In Everyday Use, Revelation, And Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

The extent and degree of information and detail written in this article about each represented author and their contributing works can ultimately be seen as one of the articles main strengths. However, although this article gives a vast amount of information on the women’s opinions and beliefs the article at times seems disassembled and erratic. The flow of the article is somewhat hard to follow, and without an increased measure of concentration, the ability of the reader to comprehend and decipher whom the author is speaking of can be lost. Also, with the extensive amounts of information and detail that each female author contributes to the argument, readers are bombarded with data to interpret and distinguish upon. With the author of the article not decisively choosing the strongest points of argument from each author, the information becomes overwhelming and possibly confusing at times.

Through the way in which Day portrays the protagonist, Claudia Valentine, she challenges the stereotypes and ideas set in the readers' minds, in relation to gender issues. Day also succeeds to ruthlessly unmask

The novel The House on Mango Street is filled to the brim with women who are unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives. Readers meet wives who are destined to spend their lives in the kitchen, mothers who waste away cleaning up after their kids, and girls who are stuck in a hole that they can’t escape. Through Sandra Cisneros’s use of literary devices such as motifs, symbolism, and imagery, we are able to learn that the women end up in these situations by conforming to femininity, and we find the theme of women are often held back by their own gender roles.

In the book “The Things They Carried” four female characters played an important role in the lives of the men. Whether imaginary or not, they showed the power that women could have over men. Though it's unknown if the stories of these women are true or not, they still make an impact on the lives of the soldiers and the main narrator.

Furthermore, there was a strong lack of female empowerment resulting as there was a general strong dichotomy in tasks performed by each gender. However, the women’s new lives offered them a sense of liberation by providing a larger space of operation, in that they could explore additional activities previously limited or unexplored to them, such as teaching and gardening. Regardless, these observations paint a general brush of the women traveling and there always exist individuals, such as Sessions, who buck this trend.

The mother in Girl is never directly described to the reader, but the amalgamation of lessons that she focuses on in Girl show that she is clearly occupied almost

Author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”. When one thinks of comic books, it is very likely that the subjects that come to mind are Marvel’s Spiderman or DC’s Batman. Although comic books are stereotypically thought to be mainly about super heroes, there are a wide variety of subject matter they could be written about, such as romance. In the 1950s – 1960s, it was common for these romance comics to exploit the social norms of that time and emphasized the subject of gender roles. While the men in comic books were usually illustrated in a brave heroic manner, the women would be portrayed to be what would now be considered a stereotypical “trophy wife”. As a young child reading these comics and taking in these images, they are slowly molding their ideals to believe that what they are reading and seeing is what is accepted and normal in their society. By coding gender norms into the texts, authors are helping mold the ideology of its readers to believe that it is acceptable for both genders to follow specific rules that accommodate to the believed social norms of the time.

In the story, “Where are you Going, Where Have you Been?” the author, Joyce Carol Oates, uses literary devices to convey a message about the loss of innocence. To be more specific, Oates’s characterization of the protagonist, Connie, specifically shows the actions leading to her innocence being taken from her. The literary device of characterization gives a clear picture Oates thoughts at the time she wrote the story, expressing concern for young girls who are at risk of having their innocence taken from them.

In the short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates and the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley unique gender/sexual roles and disobedient actions portray through the main characters’ to defy the cultural status quo. Irony, juxtapositions, and foreshadowing are being used in each piece of literature to help the reader comprehend and compare what the author is saying about the characters and their motives now and in the near future. Connie, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” can compare to Bernard and John in Brave New World, because all are ignoring the rules, whether it is society for Bernard and John or her friends’ parents for Connie. Each character wants to be with the opposite sex and experience life, even if they are being told otherwise. The authors each make these protagonist main characters appealing to the reader because we feel as if we can connect to them and perceive their desire to oppose what the rules are and how they want to be divergent from what their controlling forces are telling them to do, whether it is parents or society.

Throughout the history of storytelling, there have always been storybook characters that inspire and motivate young readers to become more engaged and knowledgeable about the struggles that some people go through. Reading has always been a pastime of mine; while reading I collect new friends in wonderful places that otherwise I could only dream of. Each of these characters that I have befriended and connected with over the years, has shaped my personality in some way or another, and choosing just one seems an impossible task. Although women’s rights have skyrocketed in the past century, overall the world is still predominately male-orientated, but the world of books has no bounds for inspirational women. Countless authors have written

Authors use various types of literary devices when writing. One of those devices that can be used is allusions. In this particular short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, author Joyce Carol Oates uses biblical allusions. These allusions allow the reader to better understand the short story. Throughout Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” the author uses biblical allusions to help show who the characters really are.

Joyce Carol Oates plays upon the stereotypic female gender role through her adolescent character, Connie, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” The story was written at a significant time in America’s history. It was a season when social and moral conventions were challenged. This period experienced the rise of women struggling for sexual freedom and gender equality in a patriarchal society. Oates portrays the protagonist, Connie, as naive, unaware and inexperienced; she has yet to find her identity and fully understand her place as a women in the world. She believes she has learned to play the game of the sexes and that she has the upper hand. This belief, though, is quickly subverted when she is confronted by Arnold Friend, a man who works to reinforce patriarchal standards by punishing Connie for acting outside stereotypic female role boundaries, she then realizes as a women, she has very little power.

When it comes to female characters, authors depict women with a sense of realism, that being that they are a common folk with a usually large but simple impact in the story. On the contrary, John Steinbeck’s female characters in his novel East of Eden do not have the sense of being normal women, and he goes to extremes when it comes to the women being good or bad. Faye, Olive, and Cathy are all women that have taken to extremes in their acts of kindness or evil. Faye is too good of a person, especially in the society that she is in. Olive helps an enormous amount in the military with work she has done that seemed unlikely for her to do by herself. Cathy, on the other hand, commits horrible acts that would immediately classify her as mental, but is ironically one of the smartest characters in the novel. These kinds of women are uncommon, especially in their society.

Throughout the story we see the protagonist struggle with the gender roles placed upon her by her society; specifically the role she is supposed to play as

Ruth L. Ozeki, in her novel My Year of Meats, utilizes epiphanies in her development of female characters in order to reveal the flaws of a patriarchal society. These epiphanies are employed in order to emphasis that women should take charge over their lives and to not be constrained to keeping secrets as a result of their fear of repercussion. Ozeki presents a vision of a progressive, feminist global community through her characters Akiko and Bunny. While Bunny realizes her need to voice her concerns having “drifted through life… never [having] made a single decision, (p. 294)” Akiko realizes she does not need to depend on a man and that “she would never need him again (p.181)”. In