Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"
    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"
    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"
    Ebook41 pages30 minutes

    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535825726
    A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Sacks, Zambreno, Lawlor, McEwan, and More

      Apr 23, 2019

      Out this week: new Ian McEwan, a fascinating study of the American heartland, and the final collection from the late, great Oliver Sacks. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Sacks, Zambreno, Lawlor, McEwan, and More appeared first on The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring So, Kleeman, Awad, and More

      Aug 3, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the late Anthony Veasna So, Alexandra Kleeman, Mona Awad, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring So, Kleeman, Awad, and More appeared first on The M

      10 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2017

      Jan 10, 2018

      Poets, editors, songwriters, teachers, journalists, novelists—some great writers and some under-sung ones left us this year. Here, in chronological order of their deaths, is a selective compendium of literary obituaries from 2017.     Bhara

      15 min read

    • Article

      Several Attempts at Understanding Percival Everett

      Apr 11, 2024

      I knew from the dozens of other interviews I had read with him that Everett doesn’t love doing press. “I wonder why?” he joked to me. The post Several Attempts at Understanding Percival Everett appeared first on The Millions.

      19 min read

    • Article

      November Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Nov 3, 2022

      New books from Hilton Als, Percival Everett, Lynn Steger Strong, and more. The post November Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Literary Deaths of 2022

      Dec 29, 2022

      In 2022, we mourned the deaths of many literary giants who remained under-celebrated in their lifetimes. These are some of them. With his eye patch and no-bullshit demeanor, Andrew Vachss was a man on a mission. He was an author of hard-boiled fictio

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Late Bloomer

      Sep 1, 2023

      “An eccentric woman deserves an eccentric biography.” So writes Willard Spiegelman in this first biography of the poet Amy Clampitt. If there was anything eccentric about the genteel bohemian Amy Clampitt, it was that she was extremely private about

      5 min read

    • Article

      Hanukkah Lights 2023

      Dec 7, 2023

      Hanukkah Lights 2023
      2 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Malcolm, Sudbanthad, Stern, Doten, and More

      Feb 19, 2019

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Janet Malcolm, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Lindsay Stern, Mark Doten and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book p

      5 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Sep 2, 2021

      The October issue of WM means it’s nearly time for Halloween, so forgive something a little ghoulish and, by modern standards, distastefully macabre, for the summer 2021 issue of the Hudson Review has published a remarkable article by Peri Klass on t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021

      Dec 30, 2021

      This highly selective list of literary lights that were extinguished during the past year ranges from brand names to barely-knowns. The post Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021 appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      In The Thick Of It

      Aug 2, 2022

      Not a few readers first encountered Stewart Brand in the opening scene of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s whirligig chronicle of the Merry Pranksters, Bay Area refugees from the humdrum who in the early 1960s coalesced around novelist Ke

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ed Simon

      Dec 5, 2021

      Each of these books taxonomizes the passing of anything that even remotely looked like it could be described naively as the "American Dream." The post A Year in Reading: Ed Simon appeared first on The Millions.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Year

      Dec 22, 2021

      In 1932, eccentric art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan hosted DH Lawrence in her mansion, located at the Taos art colony she had founded to further the spread (and it must be said, exoticize) of Native American art. As DH Lawrence is wont to do, the visit w

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Dreyer, Lapidos, Winters, and More

      Jan 22, 2019

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from the likes of Benjamin Dreyer, Juliet Lapidos, Ben Winters and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to h

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Conrad Aiken's "Impulse" - Gale

      11

      Impulse

      Conrad Aiken

      1934

      Introduction

      Impulse is a short story by Conrad Aiken, a modernist poet and writer who was a contemporary of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Widely known for his poetry, Aiken was at the center of the modernist movement of the early twentieth century. He also published several novels, numerous critical essays, and short-story collections. Impulse first appeared in Aiken's 1934 collection Among the Lost People and can also be found in The Short Stories of Conrad Aiken, published in 1950. His poetry and prose work alike are intensely focused on philosophical and psychoanalytical questions that he spent his career trying to reason out. His quest to make little discoveries about what comprises the human condition and to explain his theories and findings drove his work.

      In a 1968 interview in the Paris Review, Aiken admitted that he began experimenting with short stories in the early 1920s for a very simple reason: fiction paid better than poetry. In the process of writing fiction, however, he found another avenue to express the things he wrote about in his poetry. His fascination with Freud's theories of the subconscious and his intense search for a higher power permeate both his poems and his fiction. Impulse, a story about a man who follows through on the very basic human desire to steal, exemplifies this perfectly. In the course of a few short pages, Aiken questions how a person's actions are defined by intrinsic moral codes and are determined by social strictures. He examines the fickleness of relationships between lovers and friends. Most importantly, he explores the notion of self-knowledge and what makes up a life. Impulse can also be found in the anthology Short Story Masterpieces, published in 1954, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine.

      Author Biography

      Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, on August 5, 1889. When he was eleven years old, his father shot his mother and then killed himself. Young Conrad was the one to discover the bodies. This incident served as an impetus for the psychological self-exploration that guided his entire career. Aiken was ultimately sent to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be raised by an uncle. He attended Harvard University, where he edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot and began to explore the connections between the individual and the larger world.

      Aiken married Canadian graduate student Jessie McDonald in 1912. He became a contributing editor to the literary magazine Dial, which introduced him to important editors and writers, including Ezra Pound. When the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1