Analysis Of The Book ' Ramona '

Richard Wagamese, the award-winning author of the novel Keeper’n Me (2006) as well as various other literary pieces such as Dream Wheels (2006), Medicine Walk (2014), and Indian Horse (2012), was born in 1955 in Northwestern Ontario and is from the Wabaseemoong First Nation. Through the combination of Wagamese’s fictional writing blended with components of his personal life in Keeper’n Me specifically, the fifty-nine year old author has been recognized for this and other phenomenal works through a variety of diverse awards in his years of writing including being the recipient of the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media and Communications. His debut novel allows audiences to get a glimpse of what this writer is capable of and furthermore his personal life as he incorporates many fascinating concepts into it while keeping it a light read.

In “A love affair with books” by Bernadette Piassa, tells her story about defeating the odds and finding a way to continue her love of reading. To her books were not just a pastime, but a source of sustenance. The article takes time and patience to the account of her story, careful and precise wording being used in the chronological order is being told.

Life is a constant roller coaster ride of grueling struggles and bittersweet accomplishments. There are also times where one neither wins nor loses, but lessons are always learned. What we do during that time of strife and struggle defines who we will become later. Those who embrace the change and hardship, while finding a way to make it through, will become stronger in the end. In “The Dreamer”, by Junot Diaz, the dream of a young girl to become a nurse never comes to fruition, but her struggles and sacrifices enabled her to move out of a Third World country. Due to his mother’s sacrifices, her son Diaz is able to live a better life, achieving his goals of becoming a writer because she pushed him to better himself with her courage.

During the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, author J.D. Salinger brings Holden’s pessimistic, antisocial personality to life through what he says, how he says it, and through the characters he meets. Salinger bases Holden’s expressions off of the culture of the 1950’s, his own personal dialect, and the everyday occurrences of Holden’s life in mind. J.D. Salinger manipulates the diction, uses syntax to criticize others, and controls the character interaction and dialogue in order to create the protagonist, Holden Caulfield.

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

Romance is used as a device to drive the story of Ramona, a 19 year old girl of Indian and Scottish descent who falls in love with Alessandro, an Indian shepherd. Using a fictional love

Dry September is a story where citizens of a Jefferson, Mississippi have heard a rumor that Will Mayes, a black man has raped a white woman named Minnie Cooper. The story explores the reactions of the town’s citizens as this rumor is spread. Individuals begin to make individual conclusions and assumptions drawing hasty ideas based on insufficient or miniscule evidence, even going as far as to make up some of the evidence to draw a conclusion. There is a relationship between racism and violence in the world of the text.

Helen Hunt Jackson’s intent for her novel Ramona was to give the public “a large dose of information on the Indian issue without them knowing it” (Senier, 23) by means of delivering it in the form of a sentimentalist “literary sugar-pill”(Senier, 22). Historian Allan Nevins writes in The American Scholar: “it is no real condemnation of Mrs. Jackson's books to say they are sentimental. That is merely a statement of their limitation” (281, Nevins). In order appeal to white audiences, Jackson isolates Ramona and Alessandro from their Native American identities.

When it comes to taking a child away from their parents, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration. If a child is being neglected, it is obvious that the child needs to be taken away from the parents, right? Not always. In the article “The Separation” by Larissa MacFarquah, the concept of child neglect and abuse is discussed. If a mother is too poor and cannot afford to upkeep her home or buy food for her children, is that neglect?

In a time that is faced with great racial prejudice, Ramona has an open mind, and knows to judge others by their personality, rather than by their heritage. Most people in her area believed that the Native Americans were not worth anything more than hard labor: “Americans would not let an Indian do anything but plough and sow and herd cattle. A man need not read and write, to do that.” Despite this common opinion, Ramona learned to have her own racial views. She was victim to bigotry herself, but she learned to be welcoming to all: “Ramona gazed after him. For the first time, she looked at him with no thought of his being an Indian.” Ramona had been taught her entire life that it was necessary for her to dislike the Native Americans, that the natives were not intelligent or worth time. She was even told this about herself, as she was half native in her heritage. However, she innately knew that she was proud of her bloodline, “Her Indian blood had as much proud reserve in it as ever infused into the haughtiest Gonzaga’s veins.” Ramona had the prudence to actively decide on her own what was good and bad. She made the choice to decide for her own, instead of following the common

A criminal is one who has committed a crime. In this story, there is a character that is a looming threat according to the grandmother. This criminal is left with a tragic that has left him disillusioned especially when it comes to the terms of seeing the goodness in the world. The Misfit, himself, says, “I call myself The Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (O’Connor 377). This shows that The Misfit has been through quite a lot of trouble or has caused a lot of trouble. This character demonstrates how O’Connor applied religious and cultural aspects in the story.

In the vignette “Boys & Girls” , Esperanza describes herself as a red balloon and I’m sure we are all wondering “what’s the meaning behind this?”. In the book, Esperanza recently moved into a house on Mango street where she has family, and no friends except for her best friend whom she shares everything with. She is isolated and feels a ton of anticipation because she feels as if she sticks out like a sore thumb in the new neighborhood, and that is where the picture behind the red balloon comes from. She is floating around in a pool of anticipation. Even after she makes a couple new friends she still has this feeling of anticipation, and that’s the anchor coming into place because it’s holding her back from feeling like she is accepted in this

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of

ANGUSTIAS: I find him distracted. He always talks to me as if his mind is on something else. If I ask him what’s wrong, he says: ‘We men have our own problems.’