Compare and Contrast of Quindlen and Lutz

How ironic it is that some people truly do not appreciate what they have or realize a good thing until it is gone? However, many may say that some people have to travel the path of lost and despair to realize the things that are important. Others simple may just live a life of delusion so as to ignore the present and so they miss out on the important things. To be your authentic self one need to be honest with self and for some to arrive to authenticity it may require despair or lost. In this review, the narrator seemed to have an obsession with a self consuming image that is created by using a glass cleaner that creates a promising and vital false outlook that make him very happy in his home. His home has become his refuge in a sense and

When living with his grandmother, Suina describes his memories during the frigid winter. During those cold months, “a warm fire crackled and danced brightly in the fireplace, and the aroma of delicious stew filled our one room house.” Suina’s description illustrates his grandmother’s house as a nurturing environment. It is a setting in which his grandmother clearly cares for him. He remembers enduring the long freezing winter nights when “the thick adobe walls wrapped around the two of us protectingly.” The characteristics of the house showcase a sense of connectedness between Suina and his grandmother. Living with his grandmother clearly give Suina several reasons to be happy. It is not only a place that cares for and protects him, but it is also a place that “was just right.” Suina’s grandmother’s house provides him with a tremendous amount of self-confidence. Unfortunately, all of that self confidence is lose when he goes to school. School leaves Suina utterly bewildered. He begins to realize how different the two settings are. He starts to lose sight of the essential aspects of life with his grandmother that once made him so

Unfortunately, the loss of housing occurs frequently and takes a psychological toll on the people affected by depression. Desmond displays how Arleen is very troubled when she gets evicted, thrown into the cold, and stranded with nothing. It takes a toll mentally when she realizes she has no home to get away from the cold, but also the eviction will be on her record for the next move. When people get evicted there is so much going against them, that mentally they can’t keep up and become depressed. Desmond describes the depression of a Hispanic woman and her three children during an eviction. At first, she had “borne down on the emergency with focus and energy,” then she started wandering the halls “aimlessly, almost drunkenly, her face had that look, the movers and the deputies knew it well”(125). Desmond adds, “It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours”(125). With vivid imagery, Desmond truly shows the mindset of a woman who knows she lost everything. Eviction scars people and that it makes a lasting mark on how they mentally feel as if they are worthless.

The objects people keep in their homes can tell a story about who they are or were. Each item possessed by the residents of a house is evidence of how these people may have lived. Ted Kooser’s poem “Abandoned Farmhouse” takes the reader on a walkthrough of the remains of a farmhouse where a poor family once lived. In “Abandoned Farmhouse,” Kooser selects seemingly insignificant relics left behind by each family member to illustrate who these people were and how they lived. The picture he paints is a bleak one and reflects the impoverished life which the residents lived within this now lonely and desolate building.

She tells of the feeling of shame which emerge from not even having a bed throughout her entire childhood (3). She does reassure that she has the security of her family being the only constant in her life, “Close and sweet and loving. Lucky me on my small pallet on the floor” (4). Travelling every summer “We never knew from one day to the next, from one year to the next, where we would go or live or what we would do” (127), her security of her family seemed always there “Having lived in other people’s houses, barns, and in migrant housing in various stages of decay and repair, it felt as though we could make a home out of anything” (99).

The poem ’10 Mary Street’ by Peter Skrzynecki portrays a sense of acceptance to place as he feels a bond to his childhood home which offered him stability in a new environment . The poem by Skrzynecki conveys feelings to readers received from the place of his memories, in the home. The poet utilizes literary technique personification, which allows the audience to visualize his admirable home. This is demonstrated in the quote “The house stands in its China blue coat – with paint guaranteed for another 10 years”. The notion

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

Sanders would disagree that home is not a place. He starts out his essay with a story of a family whose house is destroyed by a tornado three times. Each time they rebuild in the same spot. Sanders admires this family for their commitment to their home. Sanders believes length of time in an area has a definite effect on someone’s meaning for that place. Sanders is encouraged by the words of Gary Snyder in The Practice of the Wild: “You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough, the spirits will begin to speak to them” (104). Ford does not believe in commitment to a place. He quotes Ralph Emerson saying, “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them” (Ford

The cost for places to live like hotels, motels, or trailer parks may be within reason, but not enough for a blue collar worker’s salary. The difficulty in securing a place to live is not uncommon, and many have made ways to work around it like sharing apartments. Ehrenreich details these types of situations in her novel like “Tina, another server, and her husband [who] are paying $60 a night for a room in the Days Inn…[or] Joan… [who] lives in a van parked behind a shopping center at night and showers in Tina 's motel room” (pg. 25). Examples taken from Ehrenreich’s novel shows us the struggles that many have had to go through to secure a place to live. It isn’t to say that these people don’t work hard, but, unfortunately, this is the best they get for the work they put in and the pay they receive.

The setting of the home is used throughout both texts. This evokes a sense of comfort and homeliness in the reader, therefore making them proportionally more sympathetic towards the relationships of both the central couples in question and allows them to interrelate the situations in their own lives. Noah’s 1946 plantation home is one that is full of life. His home is a refuge that is laden with memories of Allie. In particular, ‘a picture of [Allie’s] dreams’ is located in the central location of the house, ‘see desire in . . . every stroke’ symbolizes the ever-changing nature of their relationship, just as Allie was ‘adding to it every day, changing it as our relationship changed’. Much like Allie’s painting, Henry and Clare’s house in Chicago mirrors their married life, marked by ups and downs. It has seen their characters and relationships develop, at times being a safe haven where the house ‘envelops us, watches us, contemplates us’ as though it were a guardian. The house, however, also sees Henry’s frequent disappearances and Clare’s endless longing, a ‘love intensified by absence’. It ‘watches’ the many arguments, Clare’s multiple miscarriages, and eventually Henry’s death, morphing and altering with each new event. Through the setting of the nursing home, Sparks is able to evoke the emotions of longing, distress, and pity in the reader. It is a place of sadness and loss, with the constant reminder of an entire life, not remembered, ‘she would stare at forgotten offspring, hold paintbrushes that inspired nothing, and read love letters that brought back no joy.’ This loss symbolizes the unpredictable way is which a love and a relationship can change so dramatically so quickly. Sparks is able to embed the idea that once a deep and ideal love is found, it may not remain so pristine and complete after a time. This is

“House” and “home” are two terms that are often seen as one and the same. They are concepts that hold a vital part in one’s good life. In order to understand their importance in the good life, one must understand why it is deemed to have any value at all, and how they are each severely different. Answers to these matters can be found in the following resources: Sonia Nazario’s Enrique’s Journey, Dr. Shehan’s lecture on Governing the Good Life, and Miranda Lambert’s The House That Built Me.

Their home is a clear depiction of a factory, where an ideal form of a ‘norm’ is made, and Miss

When Jane enters where her family waits, “Memories from [her] childhood jarred against the little living room” (Greer 1). Then, the author lists the few items present in their home such as a small light bulb and radio juxtaposing the many decorations and luxuries she experienced growing up. Describing Jane’s recollection as jarring, shows the pain and regret she feels towards her wasteful and materialistic upbringing. Also, when Jane reminisced about the weather “Tears welled up. But they were tears of anger” and thought, Why goddammit?...Why did you have to waste so much and leave so little” (Greer, 3). Greer’s use of Jane’s tears, in conjunction with rhetorical questions emphasizes her regret and dissatisfaction in regards to previously over consuming. The author’s manifestation of frustration through Jane’s emotional expressions elucidate the repentance the couple endures with remembrance of their past. In this case, the text punishes Joe and Jane for their previous wasteful lifestyle as they constantly remember the children and friends they lost. Furthermore, Even though, Joe and Jane live with few possessions and “both [have] good jobs”, their lives reflect the effect of materialism and live simply in

John Grisham’s book, ‘A Painted House’ places the reader within the walls of a simple home on the cotton fields of rural Arkansas. Within the first few pages, the author’s description of the setting quickly paints a picture of a hard working family and creates a shared concern with the reader about the family’s struggle to meet the basic needs of life. The description of the dusty roads, the unpainted board-sided house, the daily chore requirements and their lack of excess cause the reader a reaction of empathy for the family. Although the story takes place in a dusty setting very unfamiliar to most readers, the storyline is timeless and universal. Most everyone has a desire to meet the basic

All of my memories are built around a house with yellow shutters and a red rooftop, colors I always begged dad to change. Although all of the houses around me are the same uniform type, black roofed and black shuttered, I look at my house and I cannot help but sigh in relief and think “This is home,” the place where I took my first steps only to fall right after, the place where my mom constantly cooked kimchi-jigae, and the place where I first had my heartbreak - not by a boy, but by my first C on a test.