Bobbie Ann Mason's Shiloh

Coming from a lonely and abusive home Mary had to find happiness outside of her house. Her mom made a friend from their church and she happened to have a three month year old baby. Mary always occupied the Richardson’s by helping with baby Alyssa, while also distracting herself from reality. Meeting the Richardson’s ended up being Mary’s worst nightmare. One night the Richardson’s went out and asked Mary and her mother to watch Alyssa.

In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” the narration of a mother lecturing her daughter with sharp, commanding diction and unusual syntax, both affect the evolution of a scornful tone, that her daughter’s behavior will eventually lead her to a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive her and respect her within her social circle. As well as the fact that it emphasizes expectations for young women to conform to a certain feminine ideal of domesticity as a social norm during this time and the danger of female sexuality.

However, with her alcoholic dad who rarely kept a job and her mother who suffered mood swings, they had to find food from her school garbage or eat expired food they had previously when they had the slightest bit of money. In addition, when bills and mortgage piled up, they would pack their bags and look for a new home to live in, if they could even call it a stable home, since they would be on the move so often. Jeanette needed a dad who wouldn’t disappear for days at a time, and a mom that was emotionally stable, but because she didn’t have that, she grew up in an environment where she would get teased or harassed for it. Jeanette suffered so much, that even at one point, she tried convincing her mother to leave her father because of the trouble he had caused the family already. A child should be able to depend on their parents for food and to be there for them when they need it, and when that part of a child’s security is taken away, it leaves them lost and on their own, free and confused about what to do next.

As Gaby’s project continues, she lets people know that pregnant teenagers have the ability to go to college and graduate. She wants to challenge each person to take her project as an example. Rodriguez wants people to fight for what they want in life, she does not want people to live under a stereotype like she did. Mr. Myers, one of her favorite teachers let her know that she could still follow her dreams and have a good life. He told her that it just means that she has to work a little

In “Girl”, by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother is warning her daughter about what to expect, and how to act, in society. The story represents a time when the daughter knew that her mother loved her enough to spend the time to give her the advice, but is also emotionally distant. I believe this to be representative of Kincaid’s life, and how after her brother’s were born she felt that her mother did not have enough time for her.

She has one of the most recognized faces in the world. Over forty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe‘s life and death is still in question. Her trademark platinum hair and beauty mark, her famous skirt-blowing scene, which eventually she became ashamed of because no one could see the woman who was intellectual had feelings and worked hard behind the glitter, the gold and the smiles. Everyone knew this Marilyn Monroe, but did anybody know Norma Jeane Baker? Marilyn Monroe was a Hollywood icon, maybe even a legend, but who was this luminous woman, and was the happy woman that everyone knew capable of killing herself?

Leroy and Norma Jean are both victims of rapid social change. Norma Jean was the most affected by her surroundings comparing to Leroy. Norma Jean had to marry at the age of eighteen to the man who got her pregnant, and in a cruel twist of fate, the child dies of sudden infant death syndrome. This event from her life prevents her to look towards the

Teen pregnancy is still a controversial topic today even in the most open and liberal societies. For Ruth, being pregnant in her small town was a monumental secret that over time would only get harder to hide. Feeling embarrassed and guilty she tried to hide it from the two people who should have probably

Hannah, a freshman in college, has had a life of asthma, major depression, and epilepsy. While on theatrical stage in her first college debut, Hannah collapses on stage in a seizure. After running tests on Hannah in the hospital, the doctor suggests that her lifelong health issues could possibly be because she is a survivor of abortion. This is the first time Hannah not only learns she’s an abortion survivor, but adopted too. In anguish and searching for answers, Hannah journeys with her friends to Mobile, Alabama in search of her birthmother. When Hannah first reconnects with her birthmother, Cindy, tracking her down at her work office, Cindy rejects her yet as again as she did at her failed abortion. Hannah finds herself asking God what to do in her situation.

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.

The novel begins with the mother ignorant to modern society. Junior emphasizes this. "No one had ever taught her anything. She was an orphan at six months"(23). "At the age of thirteen, she was married off to a man rolling in money and in morality whom she had never seen. He would have been the age of

Writers often compose stories and characters based on people they know. Bobbie Ann Mason was no exception in her short story, “Shiloh”. The personality of the leading female character, Norma Jean, was highly influenced by the personality of Bobbie Ann Mason, herself, in the sense that Norma became an independent woman, was raised in a small town, yearned for knowledge, and pushed social norms throughout the entirety of her life. Growing up, Bobbie was not rich nor poor. She was an average country woman similar to Norma.

On their surfaces, Little Women and Iola Leroy share as many similarities as they do differences. Both are set during and after the American Civil War, and both detail the lives of women, though the circumstances of the heroines could scarcely be more different. Little Women’s Jo March belongs to a poor but comfortable white, northern family sympathetic to the Union cause. Iola Leroy, on the other hand, endures a tumultuous life that takes her from a plantation owner’s daughter, to a slave, to an activist for racial justice. However, despite the obvious dissimilarities, the texts share several important qualities.

The setting in the short story “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason works well to accentuate the theme of the story. The theme portrayed by Mason is that most people change along with their environment, with the exception of the few who are unwilling to adapt making it difficult for things such as marriage to work out successfully. These difficulties are apparent in Norma Jean and Leroy’s marriage. As Norma Jean advances herself, their marriage ultimately collapses due to Leroy’s unwillingness to adapt with her and the changing environment.

These constant beatings in Maggie Johnson’s home, furniture thrown from parent to parent, and every aspect of her family life as being negative, her family situation is not an extremly healthy one. But, despite her hardships, Maggie grows up to become a beautiful young lady whose romantic hopes for a more desirable life remain untarnished.