Character Analysis Of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. This is evident in Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, which reiterates the story of Jeannette who is raised within a family that is both deeply dysfunctional and distinctively vibrant. Jeannette is faced with numerous barriers throughout her life. Despite the many obstacles set forth by her parents during her childhood, Jeannette develops into a successful adult later in life. One of these obstacles is the lack of a stable home base moulds her into the woman she grows up to be. Throughout her life, Jeannette must cope with the carelessness of her

The sexy and enticing image in the American civilization affects teenagers as they are driven to emulate those ideas which in the end are deceived and hurt because of their ignorance. In the story, Connie has predicaments within her family because of her efforts to become sexually attractive which causes her to criticize her sister and her mother. Joyce Carol

The beginning of the short story enlightens the reader into the relationship that Connie has with her mother. Connie’s mother does not agree with her admiration for herself. This is due to Connie’s mother’s own insecurities. Oates writes, “Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 3043). Connie was aware that her mother was jealous of the way she looked and envied her young adolescence. Her mother was nagging her daily and constantly comparing her to her sister. The constant comparison and nagging left Connie to deal with internally judging herself. Oates expresses Connie’s strong unhappiness with her mother by stating “…but around his bent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (3043). Connie’s frustration with her mother lies deep within her internal judgments. She repeatedly obsesses over her mother’s words and desires attention from older males. Even though she does not feel as if she fits in with her sister June, there are some characteristics that she likes about her sister. One of these characteristics is that June is older. Since June is older, Connie is allowed to go out when her sister does which allows her to embrace her rebellious adolescence. She wishes she was older and battles with her internal misconception of her age. In the story, Connie is at an age where she is experimenting with her surroundings. Young girls are regularly comparing themselves to their friends and their elders. The obsession of comparison leaves Connie continuously striving to be better and to increase her attractiveness. Her misconceptions suggest to her that she needs to be more sexual. Her varying internal conflicts leave her with a void that she tries to fill otherwise.

Joyce Carol Oates plays upon the stereotypic female gender role through her adolescent character, Connie, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” The story was written at a significant time in America’s history. It was a season when social and moral conventions were challenged. This period experienced the rise of women struggling for sexual freedom and gender equality in a patriarchal society. Oates portrays the protagonist, Connie, as naive, unaware and inexperienced; she has yet to find her identity and fully understand her place as a women in the world. She believes she has learned to play the game of the sexes and that she has the upper hand. This belief, though, is quickly subverted when she is confronted by Arnold Friend, a man who works to reinforce patriarchal standards by punishing Connie for acting outside stereotypic female role boundaries, she then realizes as a women, she has very little power.

The American Dream has always been the unattainable idea of a perfect life, often causing disorder when it is not realized. In response to society’s unrealistically high standards, and the human desire to be accepted, people shape their existences to fit within the quixotic ideals of society. The ubiquity of this conformity is demonstrated by its omnipresence as a theme in American literature. The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, demonstrate how these perspectives of social mores are centered on the prevalence of the unrealistic views of normality. The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and

Life has its ups and downs. In life people have their trials and they must overcome them to grow as human beings. Mistakes become lessons and through these mistakes you are able to grow up and be able to make a difference in the world. Jeannette Walls had many trials in her life. She was able to overcome them and use them to learn life lessons that most will not learn until they are much older. Growing up poor is hard and for a while Jeannette Walls was ashamed of her past for a while. Finally she found the courage to tell her story and that memoir became The Glass Castle. The memoir shows us how growing up impoverished does not mean that you will be stuck impoverished if you do something about it. Jeannette learned many lessons in life that helped her grow up fast and ultimately were able to aid her in making it out of poverty and to follow her dreams in New York. Jeannette was able to demonstrate that no matter where you come from, you can still do great things.

Born in 1862, Edith Wharton Newbold Jones was brought up within the graceful, wealthy yet conservative, confining circle of New York society, which fostered sexual repression and prided itself on the innocence of its young girls. Edith Wharton herself was discouraged from expressing her emotions or developing her intellect which was supposed to be very unbecoming traits in a woman. This is the reason why she stressed in her fiction the need of growth, and has shown how painful and frustrating this process can be for a woman. This process of growth and development is revealed in her major works, Ethan Frome (1911), and Summer (1917) (Balakrishnan 1).

Moral and social beliefs were being challenged and the youth of America, while coming of age, were rebelling against their parent’s ideals and creating their own culture. The birth of a social movement was upon the world and issues such as sexual freedom, feminism and other civil rights were hot topics during the years prior to Oates writing this story. It is these social changes and society’s interest in them that creates the foundation for the setting that breathes life into this story. Without this foundation, the coming-of-age story of Connie, not to mention American society, and her journey from the innocence of the 1950s into the bitter reality of the turbulent times of the 1960s would have been lost.

Appreciation for what one has can take that person a long way, especially if they do not have much to appreciate. Throughout the memoir, The Glass Castle, the reader learns that the novel is centralized around three base ideas. These three ideas follow the outline of how one should always make realistic promises, how the loss of innocence can affect the way one lives their lives, and how self-reliance and independence can take someone far in life. The memoir sets the themes out with intricate series of events that makes these themes inarguable, from fire fights in the street with the local thug, to lying about your age to get a job to ensure food stays on the table while your parents are away. In the end it all becomes relevant to the central

In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates, a young girl named Connie is testing the limits of the freedom granted to her by her parents. She spends her summer by hanging out with her girlfriends, and finding different boys at a restaurant across the street instead of walking around the mall with her friends. Oates shows in many examples how a naive Connie is taken advantage of by a man preying on her young and carefree mind, and transitions the main character from a carefree youth to a scared young woman being cheated by life and forced to grow up and understand the world and it’s unfairness more.

Connie is a fifteen year old girl who is confident and proud of herself, and almost feels as if she’s invincible, until she has a rude awakening when an unwanted visitor appears at her doorstep. The stories, "Lust" by Susan Minot, "ID" by Joyce Carol Oates, and "Where are you going, Where have you been?" also by, Joyce Carol Oates, describe the female coming of age. The female sexuality of these three young girls is that they didn’t understand their own reality, but yet wanted independence. The authors get across the message by using vivid symbols.

The movie “My sisters keeper” is about 13 year-old Anna, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister Kate, who has leukemia. This essay will focus on three events in Anna’s life, and discuss how each event in the characters life had an affect on her physical, psychosocial and cognitive development. The events that will be discussed are: how being brought into the world to save Kate affected Anna’s psychosocial development, how having to undergo many surgeries at a very young age affected Anna’s physical development, and also how Anna’s cognitive development was affected by her sisters sickness and death.

Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, explores the cultural anxieties in the mid 20th century. Specifically, men use womanhood (societal norms) as purposely infantilizing women in order to confine the female mind. Jackson utilizes symbolism, metaphor, and anaphora in her novel in order to convey the message for men to stop infantilizing women. Moreover, Jackson spreads awareness that women are being confined by a system that men developed: womanhood. Hence, in effect, the novel serves as an informal protest against male repression through a medium that can be read by a wider audience —more importantly an indirect challenge to male readers. According to Krolokke, Second Wave Feminism became prominent due to cultural discontent with patriarchy during the mid 20th century. Moreover, Krolokke informs the readers that Second Wave Feminism influenced women to challenge traditional family roles and male ideologies about women not belonging in the workplace (11-12). Mid 20th century is also when Jackson published The Haunting of Hill House. So, with these historical and cultural contexts in mind, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House ends the novel with Eleanor killing herself because she wants women to challenge the ideas of patriarchy into effect. Hence, Second Wave Feminism has a connection to Eleanor having a childlike personality (can not think for herself) because she wants women (especially young and single women) to explore their rights (their choices) and

She fascinated by the amount of wealth Drouet possess. They begin a relationship and Carrie lives off of Drouet. In this book the affair of Carrie and George impacts the future of the story. In the beginning George starts off a as wealthy, and successful businessman who owns a liquor business.

As George Beahm recalls in the Stephen King Companion “King is two pages into a short story, which would later become Carrie, he discards them by throwing them into the trash. His wife, Tabitha, then pulls them out and prompts King to continue with the story” (Beahm). With every major task someone sets to complete there will always be failures, as shown in the case of Stephen King's first novel. But, learning from those failures is crucial when it comes to being a successful person or writer. Carrie is not Stephen King's most distinguished book but it was his first and that is something special in its own.