In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories Literary Elements

A short story

The actions take place in 1909 in New York.

The narrator is first-person, an unnamed 21 year-old man.

The tone and mood of the story is calm and even.

The protagonist is a young man of 21 years old, who watches a movie which shows years of youth of his parents.

The main conflict is in the realization of one’s own decisions and actions, and the comprehension of the effect these decisions and actions make on the surrounding world.

The climax comes when the young man is sent out of the theatre.

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The story alludes to William Howard Taft – the twenty-seventh president of the United States. There are also allusions to famous New York areas and attractions – Brooklyn, Coney Island.

The images of nature, as realized through the ocean, are present in the context.

The paradox stands in the fact that a young man watches a movie of his own parents

Parallelism is used when describing the situation when the father comes to the house of his future wife – the protagonist’s mother. There is details and in parallel constructions is told what each member of the family is doing: “My father enters, my grand father rises from the table and shakes hands with him. My mother has run upstairs to tidy herself. My grandmother asks my father if he has had dinner. My grandfather opens the conversation. My father sits uncomfortably near the table….”

“The audience begins to clap impatiently” – (audience is synecdoche for people)

“an occasional carriage passes” – (carriage is a metonymy for horses harnessed to it)

“the afternoon descends”