Short Essay Questions on Six Literary Works

In his first encounter with Sophie Wender, David notices that she has a sixth toe, which classifies her as a deviant. Unlike others who would report this to the authorities, David says “I felt sorry for her distress, and for Sophie, and for the hurt foot—but nothing more.” (Wyndham 11) This shows that David was looking with his heart

Through out her book she continues to raise questions to make you think such as: “What does it mean to be a man?” and “What does it mean to be a woman?” In her circumstance she is a male to female transsexual who is also a lesbian, whose girlfriend actually ended up transitioning from female to male. And she raises the question, “What does all of this mean?” she also talks about those who define themselves as neither gender (Bornstein). Through her book she strives to make readers think about their life and the people around them. The overall questions she asks are: “What is Identity?” and “What is your identity?” She uses personal experience, stories, theories, political activist, television shows, and humor to back up her theories and arguments while continually raising questions about gender, orientation, desire, and why we as a society are so attached to a dualistic gender system. She does a great job of achieving her goal in teaching readers about the basics of the topic while making readers think.

Jorgensen was born a male and served as a G.I. in World War two, after leaving the war, he transitioned from male to female. Jorgensen received an immense amount of public attention after her transition becoming one of the first transgender women to get media attention. After her transition she became a performer, and a highly respects and idolized member of the LGBT+ community.

It is impossible for David to fully acknowledge his homosexual identity due to the expectations provided by his father of what a “man” should

From a young age, David exemplified his clear disdain towards his father's adultery, alcoholism, and ways he treats women. His father’s despicable treatment of women shaped him to be uncertain about his sexuality, affected how he views masculinity, and inserted a sense of arrogance in David. He observed how his father believed he way “too good” to only be with one woman, so he constantly had affairs. Ironically, despite hating his father’s mannerisms, David covers his insecurity through arrogance and judgement of others as if he is “too good” to be in the presence of other people when in Paris. Therefore, David seems to be afraid of being alone, but he often appears most isolated when he is with other people because he cannot leave his facade to genuinely connect with anybody, and David ironically objectifies himself by discarding his personal desires and follows moral guidelines his father made for him. Further, from his barbaric masculinity, David’s father claims that all he wants is for David to become a real man (BULL SEX QUOTE). Overall, David’s

Of course, this decision is bound to end in a failure. Once again David defies his feelings by doing what he thinks is right. When David came to see Giovanni for the last time, the young Italian said some very honest and true words; ‘You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think will go out covered with soap- and you do not want to stink (…) You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love'

When contemplating their relationship, David laments, “I told her that I loved her . . . and I made myself believe it. But I wonder if I had. I was thinking . . . of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence . . . which had made [them] . . . so unrelated . . . to my life” (5). Here, David acknowledges his conscious efforts to convince himself that he loves Hella, implying that true love, on some level, must be intuitive and natural. He begins to realize that the love he feels for her is not real; he only enjoys the socially acceptable relationship that she offers. Their partnership requires no deeper emotion than pure sexual desire, which is the kind of detached relationship he craves. Similarly, after meeting Giovanni, David hopes “to burn out, through Hella, [his] image of Giovanni and the reality of his touch” (122), yet when walking down Raspail, a street David has walked with both of them, “the face that [glows] insistently before [him is] not her face but [Giovanni’s]” (94). Hella provides a distraction for David from his feelings for Giovanni, but David knows - subconsciously - that he loves Giovanni much more genuinely and intimately. In referencing ‘the reality of his touch,’ David acquiesces the authenticity of his love for Giovanni, so different from the shallow relationship he has

First off we can analyze David’s relationship with his father, which is very strained. He can’t speak to him as a son nor does he want to keep his fathers company. David first lies to his father about seeing his mother in his dreams. He dismisses his father from the truth by lying and saying he saw a grave yard. This ultimately

David is the societally ordered ideal of straight manhood, and killing him is Brandon and Phillip’s way to triumph over this order. David is established as the successful straight male because of his engagement to Janet and his depiction as the typical male. Janet, his fiancé, complains to Brandon about the role David forces her into. She tells him that David makes her feel like an “‘idiot girl’” and asks herself, “‘why must I try and be so smart with everyone but David?’” (Rope). Literary critic David Greven writes that in killing David, “the lover-killers mete out punishment to the heterosexual male who has abandoned their queer circle” (Greven 15). They choose David instead of Kenneth or a stranger because David has removed himself from the group of arguably queer individuals by his engagement to Janet. Thus, “David’s body within the chest… is the violated, savaged body of normative manhood”

Societal and familial gender and sexual socialization play a major role in David’s persistent self-hatred. His father placed an extreme emphasis on masculinity during David’s childhood. David overhears him tell his aunt that, “all he wants for David is that he grow up to be a man” (15). The heternormative culture of Giovanni’s Room taught David that in order to be a real man, you must desire, love, and marry a woman. As a result of this gender and sexual socialization, David experiences persistent feelings of self-hatred and in order to cope with those feelings, he continually lies to himself about his

David is an American white gay male who has a difficult time accepting his sexuality especially in relation to how that affects his role in society and the tropes of white masculinity. In trying to stay safe within the binaries of accepted social behaviors, especially in terms of society, David conforms to social norms and even subconsciously places the restrictions of social norms not only on himself but also on others. In doing so, he enforces the ideas of society on sexuality and masculinity through his many performances throughout the novel, showcasing the power of society as well as his inability to find the freedom he does not know he is searching for. David is aware that there are things about him that stray from socially accepted ideas of white manhood and so he tries very hard to keep himself on the straight path of socially accepted norms and behaviors. Due to the influence of society David associates manhood with power and therefore does his best to overcome social alienation and weakness by forcing his identity into the epitome of the right kind of masculinity and curbing any “perverted” or “unnatural” desires he may have. Part of his desire to conform to socially accepted ideas of manhood is because of his relationship with his father. His father wants him to “grow up to be a man” (Baldwin 15). The kind of man his father wanted to him to grow up to was in terms of society’s ideas about manhood. It was in terms of the heteronormative white male masculinity. This is why David states that his relationship with his father—who for the most part did fit within society’s version of masculinity—was fine because his hid his true identity and showed him that which he wanted to be, not due to a true desire for it but in order to maintain the protection of society and not be alienated from it. He says, “And we got on quite well, really, for the vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in

This film is an intensely sympathetic and powerful account of one individual’s struggle to gain acceptance from her family, friends, and the people around her. Observational shots showing Marianna Klapczyńska’s life are intertwined with the documentation of a theatre rehearsal that is, reading the text of the screenplay. Instead of narrating the documentary, Karolina Bielawska allows the story to be told through a screenplay with two actors reading back and forth. Marianna Klapczyńska is a 40 year old women who has decided to sue her parents so that she can pursue her dream in getting sex reassignment surgery (Barraclough, 2015). She and her mother are not on good terms, her mother does not except her for who she is becoming, which is a woman.

David had three kids, Amnon, Tamar and Absalom. We read how Amnon said that he was so in love with Tamar and he even felt sick, but the only thing he wanted was to have sex with her. Amnon rapes Tamar; although, Tamar begged him to not do that awful act. Amnon does not even call her my sister, he says to her, “I am in love with Tamer, the sister of my brother Absalom.” He doesn’t want to call her sister because he doesn’t want reality to hit him.

David as a political symbol writes Laurie Schneider “Its symptomatic importance can be appraised only in the context of the general pattern of ‘cross-breeding’ between theology and philosophy, between literature and the fine arts, that molded the intellectual and artistic climate of the new age.” (Schneider 213), she also states that David was the primordia of Renaissance

For David, isolation is safety. It was always a struggle to be out in the world and be his true self. When David would be in Joey’s room or Giovanni’s room he felt safe and was able to be who he truly is; a gay man. The feeling of isolation and privacy was what he needed in order to feel comfortable enough to act as him self. David was constantly switching up in different situations and environments because he believed that society is totally against homosexuality. David loved Giovanni, but hated himself for loving him. “There opened in me a hatred for Giovanni, which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.(pg.84) David recognizes that the reason he hates Giovanni, is because he hates that he loves Giovanni.