Analysis Of Ruth In James Mcbride's The Color Of Water

To be entirely honest, I’m really tired for some reason and thus too lazy to get quotes. So instead, I will paraphrase. Ruth grows up with her orthodox Jewish family, and her father specifically abuses her and molests her, which is pretty screwed up. He’s also a racist and hates black people, which probably gave Ruth an inclination to trust them, if only to spite her

Ruth, once Rachel Deborah Shilsky, was a main character in The Color of Water. Ruth left her family in hope to escape the abuse she endured from her father. However, it was the 20th century, which represented a time when the Civil Right Movement and discrimination were at the forefront in the southern United States. Ruth was about to experience more traumatic experiences moving away, yet she kept her emotions to herself. She was a mother of twelve children, including James McBride, who she never stopped loving along with her relationship to God.

Does your past have a big influence to who you are and your children? Ruth McBride has been hiding her past from her children her whole life; her past shaped her and James’ life despite all the struggles he had with his identity. In The Color of Water by James McBride, his character is shaped by the influence that Ruth, his mother, gives by being secretive about her past. James struggles with his identity from when he was a child to an adult, which over time became a major issue he struggles to deal with. Ruth’s secrets about her past influence James’ confusion with himself and motivates him to find out who he is in order to gain closure with himself.

* James notices that his mother’s skin color than his friends’ mothers’ skin color are different, so Ruth tells him “Who cares about your friends’ mothers’ skin color? Just educate your mind.”

In the Color of Water, Ruth Mcbride has an important significance, because her complex past is what propels the book. Without her, the book would not be nearly as interesting. James Mcbride, Ruth’s son and author of the book, portrays Ruth as a secretive, un maternal like, and spiritual woman. Ever since James was a child, he remembers his mother never mentioning her past or her racial identity. James notes:”She had a complete distrust authority and an insistence on complete privacy which seemed to make her and my family odder .... Matters involving race and identity she ignored (9) Ruth keeps her past hidden away from her children, so that she doesn’t have to relive painful memories or inquire her past. In doing so, Ruth also doesn’t label

Ruth was emotionally abandoned she wanted someone to return the love she had been giving out. The mere idea of her having to go the rest of her life in that state frightened her. If she was emotionally supported by her husband she would have been happier. This shows that her mental state shows abandonment of women.

Ruth was a source of knowledge that James trusted growing up. James, being a mixed child, is confused about what skin color God would have, so he asks his mother,”

In the novel, “The Color of the Water” by James McBride, the readers are introduced to a character by the name of Ruth McBride, James McBride’s mother who presents herself as a wonderful mother to her children successful in life. The first reason Ruth McBride is a wonderful mother because she persuades her children to go to school and wants them to have a very good education in the future. One of the good reasons a mother would do was staying up all night and falling asleep in someone’s homework. Her motto is, “Educate your mind. School is important “(13). A good mother would always want her children to have the best education in the universe. Furthermore, the fact that Ruth McBride wants her children to get the best education is because she

There was only one good thing that Ruth took away from her father; She needed to be strict with her children about their education, but still loving at the same time. This parenting style became a part of Ruth, and shaped her identity of how to act as a mother and a member of society. Tateh was a terrible and hypocritical father, but he did help shape Ruth’s identity by showing her all of his flaws.

In the book, The Color of Water, Ruth’s past is very unknown and hidden to all of her children. James wants to find out more about his mother’s past so he decides to go to his mother’s old synagogue. In Chapter 22, James travels to downtown Suffolk in search for the Shilsky’s family to furthermore reveal his mother’s secretive past.

In the book The Color of Water. Racism plays a big part through the whole book. James Mcbride, one of the characters in the book has a mother named Ruth. Ruth's past was not good at all dealing with race throughout the book. In the book James tries to open up and see what his mothers past was about.

In the book color of water by James mcbride talks about his mother Ruth's and how she had ups and downs in her younger life till now when she is a widow and how she a has this habit of riding her bicycle through the all- black neighborhood in which James and his family lived. In “The Color of Water,” by James McBride has many themes. Each theme he is trying to get a point across and he tries to make us understand what him and his family went through as being Jewish and African American. He tells about his past and his parents past to give us an idea of what they all went through. In this book he brings you into their lives.

Ruth led a life broken in two. Her later life consists of the large family she creates with the two men she marries, and her awkwardness of living between two racial cultures. She kept her earlier life a secret from her children, for she did not wish to revisit her past by explaining her precedent years. Once he uncovered Ruth 's earlier life, James could define his identity by the truth of Ruth 's pain, through the relations she left behind and then by the experiences James endured within the family she created. As her son, James could not truly understand himself until he uncovered the truth within the halves of his mother 's life, thus completing the mold of his own

At the beginning of The Color of Water, James McBride’s mother Ruth goes on to introduce particular aspects about her upbringing. She mentions how she grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and begins to describe both her parents. Ruth’s father was a very cold and hard individual who didn’t care too much for his children’s overall well-being, while her mother was very sweet and kind in nature. She also goes on to talk about how her family was originally from Poland but decided to move to the United States from fear of oppression from the Russian government. Along with outside forces that proved to be a problem for Ruth’s family were similarities in oppressive behaviors in their family as well. Since Ruth’s family were Orthodox Jews,

Like Nola, Ruth Graycloud, was exploited and subjugated by her white husband, John Tate. Ruth was Moses Graycloud's twin sister. Like Nola, Ruth was an Osage woman who became a victim of one of the white men who married Native American women to get access to Osage oil wealth. Despite marrying a Native American woman, Tate had no respect to Native Americans. As Yanka Kroumova Krasteva contends, ''Tate constantly takes pictures of the Indians, as if they were archaeological finds. And this is the way he treats his Indian wife'' (55). Tate was a photographer; he used to appear at all significant events in the Indian territory ''standing behind the three- legged stand that held his camera, his head covered with black cloth, his own good eye seeing everything through glass lenses (Hogan, Mean Spirit 58). He used to photograph Native Americans and send their pictures to magazines. Tate first used Ruth as ''a model then as source of income''. (Hogan, Mean Spirit 179). He humiliated and abused her; he did not love her, disliked to be seen with her. They ''seldom went anywhere together, but when they did, he never walked at her side (Hogan, Mean Spirit 134). At the end of Mean Spirit Tate killed Ruth. As a result, Moses shot him dead.