Summary Of Paula Dan's Short Story 'Faces'

Williams’ son was labeled a body guard which is seen as a masculine, aggressive figure, and Jessie was labeled a hostess, which is seen as a feminine, weak figure; this story shows the everyday, hypocritical stereotypes labeled onto even children at a young age which strengthens her argument (Williams). Williams’ argument relied heavily on pathos and logos in a constant cycle to help the reader visualize the issues at hand, but at a more personal level.

In The Chrysanthemums, Elisa is a woman who is trapped at her husband Henry’s ranch by her gender and society’s idea of what a woman can manage. She is a very strong, capable woman who works all day to make the house spotless and the garden thrive. Elisa is good at her work, “behind her stood the neat white farm house… it was hard swept looking little house, with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on the front steps”. That show just how much work she puts into keeping the house clean. Elisa knows she is capable of successfully accomplishing any number of what society labels as men’s work and being held back makes her bitter and resentful. In an attempt to feel freedom, Elisa gifts some of her chrysanthemums to a traveling solicitor. She is devastated when she spots the flowers dumped on the road on her way to town with Henry. Elisa, like her flowers, feels discarded and devalued by men and society.

Thus, he treats her like a child and “laughs at [her]… ” and calls her a “‘...little girl’” (Gilman 90, 94). For these two female characters in “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, their struggles are a direct result of male dominance, and their coping mechanism escorts them away from the world that devalues them.

Amy Tan’s short story, Fish Cheeks, outlines the general idea of self-acceptance. As the narrator, fourteen year old Tan declares her love for her minister’s son, Robert, who unlike herself, is “as white as Mary in the manger” (Tan 1). This crush is anything but healthy, primarily because Tan is reluctant to reveal her true self to him. This hesitance she portrays is strikingly recognizable in the teenagers of today’s world. Amy Tan 's story, "Fish Cheeks," is significant to the adolescents of today 's society through the overall structure, quality, and applicability of the piece as the struggle to accept oneself as an individual is still as present as it ever was.

Self image is crucial for an individual’s sense of well being. It can also be a source for their identity and dreams for the future. As well, others’ impressions of the individual considerably affects their view of themselves. This interaction can either build their self esteem or tear it down. In his short story, “The Glass Roses”, Alden Nowlan explores the idea that when an individual is coming of age and is struggling to determine their identity, how others’ perceive them - specifically father figures - deeply influences how they perceive themselves. Stephen, the protagonist, is a fifteen year old boy on the cusp of adulthood working in his father’s woodcutting company. As he finds fascination in beauty and feels enslaved by the work, he fails to gain his father’s approval and falls to depression. Fortunately, he forms a friendship with the Polack, who provides a kinder definition of being a man as well as a hope for the future.

In the short story, the writer tells a woman’s depression which guides her to break the limits and restrictions over woman. The woman who has no name or identity symbolises all women’s suppressed position in patriarchal society. In the story, the woman describes the house and her rooms with the words; ancestral hall, old-fashioned chintz, barred windows, heavy-immovable bed. The descriptions depict the house as patriarchy’s realm. Also, the yellow wallpaper’s surrounding of her shows the woman in a trapped, confined and repressed position. Not only the yellow symbolise the weakness, but the paper also

The author agrees with the idea of women as victims through the characterisation of women in the short story. The women are portrayed as helpless to the torment inflicted upon them by the boy in the story. This positions readers to feel sympathy for the women but also think of the world outside the text in which women are also seen as inferior to men. “Each season provided him new ways of frightening the little girls who sat in front of him or behind him”. This statement shows that the boy’s primary target were the girls who sat next to him. This supports the tradition idea of women as the victims and compels readers to see that the women in the text are treated more or less the same as the women in the outside world. Characterisation has been used by the author to reinforce the traditional idea of women as the helpless victims.

While outdated traditions obtain the ability to negatively impact the relationships between characters, they are also capable of creating internal conflicts within a character. In both texts, readers witness the effect traditions have on one’s morality, mental mind, and sense of identity. The occurrence of atrocious, old traditions plays a significant role in corrupting one’s morals, inducing conflict with a character’s past values. This is clearly exhibited when “Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands” (51). The ritual itself of hurling stones at another human is a demoralizing act that should not be justified by society, and reveals her iniquitous and immoral traits as she lacks awareness of her dehumanizing actions amidst participating in the ceremony. Mrs. Delacroix picks a colossal stone amongst a variety of possible sizes, demonstrating her loss of morals and redefined focus on the power she obtains from this abhorrent tradition. Moreover, traditions from the past are

The character of the mother executes the tell-tale signs of counterfeit happiness when she tells the murderous story of the narrator’s father’s brother. “‘Oh honey,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot that you don’t know. But you are going to find out’” (36).

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

Through history people have tended to judge the lives of other by what they see on the outside, and completely disregard their actually character. “Stereotyping in the World” today has become a greater and greater problem has history moves on. Some have been known to look past these cases such as Reginald Rose’s book Twelve Angry Men. The play has been shown that one voice can change the thoughts of many by getting past the first layer and breaking it down to their inner person. Twelve Angry Men has showed the theme of “Stereotyping in the World” through the characters’ proper reasoning, communicating, and believing in good faith.

Judy Jones’ cruelty was explicitly revealed through her selfishness, wilfulness and impulse-driven behavior. She was always trifling with others’ affection. When she was interested in a man, she did not hesitate to take advantage of her charm to achieve her goal - making him crazily love her. Nevertheless, once losing the excitement, she mercilessly kicked the guy out of her current life and looked for a new delight. Her wickedness, however, did not stop at the “new one in, old one out” attitude towards love. When the miserable neglected man gradually forgot her and was about to start a new life, she tried to draw his attention back by “granting him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer”, then left him, hurt him again, and of course, non-stop looked for another

"The Chrysanthemums" introduces us to Elisa Allen, a woman who knows she has a gift for growing things, but it seems to be limited to her garden. Diligently working in her garden, Elisa watches as men come and go, living their lives unconfined, wondering what it must feel like to have that freedom. That emotion is revealed as Elisa gases at her husband and acquaintances talking, "she looked down toward the men by the tractor shed now and then." As she tills the soil for her chrysanthemums Elisa tills the thoughts in her head. The garden she so desperately maintained represents her world. A world that will only flourish if nourished. Emotional nourishment and stimulation is what Elisa lacked and longed for. The garden is limited in space to grow and so is her marriage. The garden is safe, non-threatening and so is her world. The garden contains many different elements that make it what it is, although unseen, and if the proper nourishment is not given it will die, as with Elisa.

In the short stories “The Bill” (1951) and “Take Pity” (1958) by Bernard Malamud, the author focuses on the theme of victimization that can be associated with the characters’ pride, and in their cases, willfulness. In “The Bill,” Ms. Panessa, an elderly woman who partners with her husband in a family-owned delicatessen, unwittingly victimizes herself and others with her own sense of honor. Similarly, in “Take Pity,” the main character, Eva Kalish, owns a grocery store with her husband in a “dead neighborhood” (175). Akin to the relationship Panessa develops with Mr. Schlegel in “The Bill,” when Kalish becomes a widow, she is caught in a vicious cycle wherein her pride and

Do you fit into the standards of society? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you really know who you are? Margaret Atwood puts these questions at our feet in her short stories “Scarlet Ibis”, which is a work that shows a wealthy family on vacation and Christine, the mother and wife, thinks she is being looked at under a microscope by everyone around her and “Lusus Naturae”, which portrays a young girl that seemingly has a disease, Porphyria, but she could also be a vampire, she is kept at arms length with her family and others, only to be kept in seclusion, she is described as a “freak of nature”. What both of these stories have in common is societies expectations and views on what is “normal” and how the self- degrading reflections the characters see make them criticize and internalize who they are in catastrophic ways. Atwood masterfully uses characterization and symbolism to show the destructive standards that society has and those who stand on the outside attribute their lack of acceptance and identity on who they are and not to the outside world.