In chapter 3 “The Other Wes Moore”by Wes Moore, the author states that his mother saw the school system getting poor. She decided to enroll the author in a private school. The author became friend with a boy named Justin they easily bonded because they were the only black kids in the school. Wes was displeased with the new school he was too poor for his classmates and too rich for the neighborhood kids. The author did not know where to fit.
The structure of AGMIHTF by Flannery O'Connor is interesting and is a good place to start the discussion. It is divided into two different parts. The boundary between the first and second part is when the group has their accident. As this is the moment when the trip suddenly becomes extremely unpleasant, it is a significant event that creates a sharp difference in the tone and the mood of the story. In the first part, the focus is mainly on the family and the personalities of everyone in the family.
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude for achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” This quote said by Thomas Jefferson relates to both Wes Moores throughout the book. The Author Wes had to make an important decision that would point him into the right direction by getting enrolled into military school, and deciding to join college too. The Other Wes got his General Education Diploma (GED) and was enrolled in the Job Corps to try and turn his life around by leaving the drug game, ultimately wanting to provide more for his kids in the future. Both had positive goals that they wanted to achieve but one was mentally stronger than the other thus leading to the fact that one is a very
Imagery of the bass, the river, and Sheila Mant One of the main themes of this story is that sacrifice. The narrator of this story is not given a name but he is fourteen year old. The narrator has a major crush on a women- seventeen year old, Sheila Mant. The narrator finally, and I say finally, asks Sheila on a date via the narrator’s boat.
“Slower than the Rest” by Cynthia Rylant is a realistic story about a boy named Leo who is slower than the rest finds a turtle and named it Charlie. In the beginning, Leo and his family are driving in the car and find a turtle by the side of the road. Leo jumps out of the car to get the turtle, and then Leo names the turtle Charlie. Then when Leo gets home he plays with Charlie and they become best friends. Soon, Leo takes Charlie to school for his presentation about wildfires.
Throughout the seventeenth century, conflict between Europeans and Native Americans was rampant and constant. As more and more Europeans migrated to America, violence became increasingly consistent. This seemingly institutionalized pattern of conflict begs a question: Was conflict between Europeans and Native Americans inevitable? Kevin Kenny and Cynthia J. Van Zandt take opposing sides on the issue. Kevin Kenny asserts that William Penn’s vision for cordial relations with local Native Americans was destined for failure due to European colonists’ demands for privately owned land.
In Terrance Hayes’s poem “Mr. T-,” the speaker presents the actor Laurence Tureaud, also known as Mr. T, as a sellout and an unfavorable role model for the African American youth for constantly playing negative, stereotypical roles for a black man in order to achieve success in Hollywood. The speaker also characterizes Mr. T as enormous and simple-minded with a demeanor similar to an animal’s to further his mockery of Mr. T’s career. The speaker begins his commentary on the actor’s career by suggesting that The A-Team, the show Mr. T stars in, is racist by mentioning how he is “Sometimes drugged / & duffled (by white men) in a cockpit,” which seems to draw illusions to white men capturing and transporting slaves to new territories during the time of the slave trade (4-5).
Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is a popular author in the United States of America. Mostly of her focus in her articles and books is on the expression of interpersonal relationships in contentious interaction. Tannen became well known after her book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation was published. However, this was not her only claim to fame. Along with this book, she also wrote many other essays and articles including the popular article “Marked Women, Unmarked Men.”
Picture book review: Stolen girl August 2015 ‘Stolen girl’ written by Trina Saffioti and illustrated by Norma MacDonald, is a touching, emotionally stirring picture book about the tourment a young aboriginal girl experiences when she was taken away from her mother, by the Australian government. The story takes place in a children’s home and is told with the use of small bursts of detailed paragraphs and intense, colourful and melancholy illustrations. Written for 8-10 year olds, the purpose of the book represents the experiences of children who were a part of the stolen generation in the 1900s-1970s. In this time period it was government policy in Australia that each indigenous Australian child was to be removed from their families as the
In the book “Killers of the Dream” by Lillian smith there are several ideas that are brought forward that really demonstrate that the author exaggerates the true situation and the state of affairs in the south. In the context of the book, the south was experiencing serious crisis when the whited propagated segregation against the blacks and other low class whites. The paper contains the author’s thesis and a summary of the author’s primary points. Additionally, the paper examines whether the authors account is incomplete, questionable or cases where the account does not make sense. The social profiling that resulted was regrettable and brought serious repercussions to the society in general.
Holden Caulfield lives his life as an outsider to his society, because of this any we (as a reader) find normal is a phony to him. Basically, every breathing thing in The Catcher in the Rye is a phony expect a select few, like Jane Gallagher. What is a phony to Holden and why is he obsessed with them? A phony is anyone who Holden feels is that living their authentic life, like D.B. (his older brother). Or simply anyone who fits into society norms, for example, Sally Hayes.
In My Antonia, Willa Cather pens a nostalgic story focused on a two people with a unique connection. Jim Burden narrates the story of Antonia Shimerda, the girl next door who happens to be a Bohemian emigrant. Jim moves to his grandparents’ house after his parents die; Antonia arrives in the United States with her family and little else. The two are vastly different, but bond quickly on the Nebraska prairie. Most people who study the novel acknowledge the obvious impact that Antonia has on Jim and see Antonia as “in one way or another, the center of the novel” (Lucenti).
There is a certain level of reverence that Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf exhibits for plays. Although, the motion picture is more than just a recording of a theatrical play you can’t help but feel that you are in fact watching a play that was translated onto the big screen. The camera “…function[s] as a recorder, with the signature (the distinguishing stylistic qualities) of the filmmaker kept unobtrusive”.p146. Without a doubt Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf resembles a film more heavily influenced by David Belasco. The characters’ attire, along with the car, and decoration of the home and dinner were all accurate to the time period that they were depicted as being in.
Sandra Cisneros is a famous poet from the late twentieth century. Most of her work is popular due to her profound thinking. Her work was very unique and incorporated an extraordinary type of dreamy abstraction. Most observers of her work can agree on this. My Wicked Ways, proved her talent to be “extremely electrifying”, according to the The New York Times Book Review.
From the outset, I have to say that “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger has been one of the most important and influential pieces of literature I have ever read. At its core, the book is a superb coming of age novel which discusses several extremely powerful themes such as the difficulties of growing up, teenage angst and alienation and the superficiality, hypocrisy and pretension of the adult world. These themes resonated deeply with me and were portrayed excellently through the use of powerful symbolism and the creation of highly relatable and likable characters. One such character is Holden Caulfield whom the story both revolves around and is narrated by.
