Every southerner from a small town can identify with the close relationship of this community. Yet this small black community in A Lesson Before Dying is brought together by more than just geography. This close neighborhood is kept together by the people struggling to make ends meet helping each other fight the racism and oppression of this white privileged society. This fight against oppression is depicted by an uneducated black man’s journey through mortality when being unlawfully accused of the murder of a white man.…
Toni Morrison and William Faulkner are two of America’s most successful writers who seem to share many similar themes and motifs, Especially between Morrison’s Beloved and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Both of these novels use multiple narrators, present their characters with struggles of their own identity, and show the difficulties of the people born into the lowest social class.…
Have you ever gotten sand in your eye at the beach? Living in the Dust Bowl era was like getting a sandcastle thrown in your eye everyday. In the novel of “Out of the Dust” by Karen Hesse, a girl named Billie Jo and her family have to deal with living during the Dust Bowl era. The novel focuses on the effect and difficulties families had during the Dust Bowl. The article“ The Dust Bowl” by Jan Meyers, discusses information about the dust bowl and it’s causes and effects. “Out of the Dust” uses historically accurate events such as migration out of the area and health effects of dust to create a more precise novel.…
The novel, A Lesson before Dying, was written by Ernest J. Gaines in 1993. Gaines was born on the River Lake plantation in Louisiana, where he was raised by his aunt, Miss Augusteen Jefferson. Racism was prevalent shown by the whites-only libraries in Louisiana. After 15 years of living in Louisiana, Gaines moved to California, although he states Louisiana never left him. California had libraries available for the blacks also. In California, he lived with his mother and which inspired him to the point of writing about six novels and scores of short stories. In 1953, Gaines was drafted into the Army, and he later went on to study creative writing at Stanford University. While in the library, Gaines…
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the author uses clothes as a symbol to reveal our protagonist and antagonist individualities. Connie who is our protagonist is a fifteen-year-old girl who has the habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors. Connie wears a pullover jersey blouse that looked one way when she is home and another way when she is away, in where she wears shorts. In the text, it states that “They must have been familiar sights walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their wrist” (Oates 836). In other words, Connie uses clothes to look attractive, and mature by older men by wearing short clothes, most importantly she believes she is pretty, which also plays a role in her actions and the kinds of clothes she wears. Whereas, the…
A lesson that can be found in this novel is that relationships are never perfect, and there will always be some sort of problem along the way. You’ll never to be alone because you will have friends to help you go through that problem. In the novel, Someone Like You, by Sarah Dessen there are two best friends who had relationships that goes down hill. Scarlett dates a boy named Michael, and she ends up pregnant. Then Michael dies in a motorcycle accident. Scarlett’s best friend, Halley, somehow follows Scarlett’s foot steps . Halley dates a boy named Macon, and he constantly asks her to have relations with him. However, when she finally agrees to have an intercourse with Macon, she ends up throwing up and gets in an argument with Macon. Therefore leading to her getting in a fatal car accident. Halley ends up surviving and breaks up with Macon because she realizes she deserves better.…
In the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oats uses characterization including methods such as symbolism and allusions to develop her characters, and thus establish her theme of the cross roads Connie faces in her transition from the innocence of her adolescence to the impurity of adulthood facilitated by the antagonist, Arnold Friend.…
Teenagers in general are often stereotyped into one general category: unruly, uncaring, and self-absorbed. In the short story “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Joyce Carol Oates plays on this stereotype. She uses imagery and point of view to direct the reader’s attention to the teenage girl psyche, selfish, whimsical, and longing for attention and affection, and how this stereotypical psyche can be distorted and controlled.…
Growing up every person in the world loses the purity they were once born with and the moment when one realizes that not everything in the world is the way it was thought to be, the world crumbles into pieces, but how does it happen? Joyce Carol Oates portrays an amazing detailed moment of theft of chastity, or at least what is left of it, in "Where Are You Going, Where have You Been?" With symbolic imagery, major bibliomancy, and extreme personal conflict Oates easily manages to get her point across of the complete loss of innocence.…
Arising out of the ashes the phoenix came back to life again. In Greek mythology the phoenix is the symbol for idealism and hope. It falls only to arise and live again. The main character of Eudora Welty's short story, "A Worn Path", is much like this phoenix. She must overcome much adversity on her life path. Eudora Welty in "A Worn Path" uses the idea of the phoenix to characterize and symbolize the indomitable spirit of the main character, Phoenix Jackson, who though old, weak, and forgetful can conquer obstacles put in her way as she heads toward her goal.…
Imagine world where scientist clone other people so that their organs could be donated. Never Let Me Go is a dystopian world in which human clones are created so that they can donate their organs as young adults. The novel follows the life story of Kathy, a clone who is raised at a boarding school for future “donors”. The guardians are manipulating their sense of duty and pride as children to accept the fate as organ donors and the clones never know the real purpose why they are created so they never try to escape Hailshaw.…
And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard is about a 17 year old girl who expresses herself through poetry as she has dealt with loses in her life. Emily reminisces her boyfriend’s suicide and the lost of her unborn child. Sent to a boarding school in Amherst, Massachusetts, she then meets her roommate, K.T. who quickly becomes her best friend and one of her support…
The short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” by Ursula Le Guin begins by introducing the town of Omelas: a place of ultimate joy and happiness. This utopian fantasy land seems unimaginable; however, the author urges the reader to open up their imagination and visualize a place so perfect that there is no need for kings, laws or soldiers. Every last man, woman and child is happy, healthy and full of life—except for one. In order for this town to continue to live in perfect bliss, one child of the town must suffer. This child must stay locked in a broom closet, naked and covered in sores. It survives on half a bowl of corn meal and grease a day, and its only interaction with people is getting…
The only thing the narrator seems sure about, in Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is that guilt does not exist in Omelas, but can this true. Omelas described as a happy place, a beautiful place, where no wars exist, no hunger, and no evil. Yet where does this “perfect” place come from? How can it exist? It exists because of one child’s pain and suffering produces this happiness, or maybe better put an illusion of happiness. Even though it is his sadness and pain that causes this happiness, not the people’s guilt, or could the guilt cause them to act in a way giving them the illusion of happiness.…
Written by E.M Forester, "The Machine Stops" is a science fiction story. Set far in the future, the dystopian world is considered post-apocalyptic. The people currently live underground because the conditions on the surface can no longer sustain mankind. People live off a machine, which provides for their every need. Because of this, they often worship the Machine, as if it was a god. In "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forester, the main characters Vashti and Kuno are distinctively different with few similarities.…