“The Girl Who Loved the Sky” by Anita Endrezze was my chosen poem; A story of a short-friendship among two girls. Imagery is used by Endrezze to illustrate the inside of the second grade classroom both of the girls attend. As well as a simile to compare the main character’s feeling toward numbers, I believe to be mathematics perhaps, “I learned that numbers were fractious beasts with dens like dim zeros”(Endrezze 15). Suggesting an unpleasant or rather difficult feeling towards subjects dealing with numbers. Furthermore, Endrezze explains the relationship between the two girls to be one out of empathy, possibly, “I had no father; she had no eyes”(29); disclosing the main character’s lack of father and her friend’s lack of sight to be a reciprocal
When referring to writing, tone is described as the writer’s attitude toward their subject matter and audience. To analyze any literary essay, recognizing tone is vital to understanding how the writer feels about the subject he has written about but also the underlying message he is trying to convey. In the essay written by the investigative reporter Jessica Mitford entitled, “To Bid the World Farewell” Tone is very pronounced and effective in getting the main point of the essay across. The author uses many different tones, from which I have selected three to analyze. All three off them use the good principles of writing a convincing and informative essay. Her ability to sarcastically familiarize the general public with the ‘dark arts’ of the embalming industry is both suggestive and engaging. She also uses an abundance of euphemisms, hiding the disturbing truth under a string of organized connotations. Her last method of tone is to inform the reader of the embalming methods by explaining with the wordy and often misunderstood colloqialisms of an actual ‘dermasurgeon’, in which she provides multiple quotes to further convince the reader.
In addition, the author helps the reader understand the selfishness of the mother when the reader finds out she have stole the Persian Carpet “several months before” (230) the divorce and puts the blame on Ilya, the poor blind man. Furthermore, the visit of the children is supposed to signal a fresh start for the family. The mother even emphasizes she wants the girls to come “live with [them]” (229). Yet again, even if they meet in order to reunite, characterized by a situational irony, they see themselves separated because of her mother selfish decisions.
In Anzia Yezierska's short story "The lost beautifulness," the protagonist Hanneh Hayyeh scrimps and saves to be able to paint her apartment white to make it look respectable for her son Ady when he comes home from fighting World War I. Hayyeh wants some kind of hope to cling to in her desperate immigrant's life. Although the dialect of the characters is Russian-Jewish and the setting is in an early 20th century urban environment, the idea of immigrant aspirations and the conflict between rich and poor is a common theme in American literature.
Stargirl was another fantastic book Jerry Spinelli. He added interesting characters, such as, Leo the quiet and shy one, Stargirl unique and fun one, Dori Dilson Stargirl only friend, Archie the wise and elderly one, Kevin Leo’s friend that likes the stoplight, and Hillari Kimble the popular bratty one. This book takes place in MICA, Arizona. Now, in paragraph one I will discuss the plot of Stargirl. Next, I will talk about the theme in Stargirl. Finally, I will evaluate Jerry Spinelli`s job on the novel Stargirl.
In Arlie Russell Hochschild’s, “Love and Gold,” she depicts the economic influences that turn choices of mothers in Third World countries into a precondition. Similarly, in Toni Morrison’s, Sula, a recurring theme of the struggle between independence, the ability to choose, and doing what’s best for others, or coerced decisions, is imminent throughout the entire novel and revolved around the main character, Sula. Often times the factor that weighs down choice is responsibility. Choices are seemingly infinite until you factor in what choices will affect which people and why. Both mothers and caregivers have to put their dependent before themselves, therefore limiting their
Eavan Boland’s poem “It’s a Woman’s World” illuminates the fact that history has shaped an unfair role for women in today’s society. Boland criticizes the gender bias with regards to the limitations placed on women and their job choices despite their ability to be just as successful in the workplace as men. Regardless of the fact that the bias against women in the workplace is often overlooked, Boland aims to show the shared reaction of women to the gender bias prevalent in our society by using short sentence fragments, repetition, and a fire motif throughout the poem.
However, this bridge was the connection they have. Similarly to Arana’s parents, the little girl’s parents are also different, so she’s stuck being the bridge. Likewise, Marie Arana was also the bridge between her parents and wandered the middle, unsure of which side to choose. Marie Arana saw the girl struggle to be that strong bridge and what she saw was herself. The author says there could have been multiple different thoughts during that moment, but what hit her was how the girl looked back and forth between her two divergent parents. The author states “ As I looked down at their fleeting radiance, I had no idea I would spend the rest of my life puzzling over them.” Just like as a child Arana would puzzle over her parents, the little girl was doing the same, trying to fix together the pieces of how two very different people could ever get
The article, “The Girl Who Lived Forever”, by Kristen Lewis, describes the hardships of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl, and her family, who like millions of other Jews, perished at the hands of the Nazis during WWII. Anne Frank lived during one of the most terrifying and horrific historical events the world has ever seen, the Holocaust. She and her family managed to survive for 2 long years in hiding, by living in a secret annex behind her father’s pectin factory. In August of 1944, the SS captured Anne and the others hiding in the annex. All but Otto Frank, Anne’s father, perished in the Nazi concentration camps. Though they lived through unspeakable and unimaginable challenges, Anne, her family and their friends showed a tremendous amount of courage trying to defy Hitler and his evil regime.
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.
For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.
Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.
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.
When the story first begins, the father pleads with the mother to let him see Christina and Stella once again. Although he makes the effort to reach out he attempts to take the easy way out by asking the mother if she would talk to the girls first, making things easier for him: "'Talk it over with them,' she finally said. 'They'll eat me alive if you don't talk to them first'" (Michalopoulou, 76). The reader finds out that he has been watching the girls frequently from a distance outside of their school. He has many opportunities to approach them but chooses not to therefore letting even more time pass by. He uses the excuse that he does not have an "explanation" for them as the reason for not approaching them. He knows that they will not excuse what he did so, in other words, he needs an excuse for when he sees them.
Clouds are often associated with the proposal of free thinking; which is what sleeping is presumably thought to be. During Mia Hall’s out-of-body-experience, she contemplates over the idea of staying alive to live her life as an orphan, or leaving to succumb to the fate her family had no choice of enduring. As Mia deciphers over the choice of life or death, she declares that; “sleep would be so welcome -- a warm blanket to erase everything else” (Forman, 278). A cloud is a symbol of sleep, and contains the element that Mia’s loved ones fear throughout the hours of her coma. Mia has a choice to join her body once again, or to turn into the light and have a rendezvous with the clouds which she desperately wants to meet.
Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl Interrupted,” is an autobiography in relation to Kaysen’s two-year stay at a mental hospital as she battles borderline personality disorder. Although in denial, Susanna Kaysen is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder but is unable to come to terms with her illness as she reassures herself she is fine. The reader learns that Kaysen is an unreliable narrator that is unable to discover the truth behind her illness. Through the exploration of her relationships, actions, and opinions, enhances the fact that Kaysen is mentally ill. Through her past and present relationship’s, Susanna demonstrates her self-destructive tendencies. Kaysen’s impulsivity in the novel is another indication that her diagnosis is fitting. Finally, Kaysen’s thought process and anxious behavior further prove her as a candidate for BPD.