A Fortune By Joy Monica T. Sakaguchi

Thesis: In the short stories The Charmer, Love Must Not Be Forgotten, and The Address, one’s past experiences have a profound effect on their development as an individual.

wrote the short story “Fortune Cookie”, and it is about a salesman named Harry that has not been selling what he needs be and he starts to get anxiety because he does not know what is to come to him in his future. So he turns to superstition and fortune cookie fortunes to help him produce positive thoughts, and gain confidence. These fortunes ironically start to create success in Harry’s meetings so he does not change his morning routine of lighting a candle, praying, and then going to a Chinese restaurant. For several months Harry would this do his morning routine, read his fortune cookie fortunes, and have successful meetings, until one day when he realized the Chinese food was making him sick, and since he knew he really did not need the food just the cookie he would throw out the food after buying it and just keep the cookie. Later he found a store that sold fortune cookies by the bag, so he would buy the bags, keep the cookies in his desk, and ration them out to himself, but the cookies fortunes later became unclear to him. Harry would buy dozens of bags of cookies trying to find one has good as his first ones, and the addiction just became worse, he even almost passed up on an opportunity with an international corporation just because all the fortunes he had were negative. After a numerous amount of negative fortunes Harry decided to urgently go into the meeting with the international cooperation, and after it, the Corporate level offered him a

In the short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, by David Herbert Lawrence, there is this family, as the family wants to keep their economic status, the mom want’s to have money all the time. The Mom has a mental mindset of the family being rich, as she believes that she has money, but in reality, the family is not rich and they have no money as they are in debt. The mom is unhappy as the parent's marriage is unsatisfactory, the mom thought she was lucky before she got married to her husband, so she thinks that her husband gave her bad luck. Both parents have no luck. The mom does not like her own children. The mom tells his son Paul, that she and Dad have no luck. This short story has many secrets that various of the characters keep from one another. In “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the theme is a Moral Obligation as Hester the mom does not like her kids and only her and the kids know, Paul keeps from his mom that him, uncle Oscar, and Bassett have been betting on horse races and that the “Rocking-Horse” gives Paul luck.

As a child, Jeannette’s sense of wonder and curiosity in the world undermine the need for money. During her young adult years, a new wave of insecurity associated with her poor past infects her. Finally, as an experienced and aged woman, Jeannette finds joy and nostalgia in cherishing her poverty- stricken past. It must be noted that no story goes without a couple twists and turns, especiallydefinitely not Jeannette Walls’. The fact of the matter is that growing up in poverty effectively craftsed, and transformsed her into the person she becomeshas become. While statistics and research show that living in poverty can be detrimental to a child’s self-esteem, Jeannette Walls encourages children living in poverty to have ownership over their temporary situation, and never to feel inferior because of past or present socio-economic

In his autobiographical narrative A Summer Life, Gary Soto vividly recreates the guilt felt by a six- year-old boy who steals an apple pie. Through Soto’s reminiscent he has taken us on a journey of his guilt, paranoia, and redemption through the usage of tone, allusions, and imagery.

Throughout the autobiographical narrative written by Gary Soto, many different literary elements are used to recreate the experience of his guilty six-year old self. Different elements such as contrast, repetition, pacing, diction, and imagery. Soto narrates this story as a young boy at a time when he seems to be young and foolish, Soto foolmaking mistakes, but at the same time hoping to learn from them. Soto uses each of these devices to convey different occurrences in the narrative.

Imagine: A young boy scavenges for food to provide for his impoverished family which was composed of his ill mother and starving siblings or a homeless, single mom desperatley seeking for shelter. These synopses from "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt and "The Street" by Ann Petry share a common theme: perseverance through hardships. In "Angela's Ashes," a memoir by Frank McCourt, he stells about the harships he endured through his childhood, such as, struggling to assist his family in the midst of poverty by stealing food to provide for them. Futhermore, in "The Street," a novel by Ann Petry, tells the story of young Lutie Johnson, a homeless single mom who is seeking shelter for herself and her children. In these two excerpts, the authors use the characters, settings, and events to develop the theme, which I've identified as perseverance through hardships.

In the detailed story of an impoverished family during the late 1900’s, Jeannette Walls describes her experience from the young age of 3, up until adulthood. The family of 6, with Rex Walls as the father, Rose Mary as the mother, and her three siblings, Lori, Brian and Maureen, were constantly moving throughout the country with little to no food or cash. The memoir shows how dysfunctional the family was, but never seemed to force the reader to condemn the parents. In a life of poverty, the have to move for own to town, and often lived in various mining towns. Although they each found something they learned to love (like Jeannette’s rock collection) in the desert, they had to leave them behind once Rex’s alcoholism only worsened, and they ran

A man by the name of Alex Goodfellow has swindled Tom’s father of his money after apparently selling him an outstanding vessel along with its own crew. Instead, Mr.Goodfellow gave tom’s father the exact opposite, a rundown ship which was bound to cause problems. Eventually, the ship Tom’s father once thought was his big break, had sunk while Mr. Goodfellow reaped the insurance reward. To make matters even worse, Tom’s father was put in debtor’s prison. Tom struggled with the thought of his father going to prison for something which wasn’t actually his fault, so Tom decided to take action. He made a plan to run away and get revenge on his father’s swindler. Along the way he met an interesting character who was blind. Knowing that the man possessed a rare jewel, Tom took it in the hopes it would bring provide him money for his family the much needed money. Further into his journey, Tom comes across a gravedigger named Worms. Worms teaches Tom how to dig up the bodies of the dead and introduces him to other robbers. Interestingly enough, these robbers are kids just like Tom, who rob from people living amougst them in the sewers. Tom befriends Darkey and Benjamin Penny, who teach Tom their robbing ways. Then, things take a turn for the worst. The police find Tom robbing another man and arrest him. However, in one of the biggest plot twists, Tom is found not found guilty for robbing, but for murder. Of course Tom did not

This is a narration essay with lots of descriptive details. The author used a very good vocabulary selection throughout

This collection of stories begins when the narrator Yunior and his brother Rafa who are 8 and 12, are sent to live with their uncle for the summer so their mother can work. Their father abandoned them when Yunior was 4 and their family lives in poverty, sometimes having to forgo food for clothes and other necessities. Their mother works sometimes 14 hour shifts, at a local chocolate factory while their grandfather watches them. When Yunior is 9 his father returns from the United States to bring them back. They live in an apartment and set up a new community in New Jersey. Although they still live in poverty, they do not want for food or other basic necessities. The stories then jump forward years to when Yunior is in high school and living with his mother. He works and helps pay the rent and other bills

Collectively, these literary images go to describe a young ethnic man, probably of Latin descent, who lives with his mother in a poverty stricken area. The careful recitation of instruction given to the younger man seems to demonstrate an intricate knowledge the narrators has accrued from both predecessors and experience. Singularly, this part of the story is very powerful in that it shows a young man having to hide who he is and where he comes from in an effort to seem appealing to women, and speaks volumes about the deception that both genders go through all in name of the chase.

The Hunger of Memory was written as an autobiography by Richard Rodriguez, and with any success story, there is much more than what meets the eye. Throughout the first section of this chapter, Rodriguez discusses his early education and home life while introducing Hoggart’s idea of the ‘Scholarship Boy.’ Growing up surrounded by his parents and siblings, Rodriguez was always the odd one out; often times, he would be found locked in his closet or under his bed reading. His parents, living vicariously through him, did everything they could to encourage him and his studies, yet Rodriguez continued to grow resentful and embarrassed of them. By enrolling him into excellent schools, both public and private, Rodriguez could perfect his grammar while continuing to indulge in his reading and writing.

He gets a job as an unskilled worker in the garments industry. He is horrified to see in the newspaper: the murder of a familiar customer. He retells the tale to his shrink,

The fictional life and death of a twelve year old little boy named Robert is vividly articulated in this moving tale by Thomas Wolfe. The reader learns of the boy’s life through four well developed points of view. The reader’s first glimpse into Robert’s character is expressed through a third person narrative. This section takes place on a particularly important afternoon in the boy’s life. The second and third views are memories of the child, through the eyes of his mother and sister. His mother paints the picture of an extraordinary child whom she loved dearly and his sister illustrates the love that the boy had for others. Finally, an account from the narrator is given in the ending. It is in the last section of this work that the