Eleanor Roosevelt's Short Story 'Hanging Fire'

Hardships are never easy things to overcome, everyone goes through them; some more than others. Just like we go through them, we also have different ways of handling them. In the short story, “Blackberries in June,” by Ron Rash, every character goes through a hardship. While most deal with them in the same way, there are three characters who are polar opposites. Linda, Matt, and Jamie both face some pretty tough problems, but while one likes to play the blame game, the other looks on the bright side. Linda is a complex character. All throughout the story, she does nothing but complain and while it can get frustrating, we soon learn later on in the story that there is a reason behind her madness. Linda and her husband, Charlton, both struggle financially. Of course expecting to have money left over when someone has had three kids in the first five years of being married isn’t likely. (207) Money problems are a common hardship for many, and when we see someone younger than us with more money, anyone can get jealous and/or angry. Even after having the kids through, Linda doesn’t do much to help lessen her growing money issues. As Matt explains to Jamie, “The money they waste on whiskey and her makeup and

For my book talk, I read a realistic fiction novel called Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer.

“I don’t think I realised how stressed I was, being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It’s not easy on anybody,” Reese Witherspoon truthfully admitted. However, the situation isn’t just stressful on the parent, but also on the child. Trying to connect with their remaining parent or even just getting over the loss of their other parent. It can be hard on the child to handle the overwhelming responsibility or even missing the empty space which used to be their parent. In passages from Confetti Girl and Tortilla Sun, the tension of having one parent and how that can affect their families is revealed.

The Glass Castle is a 2005 book by Jeannette Walls. The memoir explains the author’s life, growing up with her family most especially with her parents who could be described as nomads and deadbeats. Notwithstanding the difficult upbringing, her siblings and she had, Jeannette perseveres and becomes a successful Journalist living in New York City. She explains how happy, but conflicted because her parents refuse money from her and live as homeless people. She writes the memoir to work through her feelings and share’s her story. Some topics that I could identify in the text are: poverty, teenage pregnancy and child rights.

In Bell Hooks’ essay, “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, Hooks addresses and clarifies the misinterpretations that people have of the assumptions made of the poor, how poor individuals are viewed in human culture and how the poor are represented on television. She helps the audience understand how these assumptions are wrong.

“Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone” is a quote by Suzy Kassen. This is a major theme in the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Many people in life find it extremely hard to stand up for what is right because they may be going against peers and family. For a person, it takes great courage to do this but it gives them a sense that they are doing the right thing. The author, Harper Lee, disseminates the importance of standing up for yourself and what is right in many different ways. She describes many characters doing this. Jem, Atticus, and Scout each represent the theme ”Stand up for what you believe is right” in the book To Kill a Mockingbird.

As kids we are faced with challenges and obstacles, but we end up overcoming and growing from these obstacles in the end. In the movie, The Legend of the Mountain Man, the kids in the movie are faced with many obstacles that they have to overcome and deal with. One of them being their Dad having cancer and him having to leave them at their grandparents house while he gets treatment for his illness. At their grandparents house, the kids learn that their family has many secrets, and they are determined to figure out exactly what those secrets are. While on the quest to uncover their hidden family secrets, they learn about the legend of the mountain man. At the end of the story, the kids learned that their family had been hurt for a long time and that they were grieving the death of their son who died years ago. The kids discovered that their grandparents cared about their dad and them even though they didn’t show

“ You have to be able to accept failure to get better.” This quote means you have to accept failure to be a better person. This quote applies to the story “Electric Boogaloo” because his older self says don’t get caught up in your failures, laugh and be able to tell the embarrassments to friends and family. The author of “ Electric Boogaloo” shows how to push through obstacles in life, how to never give up on what you love, and to accept your embarrassments, and overcome the feelings of the memories. Pushing through your obstacles is a detail from the story, which really spoke to me. This detail speaks to everyone, not everyone has the perfect life everyone and has rough times. I had rough times and I still have rough times. This detail is

If you have ever read Ray Bradbury then you know he is very skillful in writing stories. Every word contributes to the story in an important way. In The Pedestrian, Ray Bradbury uses symbolism, repetition, and metaphors to show what it feels like to be lonely. In this world of the future most are not outside or being active because they rather be inside watching tv. In fact, no one is around outside on this cold november night.

Just part of the quote that says “Hang Them High”, that just hits me hard. I feel like that quote is showing a good amount of how people are being judged just by a certain type of class that they are in. This is somewhat similar with society today. People are being judged depending on who they are and not for what they do.

According to the PBS Frontline video “Poor Kids” 2012, more than 46 million Americans are living beneath the poverty line. The United States alone has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the industrialized world. It is stated that 1 out of 5 children are living in poverty. The video documented the lives of three families who are faced with extreme hardships and are battling to survive a life of being poor. All three families have more than one child and could barely afford to pay their bills and purchase food for their household.

When people are poor, they often have a lot of problems in their life. They struggle through every day, but they learn to appreciate everything that they have. However, when people are going through tough times, they often think that money will solve all of their problems. In “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, she guides the audience through a black family -- impacted by the need for money -- living on the south side of Chicago. The Younger family gets Lena Younger’s dead husband’s insurance check and buys a house in a white neighborhood, and they save the remainder of the money for Beneatha’s medical degree and for starting a liquor store. Willy Harris steals the $6,500 used to start the liquor store and for Beneatha’s college money,

The only woman in the world who will still cradle you in her arms even if you've stabbed her loving heart is your mother.The short story “Teenage Wasteland” by Anne Tyler is about guilt and reveals mother’s feelings towards her children. A loving mother will feel guilty for anything that happens to her children, and even for that how they feel.

How would you handle a newlywed, a miscarriage, a menacing, new neighborhood, and one heart-stealing, unruly Labrador Retriever while working and providing for a family of 5? This is what John is acquiring along with the everyday life of John Grogan. He has yet to glean from everything he has decided to take upon himself. Marley and Me is a must-read, tear-jerking novel that teaches a valuable lesson that even teens today can relate to: you should never give up on something you love and care a lot for.

Jack London, an American novelist, wrote two short stories alike in style. “To Build a Fire” and “The Law of Life” have many similarities and differences. The two stories are closely related but have many different characteristics if taken a close look at. Jack London related the two stories by using similarities and differences mainly in the setting, characters, and theme.