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. Edwards uses plot to set up a sort of life schedule. It goes in order …show more content…
But David, you missed a lot of joy". In the theme that life is beyond our control the author Kim Edwards has the book move through the years rapidly and at a fast pace in order to demonstrate how life flys by. Throughout the book Edwards uses photography as a metaphor showing the character David's growing obsession with taking photographs as a desperate attempt to make time stand still: "Photo after photo, as if he could stop time or make an image powerful enough to obscure the moment when he turned and handed his daughter to Caroline Gill". Life may also feel as it is out of their control with there being a constant aura of uncertainty or “what if” quality. That being said, the characters in the end will always wonder what life would have been like if David had never given his daughter away, but find it exhausting to wonder once they are brought together in the end after the death of David. As Paul reflects at the end of the novel: "His mother was right; he could never know what might have happened. All he had were the facts". Life was also seeming to be out of anyone's control with the struggle of the melancholy tone through the novel with Norah becoming more and more depressed becoming that of a drinker in Paul's young life and then being so unhappy with her marriage with David for him being so distant that she has an affair with a man while she is on a trip to Aruba with her job. Even with the tone the author seems to have it progress in a
While reading "The Rememberer" by Aimee Bender was very powerful and had the most effective tone and style. I felt the joy that Annie felt when she talks about making love to Ben. I also felt the pain Annie felt through each phase of Ben's transformation. The way Annie is hopeful that one day Ben will come back to her makes me have hope for her. You can almost hear the sadness in her voice as she looks at Ben in his slamander form and asks if he, "remembers her." (341). The way Annie talks about Ben's reverse evolution is so descriptive, yet simple. Annie was open and honest to herself about what was happening to Ben. She was so calm, almost as she was at ease with everything.
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.
Passions drive people, and the townspeople in “The Lottery” and Paul in “The Rocking-Horse Winner” are no different. Each of the members of the unnamed town has a strong passion for tradition. The original black box used for the lottery is described as being, “lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born” (Jackson 251). This sentence gives the reader an understanding that the lottery is an ancient tradition that has become an integral part of the town’s lifestyle. Such a tradition can only be carried on for this length of time if the people are passionate about preserving the tradition. Paul had a passion to be wealthy as a way to prove to his mother that he was lucky. From a young age, he saw that his family always wanted more money to support a better lifestyle, yet
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.
“For my part, I felt that I had somehow committed a sin of betrayal by learning English.”
In the poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is filed with metaphors and symbols that represent the feeling of a child growing up and moving out onto their own. There comes a time when every parent must send off their child into the world, and these parents feel a multitude of things when sending them off. It paints a picture of a father teaching his young daughter to ride a bike, but uses this image to represent a child growing up. The mixed feeling of pride and fear as the child grows up and moves out of the nest. The use of first person past tense shows us that the narrator is recalling the time they taught their child to ride a bike and are reliving that experience with the child moving out again. The fright of watching your child speed down the road towards life is portrayed from the start and continues throughout the poem. A good parent is always worried about their child’s wellbeing; they will always worry as they watch their children head straight to the destruction that comes with living life. Though the good parent will try their best to teach their child how to ride their bike into adulthood. This poem uses imagery, word choice, and metaphor to express the fears a parent has when sending their child out on their own into the world.
The book I chose to read for this assignment was Expecting Adam, authored by Martha Beck, which is based on a true story written in 1999. Martha and John Beck are a young couple living in Cambridge, Massachusetts pursing their doctoral degrees. Martha writes the book from when their daughter, Katie, is a toddler (18 months old) and they are expecting their second child, Adam. She tells about the nine months from conception to the birth of her child, Adam, who has Down syndrome and her life changing values and experiences.
I chose to do my analysis on the short story, “The Story Of An Hour”. The themes I see in this story is the quest for identity/coming of age, romantic/love, birth, and death. It is about a woman named Mrs. Mallard. She was an elderly lady and had a heart complications. Her sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards had to break the news to her that her husband, Brently Mallard, has been killed in a railroad disaster. Mrs. Mallard was sorrowful and sobbed in her sisters’ arms. After her grieving process, she wanted to be alone, so she went to her room and locked herself in. As she sat in the window, she seem to be calmer and accepted her husband’s death. She was not distressed of what had happened. She began to say the words “free” and her heart
Discrimination is now becoming a well-known term around the world; many acknowledge it from the time they came across: sexism, racism, ageism, and the type Anne Frank came across, persecution. Anne Frank was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who was hiding from the German Army or the Nazi’s, as they are better recognized back then. Her life story consisted of constantly escaping and being in isolation from those who wanted her dead; it was a difficult time to live in. Anne Frank was attacked because of her differences; Adolf Hitler (leader of the Nazi’s) was killing anyone who was not classified as “pure” or part of the “superior race”.
You selected a few different poems to interpret this week then my self. You have a marvelous post summarizing each peculiar one. I likewise read Nostalgia by Billy Collins this week. My conception of the author is he practically ridicules the diverse periods of time as they were portrayed. I enjoyed this poem considering the composer certainly drives the point home with this topic. An abundance of humanity complains about past generations although trends were not the greatest it's persistent rebalance of pros and cons about all aspects of life. I couldn't agree more with you that the theme of the poem demonstrates that humanity wishes regression to the way life once
The simple bowl is deep cherry wood with a silver rimmed bottom that reflects my face upside down as a result of the polishing it has received over the years. The grain is worn, but still radiates the strength of the tree that it came from. As I run my finger over the inside of the cavernous salad bowl, it picks up some of the olive oil residue from the homemade Italian dressing that has seeped into every little grain of the bowl over years of use. Never subject to washings; we only wiped it out with a paper towel, to better flavor the crisp Boston bibb lettuce salads that it delivered at every family dinner. Just as the wood bowl, my grandmother was weathered and cracked by the trials of life. I could not be around her without leaving
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
Within the larger scholarly conversation surrounding folklore, different academics have employed contrasting techniques to interpret folk tales and to investigate the social and psychological conditions in which folklore developed and changed from one form to another. With a particularly strong focus on those tales of French origin, historian Robert Darnton examines a number of fairy tales related to Paul Delarue’s “The Story of Grandmother” from a historical perspective in his essay “Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of Mother Goose”. In contrast, Catherine Orenstein criticizes Darnton’s narrow historical focus and his failure to observe the thematic changes relating to gender which occurred when authors began to cement tales into the
There are many ways to supplement a story in order to add lucidity. It is done through literary devices and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is no different. "The Things They Carried" is a narrative about a soldier at war in Vietnam. However, this story provides multiple layers of meaning through O'Brien's tone and style that help the reader further understand it. Both of these literary devices are embedded in the story and gradually help define it.
There are many literary works that have been created by the authors with different types and different genres of literary works. Literary works itself never separated from the elements that contained in it that help to build the story of literary work itself. There are 2 elements in a literary work; intrinsic element and extrinsic element. Intrinsic element itself is elements that make up a work of literature in the form structure are like a literary elements found in the intrinsic elements. Yet, this paper will focus only on intrinsic element especially in a poem.