Class Sherman Alexie Analysis

The first time one is able to comprehend the meaning of a word is a momentous childhood moment that is forever engraved in one’s memory. Books and reading are significantly impactful to people’s lives; Mark Twain said that, “books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.” This statement is apropo for Sherman Alexie, who was a Native American living on a reservation during the time he learned to read. Sherman Alexie convinces his audience that an education is crucial to being successful by using personal anecdotes to captivate and create a connection with his audience and repetition to reiterate the importance of having an education. Alexie's use of personal anecdotes fortifies the impact he has on his audience.

The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black.

Examine how either text represents either class or gender. Are these representations problematic or contradictory? How do they relate to the plot and structure of the novel? Jane Eyre is a female Bildungsroman written by Charlotte Brontë in 1848.

Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes tells the story of Murray’s family as they developed through segregation. After the death of her parents, Murray is taken to live with her grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald. Proud Shoes focuses on the life of Robert and Cornelia and how they experienced life differently due to their individual situations. This book discusses how race and gender played key roles in the life of Robert and Cornelia. Through this discussion, readers are able to understand a broader American life based on individual experiences and express topics on gender identity and gender difference.

Sherman Alexie uses indirect characterization and antihero literary devices in order to portray the differences between a father and a dad, and what a true dad should be, in the book “Flight”. This book is about a teenager named Zits who lost his parents at a young age and started traveling down a violent path. Then when he was about to commit a serious crime he started to time travel through different people’s bodies teaching him how to be more compassionate towards others. Alexie encourages the readers to be caring towards others and know that all life is sacred no matter who they are or what they’ve done. This is shown towards the end of the book when Zits thinks about what he has learned after his journey.

Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, & Class. New York: Random House, 1981. Print. Kaba, Amadu Jacky. "Race, Gender And Progress: Are Black American Women

In her ethnography account Women without Class, Julie Bettie explores the relationship that class along with race and gender work to shape the experiences of both Mexican American girls and white working class students. In her work, Bettie finds that class cannot only intersect to impact the school experiences of both working class and middle class girls, but also their transition to adulthood and their future outcomes. Thus, Bettie explores how working class girls are able to deal with their class differences by performing symbolic boundaries on their styles, rejecting the school peer hierarchy and by performing whiteness to be upwardly mobile. In women without class, Bettie describes the symbolic boundaries that both las chicas and the preps

Dana Johnson is a Los Angeles native author, who won the Flannery O’Connor Award for the collection of short stories, Break Any Woman Down, in 2001. “Melvin in the Sixth Grade” is the opening story in the fiction. This short story takes place in the early 1980’s, discussing the conflicts of self-identity with coming of age, and interracial relationships applied in a school setting. The narrator of the story is a black girl named Avery who has moved from south central L.A to Los Angeles suburbs. Being the only African-American in her class, she immediately experiences difficulties as she tries to belong to a new community with other classmates at school.

As one can see, many mothers in today 's society would not be nearly as picky and constructive as the mother within "Girl" written by Jamaica Kincaid. Young girls almost always look up first to their mother for guidance and instruction on how to be a woman. Although the advice used in this story was used to help the young girl, it was also used to scold her as well. The mother 's strong belief in a woman having domestic knowledge is what drives her to preach the life lessons of a good woman to her daughter. It is through these lessons that she hopes for her daughter to be respected within her own home and by her community as well.

He tells her how in love with her he is, and that he’s waited for her his whole life. His demeaner is happy, and charming. This is important to enticing the victim. Next, he begins feeding her the lies about herself. He tells her she is forgetful and is always losing things.

She realizes that by marrying Edgar she has alienated herself and concealed her own nature in order to become his

It is through the power of obsession, guilt and paranoia in which, Edgar Allan Poe reveals how far people would go to hurt others. Obsession acts as a strong motive for crime. Edgar Allan Poe portrays obsession in “The Tell Tale Heart” through the narrator as he expresses his thoughts leading up to the murder. After the narrator argues his case to why he is not mad, he begins his story with an “idea” which “entered his brain,” which is the start of an obsession that “haunted him day and night” (2.1-2). The narrator speaks as if the eye of the old man is latching itself onto the him.

This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a

His mother felt betrayed and disrespected because her own son lied to her. On the other hand, the father was furious. They didn’t know what they should do. At first, the father thought that a punishment was the best thing to do. However, his mother decided that they should just forgive him because it was an “accident” and he didn’t mean it.

Sissy is a means to many a situation in this novel. After Louisa’s flight back to her father’s, she takes it upon herself to speak with the man responsible for Louisa’s troubles. She tells Mr. Harthouse – a man with seduction on his mind – “the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here immediately and finally… I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under an obligation never to return to it” (175; bk. 3, ch. 2). Sissy was