Frank Bruni's Solar Eclipse The American Spirit

“An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4), sets the tone for the beginning of Mariam’s life throughout the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Many women are mistreated throughout the novel, but Mariam’s childhood is much tougher because she is a harami, or “bastard child”. Mariam tries to find emotional and physical shelter in her lifetime, but struggles to find it. In the beginning of her life she can’t find emotional shelter from her mother, Nana, so she tries to find shelter from her father, Jalil, but can’t find a connection. She then was forced to marry Rasheed, but can only find physical shelter in him. Later in the novel, she becomes friends with Laila,

In A Raisin In the Sun Lorraine Hansberry uses everyday objects-a plant, money, and a home to symbolize a family's struggle to deal with racism and oppression in their everyday lives, as well as to exemplify their dreams. She begins with a vivid description of the family's weary, small, and dark apartment in Chicago's ghetto Southside during the 1950s. The Youngers are an indigent African-American family who has few choices in their white society. Each individual of the Younger family has a separate dream-Beneatha wants to become a doctor, Walter wants to open a liquor store, and Ruth and Mama want a new and better home. The Youngers struggle to accomplish these dreams throughout the play, and a major aspect of their happiness and

Based on Annie Dillard’s account of witnessing a total eclipse in her essay “Total Eclipse” I would have to say she definitely encourages her readers to witness a total eclipse. She says that it is almost the opposite of a partial eclipse, which I am sure most people have seen many times before, that’s how different they are and I believe most people including myself think partial eclipses are spectacular and almost dreamlike.

In the novel Alabama Moon a boy named Moon is the main character. Moon is very independent because throughout the story he does a lot of things on his own including living alone. On page 3 I found out that he was ten years old because it said “I was ten years old and he’d taught me everything I needed to know about living out in the forest.” So this showed me that he knew how to live in his own out in the forest and that he was ten years old which was pretty young to be living on his own out in the forest. At first when Moon was scared and lonely without his dad he was aggressive with the other characters. On page 27 Moon really showed his anger toward Mr.Abroscotto

During the 1900s many black families barely had enough money to pay for the basic necessities needed to live. At times some families would receive a significant sum of money, something they were not used to getting. Deciding on how to spend this money is what caused problems among some families. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, she argues that there are times when in a state of financial instability and where money is a necessity to completing one’s dream that some family members choose to put their dreams over others when suddenly given the opportunity. After Mama’s husband died she was bound to receive an insurance check that would be used by the Younger family. Before even receiving the

The protagonist in Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Jacob Barnes, is a down on his luck war veteran living in France. Jake is characterized by his experiences prior to the events of the book and he narrates the story from a quiet observer’s third person perspective, often times quite cynically, exemplified when he tells his friend Robert Cohn, “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”Although never openly stating it, Jake on several occasions implies that due to a war injury he has lost the ability to have sex which leaves him feeling very insecure about his own masculinity, likely contributing to his

Twain often uses sarcasm and litotes when he uses phrases such as “enjoyed”, “one could have fancied”, and “ the wonders wrought by “the great earthquake”... ” to undermine the tragic effects of the earthquake and to purposely mock the elite’s unusual reaction to the earthquake. Sarcasm is the rhetorical device that is a non-literal comment that is meant to amuse or mock or hurt a piece of society. When Twain uses “enjoyed” to describe a tragic event, it is to mock the elite’s and influential religious group’s lack of concern and moral behavior during the earthquake. In doing so, the intended effect on Twain’s audience is to intrigue them, he does this by making his audience question as to why Twain refers to the disastrous earthquake in San Francisco as a joyful event. By recalling his experience in the San Francisco as something he “enjoyed”, Twain also uses the rhetorical device, litotes, to create a positive understatement to describe a negative. Additionally, Twain further mocks these influential groups by using phrases, such as “one could have fancied” and “ the wonders wrought by “the great earthquake”... ”, to underestimate the fears and terrors of the earthquake. But, most importantly, Twain utilizes this opportunity to expose the true reactions of the elite and other groups he despises like religious groups. By describing the immoral and selfish behavior of the groups he dislikes during the “great” earthquake, Twain shows his audience the facade of being morally superior and all-knowing the influential groups of religion and wealth have created. His intended effect of doing so, is to deter his audience from seeking guidance from these individuals and to stop his readers from aspiring to behave like

In The Sun Also Rises, during the transition of society from World War I to post-war, values transformed from the “old-fashioned” system of what was morally acceptable to a system that held the basic belief that anything of value, whether tangible or intangible, could be exchanged for something of equal value. This novel specifically pinpoints the transformation of the values of money, alcohol, sex and passion (aficion), friendships and relationships, and even one’s pain.

Within this piece, a technique Price uses is irony. The author uses this too criticize her view on the United States culture. “This was a little ironic, since American’s had hunted flamingos to extinction in Florida in the late 1800’s, for plumes and meat. But no matter” (Price). Mentioning the fact that American’s had hunted this creature to ultimate annihilation helps show that in American Culture, we struggle realizing the value of items.

One of the major themes of Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun is the socioeconomic fall of aristocracy in Japan following World War II. The title itself reflects these core themes: when the Japanese write down the name of their home country in Kanji (one of its three alphabets), it  roughly means “land of the rising sun”. The Setting Sun is an allegory that the glory days of Japan have come to an end, specifically their ancient aristocracy and their old families, as well as Japanese culture. The comfortable bourgeoisie becomes the hard-working proletariat and the historical situation changes as the material circumstances changes. This social and economic change is both subtly and unsubtly shown through the main characters’ flashbacks and stories; Kazuko and her family come from a long line of aristocrats but now face the reality of living without power or status. Following three major events -- the death of Kazuko’s father, Kazuko’s divorce to her wealthy husband, and the nation-wide economic crisis caused by the war -- the family finds themselves out of money and out of luck, challenging the way they formerly viewed the world, themselves, and their class. Through their mother’s incompetence, Kazuko’s difficulty in working, and Naoji’s existential crises, Dazai deconstructs the classist ideals that claim the wealthy gained their status and capital because of hard work, strength, intelligence, and personal superiority while remaining sympathetic toward the upper classes.

     In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes is a lost man who wastes his life on drinking. Towards the beginning of the book Robert Cohn asks Jake, “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize that you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” Jake weakly answers, “Yes, every once in a while.” The book focuses on the dissolution of the post-war generation and how they cannot find their place in life. Jake is an example of a person who had the freedom to choose his place but chose poorly.

In That Evening Sun, William Faulkner approaches the story through an anecdotal style that gives meaning to the story. The narrator uses the anecdote that happened to him to convey the story’s underlying meaning that people are restricted by social class and race, not realizing this meaning himself at the time. The era of racism pertains to the meaning of the story, discussing the aversion of southern white people to help those different from them, focusing on the restrictions that society has placed on social class and race separation and the desire to maintain the division.

In the novel Light in August, Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden are extremely damaged individuals. Both characters were raised in turbulent environments with an emphasis on religion. The sins they committed had a profound impact on them. They knew that their behavior was wrong but they were compelled to continue. Religion became a mental prison for them. A prison that they created but that they would never escape alive. Although Joe and Joanna viewed religion in completely different ways, they both lacked the capacity to forgive themselves because of their upbringing.

     The sun is the largest object in the solar system. It is a middle-sized star and there are many other stars out in the universe just like it. Even though it is only a middle-sized star it is large enough to hold over 1 million Earth’s inside if it were hollow. The temperature on the sun is far too much for any living thing to bear. On the surface it is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the core is a stunning 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t worry we are over 90,000 million miles away, the sun could never reach us, at least not yet. The sun is a still a middle aged star and later in its life it will become a Red Giant. In this stage it will get bigger, and closer to us causing a temperature increase and most likely the

The authors Khaled Hosseini and Kurt Vonnegut write novels of critical acclaim. Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns explores the life of Mariam and her struggles with her husband and society, however, she finds reason to fight through a religious tutor. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five examines the life of Billy Pilgrim who goes through the bombing of Dresden and is kidnapped by an alien species, the Tralfamadorians, who have him apply a new philosophy. Using traditional techniques, Hosseini constructs Mullah Faizullah, the religious tutor, as a wise mentor. The persona of a hermit guru was used by Vonnegut as a non-traditional guide in the form of the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five. Hosseini uses foreshadowing and a comforting