The Hitchhiker By Lucille Fletcher Analysis

The novel “Speak”, by Laurie Halse Anderson captures the thoughts of a new high- schooler caught in some deep drama of the past. From the start of school, Melinda Sordino is shunned, glared at, talked about, and poked at because of one incident at a party from the end of last summer. With her friends turned away, her grades down, her family combative, and her looks deteriorating, what does she have left? Nothing has been seeming to go right for Melinda in and out of school since that night. She has silently appointed someone responsible for this situation, someone named “IT”, Andy Evans. Every time he’s around she feels sick. The protagonist of “Speak”, Melinda Sordino has become depressed, insecure of herself, and flustered around others.

“To the hearing world, the deaf community must seem like a secret society. Indeed, deafness is a culture every bit as distinctive as any an anthropologist might study.” (Walker 1986) Lou Ann Walker’s autobiographical book, “A Loss for Words” details the story of her childhood with two deaf parents. She is the oldest of three children, with two sisters who are named Kay Sue and Jan Lee. All of their names were chosen for ease of lipreading for her parents. As she is the eldest of the three, she begins to act as an interpreter, and does so; often dealing with store keepers, mechanics, and others who would not know American Sign Language, but who would still need to understand what her parents are saying. Lou Ann, as she grows up, realizes

The book “With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets” written by Marni Finkelstein refers to the homeless youth. This book describes the lifestyle of the teenagers with no home and explains with detail about what consist in their everyday lives in the streets of New York City. The purpose of this book is to explain to people who these kids are and to see life in their point of view. It explains the difference between street kids and the kids that live on the street. We need to understand that the kids that live on the streets have their own culture and their own way of surviving. Learning their point of view would be a great eye opening experience for everyone and to also understand their struggle. This book explains a study that was done to 50 street kids and life on the streets.

The movie “Babadook” contain basic elements leaning toward psychological human emotions that contain elements of the supernatural world, a mother grief and depression and one’s inner self and how a mother copes when things turn into a horrible nightmare of one’s unconscious imagination. In Freud’s opinion the unconscious mind has a will and purpose of its own that cannot be known to the conscious mind (hence the term “unconscious”) and is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. (Freud’s).

O Pioneers by Willa Cather sets itself apart from other novels of its time because of what its stands for, feminism. It exemplifies women’s equality, represented by the main character, Alexandra, by showing her survival in a male dominated society. She succeeded in building her female identity and achieved a sense of female attainment by revolutionizing the wild land and struggling for her equal rights with all that surrounded her. This paper focuses on the feminist thoughts and the positive attitude of the image of the strong character Alexandra, who was independent, brave, and optimistic. A spirit like hers, of strength and courage, insisted that she would never be defeated by man or nature.

Mary Oliver, who was acknowledged by the New York Times as “far and away, this country’s best selling poet,” was born on September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. At age fourteen, she started writing poetry about the lush woods surrounding her childhood home. Later on, she drew inspiration from Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poet and feminist, whose house she stayed at in New York. While she was there, she met her lifelong partner, Molly Malone Cook. In the 1960s, she and Molly relocated to Provincetown, Massachusetts. Influenced by transcendentalists like Whitman and Thoreau, she is well known for her themes of the natural world. However, while her earliest poems solely focus on nature, she evolved to become more personal and spiritual by

In the short story, “The Hitchhiker” Lucille Fletcher sets the Hitchhiker as a Grim Reaper that will keep following Adam until he takes his fate and accepts his death. When we lose someone close to us it's hard to accept they are really gone. We need to move on from living in a fake reality where they are alive and everything still is the same. The story leaves the readers questioning why was hitchhiker is following Adam. Maybe the reason he is still able to drive is so he could travel on forever? Maybe the Hitchhiker is following him till his death, or the grave? While the readers just see it as Adam is the only one caught up with not accepting his death, maybe the reason he can talk to certain people is because they are going through the

Arturo Madrid in his essay entitled, “Missing People and Others” in the book, Race, Class and Gender, speaks about his form of otherness that he experienced in schools. Madrid has a Latino ethnicity and is a citizen of the United States as are his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. However, he learned about othering before he knew of the concept. Though his school tried to erase otherness through denial, it only amplified the issue. He viewed his educational experience as a socialization process where you learned to become “American” (Race, Class and Gender, 2010, p. 18). Instead of viewing his educational experience as an academic journey, due to othering it become more of a social journey. Madrid realized early on that otherness was built into the American system by the society around in every facet. Therefore, he saw this systemic rationale of othering permeate into the school system. The denial almost seemed like a dismissal of the person’s culture and ethnicity. The implicit denial existed in many facets such as economic, political, cultural and social through the absences of the “others” (Race, Class and Gender, 2010, p. 18). However, schools is where it was felt the most severely.

In poems it is essential to be a creative writer. The author uses many techniques from from exposing deep thoughts to giving humorous jokes throughout the sentence. As human beings, we all have a difficult time understanding others .We may agree or disagree depending our viewpoints on life. One of my Favorite poems is “The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield” by Robert Hayden. My favorite poem is the type of poem that has some history and confusion. When getting the audience confused, it makes them want to know more and reread the whole passage again. Hayden’s poem is a fresh new opening that brought an old dimension, his creativity to open the minds of others and look back to the past.

A contemporary reading of The Drover's Wife suggests that the author, Henry Lawson, is engaging in a little misdirection. That is to say that the title of the story deemphasizes the principal character's autonomy by referring to her as the wife of a hapless drover instead of the fearless, rugged, self-reliant woman she proves to be. The idea that she belongs to the drover, that she is his property (as opposed to him being her husband/property) is a hard pill to swallow after the reader learns of her exploits in the unforgiving bush.

The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events, to ever occur in history. Hitler and the Nazi party started a genocide that killed millions of people because of their ethnicity. The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman tells the perfect story of how life was like during the Holocaust period, through a woman and her family. The main characters in the book are Antonina, the wife and mother, Jan, the husband, and Rys, the couple’s son. The Nazi’s invaded Poland, and took over the Jan and Antonina’s zoo. Throughout the whole novel, Jan and Antonina Zabinski play an active role in the underground network of both hiding Jews and taking care of animals within their Zoo. The main character, Antonina, finds herself managing various relationships during the novel, she’s a zookeeper, a wife, and a mother as well. Throughout the course of the novel, she reveals aspects of her relationship between the animals, and her husband.

In this paper, I will explain how the article “The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice” by Gwendolyn Mink relates to the thematic focus of working women and the Marxist and socialist branch of feminism. In Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, Rosemarie Tong explains that Marxist and socialist feminists understand women’s oppression as a labor issue. Women’s work is not viewed as a productive contribution to society. One of the ways Marxist and socialist feminists sought to improve women’s oppression was through the wages-for-housework campaign of the 1970s, which fought for work done in the domestic sphere to be paid and respected by society. In this same vein, Mink’s article can be viewed as a continuation of sorts of the wages-for-housework campaign. Mink suggests that poor single mothers have the right for their work to be recognized by society and supported economically like the Marxist and socialist feminist in the 1970s.

Annie Dillard’s effective use of language and style reflect and further the opinions she voices within “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”. She knows how to reel the audience in and then strengthens her points with such detailed descriptions of every little thing. A common theme throughout this classic is about seeing and gaining the ability to be able to see things for their beauty and what they really are. Dillard also wants her audience to see the things that are usually not noticeable or sometimes even taken for granted. Things such as objects, events and creatures, Dillard does a great job at making the words on the pages jump out and come to life. She first points out the tomcat. She vividly describes how this big bloody-pawed tomcat would lay

In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid explores the disillusionment faced by the eponymous character upon immigrating to the United States. The novel's style of narration allows Lucy’s thoughts and emotions to remain hidden. Despite this intense privacy, Lucy's disillusionment is clear. She had hoped that moving around the globe would solve her problems but she still struggles with homesickness and her relationship with her mother. Her move is disappointing. The erasure poem And Coldest also engages disillusionment. The poem suggests the speaker has become disillusioned by observing the world, and indicates their plan to be “shut tight.” The poem inspired me to consider the causes of Lucy’s disillusionment, and her failure to address her own emotions. As a recent immigrant, the causes of Lucy’s disillusionment are somewhat obvious. More enigmatic is her self-avoidant, “shut tight” attitude. In this paper, I argue that Lucy’s disillusionment causes her to avoid the discomfort that comes with self-reflection.

Margaret Atwood creates a haunting and beautiful piece describing the experience a sad child goes through. She structures her poem by using five stanzas; two stanzas consisting of five lines, then one stanza with ten lines, and ending with two stanzas consisting of five lines. She uses simple yet powerful diction, tone, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and imagery to show the unknown speaker giving advice to a sad child. Her message/theme is sadness is a part of life and there are different ways to deal with it, but when death comes the thing that one is being sad about doesn’t matter.