Full House, Stephanie: Hello Birthday, Good-Bye Friend, By Laura O Neil

boys to live out her childish delusions of romance and allows herself to be swept away by this

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

Darcy is the main character, Jamie is Darcy’s sister and Hakeem is Darcy’s boyfriend/ ex boyfriend, Tarah is her best friend. Copper is Tarah’s boyfriend and Liselle and Brain are brother and sister. Now you know everybody in the book. Every character in the book plays a very special part in it. They make the plot special and unique in its own way.

Jessica is the new girl, while Alexia is popular and bratty. Peter is the class clown, while his friend Luke is the smart kid and a total nerd. Danielle is shy and has a hard time standing up for herself. Anna is an outcast because of her home situation, and Jeffery hates everything. Mr. Terupt is the new teacher who knows how to deal with them all. The class wanted to have a great year with their new favorite teacher, but then a playful joke turns into a possibly fatal freak accident. So, the kids grow very close to each other as they hold onto hope that their teacher will be okay.

In Alison Bechdel 's Fun Home, there is a focus on a sculpted perception of gender roles produced by society and a great emphasis on how Bruce and Alison challenge these strict gender specific characteristics. Through Bruce’s femininity and Alison’s masculinity along with their homosexuality, they are able to go against the norms and the collection of rules set by society. It is also through their struggle with gender roles that one is able to understand their sexual orientation. Although Bruce and Alison seem fairly different from one another, there are elements that pull them closer together revealing their similarities.

Adolescence, the part of life we are most willing to forget. The awkward years of being stuck between, not yet an adult but certainly not a child. These years, however awful they maybe, are essential to the character that later develops. During adolescence we make decisions that shape the course of our life, from the personal interactions between friends and family to the academic decisions that impact future career, choices you make as a young adult impact you forever. Partially due to the importance of these short few years, it is not surprising how often children can make poor choices that derail their entire life. Increasing at startling frequency, these stories foretell of a dismal future. Due to this cautionary tales of adolescence have been rising in pop-culture. One of these is “Where are you going? Where have you been? By Carol Joyce Oates. This story tells of Connie, a young adult trying to make the leap to adulthood. Connie in her attempt to breach the gap ends up in drawing attention of Arnold Friend sealing the fate of her poorly executed coming of age. Connies ill fated coming of age in “Where have you been? Where are you going?” by Carol Joyce Oates acts as a cautionary tale about modern perils of adolescence.

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan follows multiple Chinese-American women who struggle with their self-identity and creating a balance between American and Chinese culture. Because of their immigration and many hardships in life, many of the women feel like they cannot truly tell who they are anymore, and throughout the novel these women are portrayed as ghosts. Ghosts are used to symbolize these women because they share many parallels including being only a remnant of who they once were, or who they could be. Ying-ying St. Clair is one of the women, who has a daughter named Lena St. Clair, she has had a troubled past in China, which has made her lose her fighting spirit, and her spirit in general. Ying-ying is fully aware of her loss of spirit and is embarrassed because she considers ghosts to be shameful and weak, and wants to save her daughter, Lena, from her fate.

Alison Bechdel’s memoir, Fun Home, is a compelling narrative in which Bechdel takes the reader through her life and gives insight into her relationship and the complex lifestyle her closeted homosexual father, Bruce Bechdel. However, her serious topic is told through the narrative of comics, images that literally put the readers into the moments of her life with her. Even though, the graphic images provide visual insight, Bechdel makes a conscious decision to include a multitude of literary allusions because, as Bechdel describes, “I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parent’s are most real to me in fictional terms.” (Bechdel, Page 67) Her continued use of literary allusions can be seen as an insight to her life. The particular works of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Oscar Wilde’s plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Ernest because of their content concerning facades and the lengths one person goes through to keep a part of their identity or life a secret. TRANSITION Bruce Bechdel was the master of secrecy, hiding a part of his sexuality behind his heterosexual marriage in order to keep his idea of an acceptable livelihood. It is clear that Bruce Bechdel had a few infidelities with males throughout Bechdel’s childhood, infidelities that she did not know until later in life. This creates a whole new perceptive for Bechdel. The father who she thought as a controlling, stern, literary fein

Mrs. Fox, by Sarah Hall was published in 2014. Mrs. Fox is a short story by Sarah Hall about a woman who turns into a fox during her pregnancy, much to the dismay of her husband. Mrs. Fox describes a woman who is not satisfied with her life with her husband, Mr. Fox. They both remain detached thorough the story. When Mrs. Fox turns into a fox, Mr. Fox does not understand why his wife was not happy or satisfied in her human life. Sarah Hall does a wonderful job of displaying out an unusually intriguing setting, a breath taking characterization of the two main characters Mr. and Mrs. Fox, and she displays a dark and modern theme, rightfully earning the BBC National short story

In life, there are many ways you can live, however, the manner in which you live is your choice. In most peoples’ lives, they want to leave this world and say that they were happy and enjoyed every single moment of it. People feel like if they lived a happy life, then that is all that matters. But what if life has more to do than just being happy, what if it was meant for you to change the world or the lives of others? If you changed the life of another person and made them happy, you made a difference. A happy life is a good one, but a meaningful life is fruitful.

Part graphic memoir and part psychoanalytical study, Alison Bechdel’s, Fun Home, is a charming story about a girl’s search for identity within an unconventional family. The novel style autobiography frames Alison’s childhood and adolescence as she struggles with themes of sexual confusion, gender identity, and convoluted family dynamics. These ideas are explored through the examination of Alison’s relationship with her father, and their shared passion for literature.

In every home, there is a different definition of family and how family should treat each other. Two short stories were read by an author named Flannery O’Connor. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. It was about a dysfunctional family who encounters a criminal named “The Misfit”. The grandmother which is the main character is very judgmental towards others and sometimes her own family at times. This story starts off with a disagreement on where to go for a family trip, but they decide on going to Florida for the family trip after a while of arguing. On this trip, it showed what type of family they are. They talk about everything with one another as well as bicker and fight but at the end of the day, they are still family and love each other. They come together the most in panicking situations such as the accident and waiting for a car to help them. The point of this paper is the theme of family. Specifically, family is a theme in this short story because it depicts a dysfunctional family; the family you see on a crazy television show and can’t get enough of because they’re funny but also they have serious moments. There 's the two troublesome and annoying kids, the hot-headed dad who tries to maintain control of a situation and fails, the wife busy attending to the baby, and the grandmother, who 's a case all to herself (and also the main character). Though the story starts out seeming like a comedy, it takes a serious turn when the family encounters a criminal, who kills them

In both the dramatic monologue “Lethal” and the story “She Had It Coming” by Joyce Carol Oates, the main topic being addressed is rape and sexual assault. Both pieces feature some different viewpoints of rape: the former being from the point of view of a potential rapist, where the latter is society’s view of a woman who is gang raped. When someone is raped, however, they have one very important feature about themselves: they are vulnerable, or have a sense of vulnerability. In my mind, the word vulnerability applies to how susceptible someone is to being attacked or harmed. The dictionary definition of vulnerability also defines it as “capable of being physically or emotionally wounded” (“Vulnerable”). In both of these pieces, the people that are raped or sexually assaulted are definitely vulnerable. If either of the victims were not vulnerable, then they would not have been attacked or raped in the first place. Anyway, the victims in these pieces are vulnerable because they are both victims of sexual assault; they are completely overtaken by their male predators and, like the definitions said, physically and emotionally wounded. This is definitely shown in the first piece by Oates, “Lethal.” One of the ways the author portrays this vulnerability in the victim is through the diction of the predator. The predator starts off by saying more innocent things to the victim, like “I just want to touch you a little.” This doesn’t expose the victim’s vulnerability as much as when

In the book Life is so Good, George Dawson and Richard Glaubman give a very rare representation of life in the early 1900s. George Dawson, a poor and illiterate black man tells life as it is through his experiences. These many life experiences are portrayed in new stories told chapter by chapter intrigue the reader of the book. This paper will review Dawson’s many stories and his perspective on life at the time, as well as the way his views and mindset compares to the philosophy of African Americans at this time.