Josh Beatty Mrs. Moore Honors English 10 April 28th, 2011 The majority of people have been picked on or teased at some point in their life. Racism in the 1960’s was an extreme form of bullying. The civil rights movement was occurring in this time. The Secret Life of Bees happens during this hard, and wonderful, time for African Americans, specifically 1964, wonderful because they were getting their rights as an American citizen. In the book, Rosaleen, an African American housekeeper and nanny, gets upset with the bullying and the overpowering of the whites and acts out; this acting out gets her put in jail.
At the end, Lily finds out the complete truth about her mother who lived in the Pink house, and on the day that she died, she went to get Lily and to run away from T. Ray. Lily also learns that she did kill her mother by accident, forgives herself and learns to love her mother. I would improve the book by adding Deborah's ghost as she watches over Lily through the whole story, and how much she changes as the climax reaches its end. I would recommend this book to families and friends, since it has a very important life lesson. “The Secret Life of Bees” is, once again,
Throughout The Secret Life of Bees, Lily, the main character of the novel, undergoes many important changes. These changes occur as she grows in her understanding of herself and the world that surrounds her. As Lily travels deeper into the South and is confronted more frequently with racism, her understanding and hatred for racism grow. In addition, Lily comes to terms with the death and absence of her mother. Lily finds peace within herself by seeking other means to fill the void left by her mother’s death and becoming spiritually linked with Our Lady Chains.
Self-love and racism play a very important role in Zora Neale Hurston's “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The theme of love with her Granny was force upon Janie and finding love within her was described as a pear tree and the horizon. Janie spent her days looking for passionate love in three different marriages. With the character of Mrs. Turner, she shows how everyone is racist in the world, and she is black herself but don’t want to realize it because she’s biracial. Hurston’s theme of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was based on the Harlem Renaissance and was shown dramatically throughout of the book. First, the theme of love with her Granny was force upon Janie and finding love within her was described as a pear tree and the horizon.
Arian Tyler HUM 197F Professor Ridley November 27, 2012 Dedé Mirabal: Journey from Captivity to Liberation In In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, the author employs a repetitive theme of entrapment concerning the famous myth of the Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic, also known as La Mariposas. One example used by the author is the feeling of captivity the sister Minerva feels by her constricting home as a child. Another example is how the Mirabal sisters, under the pressures of an authoritarian dictatorship, felt confined by society and also the physical entrapment the Mirabal sisters endured during their imprisoned time. The key and most essential example of entrapment in the biographical fictions has to be Dedé Mirabal’s inner-captivity that consumes her through-out the novel. This essay will attempt to analyze and explore the personal prison Dedé’s character inhabits.
Alisa Key August 16, 2010 AP English 11 The Scarlet Letter The progression of Hester throughout The Scarlet Letter was dramatic and varied greatly. In the beginning of the book she was feeling ashamed, isolated, and shunned by the townspeople. To her, the “A” stood for more than adultery, it stood for “ashamed.” She was being imprisoned by the judgment of others; the lock was a simple scarlet letter. She was living while being haunted by her past. Even seeing her own daughter, Pearl, would sometimes bring up the emotion of her sin all over again.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel about an African American woman named Janie and her struggle to find true love and meaning in her life. While Janie is the main character, her Grandmother Nanny is the person who sets Janie on her life’s journey to find happiness. However, Nanny’s decisions were based on her slave ideals and were not what Janie desired for her own life. As a former slave, Nanny had been raped by her white master and gave birth to her daughter who became Janie’s mom. When the white master is sent off to war, his jealous wife threatens to whip Nanny and to sell off her baby.
Three main characters, Jean Louise Scout Finch, her lawyer father Atticus, and her older brother Jem encounter prejudice, hypocrisy and other evils in Alabama during the 1930’s. Several characters in this novel help Scout and Jem understand courage as a reoccurring theme to the plot, with each example a different exploration of the moral nature of human beings. Consider Mrs. Dubose an elderly ill-tempered racist woman with a hearty morphine addiction. In order to go to town, the children had to pass her house, unless wanting to walk a mile out of the way. Strolling home from town one afternoon, a verbal dispute ensued with Mrs. Dubose.
Teresa Austin ENGL 151C Maria Brandon April 11, 2011 ESSAY 4 Alice Walker Alice Walker is an advocate/activist for the end of ignorance to the persecution of her gender and race. Alice Walker’s life relates to her stories, poems and plays, they represent a mirrored image of her life growing up a poor, oppressed, black daughter of sharecroppers. Walker’s writings are a voice for the injustice of prejudice and oppression of black women and their culture. In the summer of 1952 while playing cowboys and Indians with her brothers, Alice was blinded in her right eye from an accidental gunshot wound at the young age of eight. When she was 14 years old her brother Bill had the "cataract" removed for Alice by a doctor in
Tallahassee during the civil rights movement was a less than desirable place to be for African Americans. The weight of racism in this southern town affected everyone, even down to the children and their education. It was the south at its worst from outrageous segregation laws, Jim Crow, and bus boycotts. In Ryals’ novel “Cookie & Me, Mary Jane Ryals tells a story of two young girls of different races trying to be friends in the midst of a city determined to be segregated, but the girls themselves were also determined. The hardest struggle the girls faced was being able to be friends in public.