In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, two cultures clash with each other in the struggle to save Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy. Although Lee and her family live in the United States, and thus receive medical care from Westerners, her family believes that Lee’s condition is sacred and special. The following miscommunications, both culturally and lingually, between the American doctors and the Lee family leave Lia Lee in comatose at the end of the book. However, Lia Lee could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the American doctors understood the Hmong culture. Essentially, the tragedy of Lia Lee can be attributed to the clash of American and Hmong cultures at both the surface and sub-surface level.
Additionally, Gladwell describes problems in society in the early 1890s that outliers discover solutions toward. The author uses Louis and Regina Borgenicht as an example, demonstrating that when they relocated to New York from Poland, Louis had to find a job that would have favorable pay(,) to raise children (Gladwell 139-140).. Mr. Borgenicht, one day while walking the streets, had found a dispute that the people of New York were having. He observed that clothing was an issue for middle class families, and was determined to resolve this predicament . Louis and Regina sewed all night long making clothes, that Louis would then go to the streets and sell before noon.
Your Inner Fish essay In Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish, he takes his readers on a journey throughout time, teaching how marine animals inevitably ended up on land. Shubin starts his book by describing how himself and other paleontologists found a missing piece, that showed how animals transitioned from water to land. With this discovery it allowed paleontologists like Shubin, to see transitions that could possibly link certain species of fish to humans. A major change between fish and humans is the use of limbs and its ability to use its limbs to take itself out of the water and away from the dangers within.
The Investigation is a dramatic documentary of the Frankfurt War Crimes trials during the 1960s based on actual evidence from the trial. Weiss strips the trial down to its most essential features and converts it into a powerful play. It consists of extracted testimonies from numerous witnesses and defendants, including moments of examinations and cross-examinations conducted by the prosecutors and defense counsel. The nine unnamed witnesses represent the millions of individuals affected by the Holocaust. They were brought forth to testify to the barbarity of Auschwitz.
“Experiences in early childhood…lay critical foundations for the entire life course” (CSDH,2008). The novel “Lullabies for little criminals," written by Heather O’ Neill, examines the effects of two social determinants on Baby’s life. Poverty interacts with poor education in Baby’s life, building an underdevelopment childhood for her to grow up with. It reflects children in our society who could get less life choice under the influence of poverty and poor education. Kohen (2002) says that a safer and more cohesive neighborhood has better child-development outcomes.
Skip Hollandsworth’s “Toddlers in Tiaras” argues the negative effects of participating in beauty pageants for young girls. Hollandsworth supported his argument through the use of the following techniques: narratives, testimonies, logical reasoning, appeals to emotion, facts, and an objective tone that attempts to give him credibility. These techniques are used to help persuade his audience of the exploitation of young girls in beauty pageants and the negative effects that pageants will have on their lives. Hollandsworth begins his article with how a typical beauty pageant runs and describes the multiple steps Eden Wood, a pageant contestant, goes through in order to get ready for a competition (490).
In Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor For Kids, readers have the ability to identify certain elements from chapters “Nice To Eat You; Acts of Vampires”, “Is That a Symbol?”and “Marked For Greatness”, which Laura Hillenbrand puts to action in her book Unbroken. In Laura Hillenbrand’s novel Unbroken, the characters in the story show and play out the chapter 3 “Nice to Eat You; Acts of Vampires” from Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor For Kids. In the novel Unbroken there is a general named Watanabe who was the leader of discipline at Omori POW camp in Japan. Watanabe was known for his brutality within the camp because his purposeful standing around waiting for someone to make one tiny mistake, so he could beat them until they were unconscious.
While Maddy is in the YMCA regretting and panicking about getting back into water the thought of her fish help calm her nerves, “It calms me to imagine them swimming in their pH balance environment, the clown loaches looking around near the bottom of the freshwater tank, the Pearl flirting in a stand of bamboo plant. Tonight, for the first time, I'll begin to know what my fish have known all their lives; how to breathe underwater” (3). The reference to water here in order to show the reader how significant water is to the story. Water can be seen as a symbol of flowing, calm, cool, but others can see it as a fear. And since Maddy has seen it as fear the fish help calm those thoughts.
Sigmund's Freud's theory is composed of four sexual stages that are necessary for the development of any individual. The stages include oral, anal, phallic, and genital. Freud believed through his highly controversial theory, that if one indeed fails to complete or skips over a sexual stage entirely it will reflect on the individual's adult personality and mental health/illness development. While both studying freud's theory and closely reading the novel She’s come undone by Wally Lamb the reader begins to notice that the protagonist Dolores's fractured persona and slight mental illness is a result of failing to complete a sexual stage, in her case it was stage one, the oral stage. In Wally Lambs’ novel “She's Come Undone”, the protagonist, Dolores Price, is stripped of her innocence from an adolescent age.
In The Lesson, written by Toni Cade Bambara, it begins with Sylvia giving her own description on Miss Moore. She is confused as to why Miss Moore always gathers the kids from the neighborhood and takes them on boring outings. Sylvia mentions that Miss Moore is one of the few who has a college education, but she does not seem too impressed and would rather spend her day at the pool with her cousin, Sugar. As they enter the taxi cab, Miss Moore hands Sylvia a five dollar bill to tip the driver at the end of the trip. However, Sylvia has a difficulty time figuring out how much she should give the driver and decides against tipping him but would rather give him nothing.
In “Birthday Party,” Katharine Brush’s purpose for writing the short story was to reveal how something that is good can go so wrong. She also demonstrates how some things are not what they seem. Especially in the situation that she wrote. Her purpose from the beginning to end is demonstrated by the use of literary devices. Brush begins by describing the scenario, she states, “They sat on the banquette opposite us.”
Theme Analysis of Renée Ahdieh’s Flame in the Mist “She’d fought off her assailant. And in doing so, she’d displayed one of the seven virtues of bushidō: Courage.” (Ahdieh 38)
Pain is apart of life, there is no way around it. Pain can be caused physically and psychologically. In the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there is an Albatross that greets the crew, the Mariner unexpectedly kills the great seabird. His actions cause unfortunate events to everyone on board the ship, especially the Mariner. The Mariner experiences external and internal conflicts during his voyage.
“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.
Teenagers have always sought to be their own person, forgoing rules and even recommendations in favour of self-determination. While an honourable undertaking, this path to self-discovery, leads them to experience new ordeals, where mistakes will be made. To reassure us that these mistakes are not necessarily bad, Elizabeth Alexander, in her poem "Nineteen", illustrates how youth 's desire for freedom¬ and to escape from their reality allows them to grow into adulthood and leads them to make choices that will impact their perception of the world. This theme will be analysed through structure, symbolism and contrast.