Letters From Rifka Analysis

There are moments where our surroundings bring out certain emotions in us, sometimes impacting the way we live and view life. Robert Butler portrays this use of setting in the story "Christmas 1910" through the life of a girl named Abigail. All throughout this piece, the author is symbolizing how the country setting is affecting Abigails life, conveying loneliness and feeling disconnected with the outside world.

There were rumors, rumors going around the camp. The parents were going to be sent east, to work….She repeated the conversation to her mother. She said no… They couldn’t separate the children from the parents. In that sheltered gentle life that seemed far away, the girl would have believed her mother…. But in this harsh new world, the girl felt she had grown up. She felt older than her mother. (Rosnay 70-71)

The narrator is caught between his freedom and success in Paris and his past, marred by racism, which he is again about to confront. Using the flashback episode as an example of what he expects on his return, the narrator details the horrible feelings of helplessness and hatred generated by racist behavior. His family in the United States experienced prejudice firsthand and it damaged them forever. His father 's and sister 's lives were destroyed by racism, and the narrator escaped to France to avoid the same fate. Now famous, he must come to terms with his expatriate status, and find a way for his son to live without the same scars of racism.

In William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice Styron explains the effects of World war 2 on an American, a Polish person and a Jewish person. Sophie, the polish women, who is forced to make a very difficult decision during the war, a choice that, affects her mental state of mind for the rest of her life. Stingo, the American and narrator of the story struggles to find inspiration for his writing career while also discovering his families past. Nathan, the Jewish man who is hopelessly in love with Sophie a holocaust survivor, lashes out in anger and questions her about her past. Sophie’s Choice uses three characters guilt to portray the hardships of World War 2 and the mental instability it has caused.

We hear of her moving to New York to escape her life as a child bride after being orphaned at a young age. This story allows the audience to gain a sense of sympathy for Holly, and enhances the pathos of the story. This pathos puts the audience into the shoes of Holly and enables them to understand the reasoning behind her escape. The use of language features like pathos and literary allusion allow the authors of both texts to convey the theme of escapism.

The song “The New World” written by Jason Robert Brown, describes the feeling of trepidation about leaving ones home and following a new path. Colm Toibin and Jason Brown both use imagery to show how lost one feels when searching for home. Eilis’s relationship with “home” shifts and changes as she struggles to come to terms with the consequences of living in two places both mentally and physically. She loves her small home town of Enniscorthy, but she doesn’t quite fit in with the atmosphere and the people. In many ways, her “home” has a socially-conservative environment, and not everything is as it seems. However, her new home in Brooklyn is filled with her feelings of homesickness and nostalgia. Eilis never feels quite happy there because she is always thinking about her sister Rose and her mother. Yet, Brooklyn provides her with the opportunity to start over and begin a new life.

Sara faces a number of serious hindrances on her way to making a life of her own. One of them is her father, who she looks up to and starts to resent later on in life. Her father, Red Smolinsky wants his all daughters to fulfill their gender roles: maintain the household, take care of children, cook, etc. Women, in his opinion, do not exist without men and their own function is to serve men in all senses – sexual, psychological and spiritual. Red Smolinsky represents the Old World with its conservative view on the womanhood. She also starts to hate her father when she understands the ways he has denied his daughters, her older sisters, lives of their own. Sara tries to resist this “new” world and her

The concept of home has a plethora of definitions. For example, one may feel at home in a multitude of places or with varying groups of people. In his TED talk, Pico Iyer, discusses questions about home, which aids in formulating a definition. One of his definitions is the place “where you find yourself,” which corresponds a discussion concerning home in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Iyer). Through Janie’s experience, a home for her is a place where she has a voice. This is paramount for Janie as it allows her to vocalize her opinions and feelings, thus aiding in finding herself. In nearly all of her relationships, however, this voice was taken from her, restraining her from learning about herself, her desires and needs,

After being moved within their town, relocation to another country is the final step taken in separating Jews from society. Wiesel’s father shares the news of relocation after a meeting with local leaders: “‘The news is terrible...Transports.’ The ghetto was to be liquidated entirely. Departures were to take place street by street, starting the next day” (13). This measure marks the end of Sighet Jews’ lives in their town and the beginning of a totally different life. They are pulled from everything they know, their town, their schools, their stores, and their friends. Lives in Sighet are brought to a stop while a new life, under a

By constantly moving around, Jeanette’s childhood was characterized by its instability and her own dependence on herself in order to survive the negligence of her parents. The glass castle symbolized a place where the Walls’ family would finally settle and become free of governmental intervention, however, it was through Jeanette’s realization that individualism was the underlying issue to her family’s problems, that she became aware of the impracticalness of being self-reliant. While Jeanette did have faith in her parents, her father’s continual inability to support his family and her mother’s own carelessness for her children, eroded all of Jeanette’s confidence. Jeanette’s decision to move to New York was not fueled by a need for individualism, however, it was in fact her desire to return to society and reintegrate into a world where she would be able to interact with other people. Thus, Jeanette's return to society signified her dependence of others and shows how individualism can never solve all of people's

First, in order to critically analyze May’s thoughts, one most first consider the foundation on which the book is built. Homeward Bound does a great job of initiating connections between Cold War politics and the American families that stood during the 1940s and 1950s. Throughout the book, subjects that May explore are feminism, consumerism, Cold War, suburbia and gender. After its release in 1988, the book altered what Americans believed the Cold war to be. The author vividly describes family life during the post-war era by giving detailed accounts of early marriages, baby booms, high values of premarital virtue

The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, is a memoir detailing the childhood and family experiences of Jeannette which include the hardships she faced and the memories she has made. She documents her early life through the experiences of having to move constantly from the orders of her parents and living under poor conditions. She is eventually motivated to move away from her parents and away from the conditions to make a life and pursue a passion for herself. Although, she dealt with many inconveniences throughout her early life, she doesn’t seem angered by her parents for having to deal with those problems. This confliction in feelings resulting from experiences is why the tone of the memoir is also confliction.

This story begins to drive the sense of emotion with the very surroundings in which it takes place. The author starts the story by setting the scene with describing an apartment as poor, urban, and gloomy. With that description alone, readers can begin to feel pity for the family’s misfortune. After the apartments sad portrayal is displayed, the author intrigues the reader even further by explaining the family’s living arrangements. For example, the author states “It was their third apartment since the start of the war; they had

It was challenging to try to find security in being a part of the Jewish community when there was not only the fear of persecution but also sometimes a lack of enthusiasm for other Jews to try and come together when they were faced with their own problems. These people who were not only cast out of their homeland, but also had to hide their cultural background in order to survive, truly know what it means to be homeless. They were not well received in the countries they immigrated to neither by native Jews nor non-Jews. They did not feel help from anyone in the world and therefore felt no sense of security. Amery says that “Genuine homesickness” was when he looked back at his life before any of this had happened and felt self-contempt and his hatred for his loss of self. These emotions are intensified when “Traditional homesickness” or nostalgia for the way things were kicks in, causing Amery to hate himself more for wanted to be back in the land that turned against him. He goes on to claim that people need a sense of home, and that without a sense of home people age very poorly. He says that young men are always seeing themselves as men of the future, while old men see themselves as what they were in the past. One grows with his “home” and needs that growth in order to look back on his life and be satisfied with being a man of the past.

At that time it is difficult to get papers permitting Jewish people to leave the country. Rifka writes, “I’ve never been to another country before, not even in another village.” Rifka knows nothing about the world outside her village. Unfortunately, a complicating factor is that Rifka’s brother is hunted by soldiers because he escapes from the army. As a result, Rifka has to distract the men searching the train for Nathan and stand in front of them in order to let her family and herself to depart on their trip to America. They begin to question her. How ever, there are only a few minutes before the train is due to depart. Rifka’s role playing ends when a man requests for the soldier’s help for his robbed factory. In fact, the man is Rifka’s uncle, who is trying to help her family escape. It is right to make Rifka have the distraction, because without her, their chances of escaping would be very slim. Rifka’s parents ask her for help because she is the only family member that can pass the custom as a Russian