Cut By Cathy Glass Summary

The short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan explains a mother and daughter relationship that has many differences within a conflict in the story. The narrator demonstrates that the mother and the daughter do not agree with the same aspect on life. Since the mother wants her daughter to be perfect, the daughter refuses to make her mother’s wishes come true. Her mother wanted the narrator to become the perfect traditional daughter, but the narrator’s differences triggered with her mother. An indication from the story is, “Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me” (137).

In the poem “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde we feel sympathy toward the speaker. “Hanging Fire” is about a fourteen year old girl who is going through a stage in her life that everyone goes through, which is puberty. Unlike most people she didn’t have someone there to guide her through this stage in her life. In addition, she didn’t get the support a girl needs from her mother when going through puberty. Throughout the poem she describes several insecurities she faces and how her mother is unapproachable.

In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Rose Mary is the mother of the Walls children who often does not act as a true adult. Rose Mary’s attitudes and behaviours are childlike, and therefore her children must take on responsibility for the lack her own. Rose Mary ignores her obligations as a parent and chooses an irresponsible way of life which endangers her children. Rose Mary has never properly matured into adulthood due to her lack of financial stability, bliss ignorance and optimism, and her selfishness nature. To begin, the lack of financial stability in the Walls family has always been problematic, however as the mother of her children, Rose Mary never contributed much to the family income due to her stubbornness and free-spirited nature.

Consequently, is this the advice coming from a young mother who was never given this advice herself? Is this mother giving her young daughter this advice so she does not make the same mistakes she did? For instance, when the mother says “this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child;” (p.321) in my opinion, she gives this advice because as a young girl, the mother was a slut and maybe even became pregnant with the “girl”, but since she did not have this wise advice she did not know what to do in this situation. Therefore, the mother must give her daughter tough loving advice so that she does find herself in the same situation. Clearly, the moral of mom’s lessons is to take care of your reputation.

The narrator is currently unable to take care of her own child, one of her main responsibilities in life, because of her postpartum depression. Motherhood has been the cause of her mental trauma, and said trauma makes it difficult to fulfill her maternal duties. With her inability to take care of her child, she has even less of a role in the family than she previously held. In “Woman,” Kate Austin discusses how men gained their higher standing because of maternity. She states, “ A woman will bear anything for the sake of her children.

Pearl grew up in a very harsh society where others treated her as an outcast because of her mother’s mistake. Pearl was put in a situation where she has to mature quickly and she was a very intelligent girl. Pearl knows she is an outsider and the children she would chase after would make rude comments towards her mother and Pearl’s instincts of flee or fight kicked in and she chose to fight. Which is a common reaction for a child who is shunned by society. As the novel progresses, Pearl acts out less violently and becomes calmer, especially in nature.

My first character analysis is Kira. Kira was the main character in my story and the traits she was in between are sad, negative, dependent, and afraid. This is so because she had lost her mother to a sickness and she lost most confidence at this time because she felt that she has no one to help her. For the rest of the story she feels that she cannot do anything because she is alone and afraid of failure without her mother. She also negativeness or dependency

Waxen Wings is a story that talks about a main character named Birdie. Birdie’s life is not the ideal life, and it seems like she has failed at everything she has ever tried. This story really makes the reader feel bad for Birdie, and she is seen as the victim of the story. The tests that she goes through are things that would make most people give up, but she does not give up. That fact alone makes this story somewhat inspirational.

In the beginning of the story Georgiana is characterized as being a foolish young girl that is extremely weak. She is dependent on other people's judgment and when her husband hates her birthmark that everyone thought made her so beautiful she asks him, “Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!”(page 1, paragraph 6). She was dependent on her mother to tell her what to do constantly and how she told her she was so beautiful, therefore, when she had a change in scenery it was confusing to her. After being told multiple times a day that he could not stand to look at her she figures out that when she compliments him she receives compliments in return.

The style of argumentation is very closed and both mother and daughter are not very open to other suggestions and kind of stubborn. Later in the text, Rachel tells the reader about other mothers and their bad relationship between mother and daughter. In the start, the reader really gets the imagine that she really struggles because of the teenagers, also because of her title choice "a modern tragedy", which indicates the problem among two sides and that the author wants to

Henrietta and her family encountered multiple difficulties: from finding a place to live to seeking jobs to support themselves. But the worst problem that they always had to deal with on a consistent basis surrounded family relationships. One of the biggest obstacles Henrietta and her family had to face head on was dealing with their daughter Elsie who had a sort of developmental disability. Especially having to watch her grow up and not be able to get the help she desperately needed but was unavailable because the family could not support her individual needs fully, the only person that could ease her pain was Henrietta which is illustrated by this quote, “…but she just stared back, unflinching, her eyes haunted with fear and sadness that only softened when Henrietta rocked her back and forth” (Skloot 44). Even with having to deal with many other issues almost daily, nothing ever deterred the Lacks family from their faith in a divine spirit.