“The Undercurrent” by Kellie Young is a story of a mother and daughter’s relationship that takes place in Hawaii throughout Young’s childhood. It describes to readers how her mother has influenced her life by becoming an admonitory voice inside her head. The impact Young’s mother has on her is widely due to the amount of admiration Young has for her. A crucial element to “The Undercurrent” is the short stories found throughout her narrative that exemplifies the greater concept of how her mother has shaped her life.
In Elie Wiesel’s novel Night, he displayes a theme of desperation and confusion. It tells the story of the Jewish race from the point of view of a teenage boy. Their family then gets split, so the sister and the mother go to one concentration camp and the brother and the dad go to another. When they arrive to the camp, they get split into different sleeping quarters. Throughout the rest of their journey, they experience hardship and torture as in having to be “Pressed tightly against one another, in effort to resist the cold,” (Wiesel 98).
Lucille Parkinson McCarthy, author of the article, “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum”, conducted an experiment that followed one student over a twenty-one month period, through three separate college classes to record his behavioral changes in response to each of the class’s differences in their writing expectations. The purpose was to provide both student and professor a better understanding of the difficulties a student faces while adjusting to the different social and academic settings of each class. McCarthy chose to enter her study without any sort of hypothesis, therefore allowing herself an opportunity to better understand how each writing assignment related to the class specifically and “what
Ellen Hopkins’ Crank is an epic poem geared toward warning young people of the various consequences of using dangerous drugs. However important its message, it provides a single story, a stereotypical tale influenced by pop culture about addiction and the people it affects. In the poem, the heroine, Kristina Snow, gets addicted to methamphetamines, otherwise known as “crank”. Her life takes a downward turn that includes pregnancy and dropping out of school. The poem depicts just one experience with drug abuse and links it to what is perceived to be the most likely thing to happen if you get addicted to drugs, providing a false single story for the young people it targets.
“Night” is a poem by Hilda Doolittle better known as H.D. Born in Pennsylvania on September 10, 1998. The work of H.D was “characterized by the intense strength of her image economy of language and use of classical mythology”. Mythology is the myths of a group of people depending on each culture. While classical is a long established event or idea or also traditional, HD used traditional myths to create each poem. She was also the leader of the imagist movement which was very important at that time.
In the Heat of the Night is mystery drama film directed by Norman Jewson in 1967 which based on John Ball’s 1965 novel of the same name. It tells the story of Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia, who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a racist small town in Mississippi. Phillip Colbert, a wealthy industrialist from Chicago was murdered. He was constructing a factory in Sparta and staying with his wife during construction. Police Officer Sam Wood during his motor patrol of Sparta found his body on a pavement at the front of a pathway entrance onto Main Street.
Nella Larsen’s Passing is a novella about the past experiences of African American women ‘passing’ as whites for equal opportunities. Larsen presents the day to day issues African American women face during their ‘passing’ journey through her characters of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. During the reading process, we progressively realize ‘passing’ in Harlem, New York during the 1920’s becomes difficult for both of these women physically and mentally as different kinds of challenges approach ahead. Although Larsen decides the novella to be told in a third person narrative, different thoughts and messages of Irene and Clare communicate broken ideas for the reader, causing the interpretation of the novella to vary from different perspectives.
Jane Dailey’s “Sex, Segregation, and the Scared after Brown”, published in The Journal of American History, couples religion, sex, and the struggles of segregation during the civil rights movement. More specifically, Dailey addresses the language of “miscegenation”; asserting that religion was a vessel utilized by both sides of the segregation argument (Dailey 122). For the believing Christian, segregation of races was of “cosmological significance. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education sparked much controversy in the religious word, mainly with those who supported segregation.
After reading the novel, Righteous Dopefiend, I have a different lens in which I can view substance abuse and individuals who suffer from substance abuse disorders. All of the characters in the novel offered a unique perspective to different aspects of substance abuse disorders and the challenges associated with substance abuse and homelessness. However, despite all of the interesting aspects of each individual in the novel, the character Tina stuck out most to me and had the greatest impact on how I will view and engage with individuals who may suffer from substance abuse disorders. Initially what caught my attention about Tina was the chapters that described how she lived as a female on the streets, which was often considered “a man’s place”.
This is because of her escapades of the day that ended up with her crushing a stolen wedding limo into a house (Thomas). The film explores substance use disorder through the eyes and life of Cummings and the people she meets in the rehab. It also explores the challenges they go through in trying to get clean. This essay will show how substance abuse and its related disorder is being portrayed in the film.
Author – Lynda Hull is the author of the poem “The Night Waitress”. Hull had been developing an impressive career in Literature when she died in a car accident. She was influenced heavily by Hart Crane, she had allegedly memorized his poems, as well as jazz musicians. Hull taught English in many universities and also served as Poetry Editor for a journal.
In “Birthday Party,” Katharine Brush’s purpose for writing the short story was to reveal how something that is good can go so wrong. She also demonstrates how some things are not what they seem. Especially in the situation that she wrote. Her purpose from the beginning to end is demonstrated by the use of literary devices. Brush begins by describing the scenario, she states, “They sat on the banquette opposite us.”
Girl, Interrupted, written by Susanna Kaysen in 1967, is a thought provoking memoir following her and fellow parents’ tragic and twisted experiences in McLean Mental Hospital. As a young adult Susanna Kaysen tried to commit suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills and following it with a bottle of alcohol. Her parents were very worried about her and suggested her to go to a doctor that her dad once knew. Kaysen visited the doctor who, after talking to her for a while, requested that she be sent to one of the best mental hospitals in her area. She had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Fisher uses powerful diction and word choice to bring the secretive disease into the light. Through her speech, “A Whisper of AIDS”, Fisher uses fear inducing logistics and powerful emotional images to sway her audience. She showed the world that the HIV virus does not strictly target homosexual men. People of all backgrounds are effected. Her speech brought about funding and increased
“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.
