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Summary Of So What Are You Anyway By Lawrence Hill

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The short story “So What Are You Anyway” By Lawrence Hill is about a young girl named carol who boards a plane and is seated next to a couple that is a little too comfortable when talking to a child. The couple Mr. and Mrs. Norton Make very crude comments that carole senses are dirty questions. Carole handles this as best she can by telling them to stop and screaming “leave me alone.” The stewardess then asks her if she wanted to move and she gladly accepts and moves her seat next to the stewardess. There are numerous examples of social issues in this story and the first one has to do with race. Carole is being judged by the Nortons because she is of mixed race. When she first sits down, Mr. Norton makes a comment about her doll. “A black doll! I never saw such a thing” (pg 1). This comment shows that Mr. Norton feels like there is something wrong with a black doll. Race also becomes an issue when Mrs. Norton says “ I just can’t see. It’s not fair to children. I don’t mind them mixed but the world isn’t ready for it.” This shows how racist Mrs. Norton is by expressing her opinion on how she dislikes mixed-race children, …show more content…

In the story “So What Are You Anyway” Lawrence Hill many examples of power are when Mr. Norton is physically blocking Carole from moving out of the row. ”The man next to carole hogs the armrest. His feet sprawl onto her side,” This shows how he is blocking the row and the way out. He has power over weather she can leave or not. Another example is that when Mr. Norton says “there’s a big hole down by the toilet,” She looks just incase this shows how he has the power to slightly persuade her to think

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‘You’re a mulatto!’” (Hill 3) Mrs.Norton calls Carole a “mulatto” after probing about Carole’s racial background and finding out that Carole’s father is black and Carole’s mother is white. “Mulatto” is a slur that dehumanises and marginalises a child with one parent that is Black, and one parent that is White. In What are you, anyway?, the use of derogatory and racist language used by Mrs.Norton that is directed towards Carole shows the Norton couple’s discriminatory attitudes towards people with a mixed race.

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Meanwhile, James, who appears black, feels different from the other black children in his neighborhood, because his mother is white. James struggles with his mother looking different than him and he recalls, “When I asked her where she was from, she would say, ‘God made me,’ and change the subject. When I asked her if she was white, she’d say, ‘No. I’m light-skinned,’ and changed the subject again”(McBride 21).

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In Lawrence Hills “So What are you, Anyway?” the worst part of the story was the Nortons ignorance. This is first seen with Mr.Norton's misuse of slurs. Mr.Norton explains to Carole race using her doll as it was “ a Negro doll.”. Him using negro instead of black is ignorant because even in the 1970’s , the word negro would be considered highly offensive.

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Power is or means having control over someone or something. Although Mayella is powerful, class was where she suffered the most. “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin.. Its windows were merely opens in the walls….what passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks, and tool shafts….Enclosed

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With every person we meet we hold power over one another in ways that often go overlooked. These things affect how each individual is treated and lives their lives. In the story, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, a work of science fiction, both the main character Dana and the child version of her ancestor, Rufus, exert power over one another with Dana holding the most. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of power is “possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” In this story, power is an important theme.

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Power is the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way, Power is not only strength it is a human relationships, power is the authority one person holds over another. In the play The Crucible,written by Arthur Miller. Three characters Abigail Williams, Reverend Hale, and Judge Danforth. All want to gain power as the play goes on. But it takes a turn and influenced them negatively.

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Racism and bias As people, we are all a part of the human race, no matter our skin color, ethnicity, or origin. Despite our differences, at our core, we are all members of the human race. Lawrence Hill's brief story, "So What Are You Anyway?" touches upon subjects such as bias and racial character, telling a story about a young black girl named Carole. During her plane trip alone, Carole is seated next to a white couple who, upon taking note of the dark skin of her doll, start asking about her race in different ways.

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But first what is Power? When researching Power words such as authority, control, direct, command and influence all appear. These words all support the following statement “Power is the ability to influence and control the behaviour of others.” The problem with power is that it often leads to those in power abusing it. As Lord Acton famously quoted “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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In this example if you were a civilian in that bank you could be terrified to be shot so you would do exactly what the gunman said which in a way gives them all the power. Another example that was very obvious was when one of the gun man caught a civilian lying about were his cellphone is he took his gun and beat a man which was a way of proving to the other civilians that he has all the power. In the movie Usual Suspects the theme power is shown when the two dirty cops were doing airport pick up on a smuggler, these corrupt cops feel that because they wear the badge and hold a gun that they have power over the doing of things right and wrong they know very well that what they are doing is wrong but they continue to do it because the power is something they thrive on and they need. Another example of power is when the crippled man was getting interrogated he believed that he was a step a head of the cops.

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Power can drive people do things they never thought they would. Power draws people to become somthing there not. Would you change if you had a lot of power. Well that's exactly what happened in the play the tempest. The tempest is a play that has charecters that struggle for power.

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Power in today’s can be used in many different forms such as to show strength, rank, encouraging others, being an influence, being a leader, and much more. The way you use power in a situation can have a positive or negative impact on an individual, community, country, nation, or even the world. In the short story “Miss Temptation” by Kurt Vonnegut, he describe how power can impact an individual way of thinking of others due to past experiences. Power can anything one allows to have a dominance over their lives. It is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.

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Richard quickly grows up and is mature enough to ask questions about his race, which is clear when Wright says, “My grandmother, who was as white as any white person, had never looked white to me” (23). RIchard is starting to ask himself an important question: What does it mean to be white? He wonders why his grandmother is black instead of white, which commences his wonderings about what the roots of racism really are. RIchard begins to curiously ask more and more questions, showcasing his curiosity and need for answers, when he says, “Granny looks white.. Then why is she living with us coloured folks...did granny become coloured when she married grandpa?”

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The problem is more than race, it is about how humans treat other humans and how little respect we give to those we deem lower than us. The author used the characters to show that the desire to be superior among others goes further than race. She also used a real tragedy, the murder of the NAACP Field Secretary, which allows readers to connect the novel to real life and making the novel more compelling. These key issues make the readers think deeper, allows the novel to surpass others like it, and connect to many human interactions even in today’s

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Alice is a racist, white woman, who holds nothing but disdain for Frankie. She even says that she hates that she has to share her body with Frankie, because “Negros have a different smell to them.” Frankie is unaware that these alter egos exist, but she experiences

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Carole is a mixed girl but Henry and Betty Norton, the two antagonists, keep pestering her to find out her race. While they continuously asked her about her race, they were very insensitive and ignorant towards the fact Carole is just a young girl. One of the quotes that really shows this is, “‘What are you, anyway? My wife and I had been wondering.’ Carole blinks, sees the man’s clear blue eyes and drops her head.”

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