The Girl Analysis

Characters, in Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, force the protagonist, Rachel, to choose between her white and black side. They only acknowledge her black side while only celebrating her white qualities. Consequently, Rachel feels the obligation to accept the roles that have been thrust upon her and ignores part of her race because of the commentary from her family and peers. Rachel adapting to the portrayal of her racial identity to appeal to the normalized opinions of her appearance, demonstrates her tendency to comply with the categorization people of color face throughout society. Ultimately, leading Rachel to pick and choose the parts of her racial identity that most please the people she is with.

The film 4 Little Girls (1997) Directed by Spike Lee shows in detail the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that occurred on September 15th, 1963. Dr. King comment on the event stating that it is “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity". The movie was entirely made nearly 30 years later, but still gives us an investigative feel while explaining how Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise still lived their lives day to day. Through the use of eye witness, family members, and friends we are given a detailed analysis of the event and the aftermath while juxtaposing church desecrations from the mid 1990’s. and institutional racism. 4 Little Girls was also well received by critics and truly a test for an experienced filmmaker.

“In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right”(Hobbes). This quote is talking about the nature people, and how they measure if something is “right” based on how profitable it is for them. As Thomas Hobbes did, I believe that people are generally selfish and will only try to benefit themselves as shown in the article “The Dying Girl No One Helped” where a girl was stabbed and no one helped her even though people saw her dying.

Weldon Kees’ “For My Daughter” is based on a man’s predictions about the hardships that his daughter might go through in her life. Kees uses tone and imagery to describe how this man sees a painful future for his daughter filled with sorrow and hopelessness, the forthcoming of her death. By looking at the poet’s diction I believe the speaker (the man) can imagine or feel the pain and suffering that his daughter would go through. He uses this imagery to convey what the speaker’s bitter tone.

Her true parental love for her son radiated in her writing. At the beginning of the letter, she almost regrets sending her beloved son on this hazardous trip across

In St Lucy’s girls raised by wolves by Karen Russell. Some wolf girls got taken to school to learn to be human. Some of the girls were able to change and graduate and some did not graduate. In the passage Mirabella was not able to adapt to the human environment. She was mean, selfish, and crazy. Have you ever known someone who didn’t try hard enough to pass?

The book “Pretty Good for a Girl” is a biography on a cross country star and her rise to the top, but also her spiral downward with her personal battle to win.  Leslie Heywood was a long distance runner with no weakness or fear. Heywood takes us through her early years filled with eating disorders, sexual abuse, and an unhappy home life. It wasn't a drive to win, but a drive to be accepted as one of the guys.

Commonly referred to as a classic by millennials, Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters in 2004, allows an interesting critique of racism when viewed through a sociological lens. The story follows Cady Herron, a normal teenager- except for the fact that she grew up in Africa, homeschooled by her scientist parents- as she is forced to integrate into the public-school system in Illinois. Never having been in an institution like a public school, Cady quickly learns what not to do and who to hang out with. Through trial and error, Cady assimilates and becomes a ‘normal’ American teenager who is part of the ‘popular’ crowd, befriending “The Plastics”; Karen Smith, Gretchen Wieners, and their leader, Regina George. The story of Mean Girls is not as superficial as it seems. This film illustrates the perils of not only teenage life, but current life in America, and accurately depicts the struggles that minorities face. Looking at this movie through Functionalist theory, the racial aggressions present are part of a larger institution of the public school system; insinuating that the micro and macro-aggressions directed towards minorities are part of developing the future generation and teaching them to perpetuate racial inequality in America, allowing white people to remain the majority race and to reap the benefits that come with it. The complexity of the movie lies within an interesting discourse that examines the effects and functions behind the racist

In Rebecca Traister’s,” Big Girls Don’t Cry,” she took readers on a journey of the primary elections and the Presidential Election of 2008. She opens up with blatantly stating her support for Hillary Clinton. The author then recognized the contributions of the spouses of political figures by adding a twist. If they were known for being in politics, they were illustrated as a very homely and friendly person. If they are used to supportive roles, they are highlighted for their actions or contributions to the campaign. . President Clinton is quoted on his views on becoming a first gentleman as if h knew Hillary would win. Michelle Obama is referenced as a dim wit. Interesting enough, Palin’s family is not necessarily mentioned on their take in

Olds organizes three patterns of imagery that emphasizes the speaker’s acknowledgement of her daughters upcoming maturity. The speaker takes the young girl to a swimming party where boys instantly enclose the young woman. The speaker sees the young people dive into the pool and imagines her daughter working math problems in her head to calculate her relationship to the diving board and the gallons of water in the pool. The speaker knows that as the girl looks at the boys, she will be recognizing the attractiveness of their manhood. Within Sharon Olds, “The One Girl at The Boys Party”, mathematical imagery is used to convey a mother’s observation of her daughters’ abrupt transition into womanhood.

The play Gas Girls by Donna-Michelle St.Bernard can be effectively analyzed through the application of concepts from the Marxist critical lens. One of the concepts presented prominently throughout the play is reification. This is evident through Gigi and Lola, protagonists in the play, making their livings by soliciting their bodies to truckers driving through town in exchange for gas to sell in the market. In order to survive, they have turned themselves into commodities and have favored their value over the negative consequences of the job such as exploitation and abuse. Secondly, relating to Marx’s idea that economics are fundamental for a society’s ideology, the girls’ lives are centralized around the aphorism, “love for gas, gas for cash, cash for living, living for love.” (St.Bernard 8, 31,

The movie, Girl, Interrupted, displays Susanna Kaysen’s eighteen-month stay at a mental institute in the 1960s. This film was an adaptation of a book based on a true story of the main character and author Susanna Kaysen. Susanna was checked into Claymore, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, after chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. At first, Susanna denies this blatant attempt at suicide and constantly struggles with uncertainty of her thoughts and emotions. Although Girl, Interrupted exhibits several mental disorders one of the most prevalent disorder of this film is Susanna’s Borderline Personality Disorder. This film depicts majority of the signs and symptoms of a person with Borderline Personality. As stated in the textbook, “the lives of persons with borderline personality are marked by instability. Their relationships are unstable, their behavior is unstable, their emotions are unstable, and even their images of themselves are unstable” (Larsen and Buss 593). Susanna’s romantic relationships are extremely unstable and she frequently engages in casual sex. She jumps from one guy to another in a matter of few weeks. One scene that establishes this the most is when her boyfriend at the time comes to visit her at Claymore and expresses his true feelings for her and she instantly withdraws. He asked her to go to Canada with him and she turns him down immediately. She also kisses Lisa who she befriends at the mental institute, displaying a switch of

A trope states different categories of figures of speech e.g. similes and puns. They used to describe and analyze a convention that can easily be understood and recognized as its common applied. Popular cultures are the images, perspectives and ideas that are within a given culture and is directing a certain mass. Final girl, a horror movie is among those movies that have many tropes in them. This movie is about a certain woman who becomes the last in line to ever confront the killer. She becomes the only person to ever narrate the story. This all happens after all her friends were killed by the killer holding her. The killer won’t let her go as he is holding a knife to finish what he had started. Hence, the essay below analyses tropes in pop cultures in the movie, the final girl.

In the movie Girl, Interrupted the plot surrounds a period in the life of Susanna Kaysen played by Winona Ryder who was institutionalized at the Claymore mental hospital in the 1960s. In the movie, the main character Susanna is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and undergoes treatment to which at the end of the movie she is released. It is at this hospital that Susanna encounters many other patients of which she shares many experiences with. One of these patients was the longtime resident and popular amongst all the other patients Lisa Rowe played by Angelina Jolie whom Susanna became close with and would mid-movie escape the hospital with to only return on her own and find that Lisa would be back a few days later. Lisa, while being the protagonist of the movie, was very charismatic in her own way and based on her behavior and revelation in the movie is diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, particularly a sociopath in the movie.

The Girl in the Torch was written by Robert Sharenow and is a historical-fiction book. This story is taken place around the time when thousands of immigrants were arriving in the promised land of New York City. The main character, Sarah (12 yrs old) always dreamed of America, a land of freedom and possibility. Just when Sarah and her mother cross the Atlantic, her mom dies and Sarah finds herself being sent back before she even sets foot in the country. She then makes a life or death decision by jumping off the boat and stays in the crown of the Statue of Liberty. When an unexpected ally helps bring her to the city, she finds a new family and along with that also a new danger. With the help of her family in New York, Sarah finds a new life in Oklahoma. The story concludes with Sarah’s life 15 years later as a married woman with a boy who she named after the man who gave her a new life. Sarah’s personality and character changes throughout the story. In the beginning she was very strong and determined. After consecutive deaths of people close to her and after realizing she has no blood family, she feels abandoned and hollow. As her life changes and she discovers family (even if they weren’t blood-related), she becomes strong, courageous and kind. Her life soon becomes a roller coaster and Sarah’s character spirals.