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The Ant and the Grasshopper by W. S. Maugham

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The Ant and the Grasshopper by W. S. Maugham
The ant and the grasshopper by W. S. Maugham

The aim of the following paper is to analyze a story by Mark Twain called A Curious Dream. We propose in this paper firstly, to analyze characters, theme and point of view; secondly, the author’s style and thirdly, the author’s beliefs.

Firstly, Characters

The participants in the story are: the author, John Baxter Copmanhurst (the skeleton). The author in the story is the narrator presented with the subject pronoun “I”; he is the one who describes and comments a singular dream he had. The second character John Baxter is a skeleton. He is a fully developed character who feels upset because his descendants have forgot him in his grave.

Theme

Maugham takes as a reference the fable “the ant the grasshopper” which provides a moral lesson about hard-work and preparation to express that in everyday life not always workaholics and people who are morally correct get the best opportunities to survive on it, also that not all the time good acts are compensated with a prize. There are some occasions where lazy people obtain the best. This is shown in the story of the two brothers who have similar characteristics to those of the grasshopper and the ant. Tom (the grasshopper) takes life easy while George (the ant ) works hard, takes no joy and gets little happiness from life and at the end Tom with all his faults is the lucky one; while George with all his virtues ends dull and upset.

Point of view

The story presents three different points of view which are: the first person point of view. This is pointed up when the author makes use of the subject pronoun “I” as illustrates as follow: “when I was a very small boy…”, “I was made to learn by heart…”, “I do not ascribe it …” The omniscient point of view; it is used when the narrator knows everything about the characters. For instance, “George was terrible upset”, “it cost George an infinitive deal of trouble...” and finally the objective point of view in

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