Luka's A Wom A Short Story

On the story, she commented, “Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I supposed that by setting a particular brutal ancient rite in the present and in my village the story’s readers with a dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”

Lina Vilkas was a fifteen year old girl who had endured through Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror when her country, Lithuania, had been taken over by the dictator. Her whole family had been viciously kicked out of their home and packed into a cart in the middle of the night. Spending six weeks in a train car with a group of strangers who had soon become close companions, her inevitable journey into becoming a completely different person began. From that point on she had to survive on wit and ability if she wanted to make it out of her absolute personal hell. With some help along the way, Lina had become an entirely new person by the end of her story. The character Lina Vilkas has experienced metamorphosis due to the invasion of Lithuania and the separation from the life she once knew, and her drastic change has affected her and the people around her, both negatively and positively.

knows that there is suffering and unfairness, yet the question she puts to the reader is why

The few concrete houses had been built by families whose sons or fathers had gone south…” which made me feel like her village was a small cozy, beautiful place, but after the Taliban invaded it, its beauty had been destroyed.

The author uses sensory details of sounds, smells and feelings to highlight to horror of the violence experienced by Chika. ‘…smell is sickening, of roasted fish, unlike that of any she has ever smelled’. And also author uses future tense and repetition ‘never find her sister’ to highlight the tragedy and horrific event of the war and violence. Throughout the story, the author demonstrates the futility of war and violence identifies that there is no positive affects to anyone at all.

Cynthia Ozick’s story “The Shawl” is told in a way were the readers feel hopelessness and despair. The characters are put in a situation so hopeless there’s no way that they can escape. This text at first begins with confusion, however as you read more you start to put the pieces to gether like a puzzle. Magda the only character who thrives in the story, and still she becomes a victim of the harsh environment around her. At it’s core this text tells of how you can be thrown in an concentration camp, treated as a lower human being, just because your not the perfect white color, and starved to near death, but no amount of oppression could drain the humanity you have inside. Although Stella is a counter to this because she is bitter, and envious

Lena revisits her ancestry after a terrorist attack in Jordan. When a voice beckons her for “the time to return home” she obeys. She had been called back “to the land of [her] ancestors” who “had tracked [her] down and [were] speaking” to her (Howe, 20). Lena’s mother had died in childbirth, leaving Lena an orphan. Ezol guides her to reconstruct the history of the Miko Kings: to “unwrap the team’s stories as one might open birthday gifts. Out of order, but with a gift for celebration” (Howe, 22). Ezol’s nightly stories allow Lena to reconstruct lost history, in which “time opens like a coffin”(Howe, 33).

After the riots, the Wakatsuki family moves to a nicer barracks by the hospital. They got to move because of Mama’s job as a dietician. Jeanne and her siblings attend school. Manzanar begins to resemble an American small town. Jeanne explores a variety of hobbies. She explores baton twirling, Japanese dance, ballet, and catechism. With her interest in “American” past times, Jeanne and her father drift farther apart.

In the novel The book Thief, Markus Zusak explores that death and war are often more difficult for those who survive. At the center of the text is the idea that those who are left behind after tragedy suffer greatly. This is revealed through the hardship of life and experience a gentle transition. This was shown as an experience of Liesel who struggles as well as the other characters that have difficult processing their grief and guilt. Zusak’s novel acts to alert his readers the dangers of war and by the hardship of life and experience a gentle transition.

Though her family was her main source of strength, Klein had to find someone else to rely on when she lost them. Her childhood acquaintance, a girl called Ilse, filled that void in Klein life, and Klein did the same for her. Together they pushed each other through illness, back-breaking labor, and a 350 mile death march through freezing rain and snow. Klein and Ilse became more like sisters than best friends. Ilse last gift to Klein was a single, bruised raspberry for her birthday. Klein held Ilse as she lay dying on the freezing ground. Before she drew her last breath, Ilse begged Klein to o on for one more week romise me. (p 205) Exactly one week later, the war ended and Gerda Klein found herself a free woman.

This story is told through a first person perspective as each refugee has their own secrets to keep while seeking a new life. This was a highly effective choice as it enabled the reader to “be in their shoes” and witness the brutal journey these refugees have faced. In order to show us the severity of the journey, imagery is needed since it helps the audience picture the situation as most of us cannot imagine what life at this time was. When Joana arrived at the port, as “animals roamed helplessly in the streets and people screamed out for food and lost family members” (152). This description shows how this war has torn apart everyone physically and emotionally as complete chaos unfolds. It is also an appeal to pathos as her audience would feel devastated by having to witness such a scene. This is because nobody should have no food to eat or not know whether they were safe. As a result, the description of the port upon Joana’s arrival proves that even after their journey was completed, the fight for survival was not over. Instead, it was just beginning as everyone fought for a boarding pass that one hoped would allow them to

each” a statement from Harriet Ann Jacobs reflecting her will to overcome the standards of

The woman suffrage cannot be compared to the genocide of millions, the mass casualties of war, or the enslavement of the African American but it was a war millions of women fought for. The majority of women were suppressed by their husbands and the regulations in society leaving women neglected politically, economically, and socially with little authority or opportunity to encompass change. Women were looked upon in society as the house workers who were incapable of having respectable thoughts on decision making whatsoever, therefore detaching women from all aspects of life other than their motherly responsibility’s, to be a wife and a mother. Zinn, quoted “it seems that women have best been able to make their first escape from the prison of wifeliness, motherhood, femininity housework beautification isolation when their services have been desperately needed – whether in industry or in war or in social movements. Each time practicality pulled the women out of her prison in a kind of work- parole program- the attempt was made to push her back once the need was over…” ("19/Surprise 504." A People's History of the United States. ) this quote shows how women have obeyed the role that they were put in and didn’t question it. The obedience of the women in American has cause a delay in women

Without significant, strong people in the world, the earth would be no longer here. People would not survive and the world would be in chaos. Because of this, the people who do good for the world are treasured and kept close. In the biography Harriet Tubman: Guide to Freedom by Ann Petry and the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, two extraordinary women are revealed in the text. While Harriet is a former slave with little experience in the real world but with a heart filled with bravery, Mrs. Flowers is petite and full of willpower to strive to success.

Even though Both Ivan and Masha successfully achieve ‘freedom’, but Masha’s attachment to hope prolongs her suffering. Sent to a Siberian work camp for failing to denounce her husband, who was sentenced to “ten years without right of correspondence” under the claim that he refused to denounce ‘terrorists’, Masha clings onto the hope that she will be free one day (101). She religiously “kept hoping” that “her sentence would be repealed”, and initially this ‘hope’ “made her turn hot and cold with joy” (101). However, it was the hope she had that enabled her suffering to continue. As hope found its way into Masha’s heart, it “brought heartache,” stemming from her want to be free (105). Being forcibly raped by one of the guards, having her teeth knocked out, and failing an attempt to commit suicide, Masha continued to “drag herself along” (108). Escaping the work camp, even though suicide, could not be achieved; the GULAG consumes Masha, but her hope continues. Continuously waiting for the moment where she would be reunited with her family, Masha finds a way to fill her heart with “happiness, light, and grief” (108). Unfortunately, the setting of the work camp does not allow for a woman to experience happiness without