Stories and memories passed on through generations can help to shape an individual. In many instances, storytelling can tell a lesson or push a person’s opinion about something in a certain direction. Memories can sometimes be unreliable, but can also be all that someone can base their life off of. Judith Ortiz Cofer’s memoir Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood uses storytelling to share her memories in a life lesson manner. She takes the reader on a journey through her memories and childhood and uses her memory as a main tool. Memory and storytelling is an important aspect of Silent Dancing, because they helped to shape the author, told lessons to the reader, and explained a life tied between Puerto Rican and American.
The essay Be Specific by Natalie Goldberg was an essay thats main point to me was respect. Respect is something that every individual deserves. A synopsis of what respect means to me all leads back to the golden rule, treat others as you want to be treated. The example that Natalie used that was the most realistic to me was when she said "Hey, girl, get in line.". Many people in today 's world do not take the time to use names it is always hey you, dude, bro, girl, and so the list goes on; as a result our generation is known for being disrespectful in regards to previous years. Although, in today 's society disrespect is more common that is not the case for everyone. Respect is something that people have or they do not; it is mainly taught
In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention.
Barbara Cage once said, “A grandma is warm hugs and sweet memories. She remembers all of your accomplishments and forgets all of your mistakes.” In ‘The Secret of Sarah Revere’ by Ann Rinaldi, Grandma Revere is the complete opposite of the kind-hearted grandma that makes you cookies. She is strict and disrespectful to all her grandchildren. In the novel the narrator Sarah Revere will do anything to get away from her sister Debbie and their grandmother. Ever since Debbie was young she has always been Grandma’s favorite. Debbie has her ways of getting by in the Revere household. They involve manipulating Grandma to get exactly what she wants. It’s hard enough to control Debbie but Grandma can’t manage everybody in the house for long. Although
Throughout the story she places judgement, she lies and manipulates her family, and she proves to only care for herself. She does all of this while claiming to be a lady, and holding herself is higher regard than everyone else around her. She continually shows that she is not lady, and she is also doing the things that she looks down upon other for, This is an example of a true hypocrite. Another shining example of her hypocrisy is shown when she brings up religion when speaking to The Misfit. “Do you ever pray?(258).” “‘If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you’(259).” These quotes imply that the grandmother is a Christian. As a Christian, judgement, lies, manipulation, and selfishness should not fall under her terms. However, they do. This grandmother is a true hypocrite, and it shows from the
Over a year ago my Aunt Bernadette and my Uncle Glenn got divorced. My Aunt didn’t take it very well, but to the rest of my family it didn’t come as much of a surprise. They were always fighting with each other over petty things and didn’t get along. However, my Aunt couldn’t accept that she was part of the problem, so she decided to push the blame onto someone else. That someone being my Grandmother. She said that my Grandma was too involved in their relationship. My Aunt thought that my Grandmother calling them and wanting to see them was driving a fork in her marriage. My Aunt accusing my Grandma is similar to when the girls were screaming out people they claimed to have seen walking with the devil in Act one of the play. The girls were all watching as Tituba was giving up names of people she saw with the devil. Seeing her being praised for gave Abby the idea to confess and then accuse people as well, which caused all the other girls to do the same. Tituba and the girls accused others to make themselves look better, just like my Aunt did. My Aunt blamed my Grandma because she wanted to make it look like she was the
“You – you want me to lie?” Adam asks, bewildered at the direct boldness of such a man.
There is a social norm to respect one’s elders that is universal throughout the world. Lucy refuses to follow this belief in the way that she completely resents her mother. Much like those who have ‘daddy issues’, Lucy is haunted by her failing relationships with her mother.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O’Connor is a short story that brings out mystery and cruelty. Manipulation plays a big role in this story by the grandmother. She tends to manipulate her family and tends to get her way by playing with them. Although the author wanted to give many perspectives of the grandmother, we as reader got our own views of her. The grandmother was the one who surprises the reader because she tends to beg for her life while putting her family second. The importance of family throughout the whole trip was very important because they tend to stay together except the grandmother where she only cared for her survival.
The grandmother represents the conventional social values such as that she considers herself a lady. For instance, she is dressed very elegantly for a road trip as mentioned on page 965, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” She believes children should be respectful of their native states and parents. The religious values represented by her are that prayers and Jesus would help the sinner. These values are exposed in the course of the story in various situations. For example, the grandmother persuades her son not to go to Florida, and she feels that children should listen to their parents. She tries to convince the Misfit to pray so that he feels better. The Misfit means
What makes people grow up? Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor is set during the Great Depression, in the rural areas of Mississippi. The majority of the people in this community are sharecroppers, who are greatly dependent on plantation farming. However, the Logan families own their own land. Cassie tries to understand with her family what racism is. Cassie, the narrator leads us through all the disaster and trouble that her and her family have been through. Cassie's interactions with negative uses of power is directly responsible for Cassie's coming of age.
Flannery O’Connor was a Southern author from America who frequently wrote in a Southern Gothic style and depended vigorously on local settings and bizarre characters. Her works likewise mirrored her Roman Catholic faith and regularly examined questions of morality and ethics. She created violence in the end of both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge” to put the stories to the end. She asserted that she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace, and also violence is the extreme situation that best reveals who
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor’s goal is to teach her readers an important lesson. By presenting an exaggerated and flawed character, and through a peek into her life, she displays the consequences of many faults, but most importantly, the danger of a lack of self-awareness. By the end of the story, the main character, Grandmother, has had an epiphany, brought on by a traumatizing event. By giving them an outside view of the folly of her character, Flannery O’Connor hopes to warn her readers of following the same path that will inevitably lead to destruction in some way or another.
In other words, don’t pass down the same values if they are promoting gender inequality. The multi person perspective in this story allows the reader to fully understand the feelings and viewpoint of culture/gender roles from each characters. There is a one generation gap between the Grandmama and the girl, of which you can bluntly see through the different viewpoints. Near the beginning of the story the narrator describes the summer as the one where “Grandma taught Nonso how to pluck Coconuts”, but “didn't show you because she said girls never plucked coconuts”. Later on in the story, Grandmama asks Nonso to “to climb to the highest branch of the avocado tree to show her how much of a man he was.” This is clearly the perspective of what Grandmama definition of “a man” is. But, compare it to the latest generation (the main girl of the story) who “really were (was) the better clumber, you could scale a tree, any tree, in seconds- you were better t the things that did not need to be taught, the things that Grandmama could not teach him”. Looking at how the grandma looks at climbing a tree, and how the girl looks at climbing the tree, you can begin to see the difference of generations. Grandmama believes climbing a tree is for a man, that girls just don’t. But the
At the dawn of time, civilization was created in the image of a perfect society by the gods. Earth was ideal, where only kind words and content people were known to exist. The gods agreed upon hiding mortals to all hurtful and horrible actions, behaviors, and feelings. The gods’ plan