Realism In The Outcasts Of Poker Flat

Words: 566
Pages: 3

Realism is when an artist does not make his total work happy. They show the reader a reality. Realism can be seen in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" by Bret Harte, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" by Kate Chopin, and "Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall. The artists use different strategies to show different types of realism, so they can let their audience know that what they may not believe in is true. In the poem "Ballad of Birmingham", Dudley Randall expresses realism through the point of view of a mother who just wants her child to be safe. For example, "The mother smiled to know her child was in the sacred place, but that smile was the last smile to come upon her face." She believed that her child was safe because she went to church instead of going to the march, yet she didn't anticipate what's to come. Later, the mother says, "O, here's the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?" After the bombing of the church, when the mom searched for her child, all she found was her child's shoe. Through these lines, Randall used pathos and rhyme to show realism. In the moms reality her children were not safer at the church, nevertheless, she …show more content…
This can be seen in "The Story of an Hour", "news of her husband's death . . . It was Brently Mallard who entered . . . they said she had dies of heart disease ___ of joy that kills." While she wasn't overjoyed by her husband's death, she still felt free from him and wasn't devastated over his death. In reality when she found out her husband was alive, she died but it wasn't from joy. Chopin also uses, "a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever," in "A Pair of Silk Stockings". While she wished she would never have to go back to her real life, in reality she had to go back and take care of her