Christopher Paul Curtis Use Symbols In The Watson Go To Birmingham

In the novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 Byron was not a good person in the beginning he did not do good stuff. For example, he was using matches 2 times. Although his parents said again not to use matches. Momma said what she always did if Byron uses matches again.

Another symbol that we see in this story “Young Goodman Brown” is the pink ribbons that faith uses in her cap. “He looked back and saw the head of faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons” (Hawthorne 137).This seems to symbolize the ribbons as having a sort of positive emotion in this case towards the presence of Goodman Brown. In this story there were quite a few symbols that symbolized important events or ideas through the entire

Many people assume that people are just people, we have no intentional meaning, but that’s not really the case. This is seen the historical fiction novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis when The Watsons were traumatized over the bombing at Joetta’s church. The author uses symbolism to convey the message that maturity comes with time because with impactful events and people, you have to adapt.

Coming of age is an influential part of many people’s lives. They begin to leave behind their innocent childhood views and develop a more realistic view on the world around them as they step forward into adulthood. (Need to add transition) Many authors have a coming of age theme in their books; specifically, Harper Lee portrays a coming of age theme in his book To Kill A Mockingbird. Through the journeys of their childhoods, Jem and Scout lose their innocence while experiencing their coming of age moment, making them realize how unfair Maycomb really is.

In The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963, the Watson Family travels down to Alabama to teach Byron a lesson. The Watsons take a huge risk by traveling down south. Because there are so many negative possibilities, it was not worth it for the watsons to go to Birmingham.

In the story “The Passage” By Dalton Trumbo, the author portrays coming of age and the beginning of a new chapter in life through the dialogue between the protagonist, Joe, and his father. The bond between Joe and his father is exhibited as very stable and happy. Their bond displays the attachment every adolescent acquires with their parents; as we learn almost everything basic to life from our parents. This short story suggests that at one period in time we start to grow out of adolescence into young adults and begin to detach from our forever known guardians and heroes. We begin to mature and become more distracted with friends, school, sports, etc.. Joe, in this short story, depicts this detachment from our parents as we grow for example in paragraph two: “Now he was 15 and Bill Harper was going to come tomorrow… Tomorrow for the first time in all their trips

Joey talks about what he found after his mother’s death as he was going through the contents of the house and he finds an old college yearbook with portraits of his mother, “With a magnifying glass he studied her unsmiling, competitive face, with her hair in two balls at her ears and a headband over her bangs.” This excerpt really shows how into detail Updike goes, it’s really great because it helps convey what is going on in the story so everything can be seen clearly as he wants the reader to see. Joey is going through the basement and there’s a description of how he does it and it has imagery anda use of an onomatopoeia in it, “Joey’s city shoes slithered on the smooth floor, and then thumped on the wooden cellar stairs.” (129) This really helps the reader see what’s happening as if he’s there. The onomatopoeia helps strengthen the imagery present in the sentence. Towards the end of the story Joey explores his father's toolhouse, it was a pathetic one. His father wasn’t a manly man and didn’t get much use out of it, “In the toolhouse, where his father had left a pathetic legacy of rusty screws and nails neatly arranged in jars, and oily tools, half of them broken, mounted on rotting pegboard, there were also antique implements worn like prehistoric artifacts”

In the fictional novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham there were several historically accurate cultures and events from the 1960’s. Most of the story is based on the mother wanting to go to Alabama, because that’s where her family is. However her husband doesn’t think it is a good idea because he knows there is segregation down in the south, and he doesn’t want his kids to see all the hatred for people of a different skin color. Their children have not been exposed the separation of different skin colors because they live in Flint, Michigan, where there is not a lot of conflicts about segregation. Yet, at some point the family decides to make the long trip to Birmingham. Before they leave for their trip, their dad goes and buys a record player

The topic of Civil Rights is an interesting topic for so many people. This event changed history forever and allowed some people who couldn’t even get good jobs to become president of the United States or even have the same rights as others. In the book The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963, the author, Christopher Paul Curtis, wrote a story about a family that is living in this time. The author mostly focused on telling us a story of the Watson family and not really any historical events. I really would've liked it if the book gave more information on civil rights and not just have one historical event happen at the end of the book. Adding some more facts and history would have made the book more interesting. All in all, the book The Watsons Go

“The Watsons Go To Birmingham,” by Christopher Curtis and “16th Street Street Baptist Church Bombing,” by Jessica McBirney

Coming of age is a recurring theme that is universally known throughout many different pieces of literature. Whether it’s influenced on true experiences, childhood memories, or even based on one’s current juvenile reality, many of theses works have a correlation between them that include many similar ordeals and struggles that the character goes through in order to metamorphosize into taking their first step out of childhood. One prominent theme that often appears is how one experiences and faces a time of tribulation and other walls that stand in one’s path. In effect, hardships mature and enlighten one, causing the loss of something such as childhood innocence. Lastly, these three combined points finally lead to one’s metamorphosis out of childhood. All in all, these three factors take one out of childhood, and slowly allows one step out into the reality of this world.

In order to understand the characters, or character from the movie, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, you have to first understand what the movie is about. This movie is about an African American family during the summer of 1963. This family consists of the father (Daniel), mother (Wilona), their two sons Kenny and Byron and their daughter Joetta. The Watson family lives in Flint, Michigan, but decided to take a summer trip down to Birmingham to visit Wilonas’ mother. The planned trip was to get Byron, their juvenile delinquent son, to realize that he needs to get his act together. But as the weeks pass by in Birmingham, they realize how much they love Michigan and would rather be back at home. The character I would like to dissect, is their fifteen year old son Byron. To me, Byron was the only character that went through a major change over the summer of 1963. Byron showed characteristics and actions of how the Europeans used to treat African Americans, but as the movie progresses Byron starts to change and embrace his family and race more. In the beginning Byron was rebellious, unconsciously wanted to be white, and had a nonchalant attitude but then he changes and becomes comforting to his little brother Kenny.

Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have fostered the extraordinary resilience and strength of the three older siblings through a collaborative set of rites of passage? One could argue that the unusual and destructive behavior of the parents forced the children into a unique collection of rites of passage that resulted in surprisingly resilient and successful adults. In moving back to Welch, Virginia, the children lost what minimal sense of security they may have enjoyed while living in their grandmother’s home in Arizona. The culture and climate (both socially and environmentally) along with an increased awareness of their poverty resulted in a significant loss of identity. As they learned new social and survival skills in this

David screams, “I could have walked right past our house, down the length of Green Avenue and right out of Bentrock. I could have kept going and never returned, out of my town, away from my family, away from my childhood. I could have kept going and taken with me the truth of what had happened in that house” (87). At here, David says “I could have” for three times to indicate that he wants to find a place to bury the secret forever. As a twelve-years-old boy, David has no power in the whole event, but unfortunately, he knows everything that has happened. David may wonder if he buries the secret or hides the secret forever, he could have his childhood back, have his family back, and have his peaceful life back. The parallel construction of “I could have” sentences show David’s fear of the dirty truth of the family, and the content gives readers a more intense and stronger feeling than other content does. Due to the parallel structure, David’s fear of the secret is very impressive for readers, it foreshadows that David wants his life back to normal, thus it helps readers to understand why at the end David concludes “that Uncle Frank’s suicide had solved all our problem” (161). Overall, Watson writes two parallel structure sentences like “I didn’t want to see…” and “I could have…” to analyze David’s inner world, thereby shedding light on the characterization of a twelve-years-old boy, indicating that David was forced to grow up during this

The way a family is viewed in today’s time is the one of the american dream, with the white picket fence and smiling faces from both the children and the parents. Unfortunately, the curtain is pulled back to see the father three doors down with the single mother, the son is leaping out the window every night and the mother is taking too many supplements for depression while the little girl sleeps alone in the dark, crying. Not every family can be portrayed as what they want to be. To some extent, every family has their own problems that they must deal with everyday. No matter how much white paint one coats over their fence, someone stopping by will see the cracks and uneven brush strokes on the structure that is supposedly supposed to protect them all. These types of families have children that grow up with their parents always on edge, snapping at random moments and start to believe that this is how a family is supposed to act. Then, when they leave their unstable environment, they have their own problems with the new family they created, which are inherited from the one they thought they left behind. The attachment they once had to their former life was left in loose ends and unneeded ties with no scissors available to cut them with. Dysfunctional families often have these types of dynamics and are viewed not only from personal experiences but now also are transferred into works of literature to develop the misgivings of such a family. In Fences, August Wilson creates a