Excerpt From The Winter Hibiscus Summary

This also connects to the idea of foreshadowing as this idea is followed throughout the story. 2. “‘Mom frowned at me. 'You'd be destroying what makes it special' she said, 'It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty'”. (Walls 38) In this conversation between young Jeannette and her mother when the innocent Jeannette a proposed an idea to straighten a wind-twisted Joshua tree by planting it near their house so she could protect it from the wind and care for it like a mother.

And how Nea deals with this events. This story is written with the immature and unreliable 12-year old perspective. These two sisters have grown together all through their life’s, creating a strong bound, and the fact that her family and a “old guy” is taking away her sister is something she can’t stand. In the end Nea believes that she is saving Sourdi from Mr.Chhay and her mother. However what Nea does not understand in all her youth and idealism , is that sourdi does not want to be saved: She willfully accepts her fate and her marriage to Mr.Chhay because she finds financial stability and a secure future.

The mother yearns for the life she could have had and probably dreams about it every so often, so we created a snapshot of the alternative reality she craves through these photos. *change slide* The purpose of the poem is to challenge the views of motherhood. Gwen Harwood presents the idea that motherhood is anything but glamorous. She shows her audience that being a mother is more than complex and tiring, it is shown in the way she paints the woman as a person constantly making sacrifices for her children, which mentally exhausts her. Throughout the entire poem, she demonstrates the woman’s desire to have a better life and her want for freedom, to be free of responsibilities given to her.

Firstly, Hana is dealing with the grief of losing her father in the war while she was overseas being a nurse for other wounded soldiers. Her decisions are constantly influenced by her painful memories that she holds onto like her obsession with the English patient, her want to stay in a dangerous villa secluded and her falling in love with the patients. The patient reminds Hana of her father because he was also burned beyond recognition and Hana feels like she need to save this patients so she can feel better about not being near him

Similarly, Maxine’s throat bursting shows her family how isolated she felt. However, once she told them about her secrets, she no longer needed their approval because she realizes that she is finally free of their

Any person who has been away from home will know the feeling of coming home and having a mother waiting. Even as she is waiting for Dee, her brain is still on her other daughter who is home and who is emotionally distraught. She seems to be brutal in her assessment of her daughters, but one gets the feeling that it is out of love. For example, she says that Dee has become ungrateful and uppity since she got her new life. She however daydreams of the day they will meet on a talk show, and her daughter will thank her.

Cordelia is one of Elaine’s school friends whom she meets after she returns from a summer vacation. In “A Study of Childhood Trauma”, Anna Lloyd argues that Cordelia indeed is a victim of an abusive family structure. Cordelia belongs to the upper class family and her house is ornamented in ways unfamiliar to Elaine for the reason that, not only her house is larger than her friends’ houses but the colors inside are light and welcoming as well. Cordelia’s mother also buys flowers to put in the Swedish vases; a habit that is unusual to Elaine. Moreover, Cordelia mentioned several times that they have a cleaning lady referred to as “the woman”.

Tan expresses the changing connection between the main characters’ mother-daughter relationship through the use of metaphors. This is shown when Rose Hsu Jordan talks to her mother about her recent divorce with her husband, Ted. Tan illustrates this with the quote, “And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds spilling over the edges…” (Tan 220). The weeds spilling over the sides were killing the heimongmong plants, which was a metaphor for Rose’s confusion. This was representative of how her mother helped Rose to be more assertive about her divorce, and to finally realize what she wanted

She also had to compete with her other sisters to get Ama’s attention. When the narrator is at Abuelita’s she does not have to compete. The narrator reflections on Abuelita’s “gray eye” and that it made her feel “safe and guarded, and not alone” (33). Some people act out because they want attention. For the protagonist, Abuelita eyeing her is not creepy but comforting.

Constancia ends up learning of her grandmother’s hardships, and drops the selfish character, saying, “That’s when I’m sent to my room to consider a number I hadn’t thought much about—until today. ” (Ortiz Cofer page 2). Constancia learns to value her grandmother, since she was the driving force that allowed her mother to be sent to America. From this she has transformed into a more understanding teenager, and learns to respect her grandmother because of this. Constancia was a selfish, social-status caring teenager who believes that her grandmother is embarrassing to be around, yet after her experience at the church, she learns to value her grandmother more, and respect her as much as