People from different social classes lead different lives and treated differently by others. Society never promotes equality but categorizes them. In Bastard Out of Carolina, unfair treatment provokes characters who are in the bottom of the society and destroy them mentally. The author, Dorothy Allison tells in the novel of how anger could build up from the social inequities and personal insecurity that possibly burns one's true identity.
Through the protagonist, Bone's narration, her mother known as Mama is a victim of the bottom class. Her life is cheap and inconspicuous, as the beginning of the novel mentions, "Mama...hated the memory of every day she's ever spent bent over other people's peanuts...while they stood tall and looked at her
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It is Bone’s stepfather, Glen who her mother married in the second marriage. He abuses Bone physically and mentally. The worst thing he does is to impose reality after he sexually abuses Bone. Bone mainly learns how to get angry from Glen because he shows anger and hatred all the time through his abuses and eye contacts. Glen is jealous and insecure also disapproved by his father, James Waddell all the time. For example, in Chapter 14, Bone thinks to herself “...the way Daddy Glen had stuttered when his father spoke to him.” and add up to Mama says “Glen’s always trying ti please him, and that old man takes every chance he gets to make Glen look like a fool. It just eats Glen up, eat him up.” (pg. 207) Allison shows how Glen seems so weak and powerless in front his father. It tells audiences that Glen is not confident and tries to show his strength and power from abusing Bone. Glen’s father destroys his true identity and influences Glen. Glen is doing the same thing of destroying Bone's identity. He manipulates Bone and physically beats her when she denies to him and also makes her must follows his directions. Allison mentions ‘It eats up Glen’ to also suggest that anger is a key factor that makes Glen so violent and hateful. The anger Glen has origins from his father’s constantly disapproval. Then it transfers to Bone and makes her gradually lose herself in front of Glen. In Chapter 20, after Glen sexually abuses Bone, he says to Bone, “You’ll learn.” and “You’ll never mouth off to me again. You’ll keep your mouth shut. You’ll do as you’re told.” (pg.285) Allison suggests that Glen is irritated by Bone’s rebellion and wants to conquer Bone by imposing reality of what she thinks. Glen desires to take over Bone totally and holds on her mind, voice, and thoughts in his hands. Glen is fulfilling satisfactions from abusing Bone and crazy about it. His anger taken over his mind
The short story is set in the period of The Great Depression, and lower classes especially struggled in this hard time. The Great Depression attacked the nation by society class. The lower levels struggled even more than usual. Lizbeth lived in a small rural town with a few members of her family. Her father and mother worked all day and Lizbeth and her brother, Joey, would hang out with other teenagers in their community to waste the daylight. The community always helped each other out but there was this one woman, Miss Lottie who played an important role in young Lizbeth’s
She sets out to explore the world that welfare mothers are entered. The point was not so much to become poor as to get a sense of the spectrum of low-wage work that existed-from waitressing to housekeeping. She felt mistreated when it was announced that there has been a report on “drug activity”, as a result, the new employees will be required to be tested, as will the current employees on a random basis. She explained feeling mistreated, “I haven 't been treated this way-lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations-since junior high school” (Ehrenreich,286). The other problem is that this job shows no sign of being financially viable. Ehrenreich states that there is no secret economies that nourish the poor, “If you can 't put up the two months’ rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week” (286). On the first day of housekeeping, she is yelled and given nineteen rooms to clean. For four hours without a break she striped and remake the beds. At the end of the experience she explained that she couldn 't hold two jobs and couldn 't make enough money to live on with one as where single mothers with children. She has clarified that she has advantages compare to the long-term
No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...
The overwhelming poverty that Sylvia (Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson" p.543) and Abner (William Faulkner, "Barn Burning" p.250) experience dooms them both to a life of self-destruction. Though from different worlds, Sylvia and Abner both experience hate, confusion, and anger because of their lowly positions in life. Instead of trying to better themselves, they choose to vent their dissatisfactions on others, and ignore the cause of the discriminations they face.
This essay will focus on exploring the theme of prejudice in Harper Lee’s novel - ‘To kill a mockingbird’ , published in the four years after the renowned bus boycott of Montgomery, , it resonates with the feelings and attitudes prevalent at the time. A variety of different types of prejudice are exposed to us throughout the progression of the novel, arguably the most significant being racial and class prejudice. I shall focus my essay on exploring how these types of prejudice are explored in the novel.
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
Most stories depict a world full of misconception and over scrutinized facts which deal with an indirect narration of the past. The story is drawn out and over dramatized to the point of disbelief. Bastard out of Carolina is just that. On the contrary, this book is nothing but realistic. Comparing world sufficiency established by Dorothy Allison’s idea of the fifties to that of today’s standards, one would see it as if that world is one out of a fairytale; not so much a fairytale, but as more of a nightmare-tale. To the readers’ surprise, this fictional story is based off personal experience from that of the author. In conclusion, what is said in this novel could be directly compared to life as it was during the nineteen fifties in South Carolina. In particular, white folk of the time period are what is being analyzed and compared. Allison was born into a macrocosm of poverty and sexual abuse. To her, this was the normality of existence at a young age. Her life parallels Bone’s existence in the book and is an ideal structure to base assumption of the fifties off of. What was sufficient ‘then’ is highly different from that of expectations and sufficiency from a present day perspective. Sufficiency lies on a linear social line of expectation. The norms and ideologies of society lie along this line likewise. Defining what exactly sufficiency means in this context: sufficiency is the normality or the accepting of a certain level of knowledge, income, and interactive structure into a society. Essentially it is what is considered ‘enough’ in a given tense. In the fifties for example, role expectations in a family are extremely different from that of today’s expectations. The undertaking of a role today is more freely accepted than what ...
Bone’s parents were mostly self serving and care nothing for their son, as a result they divorce and left Bone to contemplate about his life. As a result, he left his home at an early age as well as dropping out of school. His views became more selfish after that, usually stealing and dealing drugs to survive. He ends up with a biker named Bruce who bullies his and controls his everyday life. At first he seemed like a second abusive father, but in the end he sacrifices himself to try to save Bone from a fire. Bone starts to think that his parents were like Bruce and had alternative motives that he did not understand. Through the story, he meet with Buster and Froggy. These two people become the personification of Bone’s troubled past. Bone sympathizes with Froggy as she is abused by the pedofile Buster. Until finally, he takes Froggy, whose name actually is Rose , to her
In the novel, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee some characters suffer in the hands of justice and fairness more than others. Many characters in the novel are discriminated against such as Calpurnia, Dolphus Raymond, Helen Robinson, Burris Ewell and more. However I will be focusing on the discrimination against Tom Robinson for his race, Walter Cunningham for his low socioeconomic status and Boo Radley for the rumors and supposed mental instability he holds. I chose those three because they are the most prominent and I will discuss how the discrimination against the characters therefore leads to their injustice or unfairness.
When she was younger, she dreamed of being able to live in a decent sized house where she could even have her own small garden. However, the more privileged black neighborhoods were too expensive for her and her family at the time so she could never get the best of what Chicago had to offer. That factor didn’t hinder her from providing for her family and getting what she needed in life though. Mama’s environment formed her into a woman who hopes for the best, but even if that doesn’t happen, she will still make do with what she has. She also is very religious, this enables her to have strength and guidance during troubling times, and find a way when there is none.
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
Mama, as a member of an older generation, represents the suffering that has always been a part of this world. She spent her life coexisting with the struggle in some approximation to harmony. Mama knew the futility of trying to escape the pain inherent in living, she knew about "the darkness outside," but she challenged herself to survive proudly despite it all (419). Mama took on the pain in her family in order to strengthen herself as a support for those who could not cope with their own grief. Allowing her husband to cry for his dead brother gave her a strength and purpose that would have been hard to attain outside her family sphere. She was a poor black woman in Harlem, yet she was able to give her husband permission for weakness, a gift that he feared to ask for in others. She gave him the right to a secret, personal bitterness toward the white man that he could not show to anyone else. She allowed him to survive. She marveled at his strength, and acknowledged her part in it, "But if he hadn't had...
Mother is introduced to us from “The Rescue” and we continue to learn of her tortures throughout the book. Mother is a woman who is angry, specially towards Dave, specially when he is in need of punishment. Mother does not take care of her appearance anymore, she walks around in robes all day, watches tv, never bothers to put on make up, and often smells of alcohol. She is vindictive, cruel and abusive, always barking orders, assigning impossible chores and coming up with more sickening ways to break Dave. Mother attacks Dave’s self esteem by making him repeat and believe that he is a bad boy. Dave’s self esteem deteriorates even more as she treats him worse than one would a dog, yet acts towards his brothers with care and affection and even goes on to teach them to look down on Dave.
In the South, a person’s identity is a critical factor in determining who he or she is as a person as well as their part in society, much like in the novel Bastard out of Carolina. To understand a person’s identity, Thompson and Walsh gave the definition of a “fluid process” rather than a person’s “fixed” personality (380). Therefore, identity is self-based on choices people make as well as what they go through. Identity also evolves as people mature while numerous factors affect a person’s identity. It is through this novel that the readers will understand how the affects of sexual child abuse force children to negatively alter their identity based on a traumatic experience.
Mama's economic hardships may have killed her dream, but she has not allowed it to kill her. The social inequality which the Younger encounters also does not hinder Mama's compassion. Mr. Lindner temporarily shatters Mama's dream of owning a home when he comes to the Youngers prepared to give them money to move from Clybourne Park. The derogatory use of "you people" by Mr. Lindner has little to no effect on Mama's steadfast decision to move to Clybourne Park.... ...