The Theme Of Identity In Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl

As I analysed Barbara Kingsolver’s Naming Myself and Sandra Cisneros I noticed the concept of both poems are very similar. The concept of both poems is both Sandra and Barbara talk about their family’s history and how it doesn't represent them. Both poems mentioned their names having a bad history and both of them disliking their names.

In class we watched the movies Pariah, The breakfast club and Mean girls to see how they present expressive individualism. Bulman defined expressive individualism as “that strain of American individualism that values not material achievements, but the discovery of one’s unique identity and the freedom of individual self-expression” (Bulman, 2005).

One’s surroundings may have an impact that affects perception and behaviors they pursue. In the novel, the outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, Sherri (Cherry) Valance was not the typical upper-class adolescent. She stimulated her friend, Ponyboy Curtis, to see how equally unsettled Socs and Greasers both were. As her character develops, Sherri acts as a spy in service of the Greasers to help them and her class as well. The gang influenced decisions Cherry Valance made by confirming their aspects, feeling sympathetic towards her conflicting posse, and seeing the genuine character in a person.

In her ethnography account Women without Class, Julie Bettie explores the relationship that class along with race and gender work to shape the experiences of both Mexican American girls and white working class students. In her work, Bettie finds that class cannot only intersect to impact the school experiences of both working class and middle class girls, but also their transition to adulthood and their future outcomes. Thus, Bettie explores how working class girls are able to deal with their class differences by performing symbolic boundaries on their styles, rejecting the school peer hierarchy and by performing whiteness to be upwardly mobile.

Many of the names were chosen from the bible on the day of a child’s birth. Letting God choose a child’s name shows a level of faith in the parents which often results in awkward and weird names. The use of the name, Magdalena called Lena, is similar to the phrasing in the bible in names like Simon called Peter. Toni Morrison put a lot of emphasis into the characters' names in Song of Solomon. The main characters' last name of Dead has a lot of emphasis. The first man in the family that was named Dead ended up being murdered. Guitar repeated uses the joke, “You can’t kill someone that is already dead. The names have a greater meaning and Toni Morrison wants her readers to get a similar understanding, or any understanding out of them at

Imagine walking into a room and being instantly identified as a criminal. Imagine having to experience this in every room you enter. Imagine walking into a store and being watched, expected to be a thief or sometimes even expected to reveal a knife, gun or a bomb. When we meet new people, most of us look for differences rather than similarities. From young we are taught that everyone is different and that continually makes us associate others by these differences. We focus on these exact materialistic differences and rather than embracing them, we continually distance ourselves because of them.

With Mulan, Disney opened a number of controversies about questions of masculinity and gender roles. Why is the main character a woman who is cross-dressing to be a man in order to save her father from the troubles of war? Why is she taking a role of a soldier? How is her behavior depicted? The codirector of the movie stated: “What I like about Mulan is not that she changes herself but it's really that she changes society and their way of seeing her. That's what allows her to be accepted in the end. She ends up being accepted for who she is which is a pretty universal want for a lot of different people.“ (Ward, 2002, 95) Like in Hercules and Tarzan, obviously the main theme is finding the true self. However, in order to be accepted by the society, the protagonist must go through some changes, of course, to reach the acctualization.

Rejection can make one feel alone, helpless, and out of place, and it’s a feeling that can make someone feel like they are no good, or that they aren’t worthy of a good life. All throughout the story, we are given examples of how the young girl is shamed and rejected. She was never accepted for who she was and this made her do things, sometimes extreme to help out her family. She knew she would never fit in, and her actions proved just that.

This passage is from the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. The overall purpose of this book is to inform the readers of the stereotypes girls must face as adolescents. The author is able to express her opinion as a parent and give advice to other parents with daughters of how to overcome the stereotypes so girls do not succumb to the girly culture that bombards the media. The book touches on Orenstein’s role as a mother to her daughter Daisy and the challenges she faces due to all the stereotypes for young girls. This passage focuses on girls conforming to the stereotype regarding pink is the color for females.

During the 20th Century, communism was the main source of government in Russia. Ayn Rand opposed everything that Communists stood for. She believed in individualism and wanted to express her own thoughts. She based her book, Anthem, on her life in Russia and the struggles she endured. When she came to America she wanted to show people what life in Russia was actually like. She parallels her life to the life of her character named Equality. Throughout the book Equality and his love Liberty, have multiple names each representing how they progress from collectivism to objectivism. These names change from being standard names that represent a society that is based fully on the idea of collectivism towards names

In Isabel Allende’s short story “Two Words”, readers follow the story of Belisa Crepuscalario, a woman who was born to an extremely poor family and sell words for a living. Colonel, a really tough and closed man who does not show his feelings easily and had spent his life serving homeland in the civil war. Late in the story she meets Colonel where the tough and closed man become a totally different person. In “Two Words,” Allende emphasizes the power of words through Belisa’s work to develop both Belisa and Colonel’s character, helping him realize that life is beautiful and enjoyable.

1) Throughout our course, there have been some incredible and powerful women characters and writers. From Granny in “Jilting of Granny Weatherall” to Delia in “Sweat”, all of their stories had powerful connotations and influences in the readers. First of there was Phoenix from “A Worn Path,” she is the protagonist of this tale and is described in a lively way by the way she moves. Welty said, “Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with odor like copper.” The rag in her hair, her skin, and even the wrinkles on her face are deeply expanded upon in the story and accentuate her character. She is a resilient woman and perseveres through all that comes to her. Even her name is a symbol; the

In Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli, the protagonist, Leo Borlock’s experiences cause him to change throughout the novel. In his first experience, Leo meets Stargirl—or at least everyone keeps talking about her when she arrives at school. She’s quirky and eccentric and has everyone wondering who she is. Leo and his friend Kevin agree at first to put her on “Hot Seat”, a show they run together where they interview students from their school. However, the next day, popular girl Hillari Kimble is telling everyone that Stargirl is a fake, planted to encourage and excite the students.

One way she uses panel design to make her novel successful is the absence of color. Satrapi’s use of comic panels makes the reader read and understand the memoir in a new and different way. The panel design is only black and white but the images depict the different colors of the revolution that are more clearly understood.

Fashion is essential to culture, it offers aesthetic forms in fields such as dress and clothing, philosophy and religion, music, habits and customs, through which individuals attach to, or demonstrate their difference from, various communities. As a cultural process, fashion is responsible for situating individuals within a constantly changing forest of objects, people, events, styles and practices to which they relate, about which they form opinions and which symbolically help to locate them within various social strata and communities. In this way, being 'in fashion ', indifferent to it or actively claiming to reject