“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” By saying this, Michael J. Fox must have known that he would not have had as long of a rewarding and successful acting career without the support of his family. Fox knows that support from family members is important under any circumstances. In his case, even when battling life-altering diseases. Many classic works of literature have a strong theme of family and convey that a good support system can “make or break” a person. Without a positive support system, human beings may not have a wiser person to instill life lessons and positive values upon them that are crucial to act as fully functioning members of today’s society. Some of the cruelest and infamous people that the world has ever …show more content…
However, in “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, a father disowns his wife and child due to the color of the child’s skin. Armand, a slave plantation owner, marries Desiree and thinks nothing of it. But not long after their child is born, Desiree notices that Armand is becoming more distant to her and their child. One day, Desiree realizes that the child’s skin tone is not that far off of a mixed slave in their house. Armand then proceeds to kick Desiree and their child out. After Desiree and the baby have left, Armand decides to burn all of Desiree’s things. Doing this, he comes across a letter between his own parents where his mother reveals that she is of African-American descent. Desiree was not the reason the baby was mixed, but instead, it was Armand. Armand should not have let his pride for his race get in the way of raising his child and loving his wife. By disowning his child, Armand has now damaged his child’s upbringing which will affect him/her psychologically later in life …show more content…
The loss can cause a person to go into a state of depression, and question the importance of life itself. There is no greater example of showing how a family member can have an effect on an individual than Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. At first look, Holden Caulfield just seems to be a rebellious teen that does not care about anyone or anything. The reader eventually learns that Holden is actually a caring person, and mourns the loss of his brother, Allie. The loss of Allie puts Holden in a state of constant emotional pain. Holden contemplates suicide in the story and seems unattached to his physical self for the whole novel. While it may be hard for some to generate sympathy for Holden due to the fact that some see him as an “alienated anti-hero” (Schuessler), Holden shares his depression with the reader of the story on multiple occasions, so it is hard to fathom that he had not made a cry for help to anyone else in his life. Holden’s lack of interest in life is troubling, and the adults around him should have offered more help. Mental illness may not have been as prominent or acknowledged as a legitimate illness when publishing The Catcher in The Rye, however, his professors at one of his many schools, such as Pencey Prep, should have noticed troubling signs and that something was off in Holden’s life. Holden’s
In “Desiree Baby”, author, Chopin emphasizes racism by selecting certain words to symbolize the association between light and darkness, and the slaves on the plantation.
Imagine finding out that your entire life was a lie, and that every single thing you knew about your identity and your family was completely false! Armand Aubigny, one of the main characters in Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, experiences this exact dilemma throughout this short story. Desiree’s Baby is a story about a young man and woman, who fall in love, but Desiree, who does not know her birth parents, is considered nameless. When she and Armand have a child, they are both very surprised because the child’s skin color is not white as expected. It is obvious that the child is biracial, and immediately, Desiree is blamed for the color of the child’s skin because of her uncertain background. The truth, however, is that it is Armand who has
In the short story, “Desiree’s Baby,” Kate Chopin exposes the harsh realities of racial divide, male dominance, and slavery in Antebellum Louisiana. Although written in 1894, Chopin revisits the deep-south during a period of white privilege and slavery. Told through third-person narration, the reader is introduced to characters whose individual morals and values become the key elements leading to the ironic downfall of this antebellum romance. As Chopin takes the reader through the unfortunate circumstances and unexpected twists of Desiree’s life, a Southern Gothic tale emerges. While Armonde is Chopin’s obvious villain, one should not assume that the other characters are not antagonists themselves, as
Sometimes the hardest thing for an individual to do is taking a stance against the culture they live in, and sometimes the people who take the stance are underappreciated. Sadly, this is story of a talented writer named Kate Chopin; who took a stance against her environment with her writing, most notably in her short story, “Desiree’s Baby”. Chopin’s short story “Desiree’s Baby” uses the themes of naturalism, realism, and the usage of irony to expose the hypocrisy of racism.
Yet it is not until Armand believes that Desiree is black that he fully dominates her simply by thinking that he is superior. At this point, “when he spoke to her, it was with averted eyes, from which the old love-light seemed to have gone out” (317). Armand feels that he is too superior to Desiree to devote his full attention to her. Since he no longer expresses his love for Desiree, she feels further pushed into a slave-like position in the relationship, and, “was miserable enough to die” (318).
Similarly, in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden was devastated by the loss of his younger brother Allie. Once Allie past, Holden became unstable. After both the deaths of Allie and Diana’s best friend, they both needed to find a motivation in life, a way to deal with their losses and their stress. As we know, Holden wants to cope with his issues like the ducks did, but failed to find the answer. Diana, on the other hand, resorted to music.
Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is a teenage boy who has a hard time interacting with people around him, and does not feel like he fits in. Often times he is indecisive and has a condescending mindset generally speaking. The death of his brother, Allie, is childhood trauma that contributes greatly to Holden’s depression, and is seen in glimpses throughout the novel. Holden despises phonies and fears that he might become a phony.
Armand's pride comes out to rear its ugly head. He blames Desiree, saying that she is not white and that he wants her to leave. Because Desiree's background is unknown, others will judge and point fingers. But not her husband- this should be a time for him to stand up for his family and defend them against all opposition. The sad truth is that pride is not rational; it is selfish. Armand went from passionately loving his wife to stabbing her soul with the cruel request that she leave him. "He no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name."(p.33) Pride closed Armand's eyes and heart to Desiree's pain. Armand thought only of what it would do to his family name when it became known that he had a black child. He was so fooled by pride that Armand thought, "Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him."(p.33) Armand had a beautiful wife and healthy baby; was this injustice?
In J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher In The Rye, Sixteen year old Holden Caulfield resides in a mental facility. He can no longer adhere to daily life because his brother Allie died of leukemia and Holden was unable to go to the funeral, due to him being in the hospital, Holden did not get to properly mourn his brother. He tries to repress the pain he feels for losing Allie. this leaves Holden in a depression. Holden’s depression is revealed through his emotions, words, and his thoughts.
What does it mean? Armand said, "It means that the child is not white." When Armand states this, the reader receives the message that he believes Desiree has broken their vows by sleeping with a black man. This can back by the way the atmosphere has been between
In the beginning of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger brings up the motif of loneliness and depression which Holden reveals to the reader while at Pencey Prep. For example while writing a essay for Stradlater, he reflects on how after Allie, Holden's brother died, Holden "slept in the garage, the night he died and [he] broke all the god damn window." (39). This reaction to inflict pain on himself is evidence that the loss triggered severe emotional disturbances. Holden isolates himself after a tragic event proving Allie's death is the cause for his loneliness. Also, while alone in his dorm at Pencey writing a composition for Stradlater his roommate, Holden " couldn't think of a room or a house to describe… [he] wrote about [his] brother Allie's
Throughout time, humans struggled with issues of conformity and individuality. In the modern world, individuality is idealized, as it is associated with strength. Weak individuals are usually portrayed as conforming to society and having almost no personal ideas. In “Desiree’s Baby”, a short story, the author Kate Chopin deals with the struggles of African descendants in the French colonies during the time of slave labor. The protagonist is a white woman named Desiree who is of unknown origin and birth as she was found abandoned as an infant at an aristocrat’s doorstep. Eighteen years after her discovery, she and a fellow aristocrat, Armand Aubigny, fall in love and get married. They soon have a child, yet conflict arises when the child
(Chopin 2). Both these quotes basically tell how Armand was a strict and cruel slaveholder. Another form of racism used in this story is when Armand does not want anything to do with his baby nor Desiree, “that the child is not white; it means you are not white” (Chopin 3), “Yes, I want you to go” (Chopin 4). These quotes indicate that Armand does not want any part of Desiree and the baby because he now believes that they are from African American origin, he wants them gone because they are not white. The story shows how people let racism and slavery shape and distort their psychology and lives
The story by Kate Chopin called Desiree’s Baby (1894) focuses on the slavery days of America. It takes place during Antebellum in Creole Louisiana. Kate Chopin’s purpose in this story is to show how too much emphasis on skin and racial heritage could destroy a loving family. Lying is never an okay thing to do, especially during the days when race could make or break you. Armand’s parents did wrong by lying to Armand, making him believe he was white. This caused the self-destruction of his family, owning with harsh treatment of slaves and lived a life as someone he never was to begin with.
Kate Chopin’s “Désirée 's Baby” was set in the days before the abolition of slavery, at a time when the ownership of another person was not only acceptable, but also economically impactful in the south. It was normal to see big plantations owned by whites and tendered by black slaves. We see all of this and more in “Désirée’s Baby”. One of the characters, Monsieur Valmonde finds an abandoned baby one day while out riding. His wife, Madam Valmonde, does not have a child of her own so she takes the baby in and names her Désirée. Madam Valmonde and her husband, Monsieur Valmonde raises the child, until she is old enough to become married. Her attractiveness and especially white skin attract Monsieur Armand Aubigny, a plantation owner, and they immediately become married and have a child. Désirée and Armand both originally associate themselves with the white class, but once the plot unveils their black heritage they are faced with uncertainty, and ultimately their lives become meaningless and not worth living. Throughout the story, Kate Chopin uses symbolism to convey her themes of racial biasness and social ladder in a society. The characters and the setting in this short story help provide the readers with more understanding of how racially charged our society was at that time.