How Does Sharon Olds Use Symbols In On The Subway

This contrast shows the audience that no matter how normal these children want to be or act, there will always be something which segregates them from the other children.

“He was a quiet , soft-spoken man who wore old-timey clothes, fedoras, button-down wool coats, suspenders, and dressed neatly at all times, regardless of how dirty his work made him” (Mcbride 6).“His father was a black man, a railroad brakeman, and his mother a Native American, so he had a lot of indian in his face: brown skin, slanted brown eyes, high cheekbones and a weather-beaten outdoor look about him..” (Mcbride 120).The writing is figurative by the use of similes and metaphors. “In running from her past, Mommy has created her own nation, a rainbow coalition that descends on her house every Christmas and Thanksgiving.” (277)“Her grits tasted like sand and butter, with big lumps inside that caught in your teeth and suck in your gums.”(McBride 67) . “Ma cried, and she wailed and wailed, the sound of her cries circling the house like a spirit and settling on all the corridors and beds where we ay, weeping in silence.”(McBride 128) Allusions are used to give a timeframe of the time period by talking about issues.“She actually liked Malcolm X. She put in nearly the same category as her civil rights heroes, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor

How murder first came to enter the narrators mind is unknown. There was no real motive as said: “Object there was none... I loved the old man. He had never wronged me...” (884.) The narrator states that the old man's eye was a pale blue color with film over it, resembling a vulture. The narrator insists that he is not insane however his repeating of this, and his actions, contradict one another. Being so threatened by the old man's eye, the killer attacks his master at night, cuts up his body and buries it beneath the floor boards. Although the old man had sensed his killer in his bedroom, he was too terrified to run for his life. The fact that the narrator kills this innocent old man because of his eye is proof enough he suffers from psychological imbalance To further the evidence that the narrator is, he continues to hear the man's heart beat beneath the floor boards. Although it seems as if it is his own heart beating, he automatically assumes the old man's heart is haunting his mind. The characters are what play the key role in this short story. The killer is suffering from insanity, which he believes is the cause of the evil eye. The old man is never really developed within the story, just known he is innocent and has never wronged his killer. The old man could just represent an innocence who is opposite of a murderer's mind. Within the whole plot the characters unfold an unsettling dark theme for the story; a cold hearted killer and a loving old man with an

When considering the similarities between Lois Lowry’s novel, The Giver, and the real world; one must consider all aspects of our domain, and history. A few similarities stand out as being predominantly controlling. The Giver, possesses several resemblances to Nazi Germany. The novel also portrays an appalling method for dealing with newborns that are less desirable. The novel also reflects on the way those who are too old are sent on a vacation to elsewhere. The novel leads one to assume that the handicapped would be met with equal cruelty. The story primarily sets forth ideas that are relevant of the era; when politically correctness would have been obstructing to an individual’s uniqueness. There reaches a point where conformity and perfection is controlling of an individual’s free will, and Lowry tries hard to portray the issues found in a world where everyone is the same; in which she indisputably succeeded.

Some people believe that certain individuals are better than others. They were not born thinking this but were told this later in life. This book is a great example of someone who believes everyone is equal. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, the main character, Bruno, moves with his family for his father’s new job at Auschwitz. Bruno can see the camp but does not know who is there or what is going on. This changes when he goes over and meets a prisoner named Shmuel who is the same age. Their friendship is the only thing keeping Bruno from wanting to leave. In this book, John Boyne teaches the reader that people are equal, no matter how different their backgrounds are.

In the poem “The Guild,” Sharon Olds uses dark and light imagery to underscore the theme of alcoholism. Olds portrays a concern regarding a grandfather who passed on the legacy of alcoholism to his son. The poet reveals the darkness and the agony in the fireside scene in the beginning by using both light and dark imagery: “– my grandfather sat in the darkened room in front of the fire, the liquor like fire in his hand, his eye glittering meaninglessly in the light.” Here, the grandfather is sitting in a darkened room meaning there is no light and does not want to be alert to what is going around the room. He just wants to sit in the room alone. This dark imagery creates the barrier between the grandfather and the outside world, providing him

During the entirety of the poem the speaker uses the contrast of light and dark to illustrate the divide of Caucasian and Native American in her life and the specific wording she uses throughout shows that she is ends up moving away from her white heritage’s side. We first start to see that she is upset with her white roots when she states that her mother left her with “large white breasts” that weigh down her body. This statement is quite important. With the addition of the word “white” and the use of the words “weigh down” the narrator seems to be implying that it is a burden to carry the whiteness. Also, the narrator uses specific wording in this statement in order to disassociate herself from her own white leanings since she refers to her breasts as if they were her mothers and not her own. The next time she mentions the word white comes in the third stanza. The speaker devotes an entire line to the short phrase “and is white” almost as if to single out that word in the poem and signify that being white

Throughout literature many pieces of work can be compared and contrasted to each other. In “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses the challenges he faced as a young Indian adult, who found his passion of reading at an early age, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He challenged the stereotype of the young Indian students who were thought to be uneducated while living on a reservation. Likewise, in the excerpt from The Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez shares his similar experience of being a minority and trying to break stereotypes of appearing uneducated. He shares the details of his life growing up learning a different culture and the struggles he faced becoming assimilated into American culture. In these two specific pieces of literature discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes of social and educational American standards and have similar occupational goals; on the other hand the two authors share their different family relationships.

The short story "Class" by Sherman Alexie tells of the struggles of an American Indian man and tries to demonstrate how he reacts to his contrasted feelings and diverse world around him. The central theme of Alexie's short story is contrast, and this theme is evident throughout the story, even in the smallest of details. The actions, emotions and even the language of the characters contrast and these contrasts clearly illustrate the difference the characters have in class.

Anne was immediately confused by their presence because they seemed to be just like her except for skin color. On one occasion all the children were playing together in the lobby of a movie theater. Anne was with some local white children playing, but when it was time to enter the movie lobby the white children went in one direction and Anne went in after her friends. Her disapproving mother quickly stopped Anne and they left the theater. Before this instance Anne had never considered the coincidence that all the white children watched the movie from the bottom terrace and all the African America children from the top terrace. While thinking about the difference Anne realized that the bottom terrace and side entrance was much more luxurious than the raggedy top terrace, where she and her mother usually sat (38-2). After this the difference in skin color became much more apparent to her in everyday life. Anne was motivated to find the answers as to why she was treated differently because of the color of her skin.

The main observation readers could take from this poem is that the “lower” individual has to take care of and pick up after the white man. It is even hinted at that the poems the mother chant rival the alleged master of poetry’s own works.

Soon, they do the same or try to be the same. They also think that the coarse children or the other race is terrible. "My Parents Kept Me from Children Who Were Rough," "Those Who Don't" and "We Real Cool" are the same because they are safe with all the same kind of people around. "My Parents Kept Me from Children Who Were Rough," "Those Who Don't" and "We Real Cool" because they are told in different perspectives. All these pieces show differences and similarities of point of view. The pieces also comparisons and contrasts so many other ideas.

Charlie who is a retarded adult who is chosen by some scientists for an experimentally surgery to increase his intelligence. It shows that in his life it seemed as though a bunch of scientists just wanted him as experiment to see if works without him being consulted. In this quote” “Why am I always looking at life through a window?” The author is trying to tell us just because Charlie has a disability doesn’t mean he is different from anyone else. He should not feel like he does not belong which is what equality is not about. Both the authors had the same attention to show that both these characters life wasn’t treated like everyone else, they made us feel how different they were from the rest which made an impact on what our opinion was on the value of human

It depicts a race of people and their own self-worth placed upon them by the likes of “Schoolteacher”

        The narrator introduces the children in a category that depicts their social status. First, he informs us about their school exposing us to their social class. This gives viewers an idea of where the child stands at the macro level. The narrator gives us an understanding of the social class and creates the perception in the viewer 's mind as to where the child may end up in the future.