The Book Of Margery Kempe: An Analysis

In 1393, at the age of twenty, Margery married John, who was well-known for his talent in business. Becoming pregnant soon afterward, she began to have frightening encounters with Satan, whom she claims tortured her by making her feel guilt and extreme remorse for a sin

Citizen is a narrative written to connect with the reader by telling stories in the second person . In the novel, “Citizen”, Claudia Rankine uses short stories and personal experiences to encapsulate the struggle that African American people endure when they are thrown against a sharp white background .

Human trafficking,the illegal practice of trading in human beings for the purpose of prostitution, forced labor, or other forms of exploitation, is a crime that affects the most vulnerable citizens of society. After drugs, it the largest criminal activity globally! The victims must be the primary concern for all law enforcement units. Human trafficking in the world can be diminished and possibly erased through teachings, government intervention, and awareness.

In Outliers, Gladwell attempts to answer, What makes some people successful while others cannot seem to realize their full potential? In U.S. society, people are considered successful when they have traits and characteristics: self-sacrifice, intelligence, talent. However, He says that the conditions and circumstances surrounding our lives are the significant influential factors that determine our success, not our inner ability or talent. These talents and abilities allow these people to be separate from society.

hedonistic urges. Later on Dixon points out “We are facing the loss of our generation…gay men lost to AIDS. What kind of witness will you bear? What truth telling are you brave enough to utter and endure the consequences of your unpopular message?” (Dixon 73-74).

“The rain this mourning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses what you know is there because doubt is inexorable; you put on your glasses. The trees, their bark, their leaves, even the dead ones, are more vibrant wet. Yes, and it’s raining. Each moment is like this—before it can be known, categorized as similar to another thing and dismissed, it has to be experienced, it has to be seen. What did he just say? Did she really just say that? Did I hear what I think I just heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? The moment sinks. Still you want to stop looking at the trees. You want to walk out and stand among them. And as light as the rain seems, it still rains down on you.” (page 9)

Edith Wharton uses setting to compliment the loneliness Ethan feels while living at his farm. The village Frome lives in is, at the start of chapter 1, described as being under “two feet of snow” (Edith Wharton, 11). Snow can oftentimes be interpreted negatively because of the bitter cold it brings, symbolizing hardships and, often, death. Death of loved ones is never easy on an individual, and people are known to draw into themselves when someone close to them has passed, resulting in their own isolation. Indeed, the topic of death is brought up shortly afterwards, when Frome mentions how his father’s death, and the “misfortune following it”, led him to halt his studies (Wharton, 11). Frome was so overcome by a feeling of loss that he’d given

Margery Kempe is a true feminist icon. Clever, ambitious, and married to Jesus. Kempe uses her mystical marriage to Jesus to achieve the life that she always wanted. Her ideal life is traveling to important religious monuments and being recognized as a notable religious figure. This paper will be discussing her literacy and how she uses it to her advantage, her mistrust of the patriarchy and how she defies the social norms placed on females.

In chapter one of Maus by Art Spiegelman, Artie sets out to visit his father, Vladek, in Rego Park after being away for nearly two years. Vladek has remarried to Mala after Artie 's mother 's suicide. Artie convinces his father to tell him his story so that he may write a book about his life in Poland and the war. Vladek begins his story by explaining how he met Artie 's mother, Anja. In the beginning of chapter two, the honeymoon, Artie visits Vladek regularly over the next months to record his story. Vladek mentions that Anja had an ex boyfriend, from Warsaw who took part in Communist activities. Anja 's parents explain how she had been translating the documents to her boyfriend. When she was warned that police were on their way she went into hiding and left the package with the seamstress. Later Anja 's father helps finance a textile factory for Vladek to manage. Around the same time Anja delivers her first newborn but then suffers from postpartum depression. Anja and Vladek then go off to a sanitarium where she recovers. They arrive back home to find out that the factory had been robbed. As this happens the conditions worsen for the Jews and Vladek later receives a letter from the government stating that he has been called into active duty from the reserves.

What if your entire life was based on the beliefs and actions of others? Nieve, unfortunately, is a victim of this. Given that the story starts out with her being as young as eight years old, she never has full control of what goes on in her life. Even as she gets older, she carries on the trends she grew up with, which only make matters worse. People are forced to cope with situations life hands them. Examples of this are shown through Wendy Guerra's Everyone Leaves.

In a much different way, Margery Kempe gained her power by separating herself from her role as mother. Despite having many children, she gained authority after she began her pilgrimage and left her family. Though she uses many of her “feminine” characteristics asa way to show God’s power and usage of her, she distanced herself from her role as mother in order to pursue her goals. In response to the Biblical command “Crescite et multiplicamini” (Kempe 2), meaning “increase and multiply”, she said that it applied, not only to the “begetting of children physically, but also to the gaining of virtue” (Kempe 2). This shows that, though she understood the God-given command to have children, she also valued improving her own person and “giving a good example” as ways of increasing the number of followers of Christ. Though she did not gain authority through her motherhood, in a sense the fact that she was a mother and wife, and decided to live a celibate life and journey without her husband or children, gave her authority. The stark contrast between how she choose to live her life and the way women were expected to life made people notice her and listen to what she had to say about God. This goal was also accomplished by her fits of tears and hysteria that drew attention to her perceived weakness. By being different she established herself as lesser to show that through God’s great power, she was able to work for God.

This past Friday, I attended Claudia Rankine’s reading at Fordham University Lincoln Center. Going into the reading I had no real idea of what was going to be discussed nor the true significance of her work, all I knew is that she is an important and worldly renowned poet. In the reading, she read excerpts from her book named Citizen “An American Lyric.” Which focuses on micro aggressions towards people of color. These events are examples of everyday racism that can be experienced by people of color in the US. Though I have read some of her work in the past, attending this reading and actually hearing the author express her work through her own emotions really took things to another level. It showed me a whole knew understanding of what I

She is married, soon thereafter conceives her first child, goes on to bear fourteen children and presumably to assume the responsibilities of a wife and mother whose position in late medieval society is assured by the longstanding reputation of her father, John Burnham, and the lesser but nonetheless worthy repute of her husband, John Kempe. However, that conventional story is fissured early in Margery's life by a personal vision of Jesus that comes to her shortly after the birth of her first child.

Religion in the Middle Ages takes on a character all of its own as it is lived out differently in the lives of medieval men and women spanning from ordinary laity to vehement devotees. Though it is difficult to identify what the average faith consists of in the Middle Ages, the life told of a radical devotee in The Book of Margery Kempe provides insight to the highly intense version of medieval paths of approaching Christ. Another medieval religious text, The Cloud of Unknowing, provides a record of approaching the same Christ. I will explore the consistencies and inconsistencies of both ways to approach Christ and religious fulfillment during the Middle Ages combined with the motivations to do so on the basis of both texts.

Margery Kempe was born in about the year 1373 as the daughter of John Brunham, a merchant, who was five times major of the town King's Lynn. She did not report much about her youth, but the readers get to know that she was not capable of reading and writing. Most noticeable evidence is the fact that she dictated the book to a priest. In 1393, Margery was married to John Kempe at the age of twenty. Soon afterwards, she became pregnant (she altogether had twenty children). Following the birth of her first child, she became mad. This period is described in the first chapter and finishes with a vision of Jesus, who spoke to her: "Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?" This vision had the effect that Margery was sane again. She reverted back to life in a glamorous way, by wearing extravagant clothes and starting her own businesses, which both failed. Shortly after these failures, it came to her mind that God wanted to punish her for her sins. Her life changed some more, when she started to hear sweet melodies at night: "This melody was so sweet that it surpassed all the melody that might be heard in this world, without any comparison, and it caused this creature when she afterwards heard any mirth or melody to shed very plentiful and abundant tears of high devotion, with great sobbings..." From now on she had no longer the desire