English Notes For You

The Oval Portrait Main Characters of the Story : 1. The Narrator : (Name not given) badly injured, takes shelter in an abandoned chateau (castle) with his servant 2. Pedro : The servant of the narrator 3. The Painter : a man who paints his wife, but he is so absorbed with his work that he fails to notice that his wife's condition was getting worse, and finally she dies 4. The Woman in the Portrait : wife of the painter,  she becomes the subject of his painting, and finally dies at the end of the story Short Summary :  The story starts with the narrator (name not given) who was badly wounded and injured. With his servant (Pedro), he takes shelter in an abandoned chateau (castle) in the Apennines (mountain range in Italy).They settled in the smallest room which was full of many paintings.  He took interest in the paintings on the wall, looking at them in candle light. There he also found a book on the pillow which gave full information about the paintings there.  A...

  (The Selfish Giant) Main Characters: The Giant  : (The Central Character of the Story. In the beginning of the story he is presented as a selfish one, but by the end we find him as a kind hearted loving character) The Children : (They were the Local Kids) The Little Boy : (Lord Jesus, in disguise) Spring Summer Autumn Winter Forces (Frost, Northwind, Hail) [Note : As this story is in the form of Fairy Tale , so Spring, Summer etc. are also taken as characters and they also have dominant roles.] --------------------------------------------------------------          Plot Summary: This is a story of a selfish giant and a little boy who was a messenger of God. The story takes place in the giant's garden. In his (giant's) long absence, local kids used to visit the garden and play. But when the giant returned, he became very angry seeing the children playing in his garden. He stopped them form playing there and built a huge wall all over the garden w...

The Gift in Wartime   [   Summary, Analysis, Interpretation, and Important Questions - Answers] (Tran Mong Tu :The Poet) A Short Summary : This a war poem. In it we find a woman mourning the death of her husband. He was in war, and lost his life in war field.  She talks about gifts which they gave each other. Her gifts were things like rose on his grave, her wedding gown, her youth. In return, she received gifts like his medals, badges, his dead body, shrapnel, his blood stained uniform.  A second thought on his gifts makes it clear that such gifts are not from the husband. No husband can send such deadly gifts to his wife. These are gifts from 'war' itself. These are war's gifts not only to this woman, but to all those who lose their people in war. Wars are not only terrible to widows or war survivors,  but they are terrible to whole of the humanity. -------------------------------------------------------------- Summary : The Gift in Wartime is a war poem whic...