Cheryl Strayed's Wild Essay

Eunice Kathleen Waymon born February 21, 1933. She was the sixth of eight children born to John - an entertainer turned family man - and Mary Kate - who became a church minister - a poor southern black family that lived in Tryon, North Carolina.

Straying away from life as a whole only to be alone, some may say is the strong way to heal themselves when dealing with extreme grief or a major crisis . In the book Wild, twenty-two year old Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost it all. Dealing with the loss of her mother, her family torn to pieces, and her very own marriage was being destroyed right before her very eyes. Living life with nothing more to lose, lifeless, she made the most life changing decision of her life. Strayed never seems remorseful on her decisions to up and leave everything behind while deciding to flee from it all. This being her way of dealing with life, it shows her as being strong; a woman of great strength and character. She shows personal strength, which is

To say that Cheryl Strayed has overcome many things in her life is an understatement. She has an unmistakable amount of courage and bravery. Cheryl goes through a complete transformation within her life. The person she becomes after all of her pain and struggles is unbelievable. During her tough journey through life, Cheryl has truly found herself and becomes the person she knows her mother raised.

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." [P.1], says eleven-year-old Ellen. Thus the young narrator begins her life-story, in the process painting an extraordinary self-portrait. “Ellen Foster” is a powerful story of a young girl growing up in a burdensome world. As one reads this work presented by Kaye Gibbons, a chill runs down their back. Ellen, the main character is faced with a hard life dealing with endless losses, with the deaths of both her parents and her grandmother being included. Why would one get a chill you wonder? This individual has thoughts and feelings that many have never experienced and cannot express. Ellen is merely a child no older then the age of ten but if not knowing this fact,

I spent the first ten years of my life, roughly, homeschooled and constantly around both my parents. During this time, I had no choice but to listen to whatever music they enjoyed playing drying the day, whether it was Seal in the car or Melissa Etheridge on the home stereo. Once I had struck my preteens, and with the help of my then high-school aged sisters, I was introduced to punk rock and hard rock genres of music. This became a new addiction for me; it felt rebellious, cool, in style and new. Eventually, it felt very repetitive and it seemed as if everyone was trying to emulate the same sound. So, after a short time, I began searching for music on my own. I bought Coldplay and Vampire Weekend albums, and was on the lookout for music with a more sophisticated feeling than what I had been listening to previously. I was then hopelessly addicted to music that I was discovering, and was proud to say I found my own style of music to listen to. After I received Coldplay’s album, “A Rush of Blood to the Head” as a Christmas gift, I would play it daily to

Not only was her education affected, because she was unable to attend full days of class, but she also developed a need for drugs and sex. She began doing heroin and constantly cheating on her husband as a way to cope with her mother’s death. Cheryl did not know how to go about her mother’s illness since that was her favorite person in the world. She remembered the thousand things her mother used to compare her love to and all the times they shared together. Cheryl knew she needed to move forward so she made a life changing decision of taking her mother’s ashes into her own body in order for Cheryl to carry her mother with her wherever she was going to go. She later expresses, “Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while I was on this journey, of all the thing I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety…” (Strayed, 59). Cheryl’s mother continues to play a huge role in her life even after she had passed away which shows how important she really

In the book She’s Come Undone by author Wally Lamb, we travel on a journey with a young girl Dolores Prices, as she matures from early childhood to adulthood and all the terrible things that accompany her along her voyage. It was rather intriguing the Wally Lamb did such an excellent job of writing in a first person perceptive as a woman. He accredits his ability to his older sisters. Wally Lamb wrote this book to help emphasize one’s journey to self-discovery. This book’s theme heavily shows the loss of innocence and a coming of age story. Lamb was able to write in a way that many of us could relate to or may have found ourselves in similar situations. Regardless of Lamb’s purpose for writing this book, he was able to create a relatable

She carried that around with her all alone, not wanting to share her problems. And I knew about it! Well, not the part about mother committing suicide. So many lies to protect, and in the end they destroy anyway.” (Culleton 164) Cheryl’s mind was stressed with all the problems. In addition to the birth of a child, she suffered from Alcoholism, financial instability and prostitution. Yet, she wanted to protect her older sister from these issues. She never really took the time to ask her sister to help her. Cheryl took all the pressure on her shoulders: “So April Raintree, you think you got all the answers, eh? But you can’t tell me nothing, can you? Because in reality, you know zilch. I’m the one who knows what life is really about. Me. That’s who. I got the answers. I found the answers all by myself. You lied to me and I lied to you.”(Culleton 159) Cheryl’s reactions towards her sister prove that she lived in frustration. The only time she let her feelings out was when she was drunk. All the other time, she kept them all inside. She never really agreed to talk with April in day time either. The first time Cheryl talks about her feelings to April was in the last letter she wrote before committing suicide. “April there should be at least a little joy in living and when there is no joy, and then we become the living dead. And I can’t live this living death any longer. To drink myself to sleep, day in and day out” (Culleton 184) These

The woman who has influenced so many and has become an icon in the music industry. Whitney was born in a musical family who was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, cousin of singing star Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of soul legend Aretha Franklin. By the age of 22, Whitney became one the greatest female voices of her generation. Whitney was an artists who came alive and was able to express herself in full confidence when she was singing. When she performed she always look as though she was understood, at peace, and full of joy when she would sing. Houston was a beautiful woman with a powerhouse voice within her petite body, she had a way of making the audience respond in awe and pay

The piece of art that I have chosen is Roxy Paine’s Conjoined created in 2007. This is a representational piece depicting a pair of trees taken from nature and joined by their branches. The trees themselves are cylindrical, smooth and shiny from all angles. They reflect light from all sides creating a mirror like appearance.

     Elaine Tyler May's Homeward Bound weaves two traditional narratives of the fifties -- suburban domesticity and rampant anticommunism -- into one compelling historical argument. Aiming to ascertain why, unlike both their parents and children, postwar Americans turned to marriage and parenthood with such enthusiasm and commitment, May discovers that cold war ideology and the domestic revival [were] two sides of the same coin: postwar Americans' intense need to feel liberated from the past and secure in the future. (May, p. 5-6, 10) According to May, "domestic containment" was an outgrowth of the fears and aspirations unleashed after the war -- Within the home, potentially dangerous social forces of

Flannery O’Connor was fond of saying, “When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.” O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, but spent the bulk of her life in Milledgeville, and it is her Southern heritage that influenced her and made her writing extremely distinctive in the history that is American literature. As a Roman Catholic in the Protestant-majority South, she was often confronted with the differences between the surroundings and herself, a theme that often comes up in her writing. O’Connor was diagnosed with Lupus, an inherited disease that also killed her father, so she was constantly aware of her own impending death. It is because of this that so many of her fiction short stories have to do with death and the grace that

After so many years of being subjected by other people, she finally took her life into her own hands and made an attempt to be happy.

One of the most useless things to do in this world is satisfying other people especially when someone works as a celebrity. Their appearance will get commented and criticized. After they did some effort to change their appearance, they will still get commented. That is what happened on professional dancer, Cheryl Stephanie Burke. She was having a fat body but then she has managed to slim her body down. It seems to be the beginning of Cheryl Burke plastic surgery rumor.

Nevertheless, Cheryl, unlike Celie, is oblivious to the fact the Diana desires her because of her colour. Here, the legacy of slavery is reinforced into Cheryl’s mind as she feels undesirable to the white woman. As their relationship progressed, she realises that dating Diana will expose her to becoming fetishized as an object of white desire. It becomes apparent that Cheryl was just a sexual experiment when Diana talks about having several black lovers in the past. Namely, this scene takes on the power principle that Cheryl has no identity apart from satisfying her white lover's sexual needs. This goes back to slavery where black women bodies were used by their white slave masters.