Mrs. Joe's Parenting

Ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. Ambition often leads to great rewards but often times too much ambition can lead to misfortune. The Character of Joe Starks in Their Eyes Are Watching God has a very prominent amount of Ambition. Stark’s bullied and manipulated people in order to satisfy his own Ambitions. Through the use of indirect characterization, Zora Neely Hurston exhibits how Joe Stark’s ambition destroyed the relationships he had with other people in Their Eyes Are Watching God.

People come into our lives for different reasons. Some leave a positive impact, while others bring negativity. Readers and critics alike have treasured Zora Neale Hurston’s 20th century novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, for generations particularly for its complex portrayal of the different main characters. The people a person meet and the experiences that person many go through in their lifetime can alter a person significantly. Through the tyrannical words of Joe Starks and the inconsiderate actions of Nanny, Janie in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is negatively influenced as her actions and thoughts alter her life. The author Zora Neale Hurston conveys the message that people closest to a person’s heart can often hide their true

In the face of adversity, what causes some individuals to fail while others prevail? Many people face difficulties. Depending on the person’s strength some will get through tough times, but some will fail to overcome them. I have chosen two books: Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Book Thief. These two stories deal with people overcoming the difficulties they face throughout their life. Some difficulties include racism, religious discrimination, and dealing with others’ cruelness or kindness.

First and foremost, Lena leaving Joe for Spunk immediately sets the two men apart, further strengthening Spunk’s position as the ultimate male authority while also invoking imagery of Joe being a pathetic powerless man. Secondly, Joe’s acceptance of the situation and the public humiliation of getting his wife stolen puts him in a submissive position. Finally, when the townspeople work Joe up enough for him to stand up for himself and attempt to murder Spunk and claim his wife, he ends up getting killed. Unlike Spunk who is big and reeks of masculinity and authority, Joe hunches and twitches nervously, making him a weaker and submissive character. Moreso, using his masculine authority, Spunk is shown as a man who takes what he wants. On the contrary, Joe’s failure to take back his wife shows his lack of masculine authority. Therefore, Joe, who fails in every aspect to be masculine, is more of a feminine character than a masculine character. This all culminates to show the influence that gender roles have on character’s actions within

I remember being a little kid and whenever my family and I would see a homeless person with a sign my parents would say, “Don’t make eye contact,” or “They probably don’t even have a problem, they’re just begging.” I remember when I made my dad buy a woman and her children McDonalds because she had a sign about having no money for food and she had no home and I felt bad for her kids. I remember my dad giving her the McDonalds and her saying to my dad, “I’d rather just have the money.” That’s when I stopped feeling sympathetic towards the poor and homeless. That’s when I decided if they wanted to be out of poverty then they could work for it and I wouldn’t help them myself. I always thought if you wanted to change something then you could. As I read “What Is Poverty?” by Jo Goodwin Parker, I began to feel differently, however I then believed maybe there are some impoverished people that do need help. I believed that some people

Zora Neale Hurston took part in the empowering movement of the Harlem Renaissance, or the “New Negro Movement” (Locke, 1925), a time characterized by a flourishing African American culture. She is best known for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which primarily focuses on Janie Crawford, a young woman in search of love, of herself, and her place as a black woman in the South. Hurston’s work remained relatively obscure, until Alice Walker heralded it and elevated it to the ranks of an American classic. Her work though has also the subject of harsh critiques, notably by Richard Wright, who claimed it was not political enough. In fact, it could be argued that Janie remains passive throughout most of the novel, trapped in abusive relationships,

Joe is the antagonist even though he is the weaker one between himself and Spunk. Joe knows that his beloved wife Lena has the hots for Spunk, but he has absolutely no intention of getting her back. There is even a full paragraph on the first page that explains his feelings on the situation. This paragraph allows the reader to understand Joe on a deeper level. One phrase fully describes his feelings, “One could actually see the pain he was suffering, his eyes, his face, his hands and even the dejected slump of his shoulders”(1). This description comes right after the men comment on the fact that his wife Lena, was seen walking arm and arm with Spunk a few moments ago. Joe seems to be painted as a pushover, but it’s not until one of

In this novel, “The Round House” one of the main characters, Joe Coutts is a young thirteen year old boy who is forced to grow up sooner than he thought. His mother, Geraldine, is raped and beaten near the Round House and refuses to talk about what happened and tell who attacked her. Being that Geraldine was a tribal enrollment specialist, which could be considered something like a social worker in today’s time, it was very difficult and perplexing to narrow down who might have did such a thing to Geraldine. She knew everyone’s business or “everyone’s secret” as Joe would say, throughout the tribe. Whatever went on, she knew. Nothing ever got past her. Being such a young boy, Joe was saddened by what had happened to his mother, especially being that she was not herself at all. Joe was determined to find out who had attacked his mother and to get justice.

Not only does she have an unsuccessful marriage with Logan but she has a futile marriage with Jody Starks as well. At first Jody was the guy of Janie’s dreams. He was nice, articulate, intelligent, and said he would treat Janie like a queen and that working on a farm was no place for lady of her caliber. This enchants Janie and convinces her to run away with Jody. However when running away together Janie realizes Jody is not who he seems to be. When he is mayor of Eatonville he exhibits characteristics of a dictator. He is demanding, condescending and controlling. Even though he is critical to all of the people in Eatonville, he is the most harsh on Janie. Jody thinks that Janie and women everywhere are so inferior that "Somebody got to think

The dandelions represent Pecola’s internal struggle because of her want to be beautiful and the contempt that this leads to from adults. It seems that all adults want to get rid of the weeds because they are ugly, but Pecola, on the other hand, thinks that they are beautiful. Pecola does not only view herself as a dandelion, but rather all black people, and in some cases, all women. When she is walking to Mr. Yacobowski’s shop, she thinks to herself, “they do not want the yellow heads - only the jagged leaves. They make dandelion soup. Dandelion wine. Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon (Morrison 47).” Pecola is realizing the views that society has of blacks and women. She sees this view when she talks to China, Poland, and Miss Marie. Black

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and she gave to us” (page 205). Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye takes place in Lorain, Ohio shortly after the Great Depression, shining light onto the corruption and cycle of abuse that affects not only individuals, families, or communities, but ultimately a nation.

Martians Abroad is a unique coming of age story, set hundreds of years in the future, when interplanetary travel is common place. The protagonist of Martians Abroad, is Polly who experiences both typical and unique themes in the coming of age genre. At the beginning of the novel, Polly is shipped from her home on Mars, to a large earth academy. At this academy, Polly experiences typical coming of age themes in romance, interfering mothers, bullies, and school issues. However, Polly also faces unique coming of age issues such as risking her life to save others. In Martians Abroad, Polly must learn to adapt to new situations, both for the sake of her future, and to keep those she cares for safe.

Dolls typically socialize young girls to be women and to be mothers, which alludes to the irony of Pecola who gives birth to her father’s child. Just like how everyone else around her treats her, Pecola is despised within her own home. Her parents suffer from the belief that they themselves are unworthy of love and as a result, their children have to bear with that self-hatred, especially Pecola. Pauline, Pecolas’s mother, is a domestic servant who believes in the superiority of white people including her employer and their children. But failing to love herself and who she is, Pauline fails to love her own child Pecola. Pecola’s father, Cholly, was abandoned as a child by his mother which is where his issues with women alone begin. As a teenager Cholly lost his virginity and was humiliated by two white men while in the midst of it.

The Victorians were discovering new lands inhabited by different people, which made the contact with a great variety of different cultures inevitable. Although they were invading larger part of the world and imposing their own culture on others, they were determined to keep their culture free of outside influences. By all manner of means, they were trying to preserve their societal stability, the normality within their own society from the invasion of the different and therefore abnormal. Based on an erroneous interpretation of Darwin’s Evolution Theory, white man felt racially superior and thus tried to impose its culture on others in order to help them become civilized.

Toni Morrison expresses ideas of intersectionality, discrimination, and self-hatred/acceptance through multiple perspectives in her book, “The Bluest Eye”. The book follows a young girl, Pecola Breedlove throughout her journey of self-hatred and longing for the cultural beauty of having blue eyes. Pecola believes that having blue eyes would allow her to lead a better life, as blue eyes match society’s definition of beautiful because of its connection with “whiteness”. This yearning for acceptance and physical beauty isolates Pecola, as she begins to believe that the inferiority and hate that is being reflected back at her, is who she is. Coupled with the background of her parents, this leaves Pecola with a great deal of shame and self-loathing,