Susan Pfeffer's "Life As We Knew It" Essay

Katie Nolan, Francie’s mother, is the main reason that Francie is able to survive her arduous childhood and succeed in life. Food, heat and protection are always available to the Nolan children even if it means that Katie has to work multiple jobs or even sacrifice some of her own needs. Katie gives all she can to provide for her children and Francie truly values her mother’s hard work. Francie appreciates her mother’s thougtful acts, but still, Francie develops

Yet her compassion, as real as it is, also has a certain element of shallowness, or at least inexperience about it. She has lived the majority of her life in isolation, on an island known with her only companionship being that of her father. Growing up on this deserted island, Miranda learns to live and abide by the example set by Prospero. He is her only contact with the humanity and therefore he is her only friend and teacher. She knows no other woman and therefore had no female figure to aid the process of raising her. She is naïve and unaware of life's experiences, having been shielded from the rest of the world.      

The text recounts the events leading up to the the disappearance of Miranda, a young British girl who is struggling to deal with her mother’s sudden killing in Haiti, where she was on a work trip. The narration by the house, her twin brother Eliot, and Ore, a Nigerian girl she meets while at Cambridge leads us to find about Miranda’s pica, a desire to eat non-nutritive substances which lapses into more nefarious, vampiric desires. This is a condition that has plagued her family, particularly the

Upon further investigation into Miranda and Dev’s relationship you realize that Dev’s feelings for Miranda are purely lustful and have no substance, Meanwhile Miranda refuses to see any flaw in Dev’s personality or appearance. So even if the relationship hadn’t been based on deception it was still unhealthy to begin with. However, the relationship was based on the deception of Dev’s wife so not only was it dysfunctional in the ordinary sense, it was also sprinkled with infidelity. Later on in the story Miranda has to babysit what is essentially a tiny version of her lover(a young boy named Rohin) and she is exposed to the ill effects that illicit relationships can have on the loved ones of cheaters. Upon seeing the result that those deceitful actions had on the family involved Miranda seems to realize Dev isn’t that great if he is able to hurt his wife emotionally in that respect. She makes excuses to no longer have to spend time with him and slowly frees herself of a false relationship while gaining some more self-respect and independence. This is an analyzation of the social institution of marriage and relationships in

In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).

Porter begins the story with Miranda and her brother Paul exploring a graveyard while out hunting. As they continue with their hunt, Paul shoots a rabbit that is about to give birth. Paul proceeds to carefully slit the dead rabbit open revealing her young unborn babies. This moment is an epiphany for young Miranda as she understands the meaning of rebirth and the cycle of life and death. Miranda later reflects upon this incident years later in a foreign city’s busy bazaar and is reminded of the event that transformed her from an innocent child to a more experienced and knowledgeable young woman.

In this reading, the narrator talks about the reaction of Mrs. Millard who had heart problems, when she notices of her husband´s death. Louise Mallard is at home with her sister Josephine, when they hear of a rain accident; then Josephine tells Louise that her husband has been killed it in the accident.

In a harrowing story one woman’s search for true love, Zora Neale Hurston draws readers in through her use of literary devices throughout the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and influences readers to care deeply about Janie’s life. On page 166, when Tea Cake and Janie struggle to survive a raging river, Hurston creates a tone of fear through her use of word choice, similes, and sentence structure. In a book filled with suspense to see what happens to Janie next, Hurston manages to rise above that suspense and create an even larger tone of fear during this scene.

Like a rich man telling a poor man to stop thinking about money,’ and ‘There was always class between us’. This can be seen as a metaphorical representation of the shifting power distribution of the time, the rise of the middle class instigated more opportunities for working and lower class people to gain wealth and power and further blurred the line between the traditional societal divisions. Clegg is representative of the old, caste-bound patriarchy and Miranda is a pioneer of the new, less rigid system. Miranda herself, however, makes reference to her hatred of ‘the new class people with their cars and their money and their tellies and their stupid vulgarities and their stupid crawling imitations of the bourgeoisie.’ and views Clegg as the epitome of ‘the new people’ although it is possible that this view is a result of her idolisation of GP and subsequent adoption of his ideologies and values rather than her own opinion as she also expresses her ‘…despair for days afterwards, thinking how much of their rotten, pretentious blood I must have in me’, in reference to her parents, implying that she feels she does not belong to the class she was born into or that she simply wishes to be free of the class-system altogether.

In Louise Ederich’s book Tracks the story is told with two narrators. Having two narrators helps show you the two different points of views. That’s what make humans unique, the way we view things, the way we hear things and interpret things is different from anybody else. So we are reading two completely different forms of the story. Do we know if that information is reliable, well I guess that’s for you as a reader to figure out? Many different forms of literary devices were used very well in this book, but the use of Metaphors and Symbolism is what really stood out. One of the most important things in this book is survival, it plays a pivotal role in just about everybody’s life

Rebecca Stead incorporates the veil metaphor into the story when Miranda has a moment of realization towards Julia. On pages 143 and 144, Miranda’s veil is lifted and the truth about Julia’s personality is exposed. Originally, Julia is thought of as a rude and selfish girl, but Miranda’s view about her soon changed. While the two girls listened to a school music assembly, Miranda observed Julia and the way she watched Annemarie, Julia’s best friend. Miranda noticed that Julia did not watch the stage, but she looked at Annemarie. This simple action helped Miranda realize that Julia cared deeply for Annemarie, who Julia argued with not too long ago. Miranda saw that “Julia’s look was my look. My looking at Sal,” on page 144. In this quote, Miranda sees the way she looks at Sal, her best friend, in Julia’s eyes. In this

Marina grows and changes from her fragmented shell as she observes and builds relationships with those at the boarding school. The use of contrast emphasises Marina’s growth in trust with those around her. “I’m starting to feel mildly safe. That’s dangerous, I’d better be careful.” Her change is evident as she later writes, “I suppose I do trust them a bit, yet when I came to this place I was so determined never to trust anyone.”

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

“The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag had a compelling writing style that gave off the impression that it was a gossip column. Sontag’s short story focuses on the conversations the unnamed central character’s friends have. This unnamed male has AIDS and his condition dictates these conversations. While getting treatment at a hospital, his friends visit and bring him gifts, such as flowers and chocolate. After a while, the doctor sends the unknown protagonist home; Quentin, one of his friends, moves into his house to take care of him until he can manage by himself. His friends engage in a conversation about his disease and his condition. Even though, the unnamed character started getting better, “The Way We Live Now” ends with him in the hospital

We see from the passage above that Miranda is not sure whether her life before the island was a dream or whether it was reality. She is a character who is associated with the distinction between the two, because she lives on the island with