In Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Silko structures the story in a way that makes her points clear, convincing and engaging. She gets the audience’s attention and keeps it while creating central ideas that tie the story together. Her use of the 1st person makes the story convincing and engaging, while her use of reflection makes her points clear and engaging. The story is tied together at the end with the introduction of the Yellow Woman. Silko begins the text with “From the time I was a small child, I was aware that I was different.” (paragraph 1) This first sentence draws in the audience, making them curious to find out more. Silko uses the 1st person, which connects her to the reader and makes her words convincing and engaging. She then talks about her personal life, explaining why she looks different from the other kids. This structural choice allows her to connect with the reader, keeping us engaged. …show more content…
“One day, when I was in the first grade, we all crowded around the smiling white tourists, who peered at our faces … Just as we were all posed and ready to have our picture taken, the tourist man looked at me. ‘Not you,’ he said and motioned for me to step away from my classmates. I felt so embarrassed that I wanted to disappear.” (paragraph 8) Silko reflecting on her real life situation engages the reader and backs up her claim of white people caring about people’s race or appearance. This reflection makes her point very clear and convincing and sets up for the rest of the text to be convincing. Silko convinces the reader that looks are not as important as people’s character before she talks about the stories of Kochininako, the Yellow
This white fantasization begins with the comparison of the African-American woman to the white woman in countenance who have pale complexions and finer hair, which is directly contrasted with African-American women’s more curly-coiled hair and varying complexions that are darker than those who have mostly a European racial background. To achieve this
In her book, “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”, the author clearly tells about how the culture of the Laguna Pueblo Indians were so different from that of the Western culture. For example, in Laguna Pueblo, there is no different class or social status. I find this very interesting. They also do not place too much value on one’s outward beauty as well. Instead, women were more attractive if they are strong, even stout, which is a great contrast to today's –Western definition: skinny and thin, flawless face etc. They are more interested in beauty within. How one is at peace with nature, his or her surroundings. It is more of having a good character, being selfless, and courageous at any age.
In the essay of Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko uses flashbacks, reflection, and details to enhance the points and to make the clear and convincing. An example of structure, though reflection is how Silko switches between the non-recent and recent past to give the reader an engaging experience. Therefore, Silko is able to use structure ti make her points clear, convincing, and engaging.
To sum up, the narrator in the story is able to fulfill her instinctual desires by becoming a Yellow Woman. She transforms through her dream-like journey into the person she longed to be. It was not until Silva became violent and she sees “something ancient and dark” in his eyes that she begins to snap back into reality. The story reaches out to all of its readers and allows them to relate to the narrator because we all have unfulfilled desires throughout our lives. The sensational descriptions that are given of the landscape as well as her sexual interactions with Silva make the narrator’s thoughts and feelings very easy to understand. In fact many of us who have read the story “Yellow Woman” have a feeling of jealousy that the woman was able to have her adventure and return home and resume her life as normal, without consequence.
In the short story “Yellow Woman”, Leslie Marmon Silko uses characterization and symbolism to address personal and cultural identity.
As a child, Silko recognized her difference and slowly acknowledged her appearance throughout the course of the text. The first interaction between two characters involved Silko and her grandmother, which marked a pivotal point in Silko’s life. Silko’s
Luo and the narrator’s extreme ideals of women, constructed through Balzac’s depiction of women and China’s cultural influences, deprives their judgement of the Little Seamstress’s capability of fostering her intellectual growth beyond their intentions. In the novel, the Little Seamstress describes a scene she acted out with Luo from “The Count of Monte Cristo”: “It was totally a new experience for me. Before, I had no idea that you could take on a role of a completely different person, actually become that person—a rich lady, for example and still be yourself.” (Sijie, 156). This is a moment where the Little Seamstress realizes her potential to transform her rustic life. She finally stuns her competence to Luo and the narrator when they learn that she has gleaned a much different lesson from Balzac than they had intended: “a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price” (Sijie, 197). The Little Seamstress is profoundly influenced by Balzac’s literature and learns a valuable possession she has in her hands and decides to use it to her
This draws the reader to keep reading.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression.
Yellow is a central idea in this work and plays a major role, the protagonist calling it an “unclean” color and finding it to be absolutely “repellant.” To understand this story more, we must look into what the color means. To most people, when they think of the color yellow, they think of the sun; warmth and positivity. But when one looks into what the color means in the language of flowers, one meaning stands out; friendship. Platonic love is sweet and warm, something we would never associate with the word ‘revolting,’ which is just what the protagonist thinks of the color that covers her room.
Danny’s Identity Crisis “Yellow” written by Don Lee is about Danny Kim who was born in 1954 in Rosarita Bay. His parents were immigrants from Seoul and had just migrated to America a year earlier with the help of missionaries they met during the Korean War. His mother was having a hard time grasping their new life, and would sometimes take it out on Danny’s father because she felt she could have married better than what she did and his only reply was silence when she went on her rants. Danny wasn’t known for being the most popular man in high school and defiantly wasn’t the strongest so he would go to the Y.M.C.A. on the Hispanic part of town so he wouldn’t be noticed by his classmates. While there he found a new passion for boxing and was
This is just one way that the author keeps the reader engaged throughout the entire
As the story opens up, Silko makes it a point for the reader to realize the
The Prioress introduces herself as being like a child who does not know many words. She is going to try to tell a tale as best as she can. This child-like language can be seen through the whole tale. The
Silko is similar in nature to post modern writing due to her social commentary and ambiguous nature. However, I would have to say that she is really in a class by herself.