More Than Skin Deep - Mad Shadows

At the beginning of the novel, the motif of water is used to represent Sarah and Handful’s hope for freedom and unnoticeable, understated rebellions. The imagery of water is utilized to represent Sarah’s quiet defiance in her campaign for autonomy and fight to become a lawyer.

2. A gathering around a meal often represents an act of communion. People come together to share thought, ideas, and conflicts. In “The Poisonwood Bible”, a particular scene occurs when there is a dinner at the church. The feeling around the dinner table was a sense of belonging and agreement, which matches up well with “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” view of a meal. As the meal proceeds, Kingsolver notes “He is Congolese all right, But he has different kind of eyes that slant a little bit like a Siamese” (Kingsolver 125). This

Does every family love and respect one another? Are all families in a healthy relationship with each other? In the book Mad Shadows, the answer to these questions are clearly displayed. Mad shadows, is a fictional novel written by Marie-Claire Blair. It tells the story of an unusual family who are in a prolong feud with one another, which is the by-product of their illusions. The character, Louise, is the mother of the family. Her superficial view of life and constant denial of truth is the root cause of the dysfunction, misery, and jealousy in her family. Which consequently, fuels her own death and destruction by the end of her tragic life.

But besides the satisfying effect of fictional food, Hansel and Gretel already hints at a more negative approach to food. The siblings are tempted by the witch’s house consisting of bread and sweets. Especially evangelical discourses demanded dieting to resist the temptation of sins like gluttony or sloth (Labbe 94). Also the required dining etiquette of the increasing middle class, as well as the partly lethal food alterations of nineteenth century England, led to a rising number of didactic tales about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ food (ibid. 93). According to Daniel, the detailed and stimulating descriptions of food in children’s literature are a meant to seduce the child reader to “swallow the bitter pill of

In the work of African descended writers’, water is used as a common symbol. In Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, and Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, tears, rivers, the sea and other forms of water are used to symbolize change. More specifically, it symbolizes the change between life and death; freedom and confinement. The three writers use water as an ironic symbol, representing life, liberty, and their contradictions.

Jeanette initiates her first “date” with Melanie by offering, “Would you like a baked potato?” (85). Melanie accepts the offer, giving rise to her intimate relationship to God and Jeanette. Jeanette’s first love affair was initiated by her offering of a baked potato. In the beginning of the book, Jeanette says, “One of my earliest memories is me sitting on a sheep at Easter while she told me the story of the Sacrificial Lamb. We had it on Sundays with potato” (2). Jeanette is being taught by her mother at a young age about God, while Jeanette eats the potato. The potato here doesn’t pacify Jeanette so that she can bond with her mother over God, it pacifies Jeanette so that she can learn about God from her mother, furthering her relationship with God in the process. Jeanette maintains her relationship with God throughout the book, one of the strongest relationships in the story. When no one was there for Jeanette, she looked to God. This is unsurprising considering that her relationship with God was probably the earliest important relationship she pursued, striving to understand more of God while eating potatoes on the Sundays of her childhood. Jeanette states on her relationship with Elsie, “Elsie Norris and me ate an orange every day; half each. Elsie had no teeth so she sucked and champed. I dropped my pieces like oysters, far back into the throat” (29). Elsie visited

Later in chapter two, Foster explains that the act of eating together symbolizes various types of communion. He uses many novels as examples to help prove this point. First, a meal’s description may take the place of describing sexual intercourse. In Tom Jones, a couple’s meal includes sucking on bones, licking fingers, and groaning, clearly demonstrating more than simply eating dinner. Additionally, a meal symbolizes an act of sharing and peace. The novel Cathedral tells of a discriminatory man who doesn’t gain respect for a blind man until he shares a meal with him. Finally, a failed meal has a negative connotation, bringing disappointment to the story. In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a mother tries to have a family diner, but continues to fail. The family

* Communion is a way of saying, “I’m with you, I like you, and we form a community together.” People would only eat dinner with someone that they are comfortable with. That’s the importance about food. Any meal would represent sharing and peace. But at times, it could be considered a bad thing. An example I can come up with is when Snow White ate the apple a strange looking old woman just decided to give to her.

The family eating together is a representation of unity. Aunt Ida through her quilts evokes the imagery of unification just as Soto’s imagery of his family eating together.

In a social setting where the presence of God is absent, love simply cannot exist. It is a common-truth that human beings require love; in a society where love cannot and does not exist, the void where that “love” would have existed becomes filled with deluded misconceptions of what love truly is. In Marie-Claire Blais’ Mad Shadows, Blais clearly illustrates what happens genuine love cannot exist and is replaced by misinterpretations, with the use of well developed character relationships. In many of the relationships (romantic and otherwise) displayed

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

After the baker takes all the rage thrown on him by Ann, he in return begs for forgiveness and gives the parents what they were lacking, that is food. The baker does all this even though he is alone and virtually makes contact with anybody.

While culture is prevalent in everyone 's lives, the way that culture is interpreted can drastically vary depending upon the generation a person grew up in. In both Madeleine Thien 's “Simple Recipes” and Kazuo Ishiguro 's “A Family Supper” the way in which the children view culture is significantly different from their parents views. While the children in each story grew up in different countries, the similarities between the children and their families are strikingly similar. The cultural views of the father and son in each story leads them in separate ways, which ultimately causes major rifts within the families and creates significant tension between father and son. The fathers in each story are authority figures to their children. Although the level of authority each father has over their children is drastically different due to the age of their children, it is clear both fathers demand a certain level of respect from them. The suppers in each story, while seemingly insignificant at first, actually carry a much deeper meaning. The suppers play a large role in how each story plays out. Although there are differences in regards to how each story conveys the message of cultural divide, the point remains the same. Culture is always evolving, and while this is generally viewed as a success for society, if those involved do not have a firm grasp on what is changing, it can lead to disagreements within society and in some cases disagreements within

Another example of water imagery in the text is the coconut water. This is water imagery because the water represents purification. According to Marshall “Rum and coconut water… nevertheless she almost instantly felt the first

The movie then fast forwards to a stormy night when Babette, a French refugee, came to them for help. A good friend of hers and former acquaintance of theirs, Achille Papin, recommended the sisters to Babette. Papin knew the kindness of the two and knew they would take a stranger into their home, especially a stranger in need of shelter and love. In France, Babette had been a world class chef. She loved to cook, it was her passion. When she began to work for the sisters (for free) she no longer was able to cook gourmet meals. She was only given a budget to prepare dried cod and ale-bread, the staple diet for those who lived in Jutland. Even though she could only prepare simple, cheap, and rather unpalatable dishes, she still put her heart and soul into each dish. Her love of food was apparent if you watched her cook, she took time to add spices which she picked herself or had specially ordered to the corner store to add to the normally bland dishes and made them her own. The differences in the food was apparent when Babette was unable to cook the soup for one of the elderly followers, so the sisters prepared the dish instead. The was an obvious look of disappointment on that man when he looked into the dish and realized it was not Babette who had made it. Her presence with