House on Sand Creek

8/3/14

“The House on Sand Creek” is a well-written short story that is centered around the narrator who is a middle aged lawyer, husband to Monika. The narrator uses different techniques such as tone, imagery and setting so the reader can have a better understanding on the purpose. The purpose of this writing was to how people live unhappy lives all of the time just to get through it. Throughout this short story the narrator lives through a struggle of always being unhappy and can’t live a life of prosperity and pure happiness. The short story connects to the American dream by life being duable but it isn't always picture perfect.

The tone of the story is pretty entertaining because there was this sadness about the narrator that was actually funny, because he was self-aware enough to see how his life must look to the the outsiders. Instead of using direct langue towards others, he is aware that he trends towards using familiar phrases. Once Monika came back to him because she had realized that she missed him, he described the situation saying, “The feeling came back to me, from the days of our marriage, that I was doomed in life to take a lot of shit and make weak jokes in response”(Page 2, McGuane). This quote sums up the narrator pretty well. By reading this you can feel his tone that he is using and you start to realize how unhappy he is when he writes “that I was doomed in life to take a lot of shit”(Page 2, McGuane).You can almost feel his anger at the end when he uses a swear. He is unhappy about this situation but he doesn’t really do anything about it. . He seems to just be living life to makes the people around him happy, not himself. The writer shows this to get the readers thoughts to connect back to the American dream and how people don’t fully live it because everyone else around them isn’t either. Everyone just wants to please others and they don’t even think about themselves and that is why the American Dream isn’t picture perfect and only...