Ashes Short Story Theme

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Thus begins the highly celebrated memoir by the name of Angela's Ashes, written by Frank McCourt. In this book Frank McCourt writes about his childhood, how his parents meet in New York and then decide to return to Ireland. He describes what it is like to be at the bottom of that city's tough social hierarchy, giving vivid descriptions of how class imposes severe limitations and restrictions. It is this topic, this theme, to which I will

When Lori and Jeanette are growing older, they decide they want to move to New York City to start a new life, away from their parents. Lori and Jeanette get jobs and begin to earn money. They hide their earnings from their parents in a piggy bank they named Oz. One day Jeanette tries to find Oz to put her paycheck in. Instead she says to Lori “Someone has slashed him apart with a knife and stole all the money” (Walls 228). The kids knew right away who had stolen it. It was Dad. When Lori confronted Dad with the news about Oz, he started playing dumb, acting like he had not idea what was going on. But in fact he did steal the money. This action shows that Dad is very selfish and only cares about himself.

Greg and myself have some key similarities in the relationships with our fathers. First off, we both have a dad that lives in the same establishment with us. Our dad’s also both want us to succeed in sports, school, and life. I can tell Greg’s dad wants him to do well in school because in line 4 of the text it says Greg’s dad was “lecturing endlessly about his poor efforts in math.” In lines 9-10 it says that after Greg asked his dad about playing with the Scorpions, an elite travel team from the New York area, his dad says “it depends on your next report card.” When Greg brings home a bad report card, his dad says in lines 17-19, “And you want to

The memoir of Jeannette Walls had several characters, important people in her life. But, there was one specific character, her dad, that she had a close relationship with. Jeannette Walls grew up in poverty and always moved around. Her family was close, but Jeannette was closest to her father over anyone else. She loved and admired her father and defended him too. Her memoir, “The Glass Castle” is very popular. She is a grown-up now and cares about her parents. She offers to help them out of poverty, but they resist. Jeannette certainly cares for both parents, but her father has a special place in her heart. Jeannette has a special relationship with her father because she admired his heroicness, she got to pick Venus as her star, and he helped her and distracted her from being scared and in pain.

In the short story called, “Ashes” by Susan Beth Pfeffer, the protagonist is dealing with the complicated relationship between her divorced parents. Ashleigh, the main character, is questioned by her dad if she can borrow her mom's money for his own problems. Ashes, short for Ashleigh, like the compliments that she keeps receiving from her dad. Ashes complex relationship with her parents makes her choose between her mom or her dad. One lesson this story suggests is that no matter how much you love someone, you have to let them handle things on their own.

Throughout the course of the story, the father of the main character is shown feeding his daughter, Ashes, an endless string of compliments such as “You’re one in a million”. He gives her many words of positive reinforcement to try and persuade her to steal money from her mother. He needs this money to pay back some guys, whom of which are after him. He claims that he will pay her back. This strengthens the argument that false claims can negatively affect relationships

He brings Ashes to a diner and tells her how he has a possibility to make him on easy street. He informs her that it is more like he needs to pay $200 to some guys because he is debt, but he doesn’t have the money so he asks Ashes to steal from her mother. This is an example of how the father teaches something that he shouldn’t be and that it is okay to steal if you are in a dire need of the money. While this is the last point I believe that it really pulls the whole theme together.

According to paragraph 19, "... they had talked of nothing else but butter and eggs, and the prices of things, and now they had as much to say to each other as people who meet after a long separation. By sticking pieces of their childhood and personal lives in the middle of the story, you can see how and why the two end up bonding over their memories. In paragraph 25, the wife warns the kids, "And you better be careful of that, an don't waste it. Your father works hard for his money." This piece contradicts the description of his wife in paragraph 19. Paragraph 19 provides the background that says, "In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband." The wife went from defending her boys with everything that she had to defending her husband and his

At the beginning of this same line, the girl tells what she does not like, "It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing."  She sees her mother's life and the work that she does and simply does not want to be a part of it.  She also outright says, "I hated the hot dark kitchen in summer; the green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oil table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum" (113).  The girl is showing her opposition to her assigned gender role.  She does not like working in the house or preparing comparing and contrasting of the father's world versus the mother's world.  The father's world is composed of outdoor work, fox farming, has no emotion, expresses freedom and identified by light.  The father's world is all about the death of animals.  So, there is no time for emotions.  This lack of emotions is also carried into the relationship between the girl and her father.  The girl says, My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing.  Whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and I was shy of him and would never ask him questions" (112).  The girl accepted this and considered it part of the attitude you have to have for this job.  The girl prefers her father's type of emotion rather than her mother's.  The girl describes her mother's emotions:

Short stories can be bland and boring. As you read some of them, you can feel emotion or just read a boring story about how something changed their life, but these three stories are interesting because they develop horror. These short stories use different elements to create horror. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “A Rose for Emily,”, and “The Lottery” develop horror/gothic elements.

The narrator and his father have the kind of relationship where on the surface it might come off as cold because they’re reserved and don’t openly share thoughts and emotions but, underneath it all, the narrator must feel some respect for his father because he still contemplates over the advice his father gave him.

Ashleigh knows that he's not going to get the money if she doesn't steal the money. “I had no idea where dad was going to get two hundred dollars from.”(pg3) This quote tell the reader that Ashleigh doesn't think that he's going to come with the money. Ashleigh is his daughter so she feels a need to help her dad. “ well, why not. I was his daughter, after all.”(pg.3) This quote tells the reader that she wants to steal the money but, she deciding in her head if she should or not. Ashleigh knows what her dad did wasn't very smart. “But I've got to tell you honey, once that money is paid, I’m on my way to easy street.” (pg.3) This quote tells the reader that her dad was telling her that once the money was paid then life was going to be easy and perfect but, she knows what he's telling her isn’t going to

Though up to this time I had never gotten deeply engaged in a book, the jerkiness of the father actually sparked anger in me. I did not go too much deeper into the book, and any meaning was hidden behind the words that I thought little of. However after spending a week in English talking about the book, I started to see meaning behind it, but only once the meaning was directly stated. At the time, the book did not speak to me in any way, but now looking back, what speaks to me the most is Sarah’s new perception on identity. She asks herself, “can a tree hate the roots from which it sprang? Who gave me the fire, the passion, to push myself up from the dirt?” (286). She states that even though he resented living with her family, she can’t hate them because they made her who she is. I reflected on this, and I realised that the reason I am myself is that I grew up under the family that raised me, and that I was raised the way I

Even though, she will not be able to repay him with money as materialistic things are not of value, Bradstreet will write about him in her poetry, to show him her gratitude and express her love for him. I feel that Bradstreet wrote her poems about her father to impress him and make sure he knew that she was doing everything she could to repay him and show him her gratefulness for life. Bradstreet never discredits her father or places any blame on him for anything happening in her life, which was true of Puritan beliefs at that time.

A/N: Not intended, but I find the Ash/Rico moment quite cute and funny. The Ash/Xhäs brief interaction was also entertaining. As for the action scenes, I don’t know if I did a good job on them. You have to give me your thoughts about them. If you guys were curious, yes… Xhäs is a lot stronger than Ash because of his past experience and training with the Organization. So, no complaining! Ash needs to learn how to get stronger by adapting to new experiences like Xhäs once did. And hmm….I wondered what world was being teased at the end? And who were those four characters? Find out next time! Hopefully, I can get it posted within a week. If I can’t, then…you will have to wait until spring