“You can’t protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” This quote by Jonathan Safran Foer shows us that no person can protect himself from everything bad without blocking out the good too. In “Once Upon a Time” by Nadine Gordimer, one of the main themes is that it is impossible for people to protect themselves from everything bad in life. In this short story, a wife who lives in a nice suburban neighborhood is terrified of being robbed. Her fear drives her to become extremely anxious. This anxiety makes her buy all sorts of security devices which eventually lead to the death of her son. The wife’s goal is to protect her house and family from everything bad in their neighborhood. As a consequence of this, she gets super paranoid and ends up killing her son after he gets stuck in her barbed wire fence. After her son gets stuck in the barbed wire, she realizes that there is no way that any person can protect themself from all the terrible things in life. Therefore, because the wife’s motivation to protect her family causes her to accidentally kill her own son, Gordimer shows that people cannot protect themselves from the terrible things in life.
Primarily, the wife is motivated to protect her family and house, no matter the cost. Towards the beginning of the story, the wife is becoming uneasy about someone breaking into her house. She shows us how anxious and paranoid she is when the story says, “Yet she was afraid that someday such people might
a very common fear every salve of the time inhibited. By illustrating the tragic life of a young
Queen, by Audrey Flack is a very captivating piece of artwork. It was painted in 1976, originally Audrey Flack took a picture and then used it as the basis for this painting. Queen is a painting of box that is full of special mementos. It has features such as a quarter of an open orange, a rose, a pocket watch, a queen playing card, a locket of an older and a younger woman, lip balm, perfume, a chess piece, blush, and a chain necklace with the letter “F” on it. The painting almost looks like a vanity drawer or a keepsake drawer. However, realizing the fruits and flower in the painting I understood it to be a collection of the artist's memories as opposed to a drawer. Audrey Flack was demonstrating the many things that were significant to her while aging. Queen signifies the fight against time. It shows that no matter what possessions you retain it will not keep you young. No one can win the battle against time.
Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time is a historical novel that looks at the belief that
In ?The Yellow Wallpaper? it seems that the narrator wishes to drive her husband away, spending the entire time hoping for freedom. She explains, ?John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious? (Gilman). She is glad to see her husband away so that she may be left alone to do as she pleases without interference from her husband. She is frequently rebelling against her husband?s orders. She writes in her journal and tries to move her bed when there is no one around to see. However, she always keeps an eye out for someone coming.
Montag is someone who is shy and keeps his thoughts to himself, but thinks many things. He shows that he is distracted instead of being happy throughout the book. At the time, he was walking home from work and was looking at Clarisse. Clarisse is a girl who would roam the streets and was also Montag's neighbor. She walks over to Guy and they start to have a conversation while walking to their houses. They discussing if talking about to see if Montag is really happy or if he was lying. She keeps questioning him. Bradbury explains “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as true state affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run across the lawn with the mask and the way
What could convince a serial killer not to kill another person? “Time and Again” is a short story written by Breece D’J Pancake. The story is about an older man whose wife has passed away. After his wife passed away, his son ran away. During the winter the man drives a snowplow, where he offers rides to hitchhikers. When the hitchhikers are in his truck, he murders them and feeds them to his hogs. One day he picks up a hitchhiker, and the man plans on killing him. As he is about to kill the boy, he changes his mind and just lets the boy get out of the snowplow. The hitchhiker that the snowplow driver picked up is actually his son.
4 In the Novel Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, the character Salamanca has had internal and external forces that has affected Sal, Phoebe, and Margaret. In the book, Walk Two Moons Salamanca has faced many challenges internal and external forces, and we are going to take a look to see these forces, so put on your seatbelt and get ready for the journey. 4
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is set in 2053 in a city like Las Angeles. Bradbury wrote this novel in 1953, 100 years before the time this book was set. He intended to talk about a future society. Not only predicting a future society today but, predicting the way people are turning out. People in this society think it’s okay to burn pages of knowledge rather than read them. Firemen in this society have a job to burn books. The mood of this novel is terror and misery because people who own books live like this just to keep their books.
The Time in Between by David Bergen tries to show a different kind of cultural understand than is usually shown within the Vietnam war narrative. Bergen tries to highlight the cultural similarities instead of the cultural differences, where there is a sense of cultural appreciation. During the Vietnam war there has often been a stigmatization towards the Vietnamese that associates them as the enemy, they are seen as the opposing other. There is often an Eurocentric view of the Vietnam war that tells the story of the white male American solider and very rarely has another perspective been represented through media and literature. The attempt to acknowledge the war from the other perspective through the Vietnamese solider is used in The Time in Between. The trauma that is often associated with the Vietnam war is seen through the lens of the white male solider, often forgetting the the symptoms of trauma were experienced by both sides. The trauma from the war becomes a bridge between the two cultures and subverts the stereotypes of the Vietnamese as being the cultural “others”.
Throughout the beginning of the story, the wife continually references the things “John says” (844-5). That indicates to me that she is timid and perhaps frightened of him. “John says this,” and “John says that,” shows me that our narrator doesn’t feel permitted to have a thought that is her own. The story’s unilateral male, as well as unilateral female conversations are friendly and comfortable. However, male to female conversation in the writing is dominant, aggressive, assertive and sometimes dangerous. Female to male exchanges appear delicate, soft and understanding, always agreeing with the male perspective. I would consider women in this time period to be viewed as a pet or toy to the male, dominant figure in her life. The use of the words in this short is very important, and gives you the information to interpret the story. For instance, on page 845 it says, “It was a nursery first, then a playroom and gymnasium. I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children.” This discloses that our woman has post-partum depression. At the very least, she feels as if she is trapped or in an asylum within her own home. Perhaps this feeling of entrapment lends itself to driving her mad. It is no surprise that the woman feels trapped behind the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Her days and nights are filled with constant repetition of the same nothingness. She is left with little to
Adversity and the struggles that we go through day to day are the moments that build us into the people that we become. Nobel Laureate Dennis Gabor wrote, “Humans are wonderful in adversity, weak in comfort, affluence and security.” Being weak in comfort, affluence, and security clearly points to people’s ability to remain stable. However, Gabor notes that the strength humans have is due to the ability to handle adversity. A well-used strength allows for these weaknesses to not be the downfall of the race. Adversity can be confused with neglect in rough family situations. Jeannette Walls is an author that can represent adversity and explains them through her memoir The Glass Castle in several passages and even references the boundaries of
In her essay “Throwing Like a Girl,” Iris Marion Young examines why women move differently than do men. She discusses the apparent observable differences in bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks, and bodily self-image of feminine existence. Young makes the argument that the differences between men and women are not caused by a mysterious “essence” or by any biological or anatomical limitation, but, rather, we are socialized into “being” in our bodily space by the situation surrounding our existence.
In “En Route” by Abigail Zuger, Zuger compares two doctors one is Dr. Data and the other is Dr. Confidence. She describes them as people who follow the rules to strictly instead of showing a little more compassion for patients. Zuger describes Dr. Data as a “fact man, who is evidence based all the way” pg. (825) and she describes Dr. Confidence as a “Standing joke” Pg. (826) she also says “He seems to know no actual medicine at all” Pg. (826). Zuger says that neither Dr. Data nor Dr. Confidence will last a moment in her world because she treats her patients like people and not just as a simple patient. She actually connects with her patients, not like Dr. Data and Dr. Confidence who would basically spit their patients out of their consultation
In this paper, I will explain how the article “The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice” by Gwendolyn Mink relates to the thematic focus of working women and the Marxist and socialist branch of feminism. In Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, Rosemarie Tong explains that Marxist and socialist feminists understand women’s oppression as a labor issue. Women’s work is not viewed as a productive contribution to society. One of the ways Marxist and socialist feminists sought to improve women’s oppression was through the wages-for-housework campaign of the 1970s, which fought for work done in the domestic sphere to be paid and respected by society. In this same vein, Mink’s article can be viewed as a continuation of sorts of the wages-for-housework campaign. Mink suggests that poor single mothers have the right for their work to be recognized by society and supported economically like the Marxist and socialist feminist in the 1970s.
From the wife’s side of the story, her description of herself agrees with how the thief,