Wide Sargasso Sea By Jean Rhys

If you were thrown overboard a ship and had to survive in the freezing water of the Atlantic Ocean, how would you do it? How would you survive that? Anyone to ask me that question would receive a strained, “I don’t know?”, accompanied by an odd look. What person goes through that and lives? In The Speck of the Sea by Paul Tough, he details for us the experience of John Aldridge; a middle-age fisherman from Montauk who with only the clothes on his back and his brain survived for hours in the salty Atlantic. The telling of his experience is an exciting story that really shines a light on the human spirit, specifically on our willpower and resourcefulness.

The Open Boat, written by Stephen Crane is discusses the journey of four survivors that were involved in a ship wreck. The oiler, the cook, the captain, and the correspondent are the survivors that make onto a dingey and struggle to survive the roaring waves of the ocean. They happen to come across land after being stranded in the ocean for two days and start to feel a sense of hope that they would be rescued anytime soon. They began feeling down as they realize nobody was going to rescue them and make an attempt to reach shore. The story discusses an external conflict of man vs nature to help state clearly the central idea. The central idea of the story conveys man’s success against nature when ones’ abilities are combined together to increase the chances of survival. The use of 3rd person limited omniscience and character analysis helps to explain how the journey of the men’s survival to get out of the ocean and reach shore is able to succeed while Stephen Crane uses symbolism to demonstrate the unity created amongst the survivors.

African Americans have been discriminated and were not treated fairly from the beginning of the American colonies up to the 1960s. Their history included about 250 years of slavery followed by another 100 years of discrimination. However, many people state that throughout the 1800s, the whaling industry helped African Americans thrive as a race. In addition, they were treated as equals and could gain glory and wealth from it. In most cases, this is not true because negroes for three main reasons. Almost all African people did not receive high positions on their crew ships. Also, they experienced segregation on ships and were treated not equally. Finally, they were taken for their cheap and hard labor in a dangerous, unrewarding industry. Using internet sources and the novel, In The Heart of The Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, African Americans in the whaling industry had low status within crews and faced harsh working conditions as well as discrimination and racism.

Jeannette was always dirty from her adventurous because she lived in the desert for some time and would chase around the wild animals and insects. Jeannette was always traveling with her family and had no control of her life. Her parents were selfish, law breaking people who couldn't keep a job. Jeannette was young and didn't understand why her parents

The article Into the Dark Water by Lauren Tarshis is about a boy named Jack Thayer who was on the Titanic the night it sank. Lauren Tarshis used some of Jack’s quotes for the article. The quotes make you feel like you were at that time and moment. One quote in the article by Lauren Tarshis there was a quote by Jack that said “It was the kind of night that made one glad to be alive.” The reason why Lauren Tarshis put that quote in their is that it helps you picture it in your head.

​Throughout time, many literature works of art have shown the common theme of man with the mindset that he is the superior being in control. Around the 1830s, literature took a turn from the romantic view of the world to a more natural take of the universe. One of the better portrayals of this naturalistic view is Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” in which the short story exhibits the lives of four men cast out at sea after their steamer, the Commodore, sank and they were then forced to take refuge in a life boat. This story follows the men through the focalizing viewpoint of the correspondent and descriptively as well as effectively portrays his psychologically changing viewpoints of the ocean and their take on nature as a whole. This short story is a classic representation of naturalism with the extensive use of literary tools such as personification, metaphors, and similes to convey the message that nature is indifferent to mankind and exhibits the steady-changing viewpoint of the correspondent as the story progresses.

In Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea, whether Antoinette Cosway really goes mad in the end is debatable. Nevertheless, it is clear that her life is tragic. The tragedy comes from her numerous pursuits for love and a sense of belonging, and her failure at each and every one of these attempts.

- 1970s: Early 1970s seemed to be continuation of ‘60s. Banning of news reports of opposition and overseas, but impossible to silence people completely. Exiled parties and people who were released from the problem tried to let me people know what was happening, but difficult to create literature and art: segregational theatres and restaurants. Act of creating The Island is an act of defiance in itself: different people of different races coming together, monument to defiance of political tyranny, extremely difficult  strategy: no written script until after internationally famous, no evidence, no arrests!

However, due to the fact that there is no other way to define Annette, and because Annette focuses all her attention on her physically and mentally challenged son (almost completely ignoring Antoinette), it leaves Antoinette devoid from her own reflection. Fayad continues her critique, commenting on Tia’s role in hindering Antoinette’s quest for her identity. She asserts the claim that Antoinette breaks her special bond with Tia “permanently by labeling her as other” (Fayad, 229). However, I see this scene in a slightly different light. Antoinette must cross the racial barriers in order to assimilate into the environment, and find her true identity. Being rejected by the white society due to her Jamaican side and French mother, Antoinette never considered herself to be a part of the white elites, and always wanted to be associated with the freed slaves. However, the blacks rejected her due to the fact that she was a part of a slaveholding family. She finds solace in her only childhood friend, Tia, who constantly belittles her, calling her “white cockroach” and “white nigger” (Rhys 14). I

 Though this is a childish taunt in the novel, the truth of it is that nobody does want Antoinette; as Teresa O'Connor points out, not even her own mother: 'Antoinette is also alienated from the meagre remains of her family itself, and, most specifically, from her mother's love' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, 172).

In both of my works, Wide Sargasso Sea and Banana Boat Song (Day-O) we see the conflict with racial issues and social fairness. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette is torn between two worlds; the blacks and whites, between former slaves and former slave owners. She has a mixture of conflicting feelings for black people. Antoinette wants to be accepted by them, and feels pity, hatred, and desire for isolation.

this is a dangerous place for them to be in, and that, like Eden, the

When I was a little girl at early of my age, I spent a wonderful time with my grandma near a sea in my hometown during the last two months of her life. That was the first time we saw the smile back to her face since we got the news that she got intestine cancer. Back to that time I was deeply impressed by how being around the sea was capable to change people’s emotion in such a positive way. The poet, Pablo Neruda, in his poem “The Sea” illustrates how the sea teaches a trapped man a lesson on how to be released from struggling to find freedom and happiness. The three crucial poem-writing elements, sound, structure, and figurative language make the power of sea more vivid just like a picture we could see and have physical feelings about. And when we try to get a deeper understanding of the poem, it is the sound that we hear first.

Part One of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ is told by Antoinette Cosway, more commonly known as Bertha Mason from ‘Jane Eyre’. For the first time, we see things through her eyes, through the first-person narration employed by the author. This allows us a more intimate and personal experience of the character and allows us as readers to form our own opinions about the decline into madness that the female protagonist of the story eventually suffers. However, this style of narration has characteristics that can affect what we get

The expectations of society strip Jane and Antoinette of their individuality, in Antoinette’s case creating