ipl-logo

Similarities Between 'Brokeback Mountain And Andre Dubus The Fat Girl'

1888 Words8 Pages

Rita Mae Brown once said, “I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” What she meant by this was that defining that society should not define you, and explaining that you’re often driven to despair if you conform to the societal norms. Annie Proulx’s novel, Brokeback Mountain and Andre Dubus’ The Fat Girl proves this concept by portraying the protagonists as characters who are despondent throughout their journey and in a constant battle with themselves, trying to avoid the thing they love for an acceptance in society. In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis is portrayed as a perplexed character, unsure of his love for Jack as it is characterized as an iniquitous deed. On the other hand in The Fat Girl, Louise constantly fights an internal battle with herself with conflicted feelings between her love for food and her confidence due to society’s growing repugnance towards people who are overweight. Even though both stories end differently due to both protagonists’ acceptance towards their secrets, the characters are baffled throughout the course of their respective novel and …show more content…

However they know nothing can fill that void and they are often left miserable in the end. In Brokeback Mountain Ennis, married Alma and had children to avoid his need for Jack. Likewise, Louise married Richard because she thought she finally escaped her unhealthy lifestyle and did not eat secretly anymore. Both Ennis and Louise escaped their shameful desires due to societal norms, but both were miserable without the thing they desired. In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis tried to fulfill his void by marrying Alma. “He rolled her over, did quickly what she hated” (Proulx, 19). However, he was never happier than he was when he was with Jack. Describing that he loved having sex with Jack, and that he missed him when he was gone, Ennis

Show More
Related
779 Words | 4 Pages

For example, when she seeks love, she marries Logan. When she realizes that she cannot attain love through marriage, she desires wealth and power. In order to obtain this, Janie leaves Logan to marry Jody Starks. She is constantly moving from desire to desire every time she is unhappy with her present condition. It would be in her best interest to set realistic goals for herself, and settle in to her life in a way that will provide her with the most efficient method to obtain her goal.

Read More
716 Words | 3 Pages

What idea does the author develop regarding the conflict between pursuing a personal desire and choosing to conform? “Street lights glow red, green and yellow too, do you let signs tell you what to do?”... The words from Lady Gaga ponder over the balance between conforming to authority or self fulfillment. Do we let our individuality falter under the presence of authority and social demands, or do we maintain our own identity and achieve self-actualization? In a society where sacrifices have to be made in order to avoid prejudice, we show tenacity towards who we are at core.

Read More
533 Words | 3 Pages

Society today is really judgemental. If you don’t wear the right clothes or have the right car then you will get judged. It’s kinda like in the book The Crucible if you weren't a puritan then you were an outcast or you might have been a witch. One of the puritan girls Abigail Williams blamed a lot of women who were called puritans and lived the puritan way. In this case people just judged them without looking into far more research.

Read More
397 Words | 2 Pages

On the other Hand, Hank marries her for reputation and nothing more. He still cares for his girlfriend back home, which he constantly thinks about throughout the book, but he knows

Read More
1009 Words | 5 Pages

Conforming to social stereotypes and expectations limits one's individuality. As the outsiders oppose conformity challenges through Ponyboy

Read More
757 Words | 4 Pages

While on the other hand, the young girl reinforces how women have just as much self control as men. The dispute both creates the

Read More
762 Words | 4 Pages

The nature of conformity and individualism in Fahrenheit 451 is different compared to each other. Conformity is how everyone is in the novel while individualism is only shown outside of society. The true nature of conformity is that everyone is created equally while individualism shows what a real person is. In the novel, Montag was a character that was affected by conformity and individualism since he was once conformed in society, but then soon became an individual himself. Conformity and Individualism are polar opposites and that everyone should be unique in their own way.

Read More
904 Words | 4 Pages

Another example of Jess expressing this stage of grief was when he, again, not in the right mind, said, “I hate her”(Patterson 147), as in Leslie. He was so angry that she had passed that all of a sudden he thought that it was her fault that he felt this way and he “hated” her for

Read More
716 Words | 3 Pages

Conformity is a change in behavior, which is normally caused by another person or a group of people’s thoughts or opinions of someone. When an individual is constantly told that they are a certain way, the individual will eventually begin to believe it and conform to other’s views without even realizing it. This happened to the young Emily Grierson, by a numerous amount of people, and continued to happen until the day of her death. Many can probably say that it was the main reason for her deteriorating mental condition, instability, and the strange approach of how she handled death. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is an unusual story about a girl with a troubled mind who is eventually pushed over the edge by the constant gossip of the townspeople and the heartbreak of a lover.

Read More
745 Words | 3 Pages

She becomes sarcastic once more as she states “ I have never been called crude names, like “fatso” or “lard bucket.” In reality, she has been called all of those crude names which is precisely why she does not want to call others of size the same names that she is being called. The crude names that others have called Peck demonstrates her point of view of discrimination against people of size. Progressing on, the author addresses more about how she never picks up magazines and reads the criticism that the authors receive for portraying overweight women. Peck is highly cautious with her words as she says “I have never picked up a magazine with the photograph of a naked woman of substance on the cover, to read, in the following issue, thirty letters to editor addressing sizeism..”

Read More
2377 Words | 10 Pages

It has long been a ubiquitous phenomenon that people are 'normal ' if they follow the conformity. They just uphold the belief of being the ideal person everyone expected from is perfect and on right track. However, most, if not all, of the trend followers will eventually lose oneself and autonomy. To reconstruct own identity, the only way is self-discovery. Germany poets Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The only journey is the one within.”

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be. As an overweight son of divorced parents, the protagonist Angus Bethune hardly meets his classmates definition of “normal”. Yet the theme of Chris Cruther (the author) of the short story “A Brief moment in the Life of Angus Bethune” focuses on the damage the standard of “normality” can inflict and extols self-acceptance as a liberating force. In the short story, “A Brief moment in the Life of Angus Bethune” written by Chris Cruther, one theme that is present is that, it's okay to be different and / or “not normal”. First off, Angus is a very smart and athletic kid, He plays football for his school and is very good at it.

Read More
815 Words | 4 Pages

Conformity is something that humans have been doing for a long time. Such conformity has lead to negative outcomes. This idea is explored through “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden. In these two texts conformity eliminates individuality and causes the society to be weakened.

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem, When The Fat Girl Gets Skinny, by Blythe Baird, the poet addresses the issue of social ideology and how these trends affect young women. Told in a first perspective point of view, the poet supports her theme by describing how teenagers are being affected, establishing a social conflict of false need to achieve trends by identifying motifs for teenager’s actions, incorporating the use of life experiences from the past to the present tense and finalizing with a shift to highlight positivity in change of habit. Baird’s purpose is to illustrate a major conflict among young women who are being affected by social idolization of being skinny. She creates a mood of hopeful in order to inspire young teenagers who are currently harming

Read More
1076 Words | 5 Pages

In Ishiguro’s work of literature Never Let Me Go, he focuses on the complexity of human identity and humanity. The novel, set in Britain during the mid-1990’s, portrays an exposed world, where cloning humans are socially acceptable solely for the purpose of becoming organ donors for “real” people. In the institution Hailsham, students Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were secluded in the English countryside from the rest of the world. Essentially, the work demonstrates how human imperfection can disconnect people from the external world, often causing them to forget the present and lose themselves in the future. With close analyzation and peculiar behavior, the “clones” reveal that their self-identity is incredibly fragile, and can transform itself when others impose judgments upon them.

Read More

More about Similarities Between 'Brokeback Mountain And Andre Dubus The Fat Girl'

Related Topics

Open Document