Amanda Lindhout's A House In The Sky

For a realistic fiction, you would think that it’s about a kid with small problems right? Well, in Lost in the Sun brings in a bigger problem to the genre. So, this big problem is the main character killed someone, which I’ll tell later. Lost in the Sun is a great book by Lisa Graff, also author of Absolutely Almost.To add, this book has 289 pages, the main character name is Trent in this realistic story of a limited third person. The good thing about third person limited is it’ll show what Trent is feeling especially in the middle, but there’s a curse to it as well. Not only we only feel what Trent feels, but Fallon has a creative appearance and conflict that will make you curious.

Women in society have always been looked down upon, and not taken seriously for centuries. The coming-of-age novella House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, proves that statement correct. The novella is about a young girl named Esperanza who moves into a house for the first time, on a street named Mango street. The house is not what she envisioned, so she makes plans in her mind to move out and get her own place, far away, but she is still very innocent. While she’s on Mango Street, Esperanza experiences series of events, that force her to mature. In House on Mango Street, the theme that females are looked down upon, taken advantage of, and the ones to blame in society are shown through literary elements such as, conflict and characterization. The gender literary theory applies to this theme. This theme is also shown throughout multiple vignettes such as “Rafaela who drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays”, “The Monkey Garden” and, “Red Clowns”.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

Female roles in society have often been minute. In Jewett’s “A White Heron” and Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother”, Sylvia and Mother demonstrate feminine empowerment. These two prominent female protagonists overcome the male influence in their life and society. Both defy social expectations of women and the obstacles that come with it. The authors express this through their similar use of symbolism and alienation. Jewett and Freeman use different examples of poverty, the motivation of society, and speech in their stories.

Sexism is a challenge almost all women face. In a way, sexism can be beneficial because it can motivate women to defy society's standards and anything holding them back. However, in The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros, shows both sides of sexism, and how it can motivate women. Sexism can also make women give up and not accomplish anything. While Cisneros has the protagonist fight off sexism, Esperanza runs into many cases of sexism where the women just give up. Similarly, with The Help, author Kathryn Stockett, also shows both the positive and negative side of sexism. Skeeter, the protagonist fights off sexism to gain freedom, and in doing so she finds that all her friends don’t want to change the roles they have. Both

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

In the novel, The House On Mango Street, women face numerous challenges in their lives. Women face abuse, objectification, and oppression. They are also subjects to the societal roles that hinders them from being free and successful. Cisneros utilizes metaphors to reveal the theme of society’s gender roles restricting the lives and sexuality of women.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide…others they sail forever.” (1) The vessel of hope and dreams may fulfill the wishes of men, men who may see these dreams as either being fulfilled or not, an external reward for external efforts. For women, however, their dreams are the “truth,” a truth that women, in a proto-feminist narrative, are able to have on their own, without the influence of men. Moreover, the dreams of women have are inherently the prize and the truth. Here we are introduced to the action of the novel by a third-person narrator who sounds eloquent, educated, and factual, related to us the outside frame tale of Janie returning to town as the sun sets, and how she is seen by the people sitting on the porch as she encoutners he old friend Pheoby. The factual account of Janie ‘s return is quietly transitioned into the metaphorical narrative as if with the presence of Janie, the story must likewise be changed. Hurston relates the porch-sitters, an element of rural folklife, as “lords of sounds and lesser things…they made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs “ (Hurston,

Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, explores the cultural anxieties in the mid 20th century. Specifically, men use womanhood (societal norms) as purposely infantilizing women in order to confine the female mind. Jackson utilizes symbolism, metaphor, and anaphora in her novel in order to convey the message for men to stop infantilizing women. Moreover, Jackson spreads awareness that women are being confined by a system that men developed: womanhood. Hence, in effect, the novel serves as an informal protest against male repression through a medium that can be read by a wider audience —more importantly an indirect challenge to male readers. According to Krolokke, Second Wave Feminism became prominent due to cultural discontent with patriarchy during the mid 20th century. Moreover, Krolokke informs the readers that Second Wave Feminism influenced women to challenge traditional family roles and male ideologies about women not belonging in the workplace (11-12). Mid 20th century is also when Jackson published The Haunting of Hill House. So, with these historical and cultural contexts in mind, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House ends the novel with Eleanor killing herself because she wants women to challenge the ideas of patriarchy into effect. Hence, Second Wave Feminism has a connection to Eleanor having a childlike personality (can not think for herself) because she wants women (especially young and single women) to explore their rights (their choices) and

The novel The House on Mango Street is filled to the brim with women who are unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives. Readers meet wives who are destined to spend their lives in the kitchen, mothers who waste away cleaning up after their kids, and girls who are stuck in a hole that they can’t escape. Through Sandra Cisneros’s use of literary devices such as motifs, symbolism, and imagery, we are able to learn that the women end up in these situations by conforming to femininity, and we find the theme of women are often held back by their own gender roles.

Before the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, women struggled to hold on to their identity while raising children, caring for their husbands and homes, and in Olsen’s case, working to support the family. Like Tillie Olsen, Adrienne Rich struggled with society’s expectation of women to become wives, mothers, and homemakers. Both women bought into the "angel in the house" theory and found themselves unsatisfied. They fought to hold onto their individuality by expressing their ideas through writing, which was not readily accepted in the male dominated literary world. Author Margaret Atwood understands the magnitude of Olsen’s accomplishment saying, "Women writers, even more than their male counterparts, recognize what a heroic feat it is to have held down a job, raised four children, and still somehow managed to become and to remain a writer" (qtd. in Charters 1128). Though Olsen tells her story honestly, with a matter of fact quality, she stirs the reader with emotion and empathy for the overworked mother and the unintentionally neglected daughter.

Pearl Bunk wrote the book called The Good Earth. Her point of writing this book was to give people a better out look of Chinese culture and living style. This gives people in other countries an outlook on how we all don’t live the same or have the same culture. I am writing about his because it gave me the outlook of how the stories characters life is different from my life. What was Pearl Buck’s life and connection with china? What is some of the criticism that the experts have on her book The Good Earth?

“The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros is a perfect example of feminist theory in literature in the twenty’s century. In “The House on Mango Street,” Sandra Cisneros pictures the lives on Mango Street. She shows us how differences between the roles of men and women in Esperanza’s life, and Latino women’s lives are influenced by the Spanish culture. She also lets

According to Judith Butler’s theory, gender is a social concept and not a natural part of being, therefore making it unstable and fluid. Gender identities are produced through what Butler calls “performativity,” the repetitive acts of expression that form and define the notions of masculinity and femininity. These repeated performances are engrained within the heteronormative society and impose these gendered expectations on individuals. In this respect, gender is something inherent in a person, however Butler writes “gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed.” In Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night identity is undoubtedly central to the characters’ stories, specifically the strict social constructs of gender that is snarled with one’s identity. Tokarczuk’s novel presents a mosaic of stories that put into question heteronormative gender roles, while offering an alternative way of existence. Analyzing House of Day, House of Night with Judith Butler’s gender theory demonstrates the characters struggles within the rigid constructions of gender and how some ultimately deal with moving past such restricting expectations.

Amanda constantly lives in her past and generates devastating consequences for her children. The fate of Amanda’s children is her fault, crippling them psychologically and emotionally, seriously inhibiting their own quests for maturity and self-realization. Amanda lives in a fantasy world of dreamy recollections, and her children cannot escape from this illusory world either. She suffers from a psychological impulse to withdraw into a fabricated "lost" time.