Many people lose things everyday, but the truth is you never know how much you need something until it’s gone. In the books “Going Over” by Beth Kephart and “brown girl dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson the theme; you never know how much you need something until it’s gone is perfect for both books because of the tragic loss of Jackie’s grandfather and the separation of Ada and Stefan. This theme is supported by Jacqueline’s move to New York, Ada and her deep longing for Stefan since the wall separated them, and Jacqueline losing her grandfather. As Jacqueline got to the age where her grandparents home was just a constant routine, never seen as anything but a cycle, her mother takes her and the family to New York for “new opportunities”. Jackie thinks of the idea as an adventure till she sees the pale grey streets …show more content…
She had been in New York for quite some time, doing well in school and with a brand new best friend. When she returned to her grandparents, she nurtured her grandpa in his last moments, and when he had taken his last breath a little bit of Jacqueline had slipped away as well. It isn’t that she hadn’t cherished the time with her grandfather, but as if his death was too sudden, and when she had started to really find her way in New York and South Carolina began to fade into a memory, the news was a wake up call. The theme; you never know how much you need something until it’s gone, applies to these books because the main characters had taken something for granite. The theme affected me by making me really appreciate who I have in my life before it is too late. “Going Over” by Beth Kephart and “brown girl dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson have more in common than meets the eye with their two main characters that tend to drift away from reality. The theme affected me by making me really appreciate who I have in my life before it is too
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
The book starts off with Jeannette, a successful adult, taking a taxi to a nice party. When she looked out the window, she saw a woman digging through the garbage. The woman was her mother. Rather than calling out to her or saying hi, Jeannette slid down into the seat in fear that her mother would see her. When asking her mother what she should say when people ask about her family, Rose Mary Walls only told her, “Ju...
Porter and Welty both provide flashbacks and memories in their stories to help the reader see what Granny and Sister’s lives were like before everything fell apart with their families. Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” is packed of the flashbacks and memories of Granny’s past relationships with the only people she loves even though are all dead. She reminisced about her youthful days when she was strong, independent, and with John, the man who stood her up at the altar and died when Granny was young. She still loves him and wants to see him, but “John would be looking for a young woman with the peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan,” (Porter 81) she believed he would not recognize her. Granny also lost one of her daughters, Hapsy along with her newborn who also died. When Granny brought those memories to the surface a fog of darkness, clouds reality and she gets lost and recalls that, “there was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so c...
I looked around at everyone in the room and saw the sorrow in their eyes. My eyes first fell on my grandmother, usually the beacon of strength in our family. My grandmother looked as if she had been crying for a very long period of time. Her face looked more wrinkled than before underneath the wild, white hair atop her head. The face of this once youthful person now looked like a grape that had been dried in the sun to become a raisin. Her hair looked like it had not been brushed since the previous day as if created from high wispy clouds on a bright sunny day.
While at rock bottom of one’s life, each protagonist maintains sense of security by remembering his past. In Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday reclaims his past by remembering the time he spends with his grandmother. Through his grandmother’s death Momaday recollects her: “standing at the wood stove on a winter morning and turning meat in a great iron skillet; sitting at the south window, bent above her beadwork, and afterwards when her vision failed . . . when the weight of the age came upon her; praying. I remember her most often at prayer” (2507). He strongly desires to be at her grave and yearns for belonging through visiting her spiritually. Momaday looks at her grave with despair instead of embracing all the life that she gave him. By Momaday reminiscing about his grandma, he loses hope and bec...
Her parents meet at a social gathering in town and where married shortly thereafter. Marie’s name was chosen by her grandmother and mother, “because they loved to read the list was quite long with much debate over each name.” If she was a boy her name would have been Francis, so she is very happy to have born a girl. Marie’s great uncle was a physician and delivered her in the local hospital. Her mother, was a housewife, as was the norm in those days and her father ran his own business. Her mother was very close with her parents, two brothers, and two sisters. When her grandmother was diagnosed with asthma the family had to move. In those days a warm and dry climate was recommended, Arizona was the chosen state. Because her grandma could never quite leave home, KY, the family made many trips between the states. These trips back and forth dominated Marie’s childhood with her uncles and aunts being her childhood playmates.
The thought of having selective hearing would be a gift to many teenagers. The idea of being able to ignore the barking commands of parents and lectures of teachers would be a gift only few could dream of. In the sports fiction novel Left Out, written by Tim Green, the notion of that dream is a real-life nightmare. In 341 pages, the life of Landon Dorch is nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. If being born deaf with cochlear implants to hear wasn’t hard enough, having to move from the fields of Cleveland to the metropolis of the Bronx may have pushed the limit. As Landon overcomes outcasted parents, a fiery sister, and endless bullies, one thing seems to always catch his eye; football. Although he’s not talented and plays the position of
After establishing this sad and bitter tone, Danticat moves to a more rejoiceful tone when she reminisces about the times when her grandmother would tell her stories: “My grandmother was an old country woman who always felt displaced in the City of Port-au-Prince—where we lived—and had nothing but her patched-up quilts and her stories to console her. She was the one who told me about Anacaona” (137). Danticat then shifts to a more neutral tone when she recalls her grandmother’s peaceful death with her eyes open. She took her grandmother’s death calmly because death was so frequent in Haiti. She further explains, “I have such a strong feeling that death is not the end, that the people we bury are going off to live somewhere else” (138).
Regretfully, though readers can see how Mama has had a difficult time in being a single mother and raising two daughters, Dee, the oldest daughter, refuses to acknowledge this. For she instead hold the misconception that heritage is simply material or rather artificial and does not lie in ones heart. However, from Mama’s narrations, readers are aware that this cultural tradition does lie within ones heart, especially those of Mama’s and Maggie’s, and that it is the pure foundation over any external definition.
In conclusion, the tenuous relationship Sethe shared with her mother led to Sethe’s inability to provide for her children. Consequentially, the murder of Beloved built an emotional barrier that added to the preexisting issue of concerning her stolen milk left Denver with too little milk and the primitive drive to live that at first seemed foiled by her mother’s overbearing past. Yet, against all odds Denver was able to break her family’s legacy of being engulfed in the past and began taking steps for a better future.
During the Great Depression, there was a massive migration from rural areas to more populated areas. During this era the Joad family decided to migrate from Oklahoma to California in search of work. As the Joad family traveled to California, the Grandfather dies. During this rough time, Ma helps comfort Grandma over her husband’s death. Ma knew that if Grandma was understanding and accepting of Grandpa’s death, the family would use that courage and her example to get through the mourning period faster. “She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she has practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials” ( Steinbeck 48). The mourning period went by quickly because Ma showed strength in herself and in the family.
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
In New York, however, Cocoa finds herself amongst a group of people who seem distant and interested in only themselves. Stemming from many different backgrounds, the people of New York are always in a rush and "moving, moving, moving ---and to where?" (19). No one knows for sure. Just like the subways, racism in New York moved underground, and Cocoa experiences it as she desperately searches for a job. After having lived in New York for seven years, Cocoa still has not found a suitable mate. Only when she meets George does she start believing again in the goodness and sincerity possessed by some. George is t...
In her bedroom, Granny is literally confined to her deathbed, revealing to the reader that death is approaching. Granny speaks of a longer life from the place her life will end, emphasizing that death could come at any moment. As her mind starts deteriorating, she begins confusing the past with the present. At one time, she remembers having to dig hundreds of postholes after her husband’s death, and enlightens the reader with the fact that “digging post holes changes a woman;” (Porter 85). The change from a genteel lift to one of harsh labor representing another type of death. She worked hard for years, foreshadowing the time she will no longer need to work. Consequently, since she familiarized herself with hard work, accepting that her death is effortless is very difficult for Mrs. Weatherall. In the end, nighttime draws near, and Porter uses the time of day to symbolize mortality; the end of day is not only passing so is Granny’s life. Similar to the candle beside her bed, Granny draws her last breath to blow out light of her own life. Just as day has its end, so does every
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...