Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners is about dealing with the past and accepting Morag’s future. At a young age Morag Gunn has a lack of self-acceptance, she thought that having moved to Manawaka would cause people to perceive her as an outsider and they would treat her as though she was different. Morag not accepting herself, for the person she has become makes it difficult for others to accept her and treat her as equal. After Morag leaves Manawaka to go to university she comes to the conclusion that running away from her past does not solve her problems. She is in desperate search for security and acceptance from others. Morag searches for a place to call home but realizes that before that can happen she has to deal with her …show more content…
Morag tries her hardest to deny where she comes from and in doing this she pushes away those who love her the most, Christie and Prin. Morag find out that there is another person in Manawaka that feels that they are an outsider and does not fit in with anyone. Skinner feels that the only person that he fits in with is Morag because they are both different. Skinner (Jules) and Morag both feel that they are out of place, which creates a special bond between them. “Morag quickly learns to despise Christie and what he stands for; she emulates the middle class. “The Nuisance Ground” ends with Morag on the point of leaving Manawaka, for good, as she believes that she and Jules “inhabit the same world no longer.”(134). (Grace, 171). Deep down in Morag’s heart she feels that if she continues to live her life in Manawaka, then she will never be accepted because she denies that she has a past and she will always be an outsider. She does not want to end up like Christie and Prin. She does not appreciate what they have done for her until they are both deceased. The only thing that Morag can think of doing is to leave Manawaka for good and never think of returning. Morag wants to star over by being who she wants to be not who she is meant to be. By doing this she has no self-acceptance because she is denying her true
In the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion narrates her personal struggle of coping the realization of John being dead and will never resurrect to reunite with Joan. Joan exerts many sorrowful expressions as medical information and the vortex effects instill a sense of anticipation that John will soon come back. Consequently, Didion’s hopefulness opaques her true identity as she still associates herself as a married woman, when in reality, she needs to move on from John to reestablish her extroverted personality to the world once again. On the contrary, Didion comes to a consensus that John’s death was inevitable, Joan starts to ponder about her future with the exclusion of John. With Joan grieving
Wells, Kim. "My Antonia: A Survey of Critical Attitudes." August 23, 1999. Online Internet. November 4, 1998.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people” (85). Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities that “represent increasingly wide circles of experience and opportunities for expression of personal choice” (Crabtree). Their Eyes Were Watching God is an important fiction piece that explores relations throughout black communities and families. It also examines different issues such as, gender and class and these issues bring forth the theme of voice. In Janie’s attempt to find herself, she grows into a stronger woman through three marriages.
Willa Cather's My Antonia is a novel of heroic success to some and of disappointment to others. It is perceived differently by its audiences, as all things in life. It is an excellent piece of work none the less.
basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and
pity in the reader by reflecting on the traumatic childhood of her father, and establishes a cause
In the civilization that Montag lives in the people live their lives completely distracted. They are a media driven in society, they abuse it as a source of distraction and escape. With the seashells and the TV parlors no one ever feels the need to go outside anymore. No one knows what's missing from the society, however they all can figure out that there is a deep unhappiness that everyone ignores until it leads to suicide. Their values as a result are twisted that they turn out to be terrible people and will do anything for the sake of entertainment and pleasure. "Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and
Within the many layers of Montag lay several opposite sides. For example, Montag is a fireman who burns books for a living but at home, spends time reading novels, poetry, and other written material. Although Montag could be called a hypocrite, he does not enjoy both the reading and the burning at the same time; he goes through a change that causes him to love books. Humans have the power to change and grow from one extreme to another, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In addition, when Mildred is with Montag, Montag does not have feelings for her but thinks of her as she is killed by the bombs. He possesses both the knowledge that Mildred does not love him and the heart that truly cares, but he knows not how to deal with this. His feelings are oppressed; it takes a major event (the bomb) to jolt them from hibernation.
It is difficult for humans to allow life to flow without being proactive. This is especially true when it comes to love. One may try very hard to try to resist the attraction that they may feel to avoid the potential hurt that may result from being in love. In contrast, others may seek love and never find it. In the two novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston and The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid the characters demonstrate that although one may attempt to manipulate the circumstances in which love is attained, there is no way of predicting how love will manifest itself. The characters are put into situations that compromise their beliefs towards love, and in addition, they engage in a socially unacceptable relationships. The unpredictable nature of love can also be observed as one character resists the urge to be swept into the arms of love whereas the other is vigorously searching for it.
Zora Neale Hurston exemplifies this notion in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The story follows the life of a young woman named Janie and the different influences of her multiple relationships. Janie tells her friend Pheoby about the difference between two of her husbands:
In Nathaniel Hawthorne short story “Young Goodman Brown,” he takes us on a journey of the human heart, in which he would later coin the phrase that “there is a fund of evil in every human heart”. Though the story is filled with dark gloomy imagery, Hawthorne was able to keep us wanting to know more base on the fact its Salem village. With the uses of symbolism, the author incorporate nature such as the “deep forest”, and “Faith” the newly wife of young Goodman brown working hand in hand to illustrate the purpose of the story. Hawthorne shows us that our faith should not dictate base on the perception of others, as a result, would be compromised and weaken.
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
Woolsen, Constance Fenimore. “Miss Grief.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 short story entitled “The Birth-Mark” is, at face value, a traditionally formatted Hawthorne story; it is a textbook example of his recurrent theme of the unpardonable sin as committed by the primary character, Aylmer, the repercussions of which result in the untimely death of his wife, Georgiana. However, there seems to be an underlying theme to the story that adds a layer to Hawthorne’s common theme of the unpardonable sin; when Aylmer attempts to reconcile his intellectual prowess with his love for his wife, his efforts turn into an obsession with perfecting his wife’s single physical flaw and her consequent death. This tragedy occurs within the confines of traditional gender
Forche, Carolyn. “The Memory of Elena.” Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 1070-71.