Flow with the Changes For most of us, ordinary is the only adjective we would want to use to describe our life. Although we may strive for a simple life, its attainment might not be possible. In the book Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, a father who likes to read articles to the family during dinner, is the perfect example of this kind of character. He has a family of five. However, big changes occur in his family. An ordinary life is all he seeks, but the world keeps challenging him with changes that completely destroy him. His experiences in Ragtime represent the life and value system of middle/upper class men at the turn of the 20th century. He also represents tragedy; everything can seem perfect at one moment, and yet the next might …show more content…
“No one in the family was unmindful of the dangers, yet no one would have him stay because of them” His life before the tragedies was already quite abominable. The expedition to the North Pole was a turning point in his life. Although his relationships with his wife has never been joyful, it’s about to get much worse. He felt completely invisible after his return. Mother learned all about his business. He even cried. Even his son realized that “His Father, the burly self confident man who had gone away, and came back gaunt and hunched and bearded” (98). Changes in the family ruined him mentally and physically. The author additionally demonstrates his resentment towards of changes through the way he reacts to a full baseball team of immigrants: revulsion. The involvement of his family with Coalhouse Walker was another turning point. Father hated him. His appearance indirectly killed him with the chain of unfortunate events. Father claims that it’s ridiculous to let a car take over everyone’s life (157). He also blames Mother for taking Sarah. He even attempts to threat Conklin. He tries everything to turn his world in the reverse direction. Nonetheless he is doomed with an unstable life. Father, the compassionate husband, dies on the Lusitania ship. A middle-class man started a business, sought an ordinary life, and ended up having many severe family problems. Doctorow made Father a tragic man by
As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.
One of the most difficult, yet rewarding roles is that of a parent. The relationship between and parent and child is so complex and important that a parents relationship with her/his child can affect the relationship that the child has with his/her friends and lovers. A child will watch their parents and use them as role models and in turn project what the child has learned into all of the relationship that he child will have. The way a parent interacts with his/her child has a huge impact on the child’s social and emotional development. Such cases of parent and child relationships are presented in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. While Roethke and Plath both write about a dynamic between a child-father relationship that seems unhealthy and abusive, Plath writes about a complex and tense child-father relationship in which the child hates her father, whereas Roethke writes about a complex and more relaxed child-father relationship in which the son loves his father. Through the use of tone, rhyme, meter, and imagery, both poems illustrate different child-father relationships in which each child has a different set of feelings toward their father.
E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime is a story involving certain characters, each trying to find his or her place in America. Doctorow focus’s on many themes throughout the novel, however, one theme that he gives to the reader from the very beginning of the novel is the American dream. Many characters throughout the novel individually take diverse journeys in order to fulfill what they might describe as “The American Dream.” Throughout Ragtime several characters venture upon momentous journeys whether they be sensible or unwise, in order to try and achieve their personal pursuit of the American dream.
His mother treats him like a slave, giving him daily chores and unbelievably ruthless punishments. He has become inhuman to her as she refers to him as “It.” The only hope of survival relies on his dad, in God, or in a miracle. His story promotes the courageous human spirit and the determinate to survive.
The young sisters, who know little about their father’s suffering, make fun of the hole without knowing the consequence of their action. The father is unable to intervene on his daughters’ behalf, as he sits there “face paled.” (40), till the mother orders the children to keep quiet. Apparently, his role in the family structure prevents him from expressing his emotion directly to his children. Nevertheless, after a visit to the doctor, it turns out that the father’s internal organs are intact despite their state of severe deformation, which shows the father’s incredible determination to remain functional in his family role after his tragic loss. Ironically, the doctors “pronounced him in great health” (41), which implies that apparent defects in mental health could be suppressed by the father’s unwillingness to challenge his image as a man, thus they are not easily detectable. The father’s behavioral patterns after his father’s death are in accordance to many stereotypical views of men.
Phil’s constancy and lack of variation are embodied in rigid words such as “always,” “of course,” and “Type A.” Extreme diction such as “overweight,” “nervous,” and “workaholic” convey Phil as a worrywart with no fun at all in his life. These words mock Phil as a man sincerely obsessed with work that had lost track of his priorities. Goodman deepens her point when she introduces Phil’s family, using diction in relation to business to further emphasize the importance of work to Phil. To Phil’s wife Helen, “A company friend said ‘I know how much you will miss him.’ And she answered, ‘I already have.’” His eldest son tells the reader of how he went around the neighborhood gathering research on his father. His daughter recalls how whenever she was alone with him they had nothing to say to each other. When Phil’s youngest son reminisces on how he tried to mean enough to his father to keep him at home. Goodman informs the reader that the youngest child was Phil’s favorite. Goodman’s sentence structure of long, short, long, helps the shorter sentence stick out more to the reader. But she ends the paragraph with a sad ironic sentence, “My father and I only board here.” implying that he never really was successful.
People are born into families without decision. We cannot choose our family and sometimes that is a bad thing. In some situations, people have a bad home life growing up as a child. Until a person is old enough to make their own decisions they will have to do what their parents tell them. When a person becomes old enough to decide for themselves what their morals are they can begin to live freely. In Everyday Use, Barn Burning, and Those Winter Sundays, the authors Alice Walker, William Faulkner, and Robert Hayden all illustrate significant change in the characters Mama, Sarty, and the man at the end of the stories.
Parents are perhaps the greatest influences in a person life. They mentor us, shape us and model us into the type of people they would be proud of. This is no different in the movie, Ordinary People which portrays a family of three struggling through a tragedy and its byproducts. The movie highlights the three different parenting styles through the two parents, Beth and Calvin, of Conrad. Furthermore the movie underscores the impact of externals events on parenting styles relating the Person-Situation Controversy to Parenting styles.
When his father died, Owen Brown’s family suffered. Without any help, the family’s crops failed that year, and they were forced to sell their cattle. The family tried to maintain their farm, but the fierce winter the next year made things even more difficult; most of their remaining
He was used to live in his brother’s shadow, but when the boat accident happened to them, he was the only one to survive. As he was always indentifying himself the less important one, he considered it was wrong that he was the one who would still have a life. As a result of nervous breakdown, he tried to kill himself with cutting his wrists in the bathroom, fortunately his father found out and save him. Then he went to the psychiatric for four months. When he comes back, there are still issues he needs to deal with.
Personally, without a family or gratitude, it is difficult to become the person one strives to be. Such as, “I’m going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect” (Krakauer 21). Instead of not being offended at the thought of a new car he could have paid attention how his parents felt about him; they were proud of him and his accomplishments and in no way or form were they trying to buy his respect. McCandless shows no understanding of others, but when it comes to him, his feelings are all that matters. Not only does he show no appreciation for who his parents shaped him to be, but he takes his living situation for granted. For example, when McCandless decides to run away, “I now walk out to live amongst the wild” (Krakauer 69). He had hundreds of resources at his home and he could have used them, but he valued his self-interest over others. Living in a middle-classed home with the support handed to him, he could have sought the guidance needed since he felt unhappy: therapy, safe adventure planning, and more. McCandless did not realize what he had growing up and it is a shame that he ignored these useful
hostile environment his father sought to escape. His mother betrayed him as she never embraced
his father’s death, eventually the true measure of his character comes forth (Book I: 11).
1. He begins to dislike his father’s naïve provincialism. He felt stupid to not understand why.
he is forced to keep the image of his father alive by writing letters pretending to be his father. In