Mount Pleasant

Elizabeth Avila’s is Mexican American middle age, divorced mother and employed as an elementary school teacher; also ex-wife to Javier Avila’s. She prepares Thanksgiving dinner for her family. Elizabeth and the ex-husband Javier Avila’s have a distant relationship and he no longer lives in the house; they are divorced. Elizabeth appears to be a strong mother who has moved forward with her life. She works with a teacher who appears to be a nice gentleman that cares for her. The boyfriend has never met the family until the Thanksgiving holiday. As a single mother, Elizabeth continues to advise her two young adult children on how to live their lives and how she is going to lead her own life. She has fused relationship with her mother, Emma, Anthony and Gina; they all have a great connection. Elizabeth and the children get along without the father Javier, who left without any contact and never

The Haunting of Hill House is considered a classic to many people. It has a certain sense of feeling missing from today's novels. The Haunting of Hill House has suspense, horror, a little bit of romance, and an ending that will leave you thinking for days. Shirley Jackson is well known for her twisted work. At the beginning of the book, you our introduced to a character that has a major impact on all of its "guests". Hill House. "Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within." This is just one of the chilling sentences from the opening paragraph. The fear begins to set in. Shortly after, you are introduced to the strong yet cautious Dr. John

The setting is very joyful, graceful and inviting, but within the town hides much evil (mostly Miss Strangeworth) which one might also say is fairly ironic. The author is very skilled at making a well developed setting, which suits the themes of deception, secrets and incorrect first impression very well and makes the reader think more to conceive what is really happening or how the setting connects to theme, characters and other literary devices.

Seeing her strong father cry in the middle of the night because of the shame he felt in not being able to support his family influenced Lizabeth to destroy the marigolds in Miss Lottie's yard. When Lizabeth overhears her father complain to her mother, Lizabeth feels that before her father was strong like a rock and her mom was fragile, now everything has changed and her dad is broken into pieces. The man of the household is breaking down, and does not know where he stands anymore nor does Elizabeth. “The world had lost its boundary lines. My mother, who was small and soft,was now the strength of the family; my father, who was the rock on which the family had been built, was sobbing like the tiniest child. Everything was out of tune, like a broken accordion” (20). When Elizabeth realizes that her father cannot support her family devastates her and Elizabeth is broken by that realization. She does not have a stable set of parents who can even rely on each other or themselves, leaving her to feel lost and hopeless. Elizabeth becomes insecure by the fact of her father crying. When she realizes she cannot stand anymore confusion in her family, she goes to wake her brother up and then vents out her angst on the marigolds and this also shows some immatureness in Elizabeth. Collier also uses elements of characterization like the character’s thoughts and actions, to show

Finally, Elizabeth is a strong character. Even though Lester was stubborn and demanding she still loved him and her children. She could not bare to live a single day without them, by her side although they were old enough to be on their own. She was strong enough to leave them all behind except for Sylvie just once as a test for Lester; he passed. “”Ma” I said. She turned and looked at me. “Ma. Why are we leavin’?” she did not answer right away. It crossed my mind she might not be sure of the reason herself. This was a frightening thought. But apparently she knew. “I plans t’do some thinkin’,” she said.”” (Wilson108). Her strong character was manifest once she arrived home after her three day trip away from home. “”I watched my mother. During the laughter, I could see her retreat for a minute behind her eyes, the expressionless, lifeless, beaten. Then she took a deep breath and look at him directly, squarely, with no fear in her face. Pain, yes, but no fear.”” (Wilson115) Her reaction towards the way Lester reacted once she got home was completely unexpected, she finally stood up to him, and she was strong enough to look him in the eye. Therefore Elizabeth is

Pikes Peak is a beautiful, rocky mountain with a fantastic view. The day my family and I were going to go up Pikes Peak the day was gorgeous. Heading up the mountain is so relaxing, having conversations with my family while looking out the tinted window. Looking out my window I could see columns and rows of the most perfect looking pine trees rising up the peak. During the climb it was so admirable and calm as I was thinking in my head, what a perfect day. The view was fantastic as I got to see the world breathing in all of the fresh air. Pikes Peak has three lakes which are very inviting with its clear blue water glistening from the sun. The lookout on the very tip of Pikes Peak was very foggy and chilly. The view was pretty cool since I’ve

At the age of ten, most children are reliant on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of concentration and concern. However, Ellen, the main character and combatant of the novel Ellen Foster, demonstrates a significant amount of self-reliance and mature, impartial thought as a ten-year-old girl. Ellen is a bantling even though she was not deserted, she was impoverished of a normal childhood. Her life as a child was immensely hard, physically and emotionally. She never had a mother or father take care of her through her entire youth. The recent mortality of her mother sends her on a journey for the optimal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown insensitivity to both she and her frail mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’

Analyse how Nineteen Eighty Four and Pleasantville imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time.

One day, Elizabeth’s father came home and everyone in the household could tell that there was something on his mind. It was around dinner time when he came in from working on the

The decade following the Second World War brought about a new sensation of the ‘perfect housewife' and her duties at home. Men being drafted and shipped oversees during World War II had taken a lot of women out of the kitchen and put them into the workplace. This was the biggest movement thus yet of women changing roles in society and moving away from domestication. This movement was thwarted by returning soldiers, their moving back to the workplace, and the repositioning of women in the home. The baby boom followed the Second World War, furthering the encouragement of women to stay home and be the ideal mother and wife. Television greatly reflected this attitude. Sitcoms about the ideal family emerged left and right. Shows like

When we think about an eleven-year-old we don 't envision a girl cleaning, cooking, or doing taxes. In the novel, Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons, Ellen does not have the luxury of toys and candy. In lieu of being an ordinary eleven year old girl, Ellen is compelled to grow up and mature as a result of her family situation. While living with her birth parents, she witnesses her mother being abused by her drunk father. Ellen’s viewpoints are negative toward the start as her home is not stable. Due to the lack of support,Ellen is compelled to move around to various environments and she never gets the attention she deserves. Since she was so young, the adults in her life should have taken care of her, but instead she takes care of them. As the novel proceeds, Ellen is put through more hardships allowing her to get an alternate perspective on life. Although Ellen had a negative start in her life, her perspective of the world becomes positive as she faces challenges because of her family.

During the 1920s, most of the houses people lived in were gigantic, beautiful and large. The house Jane lived in was a colonial mansion that had the characteristics of a haunted house. The house was in fact so huge that it gave

The novel “The Watsons go to Birmingham” by Christopher Paul Curtis is a historical fiction story about a 10-year-old boy named Kenny, who is also the narrator, and his family’s struggles and their trip to Birmingham with Joetta, Momma, Byron, and Dad. Byron is the oldest child of the Watsons, he is pretty self-centered and has a “giant attitude”, it makes sense, since he’s 13 and earns himself the title of “delinquent”. Joetta is the third child of the family she is 6 and is very caring. Momma and Dad have pretty self-explanatory roles.

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

When they first arrive at the colonial house the narrator is happy about the house. It it the most beautiful house as it “stand[s] well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” and it makes her “think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little housed for the hardeners and people” (88). She arrives at the house and deems it to be just like the haunted houses society reads about at the time. The house is in some legal troubles over who rightly owns the house, which is why they were able to get the house so cheap. While the narrator wanted to take a room downstairs with a view of the gardens, her husband places her in a room upstairs. She describes the room upstairs as “a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and