Perfection In Donna Milner's After River

Tracy, a seventh grade girl in the movie Thirteen, provides a glimpse into the dangers of negative adolescent development. She was an honor student who was content playing with Barbies, but she was also desperate for acceptance and affection. Tracy meets Evie, a popular girl who engages in destructive behavior. Tracy’s only goal becomes emulating Evie, and she embarks on a path of self-destruction. Tracy, who is in early adolescence, is at the peak of her most critical developmental stage (Capuzzi & Gross, 2014), and is willing to do whatever it takes to belong. Throughout the movie, we see her struggle with low self-esteem, anger, dysfunctional relationships, self-harm, and substance abuse. Vernon (2009), discusses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which can be utilized with Tracy. Vernon (2009) notes that when needs of safety, belonging, love, and respect are not met, children respond emotionally, cognitively, physically, and socially, depending on their developmental level. The degree of development also impacts how children react to common developmental difficulties and situational problems. Vernon (2009) adds, “…how children interpret and respond to basic needs, as well as typical and situational problems, can result in various self-defeating behaviors” (p.3). Applying this to Tracy, we see that her basic needs of

The canary helps her remember the joy she had singing. The canary is something she could care for and love. ”If there had been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful-still-after the bird was still” (Glaspell 557). The bird’s cage defines how when she marries Mr. Wright she became trapped in his cage. The broken door symbolizes that she was a broken woman barely hanging on to hope. Mr. Wright cruel and unjust treatment to her and the bird causes retaliation. When he snapped the canary’s neck she is forced to kill him.

Without the proper guidance from a healthy role model in Baby’s life, she has trouble forming and maintaining proper romantic and sexual relationships. Throughout the novel Baby is shown to

Recently, Jennifer Siebel Newson had found out that she was pregnant and was having a baby girl, but despite the happiness of the joyful news, she was worried on how her daughter could grow up to be emotionally healthy in the culture, which consisted of the misrepresentation of women in the media, that we have in the world today. She also worried about how she would make sure that her daughter didn’t fall into the trap that she had fallen into as a girl. When Newson was 7 years old, her older sister died causing her to blame herself for her sister’s death. This resulted in Newson trying to fill in as 2 daughters for her parents, leading her to vulnerably accept peer pressure. She then went through an eating disorder as a teenager because

From the point of conception, a child’s feelings and thoughts are incredibly malleable. However, the question remains whether the environment changes our perception. This essay will delve into how perceptions are impacted by a North American lifestyle, and a lifestyle within the fictional world of The Chrysalids. Although a person has the ability to forge his or her own destiny, the environment plays a large part in shaping our perceptions everyday.

The bird, the most central of Chopin's symbols, appears constantly in order to provide insight into Edna’s lack of freedom and future relationship with Mademoiselle Reisz. This is evident from the start of the novel when, “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage… could speak… a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird…” Here, Chopin links the “parrot hanging in a cage” to Edna’s feeling of captivity in the life she will never have. The “cage” is also symbolic to Edna’s lack of freedom in that it interferes with her self-discovery. Moreover, Chopin presents Mademoiselle Reisz, the mocking-bird, as the only character in the novel who fully understands Edna and her motives. Being misunderstood by society, Edna finally feels she has found someone who understands her. This becomes central to Chopin’s message of Edna’s initiation to a life of

Wright so deeply that her whole view of right and wrong is distorted. Her decision to murder her husband in the name of her bird shows how corrupted her mind really is. Years and years of silent torture drove this woman to the brink of insanity. Her insanity symbolizes other women in that time that chose to stay in a loveless marriage rather than make a bold move like Nora did and go out into world on their own. Nora’s courageous choice empowered women to think for themselves, while Mrs. Wright’s choice revealed to them exactly how a loveless marriage can damage one’s mind to the point of no repair.

Early in the novel, while Edna attempts to escape from society's strong grasp, birds emphasize her entanglement by forecasting her actions and monitor her development by reflecting her feelings. The novel opens with the image of a bird, trapped

Maya Angela is like a bud who slowly bloomed to become a beautiful flower. In her most famous book’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” she discusses the horrible struggles she went through as a young girl being black, being shy, and being raped. Throughout her life she struggled

17) In The Awakening, caged birds serve as reminders of Edna's repression. She is repressed in the roles as wife and mother in a Victorian society.

The book follows Marguerite's life from the age of three to the age of seventeen and deals particularly with racism in the Southern United States. Marguerite and her brother Bailey were abandoned by their parents and sent to live with their grandmother Annie and cripple uncle Willie in Stamps, Arkansas. The book abounds in metaphors such as rape, which is a metaphor for the suffering of the black race and the title itself. The bird in the cage struggling to escape represents the black race which dreams about freedom.

With lily and rose crowns, the capture lured the bird in with kindness. As soon as he caught the bird's attention he gently walked into his own garden. Stanza three is where the story turns dark, as the narrator has been betrayed. Lines 11-12,“He caught me in his silken net/and shut me in his golden cage,” shows the act of how innocence was taken. Blake uses imagery with chronological events. Each stanza shows more about the corruption of the birds innocence, ending with the sad reality of its

A wide variety of theories and methods attempt to explain early childhood learning and development. Erickson and Maslow both have theories that focus on social and personality development, as well as a person’s motivation to learn throughout their lives. Their theories are helpful in understanding Jeannette Walls’ development of self. Erickson and Maslow also help clarify why her mother, father, and living in New York City were such influential factors in the development of Jeanette’s sense of self.

Lastly, the theme of "All that glitters is not gold". This theme covers the story from beginning to end. Towards the conclusion of the short story, Joe makes a statement to the clerk at the candy store which states "He had it on his watch chain for a charm-goin' round making out iss gold money… He had a quarter on his tiepin and it wuz all golded up too.Tryin' to fool people. Makin' out he so rich and everything."(217)In this case, everyone that was amazed by Slemmons gold money was fooled because it

While he enjoys everything to do with literature, she has no interest in anything literary. She is only happy in her alcoholic daze when she can escape the reality of her unhappy marriage and unsuccessful career. She explains to Natalie how "[t]his is the only life [she’s] got” and that “[she] spend[s] most of [her] time just thinking about how nice things used to be and wondering if they'll ever be nice again" (Jackson 10). She offers her empty life experience to her daughter, hoping that Natalie will never feel the sadness and loneliness she does because of her failure and distance to her own husband and children. The only seemingly stable one is Natalie’s brother Bud who manages to keep his distance from the family and engage himself in other activities. This conveys isolation since their depressing mood caused the whole family to drift away from one