Comparing Growing Up with Superman and Paula Brown's New Snowsuit

David Pelzer, the main (and perhaps only) protagonist, has struggled with a lot throughout the book I read. The story is mainly about Dave’s determination to withstand his abusive, alcoholic mother, who will, without a second thought, beat him if he doesn’t get his chores done. Even if he does get all of his chores done, he is starved and forced to sleep on an old army cot in his basement while his family lives in the luxury of the upstairs section of the house. The writer, Dave Pelzer, changed the names of his family to keep their anonymity, which was nice of him due to what goes on in his story. This essay is about a book called A Child Called “It.”

Children see the world as beautiful and wondrous and live without care. Little voices shriek with joy at falling leaves without worrying about the coming cold winter months, and babble delightedly to any stranger without stopping to think about skin color or worry about criminal records. Carefree days do not last forever; however, when childhood ends, the young adult faces the inevitable hardships of life. Some people choose to return to a life of innocence, while others soldier on and brave the turmoil ahead. Even so, a greater reward awaits those who overcome life’s numerous quandaries. Each adversity carves out more depth to a person’s character, and like a potter shapes his clay, so too do adversities shape people into more compassionate,

As we develop from children to adults, our perception of our parents can change drastically. The theme of the loss of innocence is portrayed in both poems, through the relationship with a father. Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Daddy’ is an extremely personal confession about realising her father was not the role model she had believed when she was young. The poem mentions that her father “died before I had time” and she “was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you”. The tone of the entire poem is bitter and sharp as Plath pours all her internalized feelings towards her father into the poem. Gwen Harwood explores the same theme of losing childhood innocence, but in a distinctly different way. The poem tells a story of a small child, who is determined to lose their innocence and is instead “a horny fiend”, sneaking out with their father’s gun. Harwood’s poetry sheds light on the idea of wisdom and growth and the desire children feel to be considered mature. Plath ends her poem in a defiant tone, claiming “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”, indicating she is done with thinking about or mourning him and has reached a point where she can move on from the grief he has caused her. On the other hand, Harwood’s poem ends grimly, after the child’s father tells them to “End what you have begun” and the child kills the owl, before “I leaned my head upon my father’s arm, and wept, owl blind in

It is widely known that through childhood and adolescence growing up is not only inevitable but also difficult. In the short story “Through the tunnel” the author, Doris Lessing shows this through the main character, Jerry, and his journey in becoming more independent from his mother. Although the journey was difficult in the end, Jerry has matured as a person and does not need his mother to constantly be with him; but she becomes a place where he knows that he is safe. In the short story, “Through the Tunnel”, the author portrays the difficulty of growing up through symbolism and imagery.

A child is cared for a nurtured by his or her parents until a certain point in their lifetime where aging and maturing becomes a prime focus. Things change, and with that, so do people. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee and the book Looking for Alaska by John Green, the main character Scout and Miles have to go through the transition from childhood to the years of being a teenager. Both kids are forced to mature and take on more responsibility as they experience less comforting and nurturing from people who once protected them. In both of these books, as the children age, they must resort to more mature ways of living, experience new responsibilities, and leave their youthfulness and innocence behind.

Childhood is a reoccurring theme in Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake. Children often grow up and become unique individuals based upon their own morals and values, however their later lives are largely influenced by their childhood experiences and those who played significant roles in their lives. Atwood describes the childhood of two characters. One being Jimmy, who is also known as Snowman and another being a girl by the name of Oryx. The novel follows these characters back and forth between their childhood and adulthood and Atwood makes it clear what has influenced these characters in their past to shape them into who they have become later in their lives. This is made evident in their behaviour and also in their ability to possess and maintain mature relationships.

paper’s view on the parents and describes their progress through the snow from a distance as “effortless and unimpeded, [but] up close, the gliding through the snow made them sweat”(1). The author juxtaposes appearance to reality when she represents the child's view of her parents as viewing them from a distance, while reality is

In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, both novels are supportive of the concept that parents notably affect their children’s lives and the decisions they make throughout their lives. The father’s of both main characters, Amir and Oskar, negatively and positively impacted them. Throughout both novel’s, the effects of not only the father’s but the mothers become extremely apparent. Amir has an extraordinary unique relationship with his father and no ties with his mother as a result of her dying at his birth.

When Aurora isn't pleased by her daughter's choices, she didn't budge easily to change her mind. This is one of the many examples of struggle between the mother and daughter. Time flies by, and Emma returns home with her three children because she finds out about Flap's secret affair. Even after the years they spent apart from each other, they both came together for support during Emma's crisis. Some more time passes by and Emma finds out about an illness that she will not survive. Aurora and Flap come to Emma’s aid at this dreadful time. Aurora, being as tired and devastated that she is about her daughter, spends all her time to make sure Emma has everything she needs. Watching Emma's illness progress, Flap and Emma decide that the best place for their children is with Aurora. Emma shortly dies and the all is left is Aurora and the children (Terms of Endearment, movie). This movie is what we started this class off with and I feel that for this paper it’s a perfect example of how maternal melodrama is shown in

Many children throughout time suffer from the trauma of being born to a parent that does more to hurt their child than to help them grow. Parents are crucial to the development of a child’s mental well-being and confidence to become the best version of themselves. Without the guidance, wisdom, and understanding that only comes from a parent, children from that background have a harder time with stability of the mind and life. Instability on both the interior and exterior can only lead to the buildup of many emotions that could corrupt with the slightest trigger. Many do not know how to express their feelings yet some channel their emotions through writing including poems. In “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, she portrays how an abusive parent can severely affect the mentality of an adult from the trauma of their childhood through the use of allusions, similes, and diction. Her writing allows others to connect to her feelings of mistreatment, anger, and abandonment that she associates with her father.

Growing up will always be a greatly discussed topic for writers, regardless of genre, time period or their own personal experiences. Stories about growing up have been a part of fiction throughout history, with great authors such as J.M Barrie, CS Lewis and even Stephen King adding their own contributions. The pieces discussed in this essay have very different views on growing up and are told from very different perspectives. One from an elderly man wishing his granddaughter would stay young forever and one from a young boy trying to be much older then his respective years.

The essay “A New Perspective” is both heartwarming and heart wrenching, an essay that stands out to me above the rest. This child spends all her time wishing that she had the family life of the children who surround her. The family dinners, a parent who participates in volunteer days, a mom waiting at the end of that cold winter day to pick her up from school, to take her home to a cup of warm hot cocoa. Rather, she has these memories, she feels pain and “cheated”. After all the time that the narrator spent being

Life is full of paradoxes. Children wish they could become adults, and adults wish they were children. However, Peter Pan and his Netherland are dreamlike. As Gail Sheehy- a famous American author, lecturer, and journalist- once states, “ If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” Maturity is complicated. Maturity is inevitable. Maturity means a lot of troubles. However, maturity is also a colorful picture of life that contains a lot of wonderful things for the individual to discover . That wonderful, colorful picture is described vividly by Robin Benway, a young writer, throughout her novel “ Emily and Oliver.” It has been ten years since Oliver was kidnapped by his dad. Right now, Oliver is home, but there is something different. Something has changed, and that’s maturity. By using the protagonist- Emmy- and antagonists- Emmy’s dad and Caro- Robin Benway shows the theme that maturity is unavoidable and essential for every person, for it is a part of life.

The innocence of youth is often romanticized as being has days filled with laughter and energy; it is oblivious of the stress and responsibilities of this world. In such a picturesque world, however, it becomes easy to forget the many limitations of youth:. nNo right to vote, to make decisions, to own property or to even stay up past a specified bedtime. The idyllic life of a child is easily disagreeable to those youth who want know what they want; to those youth with great aspirations. Many children – both real and in fictional literature – experience great struggles while trying to achieve goals by their own accord. Western North American authors Mark Helprin and Miriam Toews effectively portrayed this plight of a willful child in their novels A City in Winter and A Complicated Kindness respectively. Mark Helprin’s A City in Winter is the tale of an extraordinary young girl reclaiming her kingdom. Yet even with her wit, charm and innocence, her progression is ultimately unsuccessful until her surrogate father swoops in - quite literally - to save the day knowing it is at the expense of his life. Likewise, Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness is about a young girl who knows exactly what she wants, but lacks the moral strength and maturity to obtain it. Her father, who is both morally strong and mature, must eventually sacrifice his comfortable way of life for his daughter. In both novels the girls lack power due to

The process a child goes through to become an adult is universally filled with difficulties and hardships. Sooner or later, every child must learn to harness their emotions and become an individual in society. In the short story, “Through the Tunnel”, Jerry is an eleven year old boy who idolizes the “big boys” who spend their time in the “wild and rocky bay” rather than the “overcrowded and safe beach”. Wanting to fit in with them, Jerry tries his hardest to become like the boys and learns to become mature and independent in the process. In Doris Lessing’s novella, the author illustrates the challenges of maturation using imagery, symbolism, and characterization.