Praying For Sheetrock By Melissa Fay Greene

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

Two best friends, Chris and Win, decided to do something great their summer of senior year before heading of to collage. Chris and Win are going to bike along the West Coast to Seattle, where Win’s uncle lives. At first Chris’s mom is against them going, while his dad pushes him to go because he had a similar dream that he did not accomplish. Win’s parents seem to not have a care in the world that their son is going to bike across the country. Eventually both sets of parents agree and the boys start their journey. The trip is going great but somewhere along the way things started taking a turn for the worst. The book Shift by Jennifer Bradbury is a great realistic mystery that keeps the pages turning.

Dorothy Allison’s essay, Panacea, recalls the fond childhood memories about her favorite dish, gravy. Allison uses vivid imagery to cook up a warm feeling about family meals to those who may be a poor family or a young mother. Appeal to the senses shows this warm feeling, along with a peaceful diction.

The setting of the novel is a rural plantation in Louisiana in the Deep South. Most of the story takes place on Henri Pichot’s plantation. He is a wealthy influential man in Bayonne who can influence many decisions. Being set in the 1940’s before civil rights, the whites reigned supreme, and the blacks were still seen as inferior. Gaines uses characters such as Sheriff Guidry, Henri Pichot, and Mr. Joseph Morgan to demonstrate the white mentality towards African Americans (Poston A1). The white mentality causes many negative feelings. Folks says, “Part of Grant’s bitterness stems from his negative feelings about the black population in his hometown” (Folks B1). Grant is always mad and discouraged by the vicious cycle the blacks are put through. “The reader is able to gain insight into Grant’s thoughts and frustrations through his conversations with Vivian, his girlfriend. He feels trapped in his present situation” (Poston A1).

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

Also, as governor, Bennett may have helped to look after the Johnson’s “legal and economic interests” as well. By acquiring his estate, it enabled Johnson to have a constant source of income and therefore help the local community with it’s economy similarly. This relationship between he and the community came to help him when later his estate nearly burned down entirely. The court of Northampton treated him very well in helping them get through the disaster. He was treated just as any white man in Johnson’s position would have been. This example alone shows how merely owning property and giving back to the local community was a priority in establishing respect among people of the Northampton area; his skin color did not matter.

For the black residents of rural Mississippi, systemic racism was all too common in the 1940s and 1950s. Blacks were persecuted in all areas of life, including attacks to their economic and social security. Furthermore; direct attacks on southern African Americans fueled fear that would lead to the total division between blacks and whites in every aspect of life. The fear of deadly attacks and lynchings was used to directly intimidate southern blacks, who increasingly became domicile and subservient with the lack of opportunity and hope. It is in this climate that Anne Moody learned to break the status-quo that existed in poor rural Mississippi through sure willpower and hard work. The memoir demonstrates that Anne is consistently driven by

At the end of the story, the husband has died. This could be seen as the womans “freedom”. Linda Wagner-Martin writes “She wins back her language, and vanquishes her husband--who has neither speech nor action by the end of the story. He lies as if dead in the path of her highly functional movement, and she simply crawls over him. The wallpaper has replaced the writing paper that he would have taken from her, and she has in some ways won back her right to speech and control.” The theme of the writing is the role of women in this time period and their dependence on men but at the end of her writing she has taken control.

There were many things you could have learned from reading the book Praying for Sheetrock that would be very useful to your lives. Segregation was one of those things because in the book the white had their own community in the book and African Americans had their own communities in the wood they both were separated but not equal because the white were in charge of both communities. Corruption was happening all through this book from the sheriff Poppell tipping the truck on the highway so the poor people could get shoes to it bring down the hero Thurnell Alston. The violent acts in this book, like Sheriff Hutchinson shoots Flinch in the mouth and leaving him for dead in jail cell. Many things that happened in this book happened in real life that we could all learn from, like making sure we're integrated and were equal, were not corrupt, and not use violence as a way to discipline someone.

Praying for Sheetrock, by esteemed author Melissa Fay Greene, is a story about the Confederate States' lost cause in the civil war and the traditions and moralities that are still imbued in the deep south even to this day. It is also a story about how Federal laws still haven't caught up with the backwaters cities of the South. Praying for Sheetrock is a magnificent story which brings to life the atrocities and inhumane treatments faced by the colored man within the last fifty years. Beginning during the 1970's, several years after the famous Civil Rights movement and passing of the unprecedented Civil Rights act, McIntosh County has remain magically untouched by the changes that have swept through the nation in the past decade The county,

treats her like a child and just like a child she is kept in this

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Silas Weir Mitchell were part of two worlds, one having to live and be treated for a nervous condition and the other having to study the conditions of nerves. Yet, in this particular moment in the late-19th century United States, one can detect a dialogue between doctor and patient in each of their short stories. That is exactly what is detected between Charlotte Perkins Gilman and S. Weir Mitchell. While both The Case of Dedlow and the Yellow Wallpaper use fiction to express themselves more thoroughly about mental health and science, The Case of Dedlow is more concerned with the aspect of scientific case study while the Yellow Wallpaper focuses on indicting science. This paper will compare and contrast the narratives of the aforementioned short stories and discuss the significance of their reception and how their audience understood them.

with a rest cure. The doctor in the story is much like the doctor that

The reader is first acquainted with Cosey’s power thirst as Sandler reminisces upon Cosey’s racism in the refusal to empower the African American community by simply selling profitable land to an African American individual within the line, “he felt active dislike for [Cosey], as when he refused to see land to local people” (Morrison). Through this remembering of the past, Sandler is imparting Cosey’s self-preservation as the most powerful member of the community through a perpetuation of segregation. Furthermore, Cosey appears to be focused upon the dismantling of the community he primary helped construct. Specifically, as Cosey senses the end of his life, he withdraws himself from the proceedings of his properties and allows his wife to appropriate control, who sells all the land to a developer cashing in on HUD money as “they planned some kind of cooperative: small businesses, Head Start, cultural centers for arts, crafts, classes in Black history and Self-defence” (Morrison). As Cosey steps away from his point of power, he sets about a protection of the self while ensuring that the legacy of the African-American community ends with his passing. Furthermore, Cosey leaves expressive commands not to sell his property to people within the community. So, Cosey’s wife also abandons her community, cashing in on tax deductions and selling to out-of-town developers, who seek to construct an empire off the communities plight. Furthermore, the developers fulfill Cosey’s propensity to oppress his fell citizens as they virtually stave off the African-American cultural lineage through the construction of a center for arts and class in African-American History. Through Cosey’s death, he guarantees that the African-American lineage is enshrined as though Cosey were the alpha and omega of African-American

The purpose of obtaining power is not for benefit townpeople as whole rather than to gain domination in the society without practicing any laws. For grandpa Hayden, he had the ambition to control others’ behaviors and “he wanted, he needed, power”（8) to make himself superior to others. It is a common phenomenon that racism is one of prevailing trend in the society of 1948. Grandpa Julian represents one of the typical examples that shows his extreme disdain and prejudice toward the Native Americans, who are treated poorly and badly at that time. Although grandpa had an idea