Themes Of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky By Heidi Durrow

Everyone has a family of some kind. It may be the parents and siblings they were born with, or it could be the gang of six biologically unrelated elite drivers with an affinity for robbing banks at high speeds from Fast and the Furious. Ultimately, family is what people make of it, and it can be the ‘traditional’ two parents, one brother, one sister, and a dog named Spot, or it could be a woman and the kid she was left with. The term ‘traditional family' refers to the socially expected behaviors of each given role (for example, a mother taking her kid to the doctor,) in the family. Members of a traditional family in this case are either maritally or biologically related. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees has many characters who would consider themselves, or be considered, part of different families. The Bean Trees addresses and deals with the fact that nontraditional families can be just as strong as what society has defined as a ‘traditional’ family.

For such a small word, “Family,” can mean so much. In a dictionary one may read family as people with common ancestors, but a true family is people who stick together and support one another at any cost. Both books, Night by Elie Wiesel, and, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand display the theme of family relationships throughout the story.

People often think of family as positive, loving, and with no flaws. However, there is almost a stereotype that all families love each other and there aren’t problems or challenges in a family. Sometimes families put people through challenges and some families aren’t “perfect”. In the book Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Jolly has two kids and goes through challenges with her family. Most careful readers can see how Jolly has these challenges with her kids and how she is far off from the “perfect” family. She goes through many of these challenges in life and finds a way to overcome them. Jollys family shapes her identity because the challenges she faces ends up making her stronger. Jeremy and Jilly challenging her, LaVaughn helping her out, and her past family all shape her identity.

In the novel The Bean Tree by Barbara Kingsolver, there is a girl named missy who lived in Kentucky with her mom. Missy leaves her mom to get a new life somewhere else. She also changes her name to Taylor on her journey. While on her journey she got handed a child from a stranger. She takes the child and continues Taylor's journey. Taylor finds a whole bunch of friends on her journey. This novel makes you ask to rethink your definition of “family” because on Taylor’s journey she meets a lot of friends that start to become family to her. Also when Taylor received Turtle, she started to make a family with Turtle without even knowing her. All of Taylor’s friends treated each other and helped each other just like they were family. That is how this

Families can mean a lot of different things to different people. For some family is everything, just knowing that someone is there for you during a personal crisis to help you and provide you with love is comforting. However, at the same time a family can be heartless and relentless providing you with no comfort, instead just pain and misery. We all can agree that families shape our development and how we view the world. From childhood our thoughts and actions are shaped based on experiences from a sibling or parent that went through them. However, the influence of a family could be positive or negative, whether it is showing us the right side or perhaps making the same mistakes. In literature many writers have been influenced by their families two great examples are “A Brother’s Murder” by Brent Staples and “My father’s Life” by Raymond Carver, both writers express in great detail how families have shaped and affected them as individuals.

Family is not through blood but rather through personal connections and trust. Family are the people that surround others with positivity, family can be chosen. An example of family being chosen or accepted that is not blood related from the play ODACTTT is when Tonto and Janice were talking about her biological family and how important true family really is, and how her name is Grace Wabung. contreversely, Janice has a different opinion on family and says, “... my name is Wirth”(Taylor 57). In particular, Janice feels her family is her adopted family more so than her birth family because of personal connection, as well as who cared for her over her childhood years and what became accustomed to her. Another example from the play ODACTTT is when Rodney, Tonto and Janice are talking about Amelia Earhart. They are talking about how she is family within the reserve. They continue talking about Amelia Earhart and how her being alive is a secret kept among the community for her safety and protection from the rest of the world. The topic of discussion was Amelia Earhart, a little old lady that lives on the reserve when Rodney says, “Yeah the village. Because we’re her family now, it’s her secret but it’s also ours”(Taylor 44). Which is very significant and important because Rodney, Barb, and Tonto continuously keep telling Janice that blood relatives are family and how it is more important than

What does the word family mean to you? In my opinion, family means everything to me. It’s the people I knew since I was born, who I know I can turn to anytime needed. Everyone has their own definition of family, it can be positive, negative, or even both. In the world’s society everyone is born into a family, it can be a traditional, a un-blood related, or an extended family. No matter how well a family relationship can be there is no such thing as a perfect family. In many classic pieces of literature, many writers’ use themes of conflict between the children and their parents. It can be conflicts towards each other or conflicts the family experiences together. In many well know novels, many characters from tragic events of abuse, cruelty, and negligent events kept their courage to survive through terrible events. The story of “Ellen Foster” Kaye Gibbons takes a reader inside a story of young orphaned girl, who is passed down to every family until the she is able to find the perfect one she fit into. In the classic novel “Night” author Elie Wiesel writes a historical piece about a young boy’s experience in a concentration camp. Losing half of his family the young boy Eliezer has to fight with his father through suffering tactics from the Nazis. The classic play “Romeo and Juliet”, William Shakespeare writes a tragic piece about two young lovers being forced to disobey family orders to be with each other. In all three pieces of literature, the characters struggle

A theme that is prevalent in the novel The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow is the individual vs. society. The individual vs. society is a theme that focuses on a protagonist who is alienated from the society in which they live. Due to societal pressures, the main character struggles to conform to what is expected of them. This is especially relevant for Rachel Morse, a biracial girl who is viewed differently by a society that allows race to divide one another. Throughout the story, Durrow demonstrates that despite the conflict that individuals face when struggling to fit in, they are able to disregard how society views them and accept themselves.

     Brick, Maggie’s alcoholic husband, is an uncaring man who has no good feelings toward his wife. For example, when Maggie buys a gift for Brick to give to Big Daddy on his birthday and Maggie wants Brick to sign the card, he says “No… I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do”(28). Even on Big

Exposition - A nine-teen year old girl named Marta is on top of skyscraper that houses apartments and businesses. She sees the city as a mess and becomes dizzy over it.

How does one define family? Throughout our readings, we find ourselves learning the ideas of theorist, concepts, and definitions to help us define and describe what family is. The family could possibly be what or who we say they are, or in simpler Bozett’s term, who the patient says it is! (Plumer, 2010). A family could consist possibly of values, roles, communication, environment, and relationships. Families may transition through all of these principles that either unites them or tears them apart. For instance, the movie Mrs. Doubtfire portrays these perceptions of what family is when family processes are shifted within a household. We will now discuss in more detail of the family assessment found throughout the movie starring the Hillards.

A family is seen as a group of people who are biologically or psychologically related. They connect on historical, emotional

A family consists of a group of interacting individuals related by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption who interdependently perform relevant functions by fulfilling expected roles. (Edelman, Kudzma, & Mandle, 2014, p. 150)

According to Swartz and Scott (2009), family is defined as a group of people related to each other by blood, marriage, adoption or being sexually open in a relationship. The

A family can be defined in many ways, but the common denominator in all is the love and fulfillment one gets by being surrounded by family members. Families can sometimes be at odds with each other, but the strain of this type of relationship usually creates an upsetting feeling to the people involved. People want others to rely on, talk to, do things with, share, love, embrace, and be part of. No matter what the family dynamic is the qualities the word family has will remain the same, as time goes by, and life evolves once again for every person living their