As the narrator, Melinda Sordino, awaits her first day as a freshman at Merryweather High she describes, “the school bus wheezes to my corner” (pg 3). The authors’ use of personification describes the heaviness and panic that is set into the setting. When Melinda arrives at school, she describes, as others’ talk behind her back, the feeling that “words climb up my throat” (pg 5). This personification describes the want to speak up but is silenced by her feelings of anger and disparity. Melinda’s experience so far at high school hasn’t been perfect, but has rather worn her out “my bed is sending out serious nap rays… The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am” (pg 16). This passage shows that she would…
The structure in the poem illustrates the freedom of youth and playfulness. The poem is written in free verse to emphasize the significance of her as being free as she fantasizes about being unstoppable and not being ordinary. In lines 23 and 24, the enjambments are crucial to the whole liberal tone of the poem. Through the rhetorical question, “[c]an it be there was only one summer that I was ten?”…
As the story opens, we are introduced to an opinionated, observant, sarcastic and hormone-driven 19-year old boy who works as a cashier in a grocery store of a small town. As he describes the store and his surroundings, the reader begins to sense Sammy’s discontentment with his mundane life when he shares his thoughts and perceptions. For example, he refers to customers as “sheep” and “house slaves”. The external conflict between Sammy and his small town’s views develops as he watches the girls maneuver their way around the store. These girls were a breath of fresh air. They were new, different and seemed to stir up some outrage and criticism. For instance, Updike writes, “A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct” (119). He even began to feel sorry for the girls as he saw “old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints” (Updike 120). This demonstrates how Sammy began to realize how closed-minded and ordinary the town he lived in was. Another external conflict arises when Lengel, the store manager and Sunday school teacher confronts the girls about the store’s policy. In particular, Updike states, “‘we want you decently dressed when you come in here’ ” (121). Sammy resented the fact that Lengel and all the “sheep” judged the girls simply by their clothing or lack thereof. His act of quitting was to show them that they all overreacted to the situation with the girls.…
The speaker of this poem is going through an identity crisis. They are dull and don’t see themselves having a personality. They see women in beautiful saris in the beginning of the poem and revel in how exotic and interesting they are or appear to be. Simultaneously they are conscious of their own bland way of life…
The theme of the novel ‘The Outsiders’ as the main characters are explained to be represented as juvenile delinquents who belong to a violent neighbourhood and lawless gangs. The gangs that fight the most are the ‘Greasers’ and the ‘Socs’. The ‘Greasers’ are tough and as, they steal from the shops, rob cars, jump people, sneak into drive in movies and don’t do well in school. The Greasers wear- long oily hair and scruffy clothes. The Socs are tough, cold- blood and mean trouble-makers. The Soc’s do well in school; the Soc’s wear- short hairs, nice clothes, and have expensive cars. "How'd you like that haircut to begin just below the neck…?" (Dialogue). This reveals that the Socs are attacking Ponyboy and are trying to cut his hair. “What kind of world is it where all I have to be proud of is a reputation for being a hood, and greasy hair?" (Rhetorical Question). Ponyboy is asking himself that what world he would have to live in to put up with his reputation and having greasy hair. "You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin' can touch you..." (Dialogue). Dally is telling Ponyboy that if your get tough like me you won’t have to put up with what you’re going through. The ‘Greasers’ and the ‘Socs’ are juvenile delinquents who fight a lot and this is how teenagers are represented in the novel.…
Issa Rae has always been an awkward girl; she’s always worn the wrong pants, kissed the wrong boy, and felt the wrong way, or simply been the wrong girl. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl is a dazzling collection of essay about growing up learning to love the things in your life that makes it unique, even when those things also make it mighty awkward. She writes about being a black girl who just cannot dance, about being unhappy working in cubicle as her web series was taking off, about not arriving at a personal fashion sense, about honest, insightful, and laugh-out-loud funny and of course arrestingly awkward. One of the best books I ever read was “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” written by Issa Rae; it is the best because it tackles subjects like the misadventures of the internet, her being black and growing up watching television.…
For this essay I will analyze the unnamed narrator whom is the protagonist in the story. The story opens up with the narrator describing the current times. There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. (Boyle 77) He and his friends, nineteen at the time, like to consider their selves bad characters. He then goes on to describe there wardrobe wearing torn up jackets, slouchy appearance with toothpicks in their mouth, sniffing glue and ether, and striking poses to show they didn’t give a shit about anything.(Boyle 77) As I began reading and took into context that Boyle was really trying to get his point across about them being bad. Maybe they were trying a little too hard to put on this appearance. The narrator describes his friends as two dangerous characters Digby and Jeff. Digby wore a gold earring, while attending college at Cornell that his father paid for and Jeff went to school but was thinking about dropping out to pursue another career as a painter/musician/head-shop proprietor. Obviously pretending to be people they weren’t while trying to fit in with the new fad. They wore dark shades morning and night and wherever they went. The narrator goes far and beyond to make sure the reader knows they were three bad characters. They whipped around in their parents station…
The poem is written in blank verse. This means that there is no set rhyme scheme or metre to the poem. The poem is divided into nine stanzas of four lines each and it concludes with one single line stanza. The first nine stanzas with their four lines each, demonstrate the narrow mindedness of the white woman and the thinking of her fellow white Americans; while, the final one line stanza is an attempt by the poet to show that the Native American Indians are both separate and have a broader scope than the white Americans. Yet, the use of the blank verse form by the poet, suggests that there is room for imaginative speculation on the poem.…
The imagery Olds uses in the first section emphasizes the difference between the white woman who is the narrator and the observer and the black boy, who is the observed, as they ride the subway. The shoes he is wearing are black “laced with white” (line 3). The speaker describes the white zigzags as “intentional scars” (line 4). The scars allude to the discrimination against the black man by white society. The adjectives “intentional” denotes that whites purposely harm blacks. The image contrasts whites with blacks: whites are powerful; blacks are subservient. Similarly, the two characters are described as being “stuck on opposite sides” of the subway car; they are separated permanently from each other (lines 4-5). The description of the clothing is a third contrasting element. Here, the black man is “exposed,” while the speaker is covered in fur (line 11). This image reinforces the opposition between the white woman and the black boy.…
Living on the verge of two different cultures can envelop in lost identities. Michelle Law is a girl who is torn between two different identities, a prevalent theme that coexists in the many stories of Growing up Asian in Australia. During Michelle’s early stages, she has stumbled upon many conflicts for her and her family to overcome. In Australia, she was teased about her appearance, her hand-me-down, hairless arms, oversized clothing, and her peculiar lunch. “Now that I thought about it, everything up to that point in my life seemed so incredibly abnormal compared to everyone else I knew.” She is appointed with the feeling of anxiety, she wanted to be normal. Michelle confesses to her mum she simply wants to be ‘normal’. Yet we are all the same, looking for a group to fit in and be normal, not be ashamed of your own culture and heritage. Thus, being portrayed as the outsider to the Australian Culture can impact to adjust their way of life just to fit in.…
Kids will deny who they truly are, whether it be through clothes, interests, or even culture. They grow to be ashamed of being themselves as long as it doesn’t fit into today’s social standards. “You must be proud of you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” (Tan, 5) In the article a young girl is ashamed of her family’s “gross” culture and when her basic white boy crush comes over for dinner she is embarrassed of the food/manner that her family is eating. Tan later learns from her mother, that she blend herself into American culture as much as she wants, but when she begins to hate her own culture she is only shaming herself. “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen al my favorite foods.” (Tan, 6) The irony in this quote radiates. Tan was too busy trying to impress a boy with a clean culture that she never took the time to realize that they were eating all of her favorite foods. Tan wanted to change herself, hide her identity instead of proudly embrace it, a result from teen’s constant need to “fit…
Pop Culture has always had a huge effect of teenagers, some teenagers more than others. Although some teenagers are late bloomers, usually by some point all teenagers join the bandwagon. However, there are always outliers such as Amaka and Kambili in Purple Hibiscus by Chiminanda Ngozi Adichie. Amaka has grown up knowing pop culture, whereas Kambili has never known what pop culture even is. As her cousin Amaka pulls her into the mainstream, Kambili learns that sometimes being like other people is sometimes a good thing. Kambili grows throughout Purple Hibiscus through the introduction to pop culture.…
In another essay, ‘High School’s Secret Life’, written by Emily White, also supports the assumption that identity is shaped by culture. In her essay she observes the students of a…
This student’s analysis does a great job of analyzing the piece of poetry as a whole while at the same time taking time to discuss specific details. When first reading the poem, I did not know who Dan White, or Harvey Milk were, and the student’s analysis helped myself understand their importance affect on the LGBTQ+ community. It is important to identify the speakers own queer identity, as this helps highlight the shift in the poems sarcasm and serious tone. These shifts occur specifically when he uses figurative language, especially at the word play. The student does well to identify this word play throughout the poem. The sarcastic word play is used as an understatement to emphasize and be an example of the dismissal of the acts that have occurred. These acts are outrageous and awful, however, they’re affect on the LGBTQ+ community is overlooked and ignored. These examples of understatements can be found in lines 1 and 25. The synecdoche used to describe the people and couples as “levis and leather jackets” is meant to describe the LGBT+…
Another prominent colloquial quality of this poem is how the poem is a free verse. Free verse is a colloquial quality of a poem and as stated as, in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, ‘verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical’. One way this poem is a free verse is that he capitalized words that were not pronouns or in the beginning of the line, like ‘chick’ and ‘kid’. The poet’s use of free verse also shows in the format and wording used. The rhythm of this poem is very out of beat as it states nothing informative for the reader. The poem being a free verse, gives room for the last aspect, rhyme, which adds to the colloquial quality of the poem.…