In Nella Larsen’s Passing, Irene Redfield, the central character of the book, spends a lot of time near windows. Windows are found throughout the book, and they are a place where Irene and Clare are able to reflect upon their emotions. Irene expresses a range of emotions throughout the duration of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Irene’s demeanor is calm, but at the end of the book, she is more reckless emotionally. Depending on the circumstances in which Irene is looking out of a window, we are able to determine her emotional state at that point in time.
In the poem, “Becoming and Going: An Oldsmobile Story” by Gerald Hill the speaker is traveling down a road in the Fort Qu’appelle Valley. He notices his father and his son are also driving down this road. The speaker then begins to list the two men’s characteristics. As he lists them we see that the father and the son have both similarities and differences in their personalities.
The novella Passing, by Nella Larsen is largely a story about Irene Redfield and her own inner turmoil. She is someone with a perfectionist complex who cannot stand to be in the wrong and so projects her own frustrations and insecurities onto others in order to cope with being average. In particular, Irene projects her frustrations with herself onto Clare Kendry, a childhood friend from Chicago. A topic that Irene obsesses over is Clare’s choice to pass as a white woman, thus bringing a focus to her own actions.
During Nella Larsen’s lifetime, the African American community in Harlem, NY was experiencing the Harlem Renaissance. They were questioning and pushing the boundaries of commonly accepted views of African Americans. Larsen was bold enough to talk about passing, or when black people pass as white, and the fact that sexual attraction can exist between two women. In her novel Passing, Larsen takes a strong stance on the act of passing and the sexuality of women.
Growing up with brothers and sister can create friendly yet serious competition and rivalry. Lively is able to capture the sibling rivalry between Gordon and Claudia, along with the response of the mother by employing the use of diction and imagery. Lively use extensive diction to developed the passage and reinforce her theme about the violence and self-centeredness in the world. Lively used words and phrases like, “searching furiously”, “hunting”, and “rivalry”, to show reader the intense and very important task of searching for fossils.
Nella Larsen’s Passing is a novella about the experiences of African American women ‘passing’ as whites for equal opportunities. Larsen presents the day to day issues they 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 1920s becomes difficult for both of these women physically and mentally as different kinds of challenges progress 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 which causes the interpretation of the novella to vary from distinct perspectives. Jakobson’s model of
Repent, Harlequin Said the Ticktockman In this story the author used ways to make the reader image everything and in the same time the author kept manipulating with the events to confuse the reader. The story placed in the future, and the place is most likely in the USA because the author mentioned the Indiana city. The beginning of the story was about describing the place as modern buildings, airboats; the place seemed wonderful by picturing it. The author The setting here changed when the author in the first half of the story, started telling the story itself from the middle of it then went back to the begging to the end of the story .
In Rita Dove’s “Daystar”, there are several phrases and words that lead the reader of the poem to a profound understanding of the struggles that the main character of this poem experiences. According to the context of the poem, the main character appears to be a mother and wife in distress. Throughout the poem, she is presented as having a dreary, lethargic, and disconnected outlook of her current situation. The main question that must be asked is what the narrator tried to convey by stating that “she was nothing, pure nothing, in the middle of the day” (21-22). There are many possible answers strung across the poem that suggest why this mother describes her state of being in this way, such as the words that were being used to express how
In the story “Time of Wonder” the writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey creates a mesmerizing picture book. Throughout the book he relates his message to the reader of taking time to enjoy the weather and nature. Likewise, the reader is able to experience these events directly with phrases such as “IT’S RAINING ON YOU” (McCloskey 10). One event the reader is able to conjure up is the ocean in Maine with the taste of salt on their tongue. Moreover, the reader visualizes the calm sea on a sunny day and fears the roaring wind before a hurricane.
Book Review: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City Jaleesa Reed University of Georgia Book Review: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City is a fascinating ethnography that seeks to expose and unpack the everyday lives of African American men living in Philadelphia. The author, Alice Goffman, examines the lives of these men who are “on the run” not only from the laws that seek to restrict their lives, but also from their own identities that have become synonymous with outstanding warrants, prison time, and running. Like ethnographers before her, Goffman immerses herself in the lives of her informants. Her study reveals the oppressive nature of neoliberal America and urges
The definition of being an American is often synonymous to most people. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, once expressed his vision, saying, "My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as a beacon of hope." According to Lincoln, being American means embodying hope for a brighter future. Similarly, in Learned Hand's address titled "I am an American Day Address," he defines being American as having a sense of liberty. Understanding Hand's concept of liberty lies in recognizing the balance between courage and freedom.
The human mind is a motion camera with the eyes as its lenses. Lacking the bright glare of its lens, the eyes would take in and absorb the scenery surrounding their presence. The illustrations viewable from the banks of the mind are the memories, the nostalgic flashbacks to view as a motion picture. When there comes a time of migrating to a new life, the flowing of memories come rushing in to the human mind, leaving one longing for home, the one factor that made any person whole. An author’s concept of symbolism to the ambiguous reason of my own representation, my first invitation to a social gathering at Aventura Mall is the scene that best represents Miami from my perspective to the forefronts of the human mind.
Edward Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad, portrays an abandoned, Victorian-styled mansion built adjacent to a railroad. Hopper depicts the lonely state of the house by emphasizing the shading of the house, colors, architectural design, and placement. In the poem, Edward Hirsch emphasizes the houses’s “emotions” through the usage of personification, diction and metaphors. Hirsch’s personification of the house provides us insight on how the house is feeling. For instance, he describes the physical appearance of the house by using words like “strange, gawky house”(142) and “faded cafeteria windows”(143).
The story “Where is Here” ,written by Joyce Oates, begins when a man goes to look at the house he grew up in. He knocks on the door and the dad invites him in, but he declines and just walks around the outer parts of the house. While he is walking outside, the mom of the house tells him to come inside and walk around. The house brings back many good and bad memories that help the reader piece together the strange man's past. The short story, “Where is Here,” has a bleak setting, tortured characters, and supernatural events which help make it an American gothic piece.
In addition to her being tough, young Annie Dillard illustrates herself as a creative child with an imaginative mind. She uses figurative language, such as simile, to compare the tire tracks as “crenellated castle walls” (❡ 5), and goes into describing the ideal snowball: “a perfect iceball, from perfectly white snow, perfectly spherical, and squeezed perfectly translucent…” (❡ 6). The purpose of using these rhetorical strategies is to set a setting of the story and give a background of the
