Analyzing Brigit Pegeen Kelly's 'The Leaving'

Gabrielle Roy's "The Move", highlights a young girl's longing for adventure and travel toward unknown destinations. However, as she realizes what is truly present outside her imagination, a surge of disillusionment comes over her. The child's description of horses, spearheading an adventure, but then falling ill and tired, illustrates the girl's realization that excitement and joy in the world cannot amount to her vivid imagination. In the short story, the image of weary moving horses parallels the child's sudden grasp of reality, illustrating the naive character's loss of innocence.

In the essay, “Against the Grain,” Marina Keegan discusses her journey living with Celiac Disease. Keegan kicks off the essay describing what she will eat on her death bed, Oreo’s, hamburger’s, pizza, donuts, a beer, and so on, she basically lists the core foods in the diet of the average American teenager. Keegan leaves the reader wondering: “Why those specific foods? Maybe they are her favorite?” These questions are then answered in the following paragraph. She states that she is allergic to gluten and continues on to discuss how she was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and how her life was growing up with the uncommon allergy. Keegan includes personal experience, facts, and evolution of her thoughts to uncover how Celiac Disease has impacted her life.

It is within human nature to be competitive. While it is one of the most basic and primal instincts that has ensured our survival for centuries, today has become more for personal achievement. In movies, shows and on the internet we are constantly exposed to people competing for various reason. Athletes compete for the gold medal, game show contestants for money prizes and characters in movies for the object of their affections. When we best the challenges we decide to face, we often receive an overwhelming feeling of success along with the prize and, in turn, our confidence is boosted drastically. We are encourage to become the best versions of ourselves. However, when our attempts end in failure, we feel disappointed in ourselves and are discouraged from pushing ourselves again. In modern times, individuals often lack the motivation to challenge themselves because they fear their odds of failure. They would rather remain apathetic than even attempt to push themselves. It is essential that we have the dedication, fortitude and courage to regain the confidence to at least attempt a challenge or alter it to make it more beneficial to ourselves.

The imagery in the poem, specifically natural imagery, helps use the reader’s senses to develop a vivid depiction of the speaker’s connection to nature and dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality. The speaker’s continued use of the “moon” reflects her attribution of feminine identity and idolistic character to the moon. As opposed to referencing herself and her personal insomnia, she uses the imagery of the moon “beyond sleep” to convey her internal struggles with insomnia and her reality. Throughout the poem, the speaker also refers to shining, reflective surfaces, such as “a body of water or a mirror”, to describe the inverted reality in which the speaker experiences reciprocated love. Reflective surfaces often invert the image that is projected into them, seemingly distorting the true nature and reality of the projected image. The speaker’s reference to this reflective imagery highlights her desire to escape the burden of a patriarchal society and assume an independent and free feminine identity. Specifically, the use of natural imagery from the references to the “moon” and “a body of water” convey the speaker’s desire to take refuge within the Earth or in the feminine identity of the Earth, Mother Earth. Feminine identities are often related and associated with aspects of nature due to the natural cycle of the menstrual period and the natural process of procreation. The speaker takes advantage of these connotations to suggest Earth and natural imagery as an escape from the man-made terrors of male dominated society. In the second stanza, the speaker uses extensive imagery to develop metaphors conveying the speaker’s experience of jealousy of the moon

Have you ever felt that you knew you your home but then realized that it actually wasn’t what you thought it really was? Well, that’s how Jacqueline Woodson felt. As we grow and change, so do our perspectives on a variety of things that we experience in life. In, When a Southern Town Broke a Heart, Woodson introduces ideas changing as you get older as a central idea of the story.

The further the poem is read, the more consuming the impacts of separation becomes to the narrator until they now desire to recede from their past. The title of the poem confirms this desire through insinuating that the path of separation that they are on is perpetual and therefore, shows no clear destination. This ending consequently leaves a feeling of hopelessness for the reader that is meant to mimic the hopelessness that the narrator feels over their situation. However, in the conclusion of my personal response, I recognize the impacts of separation and the need to correct them. Whilst not wanting to vanish from society, I admit to the difficulty of returning to society due to now being accustomed to the feeling of separation and the nothingness that it creates within me.

Looking into the distance, an athlete runner can see the finishing line. However what stands before them are many hurdles one will have to jump over to reach the end. Comparing this analogy to an individual’s life, these hurdles are like the various challenges that one will have to overcome to cross their finishing line, and in order to come first, one will have to run. Melina Marchetta has written a novel, Looking for Alibrandi (LFA), which portrays the events that can waver a character from their finishing goal, their goal to achieve true freedom. It is situations such

The speaker's depression stems mainly from his unwanted responsibility and feeling of regret. The basic conflict in the poem, which is resolved in the last stanza, is between an attraction toward the woods and the drudgery of life and responsibility outside of the woods. "And miles to go before I sleep,/ And miles to go before I sleep" (line 15-16).

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 Everyone Leaves by Wendy Guerra she explains her hardships and her mental and physical abuse that she has faced and learns how to use the hardships she has faced and grows from them and learned to use those hardships to become a stronger individual. This book brings you in the life of someone that's been through so much and that many people today in this world face unfortunately she writes the intimate and harsh details of her life within the pages of her Diary that became her book. The book starts in the late 1970’s a few years after Fidel Castro became president of Cuba from 1976-2008 and in the midst of her parents divorce and a country torn apart from the rest of the world because of political issues with the Cuban government and the

In “Letting Go”, David Sedaris has let go of his mother. Sedaris’s mother was one of the main causes of his smoking. As “A few years later, we were sitting around the breakfast table and she invited me to take a puff. I did” (Sedaris 1). At a young age, Sedaris’s first experience with a cigarette began with his mother. His mother encouraged his smoking later in his twenties. “My mother, however, looked at the bright side. “Now I’ll know what to put in your Christmas stocking!” She put them in my Easter basket as well, entire cartons” (Sedaris 3) When Sedaris officially began smoking his mother supported this terrible habit by buying him cartons of cigarettes as gifts. After Sedaris’s mother found out she had cancer, she attempted

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

“ Udhav Grover - Heart Patient “ written in bold. Reading this everyday, everyone perceived me as an inferior person. Before my second surgery, all subject teachers gave me comparatively less homework, sports teachers discouraged me from playing. Knowing that my teachers would not say anything to me, I used my problem to my benefit and many times didn’t even get any punishment from the strictest teachers in the school for not doing my homework. But after my second surgery, due to my positive behavior,all the liberties were taken away and everyone in school started perceiving as a regular child. Not appreciating the old behavior from others, I quested to change my identity.

20). In the fifth stanza, she fulfills every child’s dream of the parent’s constant attention by sleeping “in the cornucopia / of your left ear, out of the wind” (C. 21), safely surrounded by and encompassing his interest. This is, of course, undercut by the fact that it is not her father’s ear or attention at all, but an inanimate statue symbolizing frightening impermanence. The poem begins and ends with the recognition that what is lost is truly lost. She begins prophetically, “I shall never get you put together entirely”. Ending nestled in his ear, she seeks solace in the pattern of colored stars, knowing that she must find fulfillment in the world immediately around her, by “no longer….listen[ing] for the scrape of a keel on the blank stones of landing”(C. 21).