Connie’s choice to care more about her friends and reputation than her grandmother
Connie’s choice to care more about her friends and reputation than her grandmother
Mrs. Dickson and Mrs. Van Buren are in a better position than Esther and Mayme. Because Esther is a 35 Black Women who sews intimate apparel, works for herself and makes living on it. She is not married. Therefore, she has no one to rely on. She also can’t write, read, illiterate. Esther lives in a rooming house which is belong to Mrs. Dickson. She doesn’t make a lot of money for doing the intimate apparel, we can see it when she goes to Mr. Marks, when he sells good or fancy fabrics to her, she can’t afford it. Her social…
In this story, Mattie goes from needing her mother the most, to basically being the mother of others to care for. Mattie gets caught up in her own world like a normal teenager does. Mother returns at last, and she’s not the same anymore. She’s very still and quiet, and that’s not like her. Instead of Mattie being the one that sleeps the day away, it’s mother that is and Mattie knew what was coming. It was time for her to become the responsible adult for her family. The coffeehouse. And especially her mother. Throughout the story. The author shows us that being negative, will only make a difficult journey more…
For example, Rodolfo Anaya always did respect his elder, But after growing up working with his grandfather, he savored his ancianos more because he knows more about them. Anaya states,” These lessons he earned from his past, which was as deep and strong as the currents of the river of life, a life could be stronger than death. ANaya also says,”I am glad I knew my grandfather.” Also, Ortiz Cofer’s character Constancia never respected her grandmother. SHe only saw her on some occasions, and when she did, she thought little of her. The story goes on and there is a part where Constancia grandmother gets lost on her way back to her pew at Sunday mass. Constancia is embarrassed for herself, showing that she is selfish and care about no-one but herself. Constancia doesn’t help her grandmother and doesn’t consider the “old lady” feelings, as she calls her, “I just can’t move to go get her… I hide my burning cheeks. I would like to disappear.” At the end of the story, grandmother doesn’t speak to Constancia. Abuela gets angry and explains that she made her feel like a zero, “Of all the hurtful things you can do to a person, the worst it to make them feel as if they are worth nothing.” Constancia thinks about it and finally realizes what she did. “... I can’t bring myself to tell my mother that I think I understand how I made my abuela feel.” Both stories reflect the life lessons, and just lessons, these people have learned from their…
Connie was a slender girl with long dark blondish hair and thought of herself as being very beautiful. She had a little bit of pep to her walk, as if she was bouncing on a trampoline as she walked around everywhere. She was a very happy and enthusiastic girl unless she was with her family. She felt as though she was not good enough in her mothers’ eyes and was always being picked on and compared to her older sister. For example, her mom would say, “Why don’t you keep your room clean like your sister?” (Oates 436) She enjoyed getting out of the house as often as she could and she would go to the shopping center with her friends where they would sneak across the street to a restaurant where the older kids would hang out. She was never the same person she pretended to be at home. She would act and dress one way at home, but when she went out she was free to express herself.…
In an American childhood a young woman named Annie Dillard writes about her life growing up in Pittsburg. In the book Annie has many people who influence her throughout her life. One of her main influencers in her adolescent years was her mother (pam). Her mother was not the usual stereotypical woman; she possessed very unique qualities that distinguished her from the rest of the crowd. Everything that she did was not done in the usual way she had to put a twist on it. You had to always expect the unexpected when you were around her. Sometimes people got frustrated with her child like ways, but Dillard never seemed to.…
Firstly, the two sides of Connie, Connie’s nightlife and her every day normal life with her family at home, emphasizes her developing sexuality. When Connie goes out with her girlfriends she shows a side of her that she will never show to her family: “Her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—"Ha, ha, very funny,"—but highpitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.” (Oates 2) By acting like this she tries to be attractive to boys and in particular older men. This behaviour creates a very distinct contrast that contributes to the story's main idea. Connie hides her sexuality from her family, where she only makes fun of her sister and has fights with her mother. This indicates that she is ashamed by her sexual side, because when going out…
What I feel is significant about this piece of literature is the story that is being told and the reality behind it. Many young girls face this kind of reality everyday and don’t have a good outcome. The authors’ intention in the story was to portray a little girl named Connie and show her struggle with adolescence and wanting to become a woman far too fast. The themes that stand out to me in this story are Connie’s constant fantasizing and daydreaming. She is always worried about her appearance and fantasizing about boys, but when it comes down to the reality of actually engaging and being confronted with a man, she reverts to being a child again. Another theme that stands out to me is Connie leaving herself extremely vulnerable. She has her friends’ dad drop them off at a shopping plaza, but sneaks off to a drive in to meet boys. Then she meets with Eddie and hangs out in an alley. This exposes her to Arnold Friend. She portrays herself with a lot of independence, but when she has the confrontation with him at her house, she tries to scare him away with saying, “But my father’s coming back. He’s coming to get me” (Oates 330). She says this because she is still a little girl and doesn’t quite know how…
Written in the nineteen- seventies a new era of sex, drugs and rock and roll, Connie is growing up in a new rebellious young culture. Oates writes about how obsessed Connie is with her appearance, "craning her neck to glance into mirrors, or checking others people's faces to make sure her own was all right". This description makes her out to be vain. One explanation of why Connie is concerned with her appearance would include a new awareness of self consciousness and a need to always look pretty. Being vain is considered a sin by many but however one must always project an image of perfection in that society and even today's society. Connie has to be able to fit in and go out to enjoy her life and if she did not look her best she would not be able to do the things she enjoyed most. Her mother was constantly pressuring her to be more like her older sister. This shows the rebelliousness of new teens in the beginning to this era and how the differences of age and culture can cause conflict. Connie thought secretly that her mother had preferred her to her sister…
Various characters in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet exhibit aspects of an “outsider”. The obvious choices being Claudius and Hamlet. Claudius appears to be freed from moral restrictions, while Hamlet represents the stereotypical isolated intellectual. However, both of them pale in comparison to the true outsider in the play: Ophelia. Both Claudius and Hamlet are too respected and entangled in the lives of others to be considered the ultimate estranged outsider. Ophelia on the other hand, is constantly pushed to the periphery, despite her significant relationships with many of the main characters. She is also unable to comply with the restrictive and conflicting expectations placed upon her.…
Since Connie is a rebellious fifteen year old girl that fights with her parents and constantly wants to do her own things, she is acting like a normal teenage girl that is of course not yet fully mature. She enjoyed going out with her girlfriends and complaining about the “hard life” she had and the constant nagging her mother gave. One night when Connie picks up a guy named Eddie, she “drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold (Oates, 320). Connie constantly tries to ignore this man, who the reader eventually learns is Arnold Friend, yet she cannot look away while he says, “Gonna get you baby” while wagging his finger. This quote could symbolize Connie’s eventual fate since womanhood comes to every girl and Eddie did not even notice Arnold saying anything since men do not understand the way girls enter womanhood. Connie continues to be compared to her wholesome sister June by her mother with a disapproving tone, but Connie returns the favor by taking her mother for a fool. In fact, “Connie thought her mother was so simple that is was maybe cruel to fool her so much”(Oates, 321). This constant bickering between mother and daughter…
she was pretty and that was everything” (323). This captivation with herself along with the constant looking in the mirrors and thinking her mother was only pestering her all the time because her mother’s own good looks were long gone by now (323) shows a sign of immaturity because she believes everything revolves around whether or not someone is beautiful. Connie had two sides to her, which is most personified in her clothing and the way she makes it look one way at home and a different way when she is out (324).…
Connie knew she was pretty, and that’s why she had a “giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right” (752). Her beauty brought power over boys. She chose to talk to only the ones that she thought were cute or popular, and she made a point of ignoring the more common ones. “It was just a boy from high school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be able to ignore him” (753). The narrator observes that the world she lived in was a familiar one. Everything was safe, but one single day made her it all…
Connie is fifteen years old and obviously self-conscious because of the love that she never receives at home. Her whole life revolves around attention from boys since she does not feel loved at home. Her sister June appears to be the favorite in the family, as she receives all of the positive attention. Connie's mother doesn’t speak kindly to Connie or about Connie, and Connie doesn't think well of her mother either. Her father does whatever he can to please Connie but doesn’t seek for a good father-daughter relationship. They never talk about what is happening in their lives and act as if they are only acquaintances. Connie wants to appear older and wiser than she actually is and her head is always full of meaningless daydreams to help her cope. Her promiscuity leads to attraction from boys and older men where she becomes terrified and realizes that she is not as grown up as she thought. Connie comes face to face with the harshreality of being forced into adulthood at the age of fifteen because of the special attention of Arnold Friend.…
Her confidence is only shaken when a man tries to oppress her in a sexual way. It is then when Connie realizes that she was not as strong as she thought she was. Due to the panic, Connie started to confuse reality from fantasy. Arnold Friend, takes advantage of Connie’s naïve personality, and tries to control her by threatening her. Joyce Oats describes oppression here as a form of sexual oppression, where woman are constantly being sexually assaulted because society has portrayed and symbolized women as sexual…
The first reason why the theme of this story is the search for independence is because Connie is a typical teenager back in the 60’s and 70’s. The sexual radicalism which argued that capitalism sexually repressed the masses in the interests of its life negating and exploitative goals. Capitalism demanded self-restraint and compulsive work. It is argued and it is also contrary to any liberated and spontaneous sexual expression. Sexual liberty has been colonized and brought into the service of capitalism’s nexus of production and consumption. Women back in that generation and decade were just being introduced to such sexual nature and liberty. Those women didn’t have anything stopping them from committing these sexual acts with such a new found freedom. The first guy that Connie comes into contact with when she leaves her friend during the story, it was the first sign of how the rest of her search for independence is going to pan out.…