House By Madeleine Thien Analysis

This theme is subtly shown throughout the story, but becomes more apparent after the main event, the slaughter. After Date Bed is presumed missing, Mud, despite the fact that she is not of She-S blood, shows concern for her friend and adopted family member throughout the story – “It is just as well that Mud’s thoughts can’t be heard because what she is thinking is, “I’m the one who loves her. None of you loves her as I do,” and the uselessness of her love arouses her to such a pitch of anguish that she thinks of returning to the plain and searching for Date Bed on her own” (Gowdy, 105). The other She-S’s feel the same way as well – She-Snorts states, “I would not go to The Safe Place…knowing that Date Bed might still be alive and lost” (Gowdy, 249). If the She-S’s didn’t care for their family as much, they would have abandoned all thought of Date Bed and wouldn’t bother searching for her.

Some people feel unwanted, as if they don’t belong. Often they have just not found the right place to reside. Sue Monk Kidd, author of, “The Secret Life of Bees” which discusses a girl named Lily who grew up with her abusive father and the guilt of accidentally murdering her own mother. She never felt at home, especially because she hand many questions about her mother, Deborah. She ran away with her nanny, Rosaleen, in hopes of finding a place to call home.

In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the protagonist, Miss Emily Grierson, is faced with challenges that leave her no choice but to find a way to escape the internal struggle of loneliness created by her own actions, leading to self-inflicted destruction. Looking in on the surface, the female character is imprisoned by the repressiveness of her father. While he played a huge role in causing Emily’s mental state to deteriorate, it was ultimately the consequences of her own self-control that confined her mind. Because of her poor choices, Emily lives in misery instead of rescuing herself from such damaging chains of sorrow. Throughout the text, it is evident that the overall conflict in “A Rose for Emily” was driven by self-deprecation

In The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls faces harsh stuff through her childhood because of her parents. In the beginning of the book she finds her mother digging through trash. She feels embarrassed, so she turns around and goes home without saying hello. Jeanette then calls her mother and asks to have dinner with her. She offers her mother help because she feels guilty, but her mother rejects her help.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story set in the 1890s about a female narrator who struggles with postpartum depression. She moves into a home for the summer with her husband, John. Since she has this sickness, John forbids her from doing any sort of activities other than some houes work. If she was doing anything, her husband would want her to rest to help with her illness. This was a common "cure" known at the rest cure back then.

She takes her anger out on the youngest daughter, Rose. Usually Camille would redirect Cookie’s rage, but Camille hasn’t been home for months. So, Regina intervenes, and Cookie responds by beating her to the edge of consciousness. A teacher suspects abuse and reports the family to a social worker. One day, Regina comes home to find a social worker waiting to speak to her.

The epigraph of Chapter Three highlights the ways both Mother and Mattie feel and relates to the novel’s theme of loss. Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Fever 1793, quotes from a letter from Margaret Morris, which states “Oh, then the hands of the pitiful mother prepared her child’s body for the grave.”, the “pitiful mother” representing Mother, and the child spoken about is Matilda. Mother has just experienced yet another death, the last one being Mattie’s father. Polly was their helper girl, and now they don’t have anyone to help around the shop. This will cause Mother to get more stressed as she and Mattie have more work to do.

When Moran is working at Prince George welfare office, a women come for help. She need help for her daughter Winnie who is just 13 year old. Winnie’s mother tell to Moran that Winnie constantly ran away from home. She also said that Winnie is very silent and loyal child and she is very close to her father, but after her father’s death she just start running away from home. They moved to Prince George because her mother thought that maybe she need a new environment, but this does not work.

Marigolds by Eugenia Collier is about a woman named Lizabeth looking back on her past, specifically the moment and things leading up to when she became an adult. “Chaotic emotions of youth” as she calls it are what really lead to the main event and are caused from confusion. In the story she as well as other children don’t understand how something like their neighbor, Miss.Lottie’s, marigolds could be so beautiful amid such a poverty-stricken, dilapidated town. She also does not understand where she belongs in her family after witnessing a huge role change between both her mother and father. These along with peer pressure are what made Lizabeth embrace those chaotic emotions and childishly act out in a violent way mutilating and destroying

For example, in the beginning of the novel when Elizabeth’s sister Jane becomes sick when she is off visiting the Bingley’s, Elizabeth walks over a mile to get to her. Before she left her mother warned her “*****”. Elizabeth, however did not care how she looked, she only wished to see her sister. When she arrives at the Bingley’s, her skirt is covered with dirt and mud which repulses Me. Bingley’s sister was repulsed, as this was very against social norms.