Analysis Of The Summer I Was Sixteen By Geraldine Connonny

Nostalgia is the feeling of missing the past. In “Grape Sherbet” by Rita Dove, the speaker develops this feeling by using past-tense verbs. The speaker also uses family to show that she misses the past. Furthermore, the speaker indicates the fleeting nature of time by using themes of death. The speaker in “Grape Sherbet” by Rita Dove has an attitude of nostalgia.

The story of Summer, by David Updike, is set during that idyllic time in life when responsibility is the last word on anyone's mind. And yet, as with all human affairs, responsibility is an ever-present and ever-necessary aspect to life. What happens when the protagonist, Homer, loses his awareness of a certain personal responsibility to maintain self-control? Homer's actions increasingly make him act foolishly, internally and externally. Also, how does Homer return to a sense of sanity and responsibility? To a degree, I would say that he does.

Teens struggle with hardships every day. Although nothing compares to the teens that struggled in the holocaust.“Night” by Elie Wiesel is a tragic story of one teen’s struggle at a concentration camp: Auschwitz. That teen is none other than the author, Elie Wiesel, and throughout the book, Elie changes drastically as a person due to his time in the camp.

Childhood is portrayed as a time of safety that is often looked back upon with nostalgia from an adult perspective. Monosyllabic words are used to show the simplicity of childhood life, for example in the line “the thing I could not grasp or name”. The ‘spring violets’ are ‘in their loamy bed’ and are no longer frail and melancholy, and the memory takes place on a ‘hot afternoon’ in contrast to the ‘cold dusk’ that represents the present. Childhood is represented as a joyful, vivacious time in one’s life, and the value of a stable family life is conveyed. The unexpected integration of Australian vernacular in the line ‘it will soon be night, you goose’, adds a sense of freedom and relaxation to the otherwise formal discourse and more rigid structure of the poem, once again reflects the simplicity and innocence that is associated with childhood. The use of

Good authors can create wonderful stories, but it all starts with the setting. Without the setting, the story will have no plot and the characters will have no reason to be there because the setting is a crucial element. Barry Callaghan, the author of “Our Thirteenth Summer” can effectively use setting as an important part of a story. The setting of “Our Thirteenth Summer” is in Toronto’s Annex District during the 1840’s, when the Holocaust was occurring. The setting influences the behaviour of the characters and reflects the society in which the characters live.

The image presented is a visual representation of Gwen Harwood’s poem ‘The Violets’. The poem creates the imagery of an adult reflecting on the days they were a child; expressing their yearn to be a child again and their distress at how quickly time goes. Youth, passing of time, memory, life, and death are recurring themes of this poem which are presented through the narrator’s reminiscence of their childhood, and through the motif of a violet. Harwood uses a range of poetry techniques in her poems, and these techniques help convey the different themes and concepts of the poem. The images incorporated in the visual representation were purposely selected to help depict these different themes and concepts. The visual representation works to display Harwood’s poetry style and context through the representation of her poem ‘The Violets.’

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.

The reflection of each poet's childhood is displayed within these lines helping to build a tone for the memories of each narrator.

There is a quote from the Chopin story, “Story of an Hour”, that is quite profound. It says “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have the right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature”.

“That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner is a good example of a great emotional turmoil transferred directly to the readers through the words of a narrator who does not seem to grasp the severity of the turmoil. It is a story of an African American laundress who lives in the fear of her common-law husband Jesus who suspects her of carrying a white man's child in her womb and seems hell bent on killing her.

Kids can be  cruel when they are envious as shown in the short story, “All Summer In A Day,” by Ray Bradbury. The sun is what makes Margot happy, and when that gets taken away from her. In this short story there is several acts of cruelty to Margot by her classmates. These kids live in the planet of Venus, and they haven’t seen the sun in seven years, except for Margot. The kids are only nine years old so they haven’t seen the sun since they were two years old, but Margot moved there from Earth when she was four and she remembers the sun and that makes the other kids envious. In the beginning of the story it is the day that the sun is supposed to come out for the first time in seven years! The kids were skeptical except for Margot because she wanted to see it so bad. The kids were starting to prepare for the sun to come out but they were sitting inside waiting. While they were waiting the kids decided to lock Margot in a closet and not let her out. When the sun came out all the kids ran outside to play in the sun that felt so warm and nice on their skin, except for Margot, who was sitting inside in the dark closet. When the kids came back inside they felt sorry for leaving Margot in there. Envy can lead people to commit awful acts and cause shame as demonstrated throughout the character's actions in, “All Summer In A Day.”

“It has been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands.” (Bradbury, 1954) In the dystopian story, “All Summer In A Day” by Ray Bradbury, it takes place on the planet, Venus. A group of children, along with scientists get to live there, while being educated at the underground school. Margot, who is only 9 years old, wasn't born on Venus like the other children, but instead on Earth. She’s the only one who remembers how the sun felt through her skin and how beautiful it shined. On the contrary, the other children are jealous of her because she has some memory of the sun, while they don’t. Jealousy caused the children to harass, isolate, and make her depressed.

All Summer in A Day by Ray Bradbury is about how a little jealousy can turn into rage and reveals that children, along with adults, can be blinded by something so simple.The author of All Summer in A Day believes jealousy and bullying are the key emotions played in this short story. Bradbury claims that the main characters, Margot, is being bullied because she was Earth longer. Whereas, the other students don’t even remember Earth because of how early they all moved to Venus. When Margot arrives, she was four. The other children had arrived two years before. The author describes her as “a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the

“Poems are written with the feelings and emotions, with the intuition and the instincts, that make each of us who we are” (Charters 669). Dana Gioia, the author of “Summer Storm 2000” expresses an emotional works to an event dated back 20 years ago. Gioia uses dictions such as, imagery, figures of speech, setting, tone, and ballad to help readers not only comprehend the poem but to help them envision and feel it as if they were the ones experiencing the story. Gioia uses these means as a way of expressing his feelings and thoughts while explain to readers the deeper meaning of what “Summer Storm” really entails.

The children are the ‘we’ of the first half of the poem. They “loved it” (5) when the mother kicked out their father and were “glad” (1) at the result of divorce. When their father lost his job they “grinned” (4) and were “tickled” (line 7) with pleasure as they watched their father’s world crash down around him. The sympathy conveyed through the narrative sits with the mother and children during the first half of the poem. As the daughter begins to speak in present terms, and the “you” (1,3) suddenly is now “father” (17), the poem undertakes a dramatic shift. Sympathy begins to surface, from the reader, for the “bums in doorways” (18) who begin to take on a victimized persona with their hands depicted as useless “flippers” (21) attached to their “slug” (19) bodies. It is not to say that the speaker has forgotten the cruel insensitive man that she recalls in the first part of the poem, but the father is now not the only villain and the mother and children are not the only sufferers.