Chinh Okparante's Writing Strategies

Throughout the literary works of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, different characters deal with adversity differently. In The Glass Castle the characters must overcome family hardships. Likewise, Spiegelman writes about his father’s struggle during the Holocaust. Lastly, in “Mother to Son” the speaker informs her son about her own hardships she had to face. Challenges that characters face can impact them both negatively and positively. Characters from all three literary works deal with adversity by having courage, being resilient, and making poor choices.

The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched

This novel is a classic example of many people's lives, which includes fear, jealousy, pride and their insecurities to name a few. The transformation of the narrator from before his reincarnation until afterwards is filled with tragedy and grief, but it is through the sacrifice of his own life that he is permanently freed from his jealousy and egotism. His "punishment" or his purgatory seemed to prove how good of a person he was all

“The Unwanted” by Kien Nguyen, is a book that can call to mind many different types of feelings through the situations that Kien Nguyen the author, faces in his childhood life. In “The unwanted” the theme of courage can be seen through the characters of Kien’s grandfather, Loan and Kien himself. These characters are able to stand up during the difficult times in the book to either help or protect others around them. At times in “The Unwanted”, these characters brings out great examples of courage that affected the minds of many around them in a positive way.

To ease one’s pain, humans will do anything to escape the negative emotions they feel, even if it is not healthy. In the novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, he effectively shows how Saul faces a journey of undoing years of isolation after his traditions and values are ignored by St. Jeromes, a residential school. This experience causes him a large amount of emotional pain. Therefore, Saul copes with his problems by escaping reality itself so he does not need to dwell on his negative emotions.

One of the notable coping methods that Faulkner analyzes in his novel is that of denial and negotiation. Various characters utilize denial to escape the pain of the death of their mother, and this technique is best exemplified

Everyone knows what it is like to have a day that completely drains them. One comes home after a long, tough day and just wants to collapse at the door. Life is full of adjunct things that complicate day to day things, and more than anything, make life a pain in the neck. These little specks of adversity are like the an ice sculptors chisel and hammer. They can change a person and make them into something amazing, or they can cause them to shatter. Kevin Conroy said that, “Everyone is handed adversity in life. No one’s journey is easy. It’s how they handle it that makes people unique.” Adversity is a part of everyone’s life in some way. How do the books Night by Elie Wiesel and tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom show adversity in the lives

I rarely read the assigned readings in English 1A and expected to do the same for 1B’s course. However, when I received the daily checks back and got zero after zero I realized I had my work cut out for me. This class challenged me, for the first in my English studies I had to work hard to earn an acceptable grade. Our first essay however, I was not too thrilled to have to write about Michelle Boisseau’s “Self-Pity's Closet”. I felt that her work was already self explanatory; the title said everything about the poem that needed to be said. The beginning of Boisseau's poem starts off with a slur of emotional turmoil, “depression, loneliness, anger, shame, envy” (Boisseau l1).I did not like the writing style because it bluntly listed how the character felt at the time. I wanted to investigate the core of why she felt a certain way but instead I was handed her emotions. I felt the urge to expose the character as an over emotional train wreck who feed off of empathy. At one point in my analysis I wrote “The speaker's life is consumed by fear of what others may think of her. She constantly is searching for the answer which would lead to acceptance not only from others, but also within her own self”. I had not gained any sympathy for the character. I felt that if she wanted to gain acceptance from others she would first has to accept her own flaws and not sulk in misery. The purpose of the assignment was to create a response. However, I found myself analyzing Boisseau’s

The narrator is totally crushed by the gender discrimination. She longed to be seen by her mother and her grandma. The narrator is heartbroken that her mother loved her brother more than her and failed to notice her. “When she went into Nonso’s room to say good night, she always came out laughing that laugh. Most times, you pressed your palms to your ears to keep the sound out, and kept your palms pressed to your ears, even when she came into your room to say Good night, darling, sleep well. She never left your room with that laugh” (190). Her agony can be easily seen by the way of her narrating. She does not get the affection that she deserves. She really needs the affection from her own mother, but she is not getting it. She compares the love which her mother shows to his brother and herself. This is gender discrimination can be seen with her grandmother too. She hated her grandma as she would always support her brother and find fault with her. Even though what the brother did, no matter what crime. Her mother and grandmother always supported her brother and never supported or showed interest towards

In Get Well Soon, the author uses diction and tone, characterization, and symbolism to explain the topic of loss of innocence, and the hidden theme of going through hard times change people's perspective of life.

There are many ways to cope with events that happen in life, some are positive and some are negative. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette tells her story of her unconventional family and how she copes with events that occur in her life. The story starts when she is a young child and how her family is not homeless, they are free spirits and their outlook on life is that everything is an adventure. However, as time progresses and she gets older, she starts to see how this is not how she wants to live her life and that she wants more for herself. Along the way the Walls family comes in contact with different situations that could be harmful to them and how they cope with such situations. The way people cope with things varies from being negative to positive; how people cope with things really shapes their lives in the long run.

In addition, the narrator shows how his own thoughts assist the person himself not to accept the victory of his enemy, as in the text narrator states, “the arrow could not have killed the bear. Blinded him, yes enraged him, but not killed him”, which shows that how that man fights with a bear till the end and wins the battle. Therefore, it shows that how acceptance play an essential role in the life, and it entirely depends on the situation in which the person is trapped. In other words, it is just up to the person how to react to that specific

In the story the author portrays the protagonist differently from the other characters because she talks about the physical appearance of other characters and when it comes to the narrator we have no idea what she looks like but she is developed partially through her relationship with other characters, although we the readers do come the find out that the narrator is around the age of 15-17 years old and we can assume that she has a bad relationship with her parents because first of all she talks about them maybe once or twice in the whole story and second of all we know that they sent her to boarding school so that alone proves that her relationship with them is lacking. As readers we also know that she has trouble opening up in the story she say “To open your heart. You open your legs but can’t, or don’t dare anyone, to open your heart” (237). This is a prime example of how author characterizes the protagonist as broken and emotionally damaged. And as the story progress the author becomes more honest with us the readers and herself, she starts the reveal the pain she is in and how lonely she feels. The narrator gives us an example of how she feels after sex by saying “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickness at

Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.

She realized that human beings has hopeless spiritual aspirations. The hopelessness of disappointment is focus around: an officer, an attorney, and a poet. In both playwrights write about their lives and inner thoughts. They give us a peak on how they view the world.