“If you don 't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim” (41). Although Rex Walls was not always an admirable father and role model, he did make an essential point while teaching his daughter, Jeannette, how to swim. In life, not everything comes without resistance. As Jeannette Walls describes throughout her life story, sometimes people are forced to face hardships that make them question their whole life. However, as seen in her book, it is important to learn to take those hardships and use them to shape one’s future for the better. In her memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls describes her unique childhood through motifs, complex symbolism, and progressive tones in order to demonstrate how one’s past positively influences their future.
Madeleine Thien’s “Simple Recipes” is not mainly about the father cooking food and his treatment towards his son, instead, the author uses food to symbolize the struggles her immigrated family experienced in Canada. While it is possible to only look at the narratives that food symbolizes, the idea is fully expressed when the father is compared with the food. The theme of food and the recipes are able to convey the overall troubles the narrator’s family encountered. Although, food is usually a fulfilling necessity in life, however, Thien uses food to illustrate the struggle, tensions, and downfall of the family. Yet, each food does represent different themes, but the food, fish, is the most intriguing because of the different environment it
People have the need to always prove their self worth to everyone. In the poem The Leaving, Brigit Pegeen Kelly demonstrates how an individual’s environment and expectations of others encourages a person’s actions. In the poem the girl is so dedicated to her work that she’s willing to stay late even when her father doubts her. The speaker takes on the challenge to prove to her father that she can complete her task, and she successfully proves to him that she can do it. By proving her self worth to her father, the speaker faces new challenges along the way that test her own thoughts and decision making which ultimately determines the pursuit of her hard work.
In the short story, “The Rip”, author Robert Drewe uses the idea of Sophie holding a jellyfish “at arms length” to display how she is becoming wary of her father, John, and is keeping him distanced from herself. he reassures her, as if he was trying to reassure himself that their relationship will not become an “anecdote”, but a reality.
Sometimes being from a different heritage than everyone else can be hard. This is shown in Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan and Names/Nombres by Julia Alvarez. In Fish Cheeks Amy is embarrassed when the ministers family comes over for a traditional Chinese Christmas dinner. Amy is embarrassed by her family's unique customs and foods. In Names/Nombres Julia moves to America from the Dominican Republic and faces issues with her name. Julia wants to go by an American name but feels different because she's from a different heritage than her friends. Both Amy Tan from Fish Cheeks and Julia Alvarez from Names/Nombres learn significant lessons about self acceptance and learn to appreciate their culture.
You never know how helpless you are until you have a near death experience. One summer, when I was young, my family and I went to a water park. I didn’t know how to swim, but thankfully the majority of the park required no swimming ability. For one of the rides, I wanted to get out of my tube and jump around, but once I climbed out, I immediately sunk to the bottom. I tried to kick back up and just as my legs gave in, a lifeguard climbed in and pulled me up. I was grateful to him, but something was bothering me. I couldn’t save myself. That was the moment I decided that I was going to become a lifeguard someday to help myself and many others.
We Live in Water is an award winning short story collection by Jess Walters. The short stories in We Live in Water depict everyday personal struggles from a male’s perspective. Walters creates the setting of most of the stories in the collection as Spokane, Washington. The choice to allow Spokane, Washington to be the setting as most of the stories is a huge contribution to the collection .Establishing Spokane as the setting is such a huge contribution to the story because Spokane is Jess Walters hometown. The setting as Spokane, Washington allows readers to interpret the story as a reflection of Jess Walters personal life. An idea Walters develops through most of his short stories is the generalized theme of entrapment. Entrapment can be described
In the novel The Old Man and The Sea, written by Ernest Hemingway a credible author, the use of figurative language was not sparse. Figurative language enhances the story line and makes the book interesting and detailed. The most notable uses of figurative language were similes, metaphors, personification, idioms, and hyperboles.
Persuant to the many tragedies that have rocked the charedi world this summer, parents are uncertain whether to allow their children to participate in outings to water parks. One father consulted with Maran Aaron Leib Steinaman, who was quoted as saying, "I am afraid of water." Rabbi Steinman refrained from forbidding swimming, but expressed his personal fear of the inherent dangers, which have already taken their toll, r"l.
I leapt from the diving board my rescue tube in hand, the air whooshing past my ears and adrenaline pumping through my veins. With a resounding splash, the swimming pool’s cool crisp water surrounded me. As I tore through the water, I looked up and saw the victim, a young woman in her twenties. A wide eyed, terrified expression was on her face as she sank underwater. I swam towards her body with all of my strength and I shoved my rescue tube into her arms. Panicking she grasped the tube as we floated to the side of the pool. Back on land my body shook from the adrenaline surging through my system. After she finished coughing the woman said, “Oh my god I thought I was going to die, thank you for saving me”.
Since one of my biggest fears is of sharks you could only imagine descending into an ice cold tank with a dozen of them. I only had a wet suit and a oxygen tank only to come face to face with several of those things. There were only 2 guides, and 1 other person trying to get over their fear of sharks, like me. Adrenaline rushed through my body every time any one of those stealthy, fierce and scary sharks went near me. I didn’t know who was more scared, me in the tank surrounded by sharks or my mom watching me from the exterior of the tank. There was not only sharks in the tank but some other ocean critters.
The short story, “Haunting Olivia,” by Karen Russell, portrays two boys looking for their sister, Olivia, who died at sea. The boys stay with their grandmother on an island for the summer, and each night they sneak away to a boat graveyard to search for the girl. Guilt and grief consume the narrator, Timothy, and his brother, Wallow, as they search for a way to rescue their dead sister. Tim holds onto the idea that Olivia can continue to exist as a spirit. The narrator uses echo to create the effect of Olivia’s ghost.
There I stood, paralyzed with fear, staring into the bottomless abyss of the ocean. Armed with only the protection of a wetsuit made simply of nylon, I was about to enter the cold, salty water and come face to face with a massive beast that could swallow me whole. Looking out in the distance, I watched the safety of Cancun disappear as I entered the world where the myths of Jaws and Moby Dick originated. As I looked out into the vast and murky water, the realization that I was about to enter the water with a colossal whale shark scared me senseless. My mind jumping all over the place, I was unable to process this harrowing fact. In that moment, my only thought was “What am I doing here?” It was a warm summer morning in the month of July, 2015.
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author who is considered one of the best and most culturally important fairy tale writers in history. His stories have been translated into over one hundred and twenty-five languages. The cultural significance of Andersen is an interesting topic to analyze. Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, “The Little Mermaid” and “The Shadow”, are culturally significant for many different reasons. “The Little Mermaid” tells a story of a young unnamed mermaid who decides to take control over her own life and destiny. She searches for eternal life through good deeds and sacrificing herself. “The Shadow” is a story about a learned man who tells his shadow to go snoop on another balcony and the shadow returns years later, wealthy and powerful. The man returns home and tries to write stories about good, truth, and beauty. These stories are culturally significant because they provide universal lessons to many different cultures, especially Danish culture.
Dr.Seuss is one of the best children’s book writers. His creative books, colorful pages and often funny stories attracts many readers. This gifted authors’ birthday is celebrated worldwide on March 2. His book The Cat in the Hat, published in 1957, became one of the most popular children’s book and helped him inspire generations of children with the ideas in his following books. Dr. Sigmund Freud’s representation of the personalities with the characteristics of the Id, Ego, and Superego are all distributed within the characters in Dr.Seuss book. The Cat in the Hat by Dr.Seuss is more than just a simple children’s story; it is a representation of Dr. Sigmund Freud’s structural model personality spectrum that presents the theme of learning to control one’s self even when having fun.