Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then in the Russian Empire, in today's Ukraine. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, he mother she never knew. He had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of North American Judaism's four main groups. Carl and his sister agreed that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple and served only kosher meat. During the depths of the Depression, his father worked as …show more content…
As a young woman she had held her own intellectual ambitions, but they were frustrated by social restrictions: her poverty, her status as a woman and a wife, and her Jewish ethnicity. Davidson notes that she therefore "worshipped her only son, Carl. He would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams. However, he claimed that his sense of wonder came from his father, who in his free time gave apples to the poor or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's garment industry.Although he was awed by Carl's intellectual abilities, he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride and saw it as part of his growing up. In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later
One of the characters who was a major influence in Ricky’s life is his mother. She is a very strong willed and opinionated person. As Rivera points out at the beginning of the novel “I am still amazed that I really don’t know who this woman is. None of us do. My brothers and sisters have conflicting fictions of where Chero is from, but we agree that if we could just pinpoint an exact geographical moment of being, we could start to figure out mother out.” (3) The author reflects on his respect for his mother when he writes about her determination, her purpose, her willingness to confront bosses, teachers, neighbors and husbands even as he states “to this day I still wonder who this woman is.” (10 )
Growing up, Ruth had a rough childhood growing up in a very strict jewish household. Her family was poor, her mother was physically handicapped, her father was verbally and physically abusive, and she faced prejudice and discrimination from her neighbors and classmates because she
To start, The author Carl Hiaasen was born on March 12, 1953, in Plantation, Florida, a rural suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He was the first of four children born to Odel and Patricia Hiaasen. He started writing from the age of six. In 1970 he graduated from Plantation High School and entered Emory University, where he wrote the school-run newspaper called the Emory Wheel. Two years later, he transferred to the
A neighbor, Mrs. Hazel Griffin, shows mercy and helps June Jordan move into her parents’ house even as Jordan’s mother lay ill. But while this neighbor helped a needy woman, Jordan’s father stood by and disapprovingly watched. He felt threatened by Mrs. Griffin because she was a single mother with a successful business who had not completed her education. Jordan’s father thought that women should adhere to strict gender roles and not be
...he opposite of her father, she probably learned a lot of the positive things in her life from her mother (even though her mother still abandoned her).
...n high school and she was striving for big goals, working hard to achieve them, and overcoming countless obstacles. Even when her father stole that piggy bank money she did not give up. Her purpose in life helped transfer her into adulthood. Without this determination and sacrifice, seceding into a successful adult would have been much more challenging.
understand what she felt about her life and her family, since her views differed from the
Shirley Jackson’s stories often had a woman as the central character who was in search of a more important life other than the conventional wife and mother. These characters however were often chastised for their refusal to conform to a woman’s traditional way of life. Much like her characters, throughout Shirley Jackson’s life, she also rejected the idea of fitting into society's perception of a woman's role.
Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania during the height of the Industrial Age (Griswold 8). Her mother, Maria Carson, was an avid bird-watcher and
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
The author, Betty Smith, taught her readers to push through any obstacle in life, through the books conflicts, setting and research. Francie had always felt distant from her mother. This is demonstrated from the plots conflict in the story. Betty Smith wrote, “Johnny grew in weakness and went further
On March 13, 1933, Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Celia Amster and Nathan Bader (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). Ruth had an older sister, Marilyn, but she passed away at the age of six from meningitis; Ruth was one year old at the time. Cecilia, Ruth’s mother, stayed home and took care of Ruth while she grew up. Cecilia made sure that Ruth worked diligently in school and taught her the value of hard work. Cecilia was diagnosed with cancer while Ruth was in high school and the day before her daughter’s graduation she passed away (Salokar & Volcansek, 1996). One of the greatest influences on Ruth’s life was her mother and the values she instilled in her from a young age. Two of the greatest lessons that Ruth learned from her mother was to be independent and to be a lady, and by that she meant not to respond in anger but to remain calm in si...
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. His father modelled an ardent commitment to his studies, a characteristic that Piaget followed from an early age. Piaget was known to have described his mother as being inclined to regular neurotic outbursts.
According to Carl Sagan, there is baloney everywhere and we must be able to spot the truths among the lies, cons, and exaggerations if we are to protect ourselves from false information, and being conned. Sagan’s essay The Fine Art of Baloney Detection provides a set of rules to follow that can help determine baloney from truth and facts. Sagan provides nine rules to help in skeptical thinking and determining lies from truths, some being more useful than others.
Also obvious is her increasing frustration with the unnecessary limitations of femaleness. “For man and woman,” she maintained, “truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same...Women, I allow, may have different duties