The Good Girl Essay

Have you ever wished that someone had given you a guide on how live the right way? Jamaica Kincaid does just that in her short story, Girl. The narrative is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly in Antigua in the 1980’s. While the setting of the story is not expressly stated by the author in the narrative, the reader is able to understand the culture for which Girl was written.

In the essay, “The Common Life” by Scott Russell Sanders, Sanders studies the connection between the individual and society. However, this leads to the question, what is the relationship between the individual and society? Individuals and societies may be in opposition but this helps to develop both the individual and society. The decisions that an individual makes reflects on how society views him/her. The overlook of the community can be reverted back to the individual within the society. Society and individuals are a package deal.

The film that I chose to write about is a Paramount Pictures presentation titled Mean Girls, starring Lindsay Lohan and also featuring a handful of Saturday Night Live cast members, including Tina Fey the author of this picture. The reason behind choosing this film is because it has a unique style of introducing characters, transitioning between scenes, and various tools to help spice up the film. Being one of my personal favorites, Mean Girls is a comedy about a home schooled teenage girl who enters high school for the first time. She tries to figure herself out by where she can fit in and who she needs to become friends with.

An example of this is when Holden is failing from Pencey he blames his parents for making him go there in the first place. Holden might be to blame for some things like braking all the windows in his basement, but society is to blame for his downfall in mental health. “In fact, lack of success may more often be caused by what I call The Peter Pan Syndrome: they won’t grow up.”(Nemko, pg.1) Holden never wants to be responsible for the things that he causes to go wrong. He has blamed his parents for the things he has done and for him not trying at all. He blames his parents for Allie’s death and that they were the reason that he wasn’t able to go the his funeral. Holden blames his parents and doesn’t want to take responsibility for his wrongdoings.

The 1991 movie My Girl tells the story of 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss who, having lost her mother at birth , lives with her dementia-ridden grandmother and her job-oriented father in the funeral parlour that he owns and operates. The story follows Vada, an extreme hypochondriac who has many strange misconceptions about death, through a variety of life-changing experiences, including the engagement of her father and the devastating loss of her best friend, Thomas Jay. Through these experiences, the audience witnesses Vada’s social, emotional, and intellectual growth, as well as her changing views of death.

     Considering all the treatment methods used at Mclean Hospital, harsh physical treatments were rarely productive. Methods such as seclusion, ice-baths, Electro-shock therapy, and even the Hospitals atmosphere itself can make one wonder how anyone came out of there better than they went in. It seems odd that people teetering on the edge of sanity were subjected to such horrible treatments. Although such treatments sometimes worked, it in no way outweighs the horrible side

William Faulkner and Flannery O’ Conner both have mischievous and morbid characteristics. In Flannery O’Conner’s story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, the main focus is that the grandma is old fashioned and uses this to her advantage in telling stories and trying not to get killed. In William Faulkner’s story, A Rose for Emily, it focuses on Emily who is also old fashioned but can’t get with the present time and keeps holding onto the past. Both have morbid endings because of their lack of letting go on past events, and use their archaic habits in different ways. In A Rose for Emily, Emily shows multiple signs of not liking change by denying her father’s death, not leaving the house and in A Good Man Is Hard to Find; the grandmother portrays

"On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time" – George Orwell

Thesis: Many often ignore the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire towards Armenians, with the Armenian genocide being referred to as “one of the greatest Holocaust’s you’ve never heard of.” However, it did happen and many who stories were not, or could not, be told often expected their stories to die with them in the harsh heat of the death marches with their deaths and survival did impact others and where necessary knowledge for their future generations. The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian is a historical fiction set which examines the love story between genocide survivor Armen and American witness Elizabeth which is chronicled by their granddaughter

In both stories “Girl” and “Story of an hour” there is use of gender that describes a typically unfair direction of the role of a women, yet the use of gender is describe differently. The use of gender in the “Story of an hour” is mainly about how the wife of a husband who dies in the train crash is going to deal with life without her husband and if she will be able to handle it emotionally. While the story “Girl” deals with a mom that tells her daughter to be well mannered fit in socially with society. The role of women in both stories is to be well mannered and considerate with high standards of behavior. For instance, in the story the women tell the daughter “ on Sunday try to a walk like a lady” (123). A lady is what the mom wants her to become because she is afraid of her becoming unfit for society. Ladies are expected to be very polite and speak in good manners in order to fit the ideal women. In the “Story of an Hour” there is a specific way her family wants her to handle her husband death. The facts Mrs. Malland was told about the tragedy at a certain times makes me believe that writer wants us to believe that women have harder time dealing with her marriage life.

The book Girl, Interrupted is about a teenage girl Susanna Kaysen. At the age of 18 she voluntarily sent herself to the McLean hospital. In the beginning of the book the Susanna was talking to a psychiatrist she has been seeing for awhile, she has had a couple of suicide attempts so she started seeing that doctor. The doctor had recommended Susanna to go to McLean to help her be anti-depressive and help cure her borderline personality. Susanna ended up being in the hospital for 2 years.

The clouding judgement of society opened my eyes to how we as individuals we shouldn't let the opinions of society cloud who we are and what we could be. People must be prepared to not care what others think and to carry on their lives not living in the shadow of someones else's story but living their

Annette Bair and Marilyn Friedman have opposing views on whether women have distinct moral perspectives. Like Friedman, I believe that women have no different moral perspectives than men. Some people, like Bair, think that women base their moral perspectives on merely trust and love and men base theirs on justice. Friedman points out that care and justice coincide . People use justice to decide what is appropriate in caring relationships and care is brought into account when determining what is just. Since these two moral perspectives correspond, gender does not distinguish different moral perspectives.

     When examining adaptations of fairytales you must look at the original source. This can be a very difficult task because with fairytales we never really know where the original came from. I will base my paper on the theory that the original tale of Cinderella comes from the Grimm Brothers version of Ashputtle. In comparison we will examine two movies. First there is the Disney version Cinderella. Secondly we will look at the movie 'Ever After'.

This case study begins with Paul Kennedy on a slow morning commute in Cleveland. During his drive, he’s worried about his wife and family, his boss, his associate, a stranger in a nearby vehicle, and even about the state of the Cleveland Browns. He is also excited about his plans to expand Daner Associates into the European market and his impending promotion to CEO. But when Paul meets with his boss, Larry, that afternoon, he discovers that he has been misreading signals. Larry is actually considering Paul for the number two role in the company and considering promoting another Daner executive, George, into the CEO position.