. Mentally or physically challenged people in our society often receive the same treatment. We make fun because they are not as intelligent or physically fit as we are. ....

.... Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brick maker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river. They come across a hut with firewood stacked and a note saying it is for them but to approach cautiously. Natives attack them and the helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with t ....

.... been conveyed to the reader. Jack shows `the darkness' and if he and Ralph had just been friends, there would never have been an opportunity for Jack to show this darkness which lurked beneath the surface. Golding also uses the dead pilot conveniently against the boys - the way in which he is caught in the trees just in the right position to be caught by the wind and look like the beast and the way the wind picks up after Simon has let him down from the trees and carries him out to sea, so that the other boys cannot see that it wasn't a beast. The author uses the boy's fear against them, and although this could possibly happen in the situation, Golding uses it as a weapon ag ....

.... really captured the feeling as he states: "Not just a story—Love Story is an experience. The reader who responds to this little book will feel less like a reader than an unwritten Segal Character, living it all out from the inside…In this "love story" you are not just an observer." (Christian Science Monitor) Although this novel was not very wordy, Segal manages to "Go into great detail about the character’s personalities and feelings towards one another." (J.Leavitt) Segal’s original style of writing allowed readers to laugh as well as cry with the characters as though they were along with them. Erich Segal begins his novel by informing the readers of the trag ....