Character Values in Lady with the Pet Dog Barn Burning, Hills like White Elephants and Horse Dealers Daughter essays

Character Values in Lady with the Pet Dog Barn Burning, Hills like White Elephants and Horse Dealers Daughter essays Human beings are naturally burdened with character imperfections that, to a great extent, define who they are as people. The idiosyncrasies, character flaws, actions, and turns of phrase characteristic of every individual are personifications of the "not so perfect" world. In literature, the acknowledgment of character flaws allows the reader a glimpse into the human psyche of the characters of a particular story, and, as such, a glimpse into the human psyche of the authors themselves, as well as the specific cultural milieu in which they write. Indeed, literary works of all kinds can give the reader greater insight into the eternal question of "why people do the things they do." Perhaps this is especially true for the American reader of the short stories, Lady with the Pet Dog, Barn Burning, Hills Like White Elephants and Horse Dealer's Daughter, for, within these works, the reader can not only glimpse, but gain a real internal understanding of some of the pivotal issues and dilemmas embedded in the cultural "Americas" from which the authors sprangissues and dilemmas highlighted by the values of love, Faulkner's 1939 classic short story, Barn Burning, opens with a young boy attending the arson trial of his father. What follows is a scathing description of the events of the case, as well as the nature of his father, Mr. Snopes, is a hard, arrogant, cruel man, given to physical violence, even worse, he displays a coldness, an almost matter of fact feeling to his cruelty that highlights his odious nature all the morea fact one notices in his brushing aside the "nigger" at the de Spain home with absolute cold calmas if it is a universal fact that his superiority must rein, and the defilement of the pristine home (with the horse droppings he could not be bothered with avoiding) is absolutely without Thro...