Kelcie Brown ENG 4U Miss Nimmo Dec 8th, 2008 Lost In the Glass Menagerie Failures are often seen as an event of inadequacy that one brings on oneself. On the other hand, failure can be induced and plotted by others. In these two plays, Bella Kurnitz from Lost in Yonkers and Laura Wingfeild from The Glass Menagerie, display many examples of total loss. Bella and Laura’s constant struggle to please their overbearing mother’s lead to their excessive defeats. Their mother’s cause them to fail in achieving their dreams of a loving male relationship, a decent education and an independent life.
The novels Ethan Frome and Catcher in the Rye by Edith Wharton and J.D.Salinger, respectively, are two great works that depict two characters’ struggles in life. Three themes that both novels share are the need for companionship, regret over lost potential and immersion in a fantasy world. Ethan Frome and Holden Caulfield are both very lonely characters in desperate need for companionship and compassion. They both search for human contact of sorts to prevent the onset of loneliness. Frome marries Zenobia Pierce prematurely, only to obviate “the mortal silence of…long imprisonment.” (Wharton, page 61) He wanted “the sound of a …voice” to fill the void on his farm.
Paige Cooper 12/12/08 English 1B, Anna Mantazaris Lucy Grealy had the misfortune of at the age of nine being afflicted with a disability that was written all over her face and with being intelligent enough to know how different her life was because of it. Lucy would never know the bliss of ignorance. She completely understood what society perceived as beauty, that she once had it and had since lost it, along with her childhood and chance at a normal life. Lucy Grealy’s memoir Autobiography of a Face takes the reader through her lifetime of internal and external struggles with her disease and her desire to achieve perfect physical beauty. Lucy’s idea of beauty is external, her mothers internal.
The daughters in the stories thought their mothers were very pushy about some things and they did not like it. However, what they did not realize is the intention their mother had for them to be in a better, more independent situation then they were. Jing-Mei Woo was one of the daughters in chapter eight titled Two Kinds and it stated, “I hated the tests, something inside of me began to die”. (Page 141) When Jing-Mei’s mother saw other people excelling, she thought it was necessary for her daughter to do the same thing. She had been put on a pedestal in her mind as a type of prodigy.
It is amazing that only through great hardships, such as Esch having to fight Manny and her finding out that she is pregnant, could she receive true insight. Unfortunately, Esch’s blindness cost her her childhood and possibly a natural relationship with someone her own age. Blindness can normally be defined as the inability of one to see, but according to Fuertes and Ward, blindness is not only a physical impairment, but also a “mental flaw” that can consume someone and can be rather “unfortunate”. One of Ward's more subtle themes in her novel, Salvage the Bones, is that of blindness. Esch, the main character and heroine of the award-winning novel by Jesmyn Ward that portrays the life of a rural Mississippi family before, after, and during Hurricane Katrina, embodies Ward’s theme of subconscious blindness, by showing it to be the primary cause of Esch’s bad decisions and self-loathing.
Emma Baird Dr. Meredith McCarroll English 232 25 September 2010 The Death of Edna Pontellier: A Rebellious Defeat Even from its first publication, Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening has caused controversy. While today The Awakening is praised for its feminist undertones, the piece was first criticized for its lack of representation of American values. Instead of depicting a main character that embodied the Victorian ideal of a woman fulfilling the role as an “Angel in the House” which was the norm for American women during this particular historical period, Edna was a rebellious wife and an adulteress, whose desires and yearning for independence lead her to make many radical decisions throughout the course of the novel¾ from inwardly
Elizabeth Perle McKenna left a high-powered position in publishing to search for the neglected parts of her life. In writing When Work Doesn’t Work Anymore, she found lots of baby boomers like herself who had bought into what they call the New Oppression – hard earned success. The symptoms include burnout, boredom and lack of balance. Suzanne Fields, “Mission No Longer Impossible—Or Is It?” -Excerpt from The Aims of
When my daughter was almost a month old, I was so overwhelmed with this drastic life change that I began to "space off" in a sense. I would be in a room with a group of people and in my mind I could be somewhere totally different. When someone attempted to bring me back from my "happy place" I would get really upset and sometimes cry out of frustration or yell at the person who attempted to bring me back to the real world which often times was her dad. It played a major role in our relationship and I began to question myself about everything. I felt like I was not doing right as a mother because all my child wanted to do was eat and eat and eat.
This novel to me is altogether depressing and very hard to read without crying. Being abandoned by one parent and almost the sight of you just disgust your other parent is hard to coop with. The story Quicksand to me is just not a story it is something that we deal with in everyday life. To me Quicksand describes all the turmoil that’s going on not only in Cranes life but also Larsen’s. It also deals with the conflicting demands of her racial and sexual identities and the nature of being a black
It was her mistake, so she is going to take on her responsibility, and be a great parent for her unborn child. She said, “If it was my choice i would have got pregnant after college” (Duval). Luckily, her boyfriend, her family and friends were unexpectedly supportive of this major change in Harley’s life. Everyone preached to Harley about how tough it would be with having a baby, she didn’t think anything of it. The only worry in their minds was Harley and her junior year of high school; hoping and expecting she would finish