The Carrie Diaries By Candace Bushnell

How would you deal with living in a community in isolation, feeling lost with those around you, and having your whole life changed with one drop of blood? FOUR by Veronica Roth displays all this with a story of a young man named Tobias Eaton. This book demonstrates the drama and strategy which keeps readers involved. From being placed in one environment from birth and choosing something precisely different, readers can see what Tobias had to go through. The main elements of this book are conflict, style, and mood.

The book uses fictional documents, such as book excerpts, news reports, and hearing transcripts, to frame the story of Carietta "Carrie" White, a 17-year-old girl from Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie's mother, Margaret, a fanatical Christian fundamentalist, has a vindictive and unstable personality, and over the years has ruled Carrie with an iron rod and repeated threats of damnation, as well as occasional physical abuse. Carrie does not fare much better at her school where her frumpy looks, lack of friends and lack of popularity with boys make her the butt of ridicule, embarrassment, and public humiliation by her fellow teenage peers.

To say that Cheryl Strayed has overcome many things in her life is an understatement. She has an unmistakable amount of courage and bravery. Cheryl goes through a complete transformation within her life. The person she becomes after all of her pain and struggles is unbelievable. During her tough journey through life, Cheryl has truly found herself and becomes the person she knows her mother raised.

Strong-willed, intelligent, and motivated are only some of the words we can use to describe Betty Friedan. Credited as being the mother of the second wave of feminism, Friedan was an influential women’s right activist during the twentieth century but her legacy has continued to strive well into the twenty-first century. Friedan is the author of a variety of books including The Feminine Mystique, which became a phenomenon because of its powerful message to women for self-exploration outside their traditional roles. This book helped to define Friedan’s role in the fight for women empowerment and equality. It evoked emotions in many women who agreed that they did not want to fulfil traditional roles, creating an atmosphere of change. She was also the cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), serving as its first president and also helped to create the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and the National Women’s Political Caucus. With these organizations, Friedan became the face of the women’s movement and encouraged women to take a stand against the pathological idealization of women by creating a sense of community

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

She describes her tenth birthday as being difficult. “But I did not have a cake times were too hard so I celebrated with ironing. I hope by my next birthday we will have peace in our land so that I can have a nice dinner.” This lack of even small luxuries such as a nice dinner, were common. It is easy to imagine that many homes were lacking in goods in the South, especially during war, because of their less industrialized economy. So, children like Carrie were often tasked with chores such as knitting, sewing, and washing. She talked about outings to church, often lamenting when she missed church on Sundays. She also missed being able to go to school. She recounts looking for her teacher, and eventually going back to school.

However, Carrie defies the norms of teenage girls, showing a lack of interest in boys, albeit her circumstances doesn’t allow the start of heterosexual relationships. Additionally, Carrie has no father figure, leading to her mother, Margaret, being the dominant authority in her life. Essentially, all the main characters are women, with men acting as pawns for their significant other. Thus, the expected gender dynamics of male dominance over women cannot take place. Ultimately, the maternal figure that is present is destructive and fails to relinquish control of her daughter to a proper male authority. For instance, Margaret denies Carrie’s request of going to the prom with Tommy, claiming “After the blood, comes the boys, sniffing, slobbering like dogs” (Carrie 1976). However, Margret is not enough to control Carrie, leading her daughter revealing her powers and granting her agency. Consequently, Carrie’s agency comes at a price, her choice of attending prom leads her to ultimate humiliation. At prom, Pigs’ blood is dumped on her when she was crowned Prom Queen. As a result, Carrie hallucinates everyone laughing at her and unleashes her power onto the crowd. In a way, Carrie White creates a true equality as she kills men, women and children, regardless if they are innocent or not. The film acts as a cautionary tale of what happens when female power is uncontrolled and available to the discretion of the female user, demonizing

Scientist are researching genetic modification for many reasons. Some people think we are not good enough the way we are, and want to create a ‘perfect’ person. We have been given the ability to learn how to heal sickness and fix wounds with science. However, we have a responsibility to use this information wisely. We have been created with unique gifts and those gifts are important to the enhancement of life. Likewise, while researching about the Author of “The Perfect Stranger”, Amy Sterling Casil, I have discovered that she also has similar feelings about the gifts that we have all been given. We need to consider a few things as we review Casil’s story “The Perfect Stranger”. First, medical advancement is a great thing. Next, we need to make sure we are taking responsible steps while advancing and not creating even more division in our society. And lastly, we need to make sure we don’t lose our diversity and unique qualities. Although, some people believe genetic modification is what we need to better the human race, in actuality genetic modification can be dangerous, because overstepping our boundaries will produce something that is no longer authentic or that is unable to relate on a genuine level.

Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Claire Standish or “the princess” portrays the stereotypical popular teenage girl in The Breakfast Club. She is in detention with everyone else because she decided to skip class and go shopping, which also plays into the stereotypical teen girl image. It can also be assumed that she is spoiled and rich since her father tried to get her out of detention but failed, and she mentions to the group that her parents only use her to get back at the other one. She brings a fancy lunch of sushi while the other teens either have nothing or the standard lunch one’s parents might pack for them. There are a couple of times in the movie that she brings up her social standing and could even be considered as looking down on those who are not as popular as her. Even closer towards the end of the movie she informs the others that if they were to say hello to her in the hallway in front of her friends, she would have no choice but to ignore them. By the end of the movie, she has opened up to everyone else about her fears of letting her peers down and has formed a close relationship with Bender.

A quote by the author that highlights this idea of not being able to be who you are is, “I wanted to be a princess and a prince; but I would never have said so, then”. This emphasizes the underlying fear many have of being judged by the outside world. It is very unfortunate that so many are still unable to say the things they wish to say and dress the way they want to dress because society perceives it to be unacceptable or wrong.

In our world we are often made to feel as if we are different,as if we don’t belong. For young princess Aislynn this is how she feels all the time. Anytime she is stuck talking to people she doesn’t see good enough to talk to, you’d expect that things would be boring and bleak. But Elissa Sussman adds different patterns of descriptive sentences to better show the tone of the social interactions of Princess Aislynn.

The princesses having, or not having, outside assistance in their journeys makes their character act and think differently.

Gone Girl (written by Gillian Flynn) and The Girl on The Train (written by Paula Hawkins) are two mystery thriller novels and New York Times Best Sellers, both receiving ‘Goodreads choice Awards Best Mystery and Thriller’. Critics have addressed the newfound novel, The Girl on The Train as being a dub for Gone Girl, which was published three years prior to The Girl on The Train. The two of the books, have a story line basis to be classified as psychological suspense novels, typically containing the sense of crime or peril, centred on the main character’s unstable emotional states. The purpose of this lecture is to compare, contrast and evaluate the two texts, observing the effectiveness of the writers’ language choices throughout the books.

Amy Dunne at first expression is a nice, cool, stylish female who would be an ideal daughter and wife. She is her parents’ inspiration for a children’s book series called “Amazing Amy”, which was about a perfect girl who overcomes all obstacles that come her way. To her husband Nick Dunne, she is a dedicated wife, who loves him dearly, and struggles to make her marriage work. Okay now let’s give you the real Amy, analyzing her throughout the book it seems she should be diagnosed with Borderline personality disorders.