Word: motifs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ironing-board syndrome" is also a familiar motif in kinetic family drawings. Kaufman and Burns think it may represent the heat of mother love, longed for but dangerous. In what some therapists will consider a farfetched interpretation, the authors attribute the X shape of the ironing board's legs-and other X shapes in the drawings-to the child's X-ing out or saying no to his sexual impulses...
Talk Show. In addition to the delicatessen, the three restaurants-a small mirror-lined hall with booths for twosomes, a large jungle-motif dining area with waiters and waitresses in safari suits, and a plushy retreat opposite the bar-offer a wide-ranging mixture of French and American food. There are hamburgers and hot dogs-and quiche Lorraine and hifsteck tartare as well: Moët et Chandon champagne and Coca-Cola are both on the menu. Empty seats are interdit. "We want Le Drugstore to be a meeting place,'' Caroline Solovei says, "and if there...
...arrival from the Soviet Union creates a natural suspense of great force. Making Mary the wife of a bland squirt who also lives at the boardinghouse ensures a tasty intrigue. And finally, having Ganin realize that Mary and Russia can never be repossessed except by memory, establishes a motif that certainly warrants fuller development in any other novels you may be planning to write. Next time, however, please try to get the book to us sooner...
...white man's blues, country music deals with the stunted aspirations of a social class caught between a determined pride and an even more determined poverty. Out of their bitterness, they perceive the world as cruel and unforgiving, hence the recurring motif of a country boy helplessly tangled in tragic events he neither caused nor wanted. Often the events center on a woman, either the unfaithful wife or the seductress who doesn't mention her husband until he is already coming at the interloper with a broken bottle. A Hank Williams song says it best...
...eyes as small as green peas"; one of his favorite images, which probably grew out of his regular disappointments in love and his otherwise suppressed resentment of women who had hurt him, was the "heart thief," depicted hanging from a gallows tree and clutching a human heart. The motif so obsessed him that he even worked it into a Christmas ornament of a masked dancer meant to be hung from a tree...