Countdown Analysis

Jeannette is very insecure about her past life of poverty, and although she has now dug herself out of the rut of destitution, her parents’ continued homelessness is always a reminder of

An illustration of this is when Helen describes Myra as having a “rotten-sweetish smell as of bad fruit.” Also, when Helen asks what she will become when she is older, she looks very confused and says, “I will help my mother, and work in the shop.” Helen replies to this by saying that she will become an airplane hostess. While Helen’s family does not have less money than Myra’s, she seems to have some issues when she says she is the only student in the classroom who, “carried a lunch pail and ate peanut-butter sandwiches in the high, bare, mustard-colored cloakroom…” She feels she is in danger because it could be somethings that separates her from the better off and popular children in the class. With this considered, if either of them had families with money like a classmate named Gladys Healey, they would not have differences they could bond

Jeannette and her siblings adapt to self- sufficiency from a young age, from being emotionally and physically neglected by their parents. The children don’t expect anything so they learn to work with what they have and what opportunities come their way. Jeannette saw the suffering of the family and took this leadership for the family guiding her sibling in the correct path.

The minister then questions her but after his unsuccessful attempt, Mother’s actions become a scandal throughout the town because “any deviation from the ordinary course of life in this quiet town was enough to stop all progress in it” (C670). This does not bother Mother and she successfully continues with her plans. By overcoming this alienation both characters achieve feminine empowerment.

As Franny is observant, she is also over dramatic. Her emotions convey this beautifully on page 39 when she feels betrayed by Margie for going over the Gale’s house instead of hers. Franny and Gale don’t have anything against each other yet so Margie was just visiting another friend. Franny is being overdramatic even though the two live in a close proximity and are best friends so it isn’t like they never see each other. With these emotions of betrayal, Franny is not mentally allowing Margie to have many close friendships with any other classmates and is getting in the way of her own friendship. While Franny’s emotions can show a great deal about her being over dramatic, her words can as well.After Uncle Otts episode, Franny claims she is “embarrassed for life.” (49). Franny believes that everyone who knows her and her family are going to gossip about the episode at the dinner table and it will reflect badly on her. Franny doesn’t realize that Uncle Otts breakdown doesn’t reflect badly on her but only Otts since she wasn’t the one having the episode and was only a bystander. She even hid herself from the public so they couldn’t see her at all since she was hiding from Otts. Now words are just spoken thoughts and the final instance of Franny being over dramatic is seen through her thoughts. On page 109, Franny thinks the reason Mrs. R’s explanation of the science fair project doesn’t make sense is because Mrs. R hates her. Franny is taking this way too

Jeannette’s self-reliant behavior is frequently shown through her refusal of help from others. On one trip to retrieve her father from a bar, Jeannette’s father is so drunk that he can no longer walk. Another man offers to drive them home, and

There was one moment in the book where she had to make probably one of the most difficult choices in her life, yet she did not hesitate to make that choice. Jeannette’s older sister, Lori, always wanted to move to New York to escape her delusional parents. However, she did not have enough money to pay for a bus ticket, wiping out any hope that she had. " ‘I'll never get out of here,’ Lori kept saying. ‘I'll never get out of here.’ ‘You will,’ I said. ‘I swear it.’ I believed she would. Because I knew that if Lori never got out of Welch, neither would I.” Then one day, Jeannette was offered $200 and a bus ticket back to Welch to take care of a woman’s two toddlers in Iowa for the summer. Instead, she insisted that the woman, Mrs. Sanders, should take Lori and her payment be a “bus ticket to New York City.” The fact that Jeannette easily made the decision of sacrificing her ticket for Lori amazes me; she knew how important the trip the New York was for her, so she wanted to make that dream happen. When Lori left, Jeannette still did not give up on her dream to go to New York and become a journalist. She joined just about “every extracurricular event at the school” to gain the attention of colleges, particularly in New York. The motivation that can be found in this is that you cannot give up on your ambitions

Jeanne is riding in the first trip to their new home. The trip is quite wild and disorderly due to Papa’s state of drunkenness. When they reach their destination, the family is in a state of apprehensiveness. They fear the worst possible situation. Luckily, everything remains normal, the people are indifferent to them. Unfortunately, it

"Sadly Frances had many misfortunes is her future. Her family suffered through war and loss, but she always kept her faith. While her husband was fleeing capture, soldiers destroyed her home. Instead of moving she cleared up the rubble and turned it into a hospital for homeless people."

The summary of the story is a memoir, which is about Jeannette and her family who are constantly low on food and money, family moving around the country a lot, and having a hard time to re-settle. The family is very dysfunctional with a multiple of stories to tell. The book is filled with much different kind of experiences that the family including Jeannette has been through together.

Lastly, her family betrayed her by not listening to her side of the story after her sister told lies about her, and they betrayed her when they acted as if they did not care if she moved out of the house. In all of these actions, the family itself and certain members of the family are portrayed as uncaring, unsupportive, disrespectful, conniving, deceitful, and hateful to Sister. Through every action of the family, Sister is treated harshly, and she tries to not let this bother her. Yet, anger and bitterness build up inside of her until she cannot take it anymore. Consequently, it built up so much inside of her that it severely affected Sister so profoundly that she moved away from her home to get away from her family.

The tragic events of Francine Cournos memoir begins when she was three years old when she lost her father from cerebral hemorrhage. For some children this would be enough to permanently damage the psyche of a child, but when Francine was five she lost her grandfather to hemorrhaging and then when she eleven she also lost her mother after a long battle with breast cancer. This forced her sister and her to live with their grandmother, who was rapidly approaching senility. Francine and her sister, Alexis, being under their grandmothers care lasted until she couldn 't manage it anymore, which was about two years. Afterwards their extended family gave away both of them to the sometimes vicious foster care system. To Francine this was the most traumatic event of them all and

Some of the major institutions that Frannie is involved in are family, religion, and the justice system. Her family institution has kept her subordinate to her husband by not providing support. Instead of trying to help Frannie get out of the abusive relationship they decided to look the other way. In the book Grace, Frannie’s little sister says, that she had mentioned to their mother the bruises she had noticed in Frannie and the mother dismissed it. The mother replied by saying that Frannie had always been a clumsy person (Quindlen, 2010). This clearly shows that her family had an idea about what Frannie was experiencing with

In this passage, Jane breaks free from the bonds that hold her down and repress her, and for the first time the reader realizes Jane’s true personality and individuality (Anderson).

When Zooey goes to Seymour and Buddy’s room he reads the quotes on the bulletin board of favorite books. In this room there are many quotes from the spiritual classics the children thrived on. Books of literature and spirituality become a metaphor for the higher life of imagination and seeking that the children shared. Zooey claims that Franny did not get The Way of a Pilgrim from the library, but from Seymour’s desk. This makes Franny upset because these books containing a beautiful world that sustained her and her siblings at home are destroyed in college by academic analysis. The telephone on Buddy’s desk that belonged to