Friendships In Monica Hesse's 'Girl In The Blue Coat'

A Friendship is made up by caring for someone special to you, It’s looking out for them, hanging out with them, and trusting them.

A friend is someone you can count on to be by your side no matter what happens. They are a big part of your lives, and even though there are fights and disagreements, they still care for you. A good friends is almost another sibling. In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie have a relationship that is very similar to that of siblings. They are not always on good terms but are always there for each other. They have a unique friendship that many men didn't have in the time of the Great Depression. While Lennie was dependent on George, he was also a source of comfort and a friend to George. Sadly, George had no choice but to kill Lennie ending their friendship and their dream together. Though it may seem cruel, George's actions were out of love. In John Steinbeck's novel we read about a complicated but beautiful friendship between George and Lennie and see it come to a tragic end.

The story “Girl in the Blue Coat” by Monica Hesse takes place in a German invaded Amsterdam in 1943. Hanneke Bakker is a black market worker who seeks for wanted items like food, lotion, lipstick, cigarettes, kerosene, and other items that are hard to get during that time for her clients. Hanneke Bakker has been struggling with the death of her love, Bas, who dies in the war fighting for the Dutch army. Once the German had invaded they began to put strict rules on the Jewish population. When she was dropping off an item for Mrs. Janssen, one of her clients, she asked Hanneke to find a Jewish teenage girl named Mirjam, who disappeared from the secret room she was hiding her in. Mrs. Janssen’s most important physical attribute from Mirjam’s description was that she was dressed in a blue coat. Hanneke hesitates because it was too dangerous to help out a Jewish person during that time but eventually accepts to help Mrs. Jansen find Mirijam. With the help of Ollie, who is in the resistance and is Hanneke’s dead boyfriend’s brother, he tries to find out where Mirijam has gone. Hanneke discovers disturbing events that have happened to the Jewish people who were captured and where they were taken. When they discovered Mirijam was taken to the Schouwburg, a place for captured Jewish people waiting to be deported to camps, Hanneke and Ollie went on a mission to retrieve her. Hanneke discovers a very important truth about the girl in the blue coat, it wasn’t Mirjam.

Maria Konnikova's essay "The Limits of Friendship," analyzes the impact of social media on close relationships, addressing the people impacted by social media use. This essay published in The New Yorker, a weekly magazine with scholarly authors, to inform the public on social media's impact on our lives. She finds that social media has created a dependency on technology and online interactions. Konnikova strives to inform that social media is decreasing close relationships, and persuades that it will impact our future. She argues on the impact of increased dependency on social media on the Dunbar number, hindering the development of future generations. Konnikova succeeds using strong logic and scientific reason as well as appealing to emotions; however, she fails to prove her credibility over the topic and instead relies on the credibility of Robin Dunbar.

ven though the article is a difficult read and hard to comprehend at some points, the article is a valuable resource because the article is supported by a mountain of evidence, organized and Lynn Blin understand Alice Munro’s writing style. Lynn Blin understands the way Alice Munro’s writing style works with the underlying dark or “naughty” concepts of “Friend of My Youth”. The article does not only analyze the story itself but the writing techniques and the deeper meanings, or as the writer, Lynn Blin says the different narratives. Throughout the article itself, she goes into detail about the different narrators and how each narrator sees how the world works and the situations that the characters face. Blin mainly focuses on the words

To begin with, many literary devices were used in the book The Help, Girl in the Green Sweater, and To Kill a Mockingbird. However, in the three books, theme was the most used device that recurred, without any questions. The theme that is acquired in each book would definitely be the racism and discrimination which takes places in the stories and the year they occur in. Also, the discriminated race that is treated unfairly in the Girl in the Green Sweater, are jews, while in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Help, the discriminated group are the African Americans.

There is a theme in “The Girl in Blue” by Ann Rinaldi. The theme is that gender does not affect skill level. “The Girl in Blue” is set in 1861, and is about a Michigan native by the name of Sarah Louisa. She is about to be forced to marry a man of her abusive father's choice when she decides to run away and join the army. She joins the army under the ruse that she is a boy and participates in the battle of Bull Run but her gender is eventually found out by her doctor and general. She is not punished for her actions but discharged and sent to work as a spy for the Pinkerton agency. She is sent to spy on a southern ally who is under house arrest to find out how she is sending messages to the south. She discovers how and is rewarded with a break. She travels home to find her abusive father had died and her sister is betrothed to the man she ran from. She leaves to go back to her job as a spy and that is where the story ends. Some of the reasons the theme could be gender not affecting skill level is that first of all the general does not punish her for her actions. Second, she is sent to work as a spy for a job only a woman could do. Lastly, before she even goes to war she has to do all the work for the house instead of her father.

Willa Cather’s My Antonia is the story of a lifelong friendship that began between Jim and Antonia, two people who became friends when they were young and lived on the Nebraska prairie. Jim and Antonia encountered a large rattlesnake and a startled and, rather than yell out in English, Antonia speaks in her native Bohemian language. Antonia’s father, depressed and sad over missing his homeland, committed suicide and left the family to fend for themselves in a strange country. Jim’s grandparents decide that they are too old to run a ranch daily so they move to the closest town, Black Hawk.

Do you ever fight with your longtime best friend over something huge, and end up losing them in the aftermath? George and Lennie have been traveling with each other for a long time, but as they are on the verge of their dream Lennie goes and messes it up, which causes George to have to do something he never wanted to do. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, it has a common theme of friendship. Friendship is what carries people throughout their lives, and without it life could be very hard. George’s friendship was the only reason why Lennie had survived all this time as seen through the conflict .

Journal: I was always the innocent one. These two girls always wanted me to be on one of their side and against the other. There friendship was on and off. One girl would pull me away from the other. It was like their friendship was a competition. They were each other's rivals. Yet they are still friends up to this day.

Often, being blind to the differences in people makes you kinder. In the book Witness, author Karen Hesse subtly implies this when Lenora, an African american protagonist, sends a letter to Helen Keller whom is a blind and deaf woman, ". Helen Keller has never known the difference between black people and white people and is kinder because she doesn't under stand the difference having never seen the difference.

Throughout the novel Ordinary People, by Judith Guest, relationships between characters are emphasized and evolved.. Two characters with a changing relationship are Beth and Calvin. Both parents to a now deceased child and a child with severe depression; they grieve in different ways that do not appear to work for the family they are trying to hold together. The differences shown in Beth and Calvin’s grieving process has led them to a downfall within their family.

Louie Zamperini finds himself in a world of trouble in the darkest settings when numerous things don’t go his way. Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, is a powerful, interesting non-fiction piece that presents Louie and Phil in a difficult, life-threatening battle for survival. The two men survive a devastating plane crash in the middle of the ocean, and they are forced to work together to pull through. Following that, they are sent to Japanese camps where they do exhausting labor, get terribly beaten, and aren’t allowed much food. The two stranded soldiers find their determination from god, their families, and a few unexpected friends.

Friends are something we all need for comfort and reliance. As much as friends can give us trouble, they can assist us into having a positive life experience. In A Separate Peace, the two main characters Finny and Gene are good friends but are also complete opposites of each other. Gene is an academically successful conformist, while Finny is an athletic rebel. Gene and Finny go through tough times together, but it’s the way they handle hardships that makes their friendship survive.

Firstly, the theme of friendship in the novel was shown through unbreakable bond of the protagonists. They had connected instantly upon working together at Maidsend Airfield in England. Together, the team used Maddie’s directional skills and Julie’s ability to speak multiple languages to navigate a lost airplane (Wein 43). This had been