The Shining House

In the novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” there are many extremely important themes, such as domesticity. This novel focuses heavily on domesticity because it portrays characters who are highly devoted to their home. In this novel, Constance Blackwood, Mary Katherine Blackwood, and Julian Blackwood are three of the only Blackwood’s which are still alive. However, the cause of death of the rest of the Blackwood’s causes many of the townspeople to hate Constance and Mary Katherine Blackwood especially. Although very hated in the village, the two girls and their uncle Julian remain in

In Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits, there are two definitive classes of people that are present throughout the novel. The poor class, including the peasants of Tres Marias and the socialist party members, has continual resentment towards the other class, which is the wealthy aristocratic class. The wealthy division of the novel shows little humanity towards the poor, treats the poor as servants, and control all politics involved in the country. The wealthy’s treatment of the lower class shattered the peace experienced by Chile because the poor and the wealthy maintained a struggle to co-exist with such division between their

Earlier this year, I read Jeanette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle tells the story of Walls and her siblings as they experience and attempt to escape the poverty-stricken lives of their parents. In her descriptions of her life and the lives of her family members, Walls influenced my ideas about poverty, homelessness, and escaping hard lives.

“I’m sick of this house” (75) exclaims 15 year old, revolutionary-minded Helen McBride. Living in a house with 11 other children was not the lifestyle she had in mind. Having her own beliefs suppressed by her mother was not what she wanted in life. Helen, feeling crowded and controlled, leaves her home and does not look back.

In this response to The Glass castle by Jeannette Walls, I am going to talk about the selfishness and the neglect Rose Mary & Rex Walls put upon these poor children.

“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls is a memoir of a family that is frequently homeless and living in very poor conditions. Despite all this, the protagonist Jeannette Walls does not lose faith but, but does the exact opposite. She does everything in her power to earn money and get an education so she can escape her current life and move to a place with better opportunities, which is New York (Walls 2005) This book intrigued me because of the way Walls tells her story. She does not have a trouble-free life, but she is a brave woman for telling her story to others. Walls admitted in her interview with Oprah as well as in her book, that she is so embarrassed of her parents in the streets. While she lives in her warm and comfortable home, her parents are in the street looking through garbage cans for food. Jeannette Walls’s approach to life is astounding, and the way she tells her story with such emotion but at the same time some parts are relatable to many others. Walls uses many rhetorical techniques in her writing that absorbs the reader not only to enjoy her book but also to empathize for her.

Rose Mary, from the memoir The Glass Castle, is a naturally self-centered woman; this can be viewed as a bad quality for a mother to possess, but in her case it does benefit her children in a certain way. Although Rose Mary’s selfishness is the reason she never provides for her family as a mother, the positive twist on this unmotherly characteristic is that it helps teach her kids not to conform to social norms. Children naturally look up to their parents, and when Rose Mary’s kids see how freely she acts when other people obviously are judging her, it influences how they perceive the opinions of others. An example of this was when the Walls were living in Phoenix. It was so unbearably hot one day that Rose Mary told her children to swim in

Outside forces do not have any long-lasting influence on how someone perceives themself. This is a notion that some individuals may choose to believe. However, through the events of one story, we come to realize that the prior statement is false. The nameless protagonist of Boys and Girls (1964) showed that as people, we can be created as somebody other than ourselves at our core because we fall back on the opinions of people whose views we regard too highly. Canadian author Alice Munro’s short story displays how an individual’s identity and realization of self is molded by the prominent role adversity plays throughout the course of their life because the contrasting values and ideologies of those around them conflict with their own moral compass.

According to Elizabeth Lowell, “Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” Sometimes what every situation needs is an outsider to flip the script and create a new outlook on everything. In Shirley Jackson’s novel, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” the speaker, Merricat, is an outsider of society on many levels, such as mental health, gender, and that she is an upper class citizen in a poor area. Although Merricat is mentally unstable, her outsider’s perspective criticizes the social standard for women in the 1960s, indicating that social roles, marriage, and the patriarchy are not necessary aspects in life such as it is not necessary to have the same outlook on life as others.

In Alice Munro’s feminist story, “The Shining Houses”, she portrays that in society, straying from social norms and ideologies will distort the communities’ perspective conflictingly causing marginalization of nonconformists. Specifically, domesticity and the need for masculine protection are two critical criteria she uses to convey her theme.

William H. Burke suggests that transience in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is a type of pilgrimage, and that “the rigors and self-denials of the transient life are necessary spiritual conditioning for the valued crossing from the experience of a world of loss and fragmentation to the perception of a world that is whole and complete” (717). The world of reality in Housekeeping is one “fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through lighted windows” (Robinson 50). Many of the characters that precede Ruth in the narrative rebel against something in this world that is not right. Edmund Foster, her grandfather, escapes by train to the Midwest and his house is

In “The Haunting of Hill House”, Jackson uses a third person point of view in order to create an ambiguous feeling during the supernatural experiences which leads to confusion of whether the novel falls under the sub-genre female gothic, or not. Jackson starts the novel with a very powerful quote: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” (1). That famously known quote is very ambiguous and evokes suspense. The sub-genre female gothic conventions consist of an old haunted house, mystery and suspense, supernatural experiences, women distress during a transition to adulthood or motherhood, repressed emotions, an aspect of feminism, heroic male figure, dark, and horror. The Haunting of Hill House consists of some of the female gothic conventions but lacks others. Viewing the supernatural experiences from a third person point of view allows the reader to have an insight of the situations.

Living in England during World War II had an impact on her life because it coincided with the time that she was moving around, making it symbolic of her life at that time. She would be lured into a false sense of security in a new home (think of the times in between bombings) and then her world would be turned upside again as she was moved away from her father, and into beaten down homes, and then again to a somewhat

There was a time when society did not consider men and women as equal. Men were considered as the superior human being and the dominant figures of authority in the house while the woman had to be a subservient. Alice Munro uses some interesting details in “Boys and Girls” to hold the readers captive. She takes us on a journey in an era where the male child was deemed more important than the female child. “Boys and Girls is a story about a girl’s struggle in accepting the role society has forced upon her in such a vivid manner that it draws the reader to want to know what happens next. In “Telling Tails,” by Tim O’Brien, he illustrates what a good story should be by using story examples. O’Brien believes that “Boys and Girls” is good story because the author uses a well-imagined plot, striking and dramatic elements, and the ability to reach deep into the heart of readers.

The theme of Everyday Use is not immediately apparent, although Alice Walker begins the story by creating a familiar setting in the comfort of home that lead to the spirit of heritage and its importance in our lives. The protagonist, a single mother of two daughters, sees herself as ."..large...rough... slow-witted" and not fitting into the social strata of her oldest daughter, Dee, who ."..has held life always in the palm of her hand." The story begins with the mother preparing the yard to be ."..more comfortable than most people know....like an extended living room" for Dee's homecoming. This line early in the story also shows the mother placing a high value on comfort.