Seedfolks Character Analysis

This realistic fiction novel, by Edward Bloor, describes the problems and relationships that Paul discovers when unlocking the meaning of truth, no matter the obstacles people put up to block him from it. The motif of “sight”, is what introduces Paul to the universal statement of truth and makes him aware of what the people surrounding him can and cannot “see”. Paul Fisher, the main character, uses the motif of sight to have a new understanding of his friends, family, and himself.

People often think of family as positive, loving, and with no flaws. However, there is almost a stereotype that all families love each other and there aren’t problems or challenges in a family. Sometimes families put people through challenges and some families aren’t “perfect”. In the book Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Jolly has two kids and goes through challenges with her family. Most careful readers can see how Jolly has these challenges with her kids and how she is far off from the “perfect” family. She goes through many of these challenges in life and finds a way to overcome them. Jollys family shapes her identity because the challenges she faces ends up making her stronger. Jeremy and Jilly challenging her, LaVaughn helping her out, and her past family all shape her identity.

In today’s society, family is often attempted to be organized within a social structure. Within this structure family typically is consisted of mom, dad, daughter, and son. However, many families do not fit into this configuration. These families may include same sex couples, separated or divorced families, extended families, or even blended families. Even though these families may be happy and healthy, to many they are not considered real families. Going along with the topic of imperfect families, both Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Rodriguez try to break down the traditional family structure through their writing. While Kingsolver’s “Stone Soup” and Rodriguez’s “Family Values” explore the ideas of different family structures and traditional American values, “Stone Soup” breaks down what an actual family is like while “Family Values” expresses the value of family in different cultures.

In the book Seedfolks, a character named Kim travels to vacant lot in her town, Cleveland Ohio, to plant Lima Beans to honor her father, who passed away before Kim was even born. While Kim is in the process of planting her beans and watering them daily, people around the vacant lot being to notice her actions . Many people follow what Kim is doing and make there own little garden, which causes the community of Cleveland to be together and to communicate to one another. Throughout the book many character come and go to the garden, and each character shares something in common with someone else apart of this Community Garden. The novel Seedfolks shows that the garden has change everyone’s perspectives on things, and made them feel apart of something they might have never been apart of before. Some people that are involved are KIm, Ana, Sae Young, Maricela, and Curtis.

What is a family? As a young child, Kingsolver played in her room with a toy set called “The Family of Dolls”, which served as the perfect example of what a “real” family is: “four in number, who came with the factory-assigned names of Dad, Mom, Sis, and Junior.” She always ended up comparing her family to this perfect idea of a family that she played with. As a grown-up Kingsolver went through divorce herself, creating a “broken” home for her child. Kingsolver experienced the abnormalness and society’s ideals pushed through her head. But although her family was

Seedfolks is a story about people living in Cleveland and they live in a community that is not diverse at all.  The characters are all different races, so it is hard for them to go out in the world without thinking they are being judged or bullied by other people.  In the story, we see the characters building up to create a community garden.  This story is about how one act of kindness can generate another.  But that’s not the only theme to the story.  There are tons more morals and themes.  Such as the garden.  The garden helps bring people together and makes the dirty neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio more diverse.  The characters in the book all have something in common, they all deal with family issues and their races and cultures make them feel like they don’t belong.  But when the community garden is created, everything starts to change.  People become more open about their feelings, they have a lot of friends, and everyone we read about connects back to one another.  The characters in Seedfolks are different from one another.  They are all different races which makes them really self- conscious about how they look when they go out in public.  They do not easily meet new people due to their cultural differences and isolation in a large city.  But when they convert the vacant lot into the community garden, this provides them with the chance to break out and meet new people.  The book shows that this is an important thing because the more diverse and close a neighborhood

Is family important to you? Are they with you through your life? Do they make you laugh and happy? Well the place in the book is a mess. The government is corrupted and the people were not fair. The rich were separated to a different part of the city away from the poor. Families were lost and abused like Day’s. In the Legend series, Marie Lu illustrates the theme that family is important to happiness through Day’s actions, Day’s symbolism and Day’s dialogue.

Firstly how does the novel show the theme of family in the novel. An example from the novel is when Ada wants to move to the city to find a job in the city. But she can’t because she has to stay at home and look after her family because her mum has died and her dad is always drunk, so if she leaves things might go badly. Also, family is shown in the novel when Willand Murray don’t talk much anymore because after what happened

People would usually imagine a family typically as a usual portrait; beholding parents that are married to each other close aside , a few children in front, and alongside in the picture could include other relatives. In the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, this image is not necessarily always the definition of a family. In the novel the main character, Taylor Greer, drove away from Kentucky with two goals:to avoid pregnancy and to get away. While succeeding both goals, Taylor decides to inherit a child she named Turtle along the way, and also encounters a strong connection with other characters at her destination. Barbara Kingsolver creates this found connection between these characters to show that family can come from anywhere,

People often believe that family is one of the most important things in the world. This is seen in the historical fiction novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis when the Watson family take a trip to Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. The author uses symbolism to convey the message of family, during the Watson’s long road trip in their new car to Alabama.

Extended response to the book Seedfolks The book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman is about a community in Cleveland coming together through a community garden. The book starts with a little girl from Vietnam named Kim planting a few beans in honor of her dad, but little did she know it would blow up into a huge garden that changed many people's lives. The book goes through a broken community that has many prejudices and stereotypes against each other. This garden helps them all come together and break down the stereotypes.

An example of how her family values each other is her description of the conventions and norms of her family. They are thoroughly supportive of one another, attending every graduation, baby shower, birthday, and house warming party. Her father and siblings have burial plots together so that they are never separated. Life is lived with everyone being connected and concerned for not only each person’s well-being, but happiness as well. She says her “relatives form an alliance that represents a genuine and enduring love of family…”

Family is a very significant word that symbolizes strong relationships and the challenges that are overcome between the members. “The Red Convertible” and “The Rich Brother” are perfect examples of strong family ties in different ways. “The Red Convertible” and “The Rich Brother” are stories that display functionality in families, overcome challenges within families, and have common characteristics among families. The stories explore very different relationships of brothers, yet similar characteristics of interactions between brothers.

Life in nature would be nonexistent if rich soil and flowing water were barren. Therefore, themes of gardens and farms are embedded into a multitude of literature to show thankfulness for the prosperity of life. Religious texts, for instance The Bible, display this gratefulness through scripture and influence other works such as Gwen Bristow’s novel Celia Garth. Bristow expresses appreciation through the setting Sea Garden: an enchanted escape that draws parallels to the Garden Of Eden.

The Tale of Genji has some strong views and ideas of how the ideal woman should be and what is expected from her. As I read the text, I couldn’t help but try to understand why these characteristics and traits would be expected from a woman. I figured it had to do with the history and politics of the people who the people during that era, their religion and philosophy. The role of woman seemed to be important yet simultaneously neglected along with misconstrued. I asked myself “how could this be the way women were treated? How is this normal or acceptable? Why are we women looked upon as objects instead of equal with our men? Do our hearts beat also? I felt the need to break down the topic of “How does The Tale of Genji describe the ideal woman”, in a way that will allow me to express my thoughts and opinions on why I feel so strongly about these expectations and ideals.