Analysis Of Sarah's First Thanksgiving

Sarah is the protagonist in the short story “The Farm,” By Joy Williams. She lives in New England with her husband of 11 years, Tommy. She is characterized as having a rather dim witted personality; she enjoys to talk but only when she has been drinking. Both Sarah and her husband suffer from major trust issues, possibly as a result from their previous marriages. Consequently, she often finds herself contemplating a divorce, but keeps it together for their daughter Martha. Sarah often entertained the suspicion that her husband was cheating on her. “Occasionally, he would slip his hand beneath her skirt. Sarah was sick with the thought that this was the way he touched other women.” (611) One night after driving herself and her husband home leaving

Allison`s parents divorced when she was only six years of age. It didn’t take the both of them to remarry. Her mother married a Bulgarian man. A few years later he died of cancer. Four years after his death Allison`s mother married another man who was a Moroccan immigrant. She likes some of the food that was introduced to her by her Moroccan step-father. Because her mother married two men of two completely different cultures Allison and her family were introduced into different customs, food, and traditions.

Sarah's father is an immigrant who holds Jewish traditions as the highest importance of life. The role of Sarah's father strikes her hard and creates an enormous hatred for him. Sarah has been Americanized and feels strongly that her father should be the provider for the family. Instead her father lives off the work of his four girls as they slave away to make ends meet. Sarah sees this as the main reason of why her family is in poverty and is in such pain. If her father would work then at least some of their misery would lesson. She appears to view her father as a leech, as worthless man, who has lives in the days of the past. "I can't respect a man who lives off the blood of his wife and children" (Bread Givers 130). Sarah appears to believe that his idea of family does not fit the American recipe for being successful and more important happy. America has a standard cultural, "nuclear family", of a providing man, a caring mother, and student children. Her apparent hatred for her father's preaching's reflects how she feels about her Jewish religion and traditions. This influences her enough to turn away from her upbringing for an attempt to better her self.

Sarah and her dad experienced a great deal of conflict with them having opposing viewpoints on many political, social, and cultural issues. Even with all of this conflict felt by Sarah, she was able to see that her and her dad are not as different as she may have thought. To be able to coexist

What would he think of our noisy Chinese relative who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food (74). But as Tan grows older she begins to realize that giving up her Chinese heritage for more American customs is not what she truly wants in life. Similarly, “Museum” by Naomi Shihab Nye conceals irony in the authors thoughts. Nye thinks that mistaking the strangers home for the McNay was a big mistake in her young life. But as it turns out this “mistake” unintentionally taught a valuable lesson to the residents of the home. This is reveled to the reader by Nye through a quote from one of the residents “That was my home. I was a teenager sitting with my family talking in the living room. Before you came over, I never realized what a beautiful place I lived in. I never felt lucky before” (80). Including these traces of irony helps add character and comedy to the already entertaining articles.

In what way is the “unlikely pairing of histories” at the thanksgiving celebration especially American? For many years, it has been a tradition for American to sit around the table and tell stories of the past and which we’ve overcome.

When I imagine “The First Thanksgiving”, I think of peace and harmony. Then my History complex comes in, I remember all of the rape, cannibalism, and disease spreading that happened in the years before “The First Thanksgiving” ruin my picture perfect scene. The Pilgrims did not have a farming aspect when they came to The New Colony but with the help of the Native Americans they learned how to survive. When I was younger we always were taught that this time, in history, everyone got along and they were happy. The Pilgrims came to have religious freedom and not to be treated as second class citizens. This is a notable act but they had various pathogens that they were immuned to but the Natives were not. Historians say that the pathogens that

Now, Sarah feels that her personal pursuit relies on getting herself embedded in the American culture through getting herself educated. This dream, however, is to face the negligence of her family, leaving her strong will to be the only tool in need to fight with the ancient molding of cultural dilemma which taught to treat women like they were the dolls in the house and are to be treated whatever the man’s in house wished to treat them as. If one raids out the whole book to find the very cause of her family being negligence will find the need for her family’s food and warmth as equal as the societal expectation

“She didn’t want him to forget anything. She helped her American mother complete tedious kitchen tasks without complaining—rolling grape leaves around their lemony rice stuffing, scrubbing carrots for the roaring juicer.” This shows that Susan is caring of her family and helpful. “All that evening Susan felt light and bouncy. She decorated the coffee can they would use to collect donations to be sent to the children’s hospital in Bethlehem. She had started doing this last year in middle school, when a singing group collected $100 and the hospital responded on exotic onion-skin stationery that they were ‘eternally grateful.’” Susan is excited that Hamadi will be helping her sing the carols, but this sentence also shows that she’s done this before, saying that she had participating in charity before. This evidence also supports that Susan is a caring and helpful person.

Before she begins the essay with the imagery, Allison adopts a persona of a mother who is formerly poor as a child, and now middle class with a large family. This is when she describes her past in an anecdote, and when she moves to describe cooking for her son and family. Her persona responds well to her intended audience, who may be poor families experiencing rough times, or young mothers in need of something to relate to.

“Your worst battle is between what you know and what you feel” -Unknown. When cultures collide, A person tends to have conflicts with others and also with themselves. In “Thanksgiving: A Personal History” By Jennifer New, She experiences internal conflict because she is confused on how she should celebrate her first thanksgiving as an adult, to either use old traditions she did as a child or to start a new thing as an adult.

While children are growing up in America, they are told several tales of America’s establishment and history. However, these stories are generally not told as they actually happened. An instance of this is the story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is explained as this elaborate ceremony where the Pilgrims and Indians gathered in harmony at this large harvest in celebration of their coming together. According to the primary document of William Bradford’s journal, Thanksgiving didn’t pan out quite as it is explained to Americans today. In the film, The Addams Family Values, the Addams children take part in a traditional, yet misconceived celebration of the first Thanksgiving. This

In comparison to, Mrs. Freeman who is the complete opposite of Mrs. Hopewell whom she has worked for, for four years. O’connor does not show her point of view in this short story only what Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga describe her to be. She is described as very outspoken on whatever he thoughts are. She is very familiar and used to the unexpected due to her daughter Carramaes early marriage and pregnancy at the age of fifteen.

There are a number of points, which seem to go in favour of this view

Sarah is a very selfless person because in the short story she put each of her family