Heavy Threads And That's Don Fey: A Literary Analysis

Stories and memories passed on through generations can help to shape an individual. In many instances, storytelling can tell a lesson or push a person’s opinion about something in a certain direction. Memories can sometimes be unreliable, but can also be all that someone can base their life off of. Judith Ortiz Cofer’s memoir Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican childhood uses storytelling to share her memories in a life lesson manner. She takes the reader on a journey through her memories and childhood and uses her memory as a main tool. Memory and storytelling is an important aspect of Silent Dancing, because they helped to shape the author, told lessons to the reader, and explained a life tied between Puerto Rican and American.

The Rocket Man is a story about a man that has two different lives. The Rocket Man by Ray Bradbury is about a man that is split between staying with his family or going back into space and not seeing them for another few years. He has to choose whether he wants to stay with his family which consists of Doug the son, and Lilly the wife and mother. This story is about a man that has a job as a “Rocket Man” that goes into space for long periods of time and they don’t see their family for a while. The man is constantly torn between staying with his family or going into space. The main theme of the story is the struggle between adventure and peace. Three devices that I’m going to use to prove the theme of the story is theme, character, and setting.

The main topic proposal for my research project will focus on Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club events and how they are based on a true story as far as she can recall. Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club deals with rape, alcoholism and a mother that is nervous in East Texas with list of seven husbands. The human mind’s memory is delicate and can change (Simply). A first-hand account such as a memoir gives me a chance to analyze the truth behind the stories. Eyewitness accounts are highly inaccurate and several witnesses in the same place and time can have many different accounts of the same scene (Eyewitnes). Regarding memoir this becomes the concern for some critics. So, what matters and doesn’t matter about truth may all be in the perspective of the author,

From my observation, this analysis demonstrates Tommy Wiseau’s obsession with aging and proves how Tommy’s eccentricity shows Tommy’s attempt to associate himself with youth and to fit in as an American.

In the story a glass castle Jeannette Walls walks us through her life and what she had to go through to get where she is today. Through the book Jeannette describes events in great detail, but how factual are these events? In The Glass Castle Jeannette describes an event where she was burnt and was admitted into the hospital. During her visit in the hospital Jeannette describes conversations she had with nurses and doctors, yet she was three years old. The encyclopedia on early childhood development states that “Adults rarely recall personal events from before the age of 31⁄2 years” (Gordon). Though this isn’t always the case in adults, it is highly unlikely that Jeannette remembered the fine details of every sentence. Most people start recalling

With some of the best selling books and highest rated movies being of the memoir genre, it’s easy to wonder how much of an impact they may have on the world. Through Elie Wiesel’s carefully crafted words in the critically acclaimed “Night”, the reader is immersed into the harsh reality that is the Holocaust and granted the opportunity to glance at Wiesel’s personal story. Though however renowned a memoir may be, the genre lacks the ability prevent such atrocities from happening again due to it’s unreliability, the readers own perception of the book and the obstinacy of human nature. Though unable to hinder forthcoming events, memoirs do present the freedom for one to share their intimate experiences, thoughts and feelings.

“Memoir, in some regard, became the voice of national policy,” so states John D’Agata in Joan Didion’s Formal Experience Of Confusion. He thus proclaims that memoirs and memories exist not only as personal experiences but that they can be remolded for public use. D’Agata’s essay supports the concept that memories are powerful tools which connect and inspire communities. Along with this, he warns that though memories and memorials can be helpful for the remembrance of people and events, they can also manipulate people’s perspectives and even erase certain memories from a narrative.

Every day of our lives we are faced with the opportunity to believe and tell many tales, whether true or false, and exaggerations of daily events. Life is almost like a game of cards, we’re all given cards and it’s up to us to decide what, when and how we’re going to play them. Tim O'Brien uses the theme of storytelling in his book, The Things They Carried, to teach lessons from the war, and allow us to understand the baggage that he along with his fellow men carried. When storytelling the main idea is to connect people to the stories being told and the past to the future. Though O’brien offers several examples of storytelling, there are a select few that stick out. In the chapter, Spin, O’Brien says,"Stories are for joining the past to the future.

Young Augustine and elderly Scrooge both have an imbalance between superficial success and internal happiness. In Augustine’s anecdote about his encounter with a drunk beggar he is miffed by the happiness of a seemingly hopeless beggar. Despite his success in his career, Augustine’s internal struggle to find meaning prevents him from achieving happiness. On the other hand, Scrooge requires three trips with ghosts to realize that there is a better path of existence. Both Scrooge and Augustine need to learn the value of being a complete person compared to only pursuing financial or professional success. However similar the arcs of their progression from misery to happiness are, how they arrive at these new understandings are drastically

Memoirs give a personal and emotion view of a historical event that a textbook cannot provide. However, the author’s memory may be distorted and biased at times. Memoirs such as Black Dog of Fate, by Peter Balakian, and All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann, provide us with a great deal of historical information about mass violence. These memoirs allow us readers to have an inside look at these historical events. Memoirs are a great way to learn about a historical event and keep you engaged in the book, but there are some setbacks with them. I am going to argue that some memoirist’s memories are not entirely truthful, rather it be because of loss of memory, or because they try to make the story more intriguing. Memoirs can also be problematic

Did you know that there are different ways that you can communicate things not just textually, but in visual terms? When the memoir is expressed in a textual way it does not hold an emotion the same way it does in a picture. According to rhetoricians Cheryl Glenn and Loretta Gray in the chapter Writing Arguments, people 's actions and attitudes do not depend on logical reasoning: “Human beings do not form their beliefs or act on the basis of facts or logic alone; if we did, we would all agree and would act accordingly. Scientific findings would stop us from indulging in unhealthy eating, drinking, or smoking. … Our actions and attitudes would change as soon as we learned the facts. But logical reasoning alone is never enough to get anybody to change” (107). Instead, people’s actions depend on their attitude and is a result of their actions. I chose to revise my memoir and turn it into a piece of found art because I am re-purposing it for my own uses. I will first explain why I converted my memoir into a painting, then I will talk about why I used dark colors and different shapes in my

People change, minds change,places change,but memories don’t. Memories are good and bad, but they make up your life. Our lives are full of memories, like on holidays.When they are special in our hearts. So, i'm going to tell you my special moments.

In the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler told Germany the single story of his opinions of the Jewish race. His single story led Germany to blame Jews, persecute Jews, and kill Jews. You would think the nation would stand against wrongdoings, but most were brainwashed by Hitler’s perspective, and the rest, cowards. Germany was manipulated to think a certain way, without caring to hear what the Jews had to say, and ultimately reacted in a harmful way to the Jews. You may ask, why is this important? It is important because you have fallen into the trap of the most dangerous weapon of all without even realizing it. A single story brings the danger of the audience not taking the time to examine multiple perspectives, being manipulated to think a certain way, and reacting in hurtful ways.

Today more than ever, a plethora of information can be accessed with the click of a button. No longer must libraries and newspapers dictate the media one receives; the internet and broadened literary horizons have created a more well-informed and open-minded generation than in previous years. Without help from authors and political movements, however, the rampant censorship that once controlled the viewpoints and lives of average Americans in the past may still be in tact. Directly contributing to this, Judy Blume challenged censorship throughout her career by consistently describing taboo topics such as puberty, hormones, bodily insecurities, and much more in her novels aimed towards adolescents. Before her contributions to the young adult genre, literature written for teenagers did not discuss the issues teens face as bluntly or as realistically. As a result of her candid portrayals, however, Blume faced a significant amount of backlash against her writing and overall character. Regardless, Blume persevered and retained her uniquely frank illustrations of adolescent life, contributing as to why her novels remain so popular roughly 45 years later.

In psychoanalytic theory, there are two contrasting models of memory, illustrating how narrative could reconstruct memories. The first believes the stable and tangible past could be retrieved as archaeological excavation, while the second challenges the possibility of the recovery of original memory, while proposes the notion of Nachträglichkeit, i.e. Afterwardsness, which means the understanding of events is always deferred, in later re-transcription, assuming memories are never reliable. Stanley Kwan’s autobiographical documentary, Still Love You After All These, stands out to be a perfect example of the second model, showing how “Nachträglichkeit”sheds light upon the study of narrative by emphasizing on narratives functioning as the deferred