A Northern Light Analysis

In the beginning Grandfather refuses to believe there is a fever until it hit them mother falls ill and they are forced to flee Mattie try’s to stay but mother and grandfather and Eliza force her to go this kills Mattie. But she must go. Grandfather finds a wagon but soon they get kicked off. Mattie finds food but soon realizes that they need more then she falls ill. Mattie wakes in bush hill ( a hospital for the ones with fever) She insists on leaving but is not well enough to go.

This novel was set during the post war period, this was a time when independence and rebelling against parents and law was more important than doing the right thing, during these times of independence, and teenagers needed friendship more than anything else.

This is challenging Mattie because she has a choice, act back our keep it inside her and be the more mature one. One more example of this is, “Jeannine saw my dilemma, picked up the plate, and passed it in the opposite direction to her mother”(49). Again this is another chance where Mattie can either act out or keep her composure. I think that these problems that Mattie has faced have helped mature her into an adult, “I stood so quickly that the seams under my arms ripped open with a snarl. The dog barked shrilly. ‘It’s not a tavern, it’s a coffee house!’”(53) This helps Mattie mature because she is building a tolerance for annoying people (like the Ogilvies). Also it shows she will stick up for her family business. That is another conflict Mattie is presented with out of many in this

The stereotypes of the elderly are influencing Mattie's life. She is telling herself not to do things because of her age whether or not she is physically able to do them, simply because people associate age with inability and dependence upon others. Her family and friends are expecting and encouraging this dependence.

In the book, Mattie starts out as a lazy teenager who needs to be told what to do by her over controlling mother, but throughout the story, she becomes more responsible and adult-like. For

Although times are changing and society is learning to adapt to the free minds of the younger generations, much is still restricted from the public eye. For example, a list of “banned books” exists containing hundreds of novels that have been removed from libraries and classrooms. Before the books become banned, they are challenged by a group of people who feel strongly that the book is not appropriate for today’s curriculum. Among these books is Looking for Alaska by John Green, which should not be banned because it implements the use of upper-level vocabulary, involves real-life problems and solutions, and causes readers to look at life from a new perspective.

The most reasonable idea that allows Mattie to be the protagonist is that she cared for a little girl named Nell even though she was struggling to care for herself. I predict that having Nell in the hands of Mattie, Grandfather dying, and Mother being gone made sense come to Mattie assuring her that caring for others as well as yourself alone is a huge responsibility. This quote shows Mattie’s thought after Grandfather’s death, “No, I could care for myself. I was not a child.” The two character traits that explains how Mattie matured is independent and a hero. She is independent because she was on her own for awhile and had to find food for herself and care for herself. This piece of evidence shows how she was alone with no one to feed or care for her, “I was alone; Grandfather was dead and Mother missing.” She had no one to count on but herself. Mattie being a hero shows a lot of her maturing. This is because she didn’t care for lots of things such as doing chores, but when things changed she realized that other people were in the need of her help like

At the beginning of the story, Mattie is a normal girl living in the glorious city of Philadelphia. Soon a fever outbreak appears and starts to frighten the people of the capitol. “ Some doctors warn we may see a thousand dead before it's over. There are forty thousand people living in Philadelphia, William. Can you imagine if one in forty were to die?”(59). Clearly the people of Philadelphia were terrified. As the story moves along, this fever begins to create a devastating mess in the city of Philadelphia, “ They say bodies are piling up like firewood” (64). This illustrates the nervous fear of the

Mattie is a fourteen year old girl, who has the responsibilities of an adult, which was expected of people that age in this time period. “[Mattie] kept his books for him”(keeping the books means keeping track of the money) said Mattie when she was explaining why she knew how much money her father had (Portis 15). This quote is interesting because it exhibits the amount of responsibility that was put upon her even at a young age. Also, Mattie seems to have the best math skills in her family despite having a mother and father much older than her. Mattie told Yarnell, (who is an African American that works for Mattie's family) “Yarnell said ‘you can't stay in the city by yourself’ [Mattie] said ‘It will be alright’” (Portis 26). Mattie is going to stay in the city by herself without her mom knowing when she will return, or what her sleeping arrangements are. It is strange because she is a young girl in a city alone with nobody to protect her, and her mother has no idea what is going on. Mattie told the sheriff “[I’am] looking for the man who shot and killed my father” (Poti 59). Mattie is not asking the sheriff to find the man and bring him to

Mattie had so many traumatizing events occur in just a few months, yet she stayed strong and fought through the pain day by day. One of these events were when she tried to leave Philadelphia. Her and her grandfather were on a cart leaving Philadelphia, When they got thrown off because they thought that Mattie’s grandpa had Yellow Fever. All of their belongings were on that cart. Now Mattie and her grandfather faced starvation in the middle of nowhere.

Matilda Cook is an adventurous and independence seeking 14-year old girl. Although she always being pestered by her mother, Mattie loves her mother dearly and worries when her mother does not return home after going the the Luddington’s farm. Mattie struggle with

In the beginning, the author explains how this young girl, Lizabeth, lived in the culturally deprived neighborhood during the depression.  Lizabeth is at the age where she is just beginning to become a young woman and is

The ancient Greeks saw the figure of the Greek myth Orion in the nighttime sky. There are several different stories about the birth of Orion. According to one version of the myth, Orion was the son of a poor shepherd called Hyrieus. Once, Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidonstopped by Hyrieus'house. Hyrieus was so generous with his guests that he killed the only animal he had-an ox.

Andie is a middle class teenager who goes to high school in the "rich" part of town, full of wealthy kids. Her best friend is Ducky (who is desperately in love with her). Andie lives with her unemployed father (her mother left the family when she was young) whom she is constantly pursuing to find employment. Andie works in a record store with a bizarre woman, who is also a surrogate mother to Andie. Soon Andie finds herself on the receiving end of affection from a rich kid named Blaine. Andie also has eyes for him and, despite her feelings that rich and poor kids have no place together in this world, accepts an invitation for a date from him. Their date ends up at the house of Blaine's best friend Steff, who is throwing a

From the beginning of the novel, the reader acquires a few key things about the protagonist. Foremost, the members in her community refuse to understand her need to abandon her home and family to go on a manhunt. That point is clear from the beginning of the novel when Mattie states that “people do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and […] to avenge her father’s blood,” (Portis 11). Typically, when it came to justice-seeking that was a job build for a man. A woman was simply too delicate to take on such a task, nevertheless, Mattie saw the opportunity to punish Tom Chaney for the crimes he committed. Focused on making justice happen, she let go of any preconceived notion of how a lady should act and where her place in society was. Forsaking the need for a comfortable life at