“If Mr. Finch doesn’t wear you out, I will.” (278) Calpurnia isn’t scared to give the kids a spanking. She has been around them long enough that she is comfortable to discipline them. And this quote tells exactly that. She is practically a mother figure to the kids. With just these few examples of the way Harper Lee addresses “Family” in To Kill a Mockingbird, it is noticeable that family matters a lot in this book.
Word count 385 Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” is a Mother’s story of circumstance and regret. In the story the mother retells of her hardships and sacrifice that her family had to endure as a result of the economic climate during the 1930’s. To overcome this adversity Olsen must sacrifice the relationship and well being of her oldest daughter in order to make ends meet and provide for the rest of her family. The main character in the story is the Mother. The Mother is a static character who remains unchanged throughout the story.
Most orphanages do not have a lot of meal choices so I would be eating this meal a lot and you might think that this would get tiresome, but for me it never did. I don’t really know why but I guess it is the ingredients. Plus it was better than eating just soup, which was our normal meal. When I got adopted, I thought I would never have this great meal again. When my new mom made this meal one St. Patrick’s Day, I was in shock.
Following Atticus’s decision to defend Tom Robinson in Part Two, Aunt Alexandra takes it upon herself to relocate to Maycomb to help look after the children during the trial. She does not approve of Atticus’s involvement in the trial, nor does she believe he is doing a good job of raising his children to the standards becoming of the, “fine folk’ the Finches are. We quickly learn that Aunt Alexandra is a woman of her time and settles into the town, “as if she had always lived with us… Maycomb welcomed her.” At this stage Harper Lee is presenting Aunt Alexandra as a typical southern lady. The use of Scout’s naivety as a narrator, allows Lee to be subtly critical of many of the characters, including Aunt Alexandra.
Susie is quickly taken to the in between, where she meets Franny, her guide in the afterlife. The in between can be whatever she wants, and Susie chooses to create her in between in the image of her hometown high school. However, the only thing Susie truly wants is to be back on Earth, growing up with the people she loves. This is the one thing Susie cannot have in the in between, but there is one way Susie can keep up with her family. From the in between, Susie can look down and watch her family as they struggle with their own feelings about her murder.
Margaret Atwood also discusses in “Our First Stories” the early-learned morals children develop through growing up listening to stories or events told from adults and their surroundings. With an old woman desperate to find someone to take care of her complicated daughter, Mr. Shiftlet happened to walk on the right farm at the right time. Now, with the responsibility of looking after the old woman’s daughter, Mr. Shiftlet’s put to the test to be a hero and taking on the task or villain and walking away. Through greed and fear Mr. Shiftlet’s displayed as a morally weak character. In life, people continue to work towards one goal, and that goal’s money.
When reliving moments in her life she speaks of both matronly task ‘When she thought of all the food she had cooked, and all the clothes she had cut and sewed’ (pg 81) and masculine jobs ‘She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes and clamping the wires’ (pg 81). Like her last name “Weatherall”, Granny has been through more than most and has the will and the drive to survive. One thing that is sad about Granny is that she is unable to really let others in. The reader knows that she was married, and that she has children, but even on her death bed Granny is somewhat harsh to her care taker daughter Cornelia, ‘It’s Cornelia. I had to go to bed to get rid of her.’(pg 80) It seems like Granny is surrounded by loved ones but she doesn’t want to let them help her, let them love her.
When Nanny says, “Thank yuh, Massa Jesus,” she is illustrating that although she is no longer a slave, the slave consciousness has caused her to view even her relationship with the deity about slave and master. This makes Janie the leader of her family’s search. However Nanny realized this, and when she saw Janie was old enough for love, she had her married. This guaranteed that Janie would not continue a loss of identity. Even as a young girl living in a materialistic world of her Nanny and her first husband, Logan Killicks, Janie chooses to listen to “the words of the trees and the wind” (Hurston 23-24).
The women are usually mothers, sisters, daughters, and maidservants. Moses’ mother was the one who casted him off in a basket in the hopes of another person finding him and taking him in as their own, saving him from death (Ex. 2:3). The Pharaoh has some compassion when he lets his daughter adopt the baby as her own, even though she knows that the baby is an Israelite. The nurse that is called to help her take care of the child ends up being his real mother.
They try to eat well but with their busy schedule and the kids they usually end up just picking something up for dinner. When Maria does cook she like to use fresh meat and vegetables, avoiding all the processed food. The kids usually have cereal for breakfast followed by school lunch while Tony and Maria start heir day with coffee and a bagel. For their lunch they often pick up lunch with coworker,