Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl
The plot of this story does not adhere to the conventional plot line. I feel that the Shawl’s plot came to early. Magda dies to early in the novel. I would have wanted her to be living just a little while longer so that we can build some sort of relationship with her. In my opinion, all we know of this fifteen-month-old baby is what Rosa tells of her daughter. Magda never lives long enough to see life through the eye of the reader. This takes away from a conventional plot line. Even though the book leads us up to the point of her death, the rest of the story is pretty much boring and it takes away from the reader’s attention.
In developing the characters throughout the story we begin with Magda. She is the youngest of them all and she is the first to die as well. She continues to be talked about by Stella and Rosa throughout the story. Magda ends up to be a very important part of Rosa’s life before and after her death. Stella was a selfish and jealous girl who did not like Magda because she thought that she got all the attention from Rosa. Stella then gets angry with Magda and steals the Shawl. I believe she has come a long way in life compared to the way she was as a teenager growing up. She has gone on with her life as she has since been to college and she is a more mature person. She even returned the Shawl back to Magda’s mother. Now Rosa is a mother who has lost a daughter to a brutal death. She also has smashed up her own store due to what she calls an evil world. She is convinced that she has nothing else to do with her life now that it is destroyed. She goes on to meet Simon Persky and he tries to comfort her and even asked her out on a date. Her panties are stolen and she tries hard to find her panties than she does finding the Shawl. I believe Rosa was in a state of depression because of the loss of her child and her store. She has little understanding of the Polish language and she tries to run away from life’s triumphs instead of facing up to him.
I feel that my judgment changes with Stella as the story progresses. She starts off in the beginning of the story as a negative person who feels neglected as a teenager. She doesn’t like Magda for the mere fact that she is a child. She talks negative and I feel that she did not like Rosa for shutting her out of her life when Magda was born. Then all of a sudden, she...
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...hings that I feel she felt sorry for. She knew she had the Shawl and Rosa did not know it. To make things better for her, she returned the Shawl not only because she stole it, but also because it was the right thing to do after all these years. I totally agree with the author’s theme about this novel brings about truth and things people live with in our environment. It certainly makes a statement of someone being down and out. People today struggle in their lives and strive to do better either for himself or for his family. Rosa lived a life she wanted to live because she wanted to. She had a chose to make and she has to learn to live with it. Life is all about choices and we have to learn to accept the choice we make and live with the outcome. Stella chose live a better life than Rosa, but Stella also tried to convince Rosa that life has to go on and she must accept Magda’s death and go on with her life. Rosa was still devastated by her daughter’s death and the destruction of her own store. Rosa has to get over that and live her life. I feel that if you experience anything in life whether it’s good or bad, try to learn from it and move on with your life to make better decisions.
In the beginning of the novel, as the reader is first introduced to Lily’s character, she comes across as an extremely negative young girl. While thinking about
David Malter was part of the Jewish sect that took on a more modern approach. He is very understanding, and he cares very deeply for his son Reuven. Reuven and his father's relationship would be considered healthy by most people. They love each other very much, and they have a very open communication with each other.
In the book The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, Reuven Malter is shaped by everyone around him. During this interaction his character becomes more developed and engaging. Through the interactions, it becomes apparent that Reuven’s father is always teaching his child how to improve himself. The conversations between Reuven and his father help prepare Reuven develop the mentality and the personal qualities, such as wisdom, compassion, and tolerance, necessary to become a rabbi.
Cynthia Ozick's short story "The Shawl" is intended to accentuate cool misfortune and gloom. Furthermore, Magda, the guiltless newborn child, is the main character to flourish for the vast majority of the story, regardless she turns into a casualty to the brutality of her general surroundings. In addition, Rosa tries to keep the subject Magda alive, and through the shawl, gives the main warmth in the story, while Stella intensely watches this new tyke receiving the consideration that Stella herself needs. Per users sympathizing with any of the three characters end the story feeling misfortune and distress.
In her work, “This is Our World,” Dorothy Allison shares her perspective of how she views the world as we know it. She has a very vivid past with searing memories of her childhood. She lives her life – her reality – because of the past, despite how much she wishes it never happened. She finds little restitution in her writings, but she continues with them to “provoke more questions” (Allison 158) and makes the readers “think about what [they] rarely want to think about at all” (158).
... is reminiscing about the fact that she messed up and it cost the boy’s life. The overall tone in the end of the novel is depressing as the governess’s actions and attitudes about current events tend to reflect the tone of the situation.
In the story The Stolen Party, Liliana Heker shows symbolism, figurative language, and irony. Rosaura could not understand the differences between the rich and the poor. She was accepted by the rich family and was friends with their daughter, Luciana. Even though her mom told her that they only accepted her as a maid and nothing else. Nevertheless, she was eager to go to the party and decided to go with excitement. Symbolism, figurative language, and irony are expressed in the story and play an important role because it tells us the difference between the upper class and the lower class.
Maggie, the protagonist, lives in a slum on the lower East side of the Bowery in NYC. She lives in the tenement housing with her mother, Mary and her brother, Jimmie. It’s the turn of the 18th century and this Irish immigrant family is poor. Mary is a drunk and her brother, Jimmie drinks and fights with everyone. Maggie doesn’t go to school because everybody has to work. She works in the sweatshop, sewing clothes. Her life is filled with poverty and gloom. Maggie meets Pete and she is impressed that Pete wears nice outfits. Pete likes her too. He takes her to the live theater plenty of times. She’s sees his clothing as a symbol of wealth and that he takes her out to places where she never been before. She sees Pete and the money he spends on her as a way out of her dreary life. She leaves her home and goes to live with Pete to have a better life. She thinks he loves her, but she has gone to devil. Soon after Pete meets Nellie and he dumps Maggie. She has nowhere to go and so she goes home. Her family doesn’t allow her to come back. Mary tells her she is a disgrace and they ridicule her in front of all the neighbors. Even the little children are warned to stay away from her. Maggie leaves with nowhere to go. Pete tells her not to bother him; he doesn’t love her, now he’s in love with Nellie. No one is kind to her and so she begins to walk the streets. She turns to...
Irene and Clare lived very different lives. During the time period of the book “passing” was the only way to be wanted. The late 1900’s was based off of racism, society and everyone being the same as one another. Society has changed since then and people are starting to have open eyes about the people surrounding them. Today Irene would have fit into society today without feeling discriminated against. Clare would not have been ashamed to be a Negro and live the culture that she wanted to live. After finishing, the reader understands the feelings and emotions that every one person has.
Who is the birthday party a rite of passage for, the birthday boy or his mother?
with her "Polack." Stella has chosen a life built around her powerful sexual relationship with
She is married to an American war veteran and is seen supressing her emotions and perceptions for the sake of saving her marriage. This can be seen in the example “… I know how that must have seemed to you and I’m awful sorry it had to happen, but it wasn’t anything as serious as you seem to take it…he didn’t know what he was doing” . There was a lot of social upheaval in the 60s, men had just come from war and so, being married was a privilege, women that were widowed or single were considered inferior and indefensible. It was expected that Stella fulfilled the needs of her husbands and kept the emotional and physical abuse a secret from society. It can also be observed that Stella was unable to have any friends, Stanley isolated her from connecting with other people. Also, she was not allowed to converse with any of his friends but instead be asked to leave the house or stay in another room while Stanley hosted his guests. And even when she learns the truth about her sister Blanche she chooses to be silent, to save her marriage with Stanley. As an audience we learn that society dictates a marriage by determining what is and is not love as it became more of a method than a natural process. We learn that Stanley and Stella do not take time to genuinely get to know one another and so, there is a decline in effective communication and patience. Stella viewed falling in love or simply being in a relationship as a necessity. Though it is not prevalent through the broken relationship between Stanley and Stella we are able to better understand that loyalty people should always be respectful towards others, however, we are able to comprehend how this attribute should be second nature in any
Had I read these stories before I became a mother, I probably would have interpreted the plight of the character’s differently. My heart might not have sunken in my chest the way it did when I read how Rosa had to watch her daughter die in such a horrible way, or have related to Phoenix’s struggle. What different people get from these stories can depend on their existing views on life in general, they might not relate or form the same type of empathy as I did for the story’s characters. Overall I am grateful, I believe being a woman and a mother helps me have better comprehension for stories such as these.
For Magda, the shawl serves as a magical place, a place of transition and latent life, it acts as a figurative surrogate mother, a pacifier, nourishment and comfort. Hidden away in her warm little cocoon, Magda is not only protected but concealed from the Nazis. When she is wrapped up in the shawl on Rosa’s chest as an infant, Magda is mistaken for Rosa’s breasts, she would “have been dead already, but had been buried deep inside the magic shawl” (paragraph 6). If it wasn’t for the shawl’s protection, Magda could not have been soothed and comforted by warmth and nourishment as she was during her short life.
This movie follows the relationship of the two main characters from the time Léon saves Mathilda's life against his better judgment. This event causes both of their lives to take a detour that ends up giving meaning to both of their existences. She is trapped living in a dysfunctional family environment with an abusive father and step-mother, a hateful step-sister and her quite little brother with only a dismal outlook on her future. She is a precocious young girl who's life seems to have several parallels with the Cinderella story. Léon is a stoic, uneducated and an unremorseful killer that is totally unemotional and unattached to the world around him. He becomes the prince that saves her.