Literary Analysis Essay On The Memory Keeper's Daughter

In the book “The Memory Keeper's Daughter” by Kim Edwards a doctor and his wife have twins and the first child is a healthy boy but then the second child that comes out is a little girl with the signs of down syndrome and he asks his Nurse to take the baby away to an institution while he tells his wife the baby girl died. Through out the entire book it is a struggle for Dr. Henry's wife Norah to have closure with the fact that her baby girl is said to be dead and she never saw her, held her, or cared for her. Kim Edwards shows through the whole book that we are only human, the themes that life is beyond our control and through the connection between suffering and joy.

In the story “The Hunger of Memory” Richard Rodriguez uses allusion, anaphora, repetition, diction, tone and syntax to express how education had changed his life.

In “Only Daughter,” published in Glamour magazine in 1990, Sandra Cisneros talks about how it’s like for her to be the only daughter in a Mexican-American family of six sons. She talks about some of the struggles she faces. Sandra is a writer. A writer who wants her dad to be curious about her writing. He never bothers to ask what she’s writing. When they’d ask her father how many children's he has, he’d respond with “I have seven sons.” The mention of only sons, not a daugher. This proved to her he was only proud of his sons but not her. According to him she’d also have to go to college but only to find a husband. A man who will take her out of poorness. Since, according to Sandra that's why her dad thought college was important for her. He didn't care about her major. Sandra Cisneros is a writer who didn’t have the attention she was meant to receive. Towards the end she finally gets the attention she desired. She translated one of her pieces into Spanish, the only language her dad could read. That's how it gained the attention of her father. When her dad finally reads her story, it fills her with joy. At first she didn't get any attention from her dad at all, because she’s a girl. Sandra Cisneros makes a great argument on her life being full of loneliness. Although, she only talks about her perspective on things. In this article she only talks about her side of the story, and her side only. Sandra talks about how her life was as being the only girl out of seven children.

Throughout Nora’s whole life she has been controlled by whomever she has been close to. She has never had to chance to have her own experiences, to think her own thoughts and to try to make something of her life. She knows nothing but what her and her father let her. Nora admits to

When Torvald finds her hairpin stuck in the keyhole of the letter box, Nora tells him it must have been their children trying to get into it, not willing to admit that she had tried to break into his things. Although the truth about her is about to be discovered, Nora wants to preserve the last bits of dignity that she has left, finally worrying about herself before anyone else. This last lie however, leads up to her finally speaking the truth and expressing that she no longer feels that she loves Torvald. Her husband is furious at her, insulting her, and fails to see that every lie that she told was for his sake. Realizing that Torvald can’t see her side of things and will only find fault in what she did, she comes to her decision to leave her family. Nora states that she is not happy and never really was, her marriage to Torvald was as fakes as a doll house according to her. Rather than lie, she is completely honest now and states that she wants to become her own person and learn that which she doesn’t know despite what society might think.

She differs from Louise in that Louise finds escape only in death, while Nora takes back her life. Laurie Lanzen Harris says that Nora’s decision is caused by her husband. She breaks the law, just like Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale, but Nora does it out of love for her husband. She commits forgery to save Torvald, and she endures trials on his behalf [cite]. When he finds out, he is upset that she betrayed him and he threatens to kick her out and take her children away [cite]. Harris says that Nora playacts at being a model woman to please her husband, much like Louise, but when Nora realizes that he does not even love her, she is heartbroken. In other words, he takes her songbird away. It is no wonder that she leaves out of revenge, and partly out of fear for her children. Even before Torvald mentions it, Nora is afraid that her criminal activities will negatively influence her children (Isben 1269). She leaves to protect them and because, as “Women in the Nineteenth Century” states, she will never have sole custody of them. These emotions are her motive to get out of her marriage

While Mrs. Wright lashes out against her perceived cage, her gender role, by killing Mr. Wright, Nora’s character ultimately decides to trip the latch, to fly free from the bars. Nora’s complex personality proves to be difficult to predict to the very end, when she decides to shirk her duties to her husband and children to focus on herself, to serve her own needs for individuality, a decision that was not entirely popular with readers and audiences alike. Indeed, Nora quite easily refuses to be the “doll” in Torvald’s house, and abandons her loving, though misguided husband, and her children. She feels driven to do this once she realizes that she and Torvald had never exchanged a serious word in

Who are you referring to when you write “...when she left him”? Nora is the opposite of Curtis. She is happy at what she does. The garden starts from a vacant lot, but then transforms into something new and beautiful. It is like the before and after of a model on television, except it ends up getting more people involved.

He kept the secret from them to save the grief because he thought Phoebe was going to die young and thought the more time that they spent together, the harder it would be to deal with her death. Phoebe’s “death” caused Norah Henry to become an alcoholic which brought her to trouble; a minor car accident. This “death” made Norah and David distance away from each other instead of bringing them closer. He thought he was saving her from grief but instead he ended up losing both his wife and his daughter. His wife soon got a job to help keep her mind off of Phoebe, and ended up becoming successful and owning her own travel agency which led to her never being home and traveling the

Judith Wright’s poem “Mother to Child” is about a woman’s emotions during the different stages of motherhood. It tells the audience that the bond between a mother and her child is very powerful and that it changes as the child grows. Wright shows us this through her use of imagery, symbolism and the structure of her poem. The use of those three elements of literature help communicate the love the woman has for her child and how their connection grows stronger as time goes on.

In the book The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, the characters use different strategies to overcome their own personal obstacles and challenges. In the novel, Dr. Henry is forced to deliver his wife’s twins. The son was born healthy, however he noticed the daughter was born with some sort of down syndrome and instead of raising her, sends the nurse to give her away. Instead of dealing with the struggle of raising his daughter, he decides that the best thing to do is send her away and lie to his wife that the child died at birth. His strategy was to just avoid the situation rather to deal with it. The nurse that is given the daughter, makes a life altering decision, to rather keep the child and not send her away. Caroline, the nurse,

Girls need a women figure to talk to about female things. Not only that but if Nora left and then later on down the road decided to enter back into the children's lives, they might have resentment towards her.

At the end of their first reconnection, Nora reveals that her transformation from obedient doll to liberated woman had already begun. She now admires Mrs. Linde for her long years of work and independence and uses it as inspiration for her own. In Mrs. Linde’s trust, Nora exposes her personal act of sovereignty: a few years ago, she had secretly borrowed money to save her husband’s life, incriminating herself. Even though she did the morally correct thing, Nora’s actions are condemnable and

In everyone’s life there is a moment that is so dreadful and horrific that it is best to try to push it further and further back into your mind. When traumatized by death for example it is very natural to shut off the memory in order to self-defense suppresses the awful emotional experience. Very often it is thoughtful that this neglecting and abandoning is the best way to forget. In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, memory is depicted as a dangerous and deliberating faculty of human consciousness. In this novel Sethe endures the oppression of self imposed prison of memory by revising the past and death of her daughter Beloved, her mother and Baby Suggs. In Louise Erdrich’s

She is successful in convincing Philip to focus on his studies rather than herself. Therefore when he 's with her, he passes all three exams without any trouble and has earned his vacation that he is reluctant to go on, but is persuaded by thoughtful Norah to do so. Unlike Mildred, Norah appreciates Philip and doesn 't allow him to waste his money. Philip intentionally chose Norah 's ilk