The Twin Sisters in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks Fleur Pillager and Pauline Puyat are the main female characters in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. Being female roles, Fleur and Pauline have similar points and different ones. Both of them are the powerful medicine women; however, while mentioning being Indian American mothers, the attitude of Fleur and Pauline are totally contrast. Although the two female characters don’t have the same kinship, we still can view Pauline and Fleur as the twin sisters, according to Paula Gunn Allen’s idea of “twinning in American Indian spiritual traditions with that of complementarity, of duality that is not the same opposition, a concept of balance that perceives the integration of two diversities as creating a whole” (Sarve-Gorham167). Therefore, Fleur and Pauline can be called the twin sisters.
All over the world, girls often go through a "princess phase", made up with anything pink and pretty. When it happened to Peggy Orenstein's daughter, the writer decided to examine the phenomenon. She found that the “girlie-girl” culture was less innocent than it might seem, and can have negative consequences for girls' psychological, social and physical development. From a very young age, girls learn to define themselves from the outside in, and a lot of researches suggest that our culture’s emphasis on physical beauty is the root of problems such as negative body image, depression, eating disorders and high-risk sexual behavior. I strongly agree with the Peggy Orenstein’s article.
The story gained a lot of information and it wasn’t as scornful as the way Dee is towards Maggie. If Dee was to tell her point of view, it would be full of lies and she would be full of judgmental comments especially towards Maggie. You would notice in the end how scornful and judgmental she was to Maggie by saying that she ought to make something of herself too. The narrator of the story admires her daughter Dee and all her good ways but also points out her selfish and patronizing ways. Dee’s attitude towards her family
She had no confidence in her mother growing up, and saw her as a “limit” and an “embarrassment”. Later in Tan’s life, she found several surveys which led her to realize that she was not alone; there were other Asian-Americans who may have shared the same struggles as her. Tan creates a symbolic diction through the use of words like “broken”, “limited”, and “fractured”. She is very repetitive with her use of these words, although she explains how she hated when people described her mother’s english that way. Although Tan knows that the way her and her mother converse is not grammatically correct, she has grown to love it.
Her dealing with these individuals has caused her to become very resentful, bitter and jealous. She was very jealous of her sister Stella-Rondo. In the text Sister stated “I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again” ( Welty, 367). This statement that Sister made insinuates that she does not want her sister around. And would be thankful if she went back to where she came from.
After her best friend Terri is introduced, she explains all the things they did together and the events that occur where the young girl realizes Terri isn’t really a good friend. Like every teenage girl, Serros was insecure about the way she looked and conceded herself ugly because of her nose.
)” Comparing the film to the story itself they are very much identical to one another with a few alterations from the story itself. The mother’s character being one as she is portrayed in the story as being rather jealous of her daughter’s beauty in a way sees much of herself in Connie, which caused her to envy her daughter for carrying on her once young and beautiful genes, and in return she chose to favor Connie’s rather odd and out of place sister June instead; we tend to see less of her character in the film acting towards Connie with that attitude. Another difference from the film is the concluding scene, which we witness Arnold actually return Connie after he has gotten what he came to steal from her, and after the way her mother greets her at, hugging and apologizing for the fight they got in to previously that Sunday morning which we know would never have happened in the stories character of the mother. A last thing that Oates’ quotes about in her last paragraph in the essay response on the film which I didn’t even
The first thing I noticed while reading the story was how the two girls differed in appearance. with the way the mother describes Maggie she says of how Maggie is vary skinny like a small child, dark skinned and has burn scars down her arms and legs, from when her home had caught on fire and she had to be pulled out as her mother had explained, causing her to be ashamed of her looks. Her mother says “she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe.” Maggie’s scars have really affected the way she carries herself. She walks like a dog run over by a car as her mother describes it. Maggie is not only physically but mentally scarred.
Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119). Dee undermines her sister, not always knowing what type of impact she impresses upon Maggie. Dee does not appreciate her sister or her mother, both of which is barely educated and lives in a poor, dilapidated home. In fact, Dee had her own way of making this noticeable in one instance when she stood off in the distance while their first home burned down with her mother and sister inside (121). She does not feel comfortable taking on the old fashioned lifestyle her mother and sister do.
Bradstreet also shows her insecurity when she says, “Nor can I, like that fluent sweet tongued Greek” (129). Lee Oser believes that she lingered over the Greek’s traditions on natural beauty (194). Although Bradstreet has great dreams, she knows her limits as a woman and is left only to dream. Bradstreet soon becomes depressed and grows angry at her state in society, because of envy and her continuous dreaming. John Winthrop says, “God Almighty hath so disposed of the condition of mankind” (107).