Hope and joy can be hard to find especially when times are tough. This is a situation in Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse , the character Billy Jo and her family are living in the time of the Dust Bowl and are struggling financially . Her father is a farmer in a time where nothing grows and after an accident Billy Jo’s mother passes away. This is a big part of Billy Jo is effected emotionally and shows seems very sad. Billy Jo has to move and has to move on and find joy and hope even in tough times. Billy Jo finds some of her hope when she can by playing her mother’s piano. The piano is a big part because it was a way Billy Jo and her mother connected. The piano was a wedding gift from Billy Jo’s father. She learns to play at a young age with her mother she describes it as “heaven” (page 22). But there is a time where that seems to line up in a time where Billy Jo was sad when she could not play the piano because of her hurt hands. This old dust filled piano has segmental value to Billy …show more content…
This poverty is the root of the causes for her being sad. Billy Jo does not realize it but the poverty her and many of others are in bring them together. She and others come together come together to fight against one main cause and it is those who Billy Jo consistently talking about such as Mad Dog. She and Mad Dog both have a passion for music in which they pursue in their local events. The circumstance going on brings them together in poverty and missing a key joy piece Ma Billy Jo and her Dad both have to work together to make it through. This causes her and her father to get frustrated because in the beginning they are both focused on doing their own topics they are used to doing. Billy Jo wants to continue working with piano while her Dad is focused on his farm. Billy Jo fails to find joy when she needs to come together with others but she is looking in the wrong place for hope but comes to it in the
In the Lilies of the Field by William E. Barrett, Homer and Mother Maria both display straightforward, hardworking, and stubborn character traits. Firstly, Homer and Mother Maria both display a straightforward personality by being brutally honest about their opinions. For example, when Mother Maria asks Homer to build a chapel, Homer speaks his mind by telling her he does not want to build it. Mother Maria shows her straightforward behavior during Homer’s stay at the convent. One morning, when Homer sleeps in late, Mother to becomes extremely upset and is not afraid to show how she feels about him. Secondly, both Homer and Mother Maria display a hardworking spirit. Homer is a hardworking man because after finally agreeing to build the chapel,
The production of Honky is a satirical comedy, following the lives of five people and the language of racism. While it focuses on the plot of 5 characters, the storyline was well thought out and intriguing. One actor in specific, Gerard Joseph, who played Thomas, did an exceptionally well job at conveying emotion and projecting to the audience, in my opinion. The overall directing, from the actors to the soundtrack and lightning, seem to be presented with excellent detail. Overall, this production was well done.
In Frank Beddors, “The Looking Glass Wars” a lot of things happen that are bad. There are lots of good things too. The story is about the “Myth” of Alice Liddell stepping through a looking glass into Wonderland. The topic of this essay is the Truth of the story. The purpose of this paper is how Loyal or devoted some people are to white imagination
Julius Caesar is mentioned throughout the book, A Long Way Gone, many times. In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael would be reading Julius Caesar or a soldier would be reciting some of the speeches in the play. In Chapter 12 of A Long Way Gone, Ishmael is called over to talk with Lieutenant Jabati. Then, Lieutenant Jabati showed Ishmael the book he was reading, which was Julius Caesar, and asked Ishmael if he had ever heard of the book. Ishmael had read the book in school, and began to recite a speech from the book. After this happened, Lieutenant Jabati and Corporal Gadafi used emotional arguments to motivate the people in the village to stay there and support the military. Also, Lieutenant showed all the people in the village dead bodies to help
In The Big Field, author Mike Lupica explores the theme, "Success uses motivation as fuel." Lupica portrays this theme through the main character, Hutch. Throughout the entire book, Hutch, a young boy that has just recently joined a highly talented baseball team, displays moments that exemplify this main theme. Hutch and his team have a chance to play in the stadium of the Miami Marlins, a Major League Baseball team, as long as they can keep winning games and advancing through a challenging tournament; however, Hutch's favorite position on the field, shortstop, the position located between 2nd and 3rd base, has already been filled on the team. Unfortunately, Hutch gets a demotion from shortstop, to second base, the position located between 1st base and 2nd base. Although Hutch was disappointed and melancholy about the switch in position, he was even more upset about the downgrading of leadership, since the
Berniece tries to show Boy Willie that the piano experienced more than pleasant events during those days. She interprets their Mama Ola’s pain by saying, “ ‘Mama Ola polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years. For seventeen years she rubbed on it till her hands bled...she rubbed and cleaned and polished and prayed over it...seventeen years’ worth of cold nights and an empty bed. For what? For a piano? For a piece of wood?’ ” (52). The tragedy of their Mama Ola is an almost mythic quality in their unified imagination, but the time has robbed it in Boy Willie’s face. He forces himself to think of his Mama Ola’s suffering as a metaphor than an actual event.
The play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry has many interesting characters. In my opinion, the most fascinating character is Ruth because of her many emotions and captivating personality. She goes through extreme emotions in the play such as happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and confusion. Ruth is very independent, firm, kind, witty, and loving.
The play is about the two siblings and their conflict between the piano. During slavery time, Boy Willie and Bernieces’ grandfather’s (Willie Boy Charles) slave owner Sutter had exchanged their grandmother and uncle for the piano as a gift for his wife. After getting worn out of the piano, Sutter’s wife missed her slaves so much, Sutter had Willie Boy to hand-carve the faces of his wife and son’s faces on the legs of the piano. However, Willie Boy didn’t stop there; he carved all of their ancestors on to the piano. The conflict between Boy Willie and Berniece is set off when Berniece’s husband dies due to stealing the piano with Boy Willie. Because of this, Berniece blames her brother for the cause of her husband’s death. She moves to Pittsburgh after and leaves Boy Willie. When the land that their ancestors worked on is offered to Boy Willie, Boy Willie decides to sell the piano as a down payment. Boy Willie thinks that it’ll be better to have the land and m...
In the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry (1959), the author depicts an African American family whom struggles with the agonizing inferiority present during the 1950s. Hansberry illustrates the constant discrimination that colored people, as a whole, endured in communities across the nation. Mama, who is the family’s foundation, is the driving force behind the family on the search for a better life. With the family living in extreme poverty, their family bond is crucial in order to withstand the repression. Hansberry effectively portrays the racism within society, and how it reinforced unity amongst the family members.
Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See shows the reader how children would deal with war and how it shaped who they are today. Doerr’s purpose for writing this novel is to highlight how mentally taxing the war was and that there was no permanent escape from the war. Both Marie-Laure and Werner believed they could escape the war both physically and mentally, yet their involvement in it makes it more difficult. Marie-Laure’s fear of her father going to jail shows how she becomes involved in the war. Werner struggled with trying to escape the war through his fascination with radios when it just brought him further into the war. After understanding the effect on certain individuals; the story zooms out showing how the majority
Because this theme is so prevalent in the work and because The Piano Lesson is a short drama, the most important point of comparison between Berniece and Boy Willie is how they manage their family history. The central conflict of the story is between these two characters who are at war over use of their family legacy. In this drama, family legacy takes the shape of a large piano with expertly carved scenes of the siblings’ family history. Their great-grandfather had etched the scenes into the wood while in the home of his former master and the family had sacrificed much to attain the instrument after their emancipation. This symbol is invaluable to the plot because it symbolizes not only their family, but the family sacrifice, freedom, and legacy. Both Berniece and Boy Willie understand the symbolism of the piano, but where Berniece wants to keep the piano untouched and perfectly preserved, thus preservi...
1. (T, P) You could see that the luxurious daydreams that fill her day at the beginning of the story show how ungrateful she is of what she has. She clearly does not value what she has based on the amount of time she takes to fanaticize about the amount of things, she wish she had. The price for greediness, pretention, and pride is steep, reluctance to admit the truth of her status. Maupassant purpose of writing this story is that, people
In the book Ask the Dust by John Fante, the main character Arturo Bandini, is a 20 year old Italian American from Colorado who comes to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a famous writer. Arturo is very talented and can become the next big writer but faces many obstacles that stop him in his tracks. Things like his own immaturity and desire for acceptance impair his ability to achieve his dream. In the beginning of the book, Arturo is very immature and lets his desires get the best of him, but at the end of the book he becomes more objective and mature. The growth of Arturo is astounding and can be separated into stages of development. He comes to a realization that you can 't just be stuck up on something but you have to be able to move on.
She worked alongside her Mother, Dad and brothers, Troy and Dane, in the neatly tended and carefully guarded rows of the family garden. She hummed the lilting notes of an Ave Maria aria or the harmony line to My Wild Irish Rose, which she somehow heard in her head when her father's rich baritone caressed the melody and her mothers fingers danced on the piano keys. She hoped the vegetables they were tending could be sold to earn a little extra for the next month of piano lessons. Despite the never-ending presence of the depression throughout the thirties, she was never hungry or cold.
Wilson demonstrates how one should accept and respect the past, move on with their life or slow down to pay respects to their family?s history, by describing the struggle over a symbolic object representing the past like the piano. Often people will sulk in the past and struggle with themselves and the people around them when they cannot come to terms with their personal history or a loss. Others will blatantly ignore their personal history and sell valuable lessons and pieces of it for a quick buck to advance their own lives. Berniece and Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson are great examples of these people. Through these contrasting characters and supernatural occurrences, Wilson tells the tale of overcoming and embracing a rough and unsettling family history.