After reading “Dothead” by Amit Majmudar I considered looking at the year in which the poem was written and right underneath the poem it marked 2011. Looking at the year I thought about the speaker's point of view, based off his writing it seemed to me as if he were going back in time and reviving his past memories. I pictured the scenario to be in a upper class school, that filled the cafeteria “Jesse sucked his chocolate milk,”(Majmudar 20) with pale faces and some seats with other skin colors. Just by picturing the scenario I became to imagine what that could do to a person who is different from everybody else. Majmudar poem gives us a glance of his past experience of being an indian in an all american white school.
The reality of life can often differ from childhood to adulthood. Twelve-year-old Pablo Medina experienced this first hand. In the reflective essay, “Arrival: 1960,” Medina tells about his experiences of moving from Cuba to America. Upon arriving, his expectations for America are set high. Coming from the communism he saw in Cuba, Medina was expecting a land of freedom, apart from violence, and segregation; he was expecting an overall better life for himself.
The essay will consider the poem 'Practising' by the poet Mary Howe. It will explore how this poem generates its meaning and focus by analysing its techniques, metaphorical construct and its treatment of memory. The poem can primarily be seen to be a poem of missed opportunity. In this way is comes to form, alongside other poems of Howe's a study about a certain kind of loss and the recuperative efforts of memory, alongside the certainty of the failure of this recuperation. The paper will begin by giving a context to the poem with regard to Howe's life and work and will then proceed to analyse it directly, drawing attention to how it can be seen to fulfil this thesis about its content and meaning.
Arab Open University Faculty of Language Studies Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA) EL121: The Short Story and Essay Writing Fall Semester 2015-2016 Part (I): STUDENT INFORMATION (to be completed by student) 1.
In the above poem Ayim tries to fit in her hyphenated/two part identity into one inseparable whole. Although she states that: “[her] fatherland is Ghana, [her] mother tongue is German” (Ayim, Blues in Black and White 46), her Afro-German identity is adaptive to and inclusive in her surroundings: “I have been living and working in West Berlin and feel more at home in this city than anywhere else” (Blues in Black and White 47). However, racism causes her to feel estranged even after the unity of the two Germanys: “The new “We” in “this our country”—Chancellor Kohl’s favorite expression—did not and does not have a place for everyone” (Blues in Black and White 48). Not all immigrants are treated on equal footing. Some, including Black Germans of course, are categorized as foreigners “and cannot be real Germans” (Blues in Black and White 51).
He was lost for the rest of the war, shuttered inside his apartment, nervous, morose, and broken.” Hedges uses heartbreaking accounts like this to make his theses invulnerable. Later he writes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about the “celebration of suicidal martyrdom and justification of the tit-for-tat killing of noncombatants.” Once he establishes this point he tells the story of Murad Abdel Rahman, whose son was killed for sport by Israeli soldiers. “A half-hour after he left, people came running to tell me he was shot in the leg.
Battle Royale story written by Ralph Ellison who is the main character was forced by the legislation to compete in a Battle Royale with other students. This story provides the realistic representation of being a black person in the country dominated by the white. During this time, the economy of Japan was nearly totally a collapse in view of the fact that they experienced high rates of unemployment. Ralph Ellison had a number of questions lingering in his head on how to achieve the equality between the white and the black. For instance, this story is set under the regime of slavery whereby his grandfather has been a slave for about eight-five years.
This discrimination has become built into society and effects everyday life. As Pashtuns, Amir and Baba have the opportunities to receive an education and start their own business. While the Hazaras, Hassan and Ali, may only work as servants. This discrimination brought on by social hierarchy causes isolation, violence, and guilt, to those surrounded by it throughout the book. These ideas are caused by discrimination and are explored through Amir’s experiences in the book.
Drifters by Bruce Dawe “Why have hope?”, is the question raised in the poem “Drifters” by Bruce Dawe. Bruce Dawe’s poem explores how change can damage a family 's relationship and cause them to drift apart. This poem has underlying and straight forward themes depicted about change. Straight forward depiction is the physical movement of the family from place to place and not everyone is in favour of this change. The very first line of the poem, “One day soon he’ll tell her it’s time to start packing”, supports the inevitable change that no one else has a say in except the man.
In October 1905, James Joyce wrote “Araby” on an unnamed narrator and like his other stories, they are all centered in an epiphany, concerned with forms of failures that result in realizations and disappointments. The importance of the time of this publication is due to the rise of modernist movement, emanating from skepticism and discontent of capitalism, urging writers like Joyce to portray their understanding of the world and human nature. With that being said, Joyce reflects Marxist ideals through the Catholic Church’s supremacy, as well as the characters’ symbolic characterization of the social structure; by the same token, psychoanalysis of the boy’s psychological and physical transition from one place, or state of being, to another is
In Wild Thorns, Sahar Khalifeh uses the absurdities of war to emphasize how the Palestinian Occupation is a war within the Palestinian community, and between the Palestinian and Israeli community. The product of such an environment is the psychological factors of tension, helplessness, sacrifice, and solidarity. Khalifeh’s characters from the Palestinian city of Nablus express these behaviors. Through her bittersweet novel, she invites readers to assess how the Occupation creates an individual to distort cultural values, and how their selfish acts destroy the loves of the group of people they surround themselves by.
The poem A Step Away From Them by Frank O’Hara has five stanzas written in a free verse format with no distinguishable rhyme scheme or meter. The poem uses the following asymmetrical line structure “14-10-9-13-3” while using poetic devices such as enjambment, imagery, and allusion to create each stanza. A Step Away From Them occurs in one place, New York City. We know this because of the lines, “On/ to Times Square, / where the sign/blows smoke over my head” (13-14) and “the Manhattan Storage Warehouse.”
However much he may think he loves her, she never seems to feel the same; nevertheless, he will not cease in his attempts to make her notice him. It is at the point he realizes that the pair can never be together that he finally has his “coming of age” moment. Short story Araby, by author James Joyce, uses literary elements such as symbolism, personification, and themes to teach valuable life lessons in a way that all types of people are able to relate to the message held within. Primarily, symbolism is a crucial element utilized to bring Araby to life. Darkness is used often to symbolize the real world and the bitter truths that come with it.
The poem "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye speaks about how you experience kindness and what it really is. The main point in this poem is that in order to experience people's kindness you need to experience hurt, sorrow, and loneliness. The author says that when you loose everything and have no one or thing that when kindness comes along it lifts you up "and then goes with you everywhere/ like a shadow or a friend" (33-34). When portraying this message the author uses a sad but hopeful tone to send the message she wants to say. This tone helps portray the message because you can feel how sad someone is when they are lonely and they have nothing.
There is always a sense of nostalgia and belonging to the homeland. For example, the words of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) express nostalgia for a past that every Palestinian has experienced. In the wake of the events that happened in 1948, Al-Nakbah emerged in Palestinian literature as a concept that signifies an unbridgeable break between the past and the present. The Palestinians’ loss of the homeland becomes the loss of paradise.