No Great Mischief champions the importance of a family’s loyalty and love for each other. This is shown through many acts of familial solidarity in the novel. However, the significance placed on the quote “no great mischief if they fall” and the meaning behind it create a warning. This quote, both in the title and the text, reference history repeating itself. It expresses a dichotomy of traditional values and modern society. It also warns against misguided loyalty, isolation, and correlating one’s self-worth with their proximity to clann Chalum Ruaidh.
The title of the novel is a fragment of General James Wolfe’s correspondence from, referring to the Highlanders he was leading to battle against the French in Canada: “they are hardy, intrepid,
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The setting is ironic in terms of the conversation because they are conversing largely about the past and the traditional values of their clan, but they are surrounded by wealth and modernity. The modern setting and perspective are emphasized to contrast the traditional and historic content and dialogue. The atmosphere is perfectly captured after the brother and sister finish singing a Gaelic song: “when we finished we stood and looked at one another, almost embarrassed in our expensive clothes amidst the opulence of my sister’s majestic house” (227). This quote also reveals their state of loneliness. They are not as involved in their clan as others, but they aren’t separate from it either. The twins have been raised differently than other children in their clan. They did not have to grow up as quickly as their older brothers and were given a post-secondary education. This leads to more career opportunities, but isolates them within their …show more content…
“‘I thought, with modern technology,’ said my sister, ‘I could separate our parents from these large groups. I took these pictures to isolate our parents and then have their individual photographs enlarged…The photo studio tried, but it would not work. As the photographs became larger the individual features of their faces became more blurred. It was as if coming closer they became more indistinct. After a while I stopped. I left them with their group. It seemed the only thing to do’” (240-241). The inability to separate the parents from the group photograph shows how imbedded their family values were in their beings. By removing the rest of their family, they became less themselves. The parents become blurry, ambiguous shapes lacking distinct features that identify them as individuals. Family was an integral part of the parents’ lives. By removing their family, the sister is removing the context through which her parents lived and loved. This also shows clan members being valuable and discernible members of the clan when within its confines, but self-worth lessens the further they are from the clan. Once again, modernity collides with tradition. In this passage, it is the modern technology that the sister wanted to use to separate her parents from the rest of her family. This shows the modern
The idea of “family” is almost entirely socially constructed. From grandparents, to friends, to wives and fiancés, the means by which we decide who is related to us and who is not is decided by the person and their milieu. In Mignon R. Moore’s “Independent Women: Equality in African-American Lesbian Relationships”, Eviatar Zerubavel’s Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community, and Franz Kafka’s The Judgement, this idea is tested. Who do we consider close enough to us to share our most intimate details and how do we choose them? Each piece offers a different view, which is the “right” way for each of the people described, whether broad (as in Zerbavel’s reading) or specific (as in Moore’s reading), but there are also many similarities in the ways family is defined and actualized.
world¨. This immensely differentiates the two siblings who both want opposite things generating a juxtaposition. However as the story proceeds, both siblings end up desiring the polar
The search for and importance of family and identity of the Calum Ruadh clan in Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief is significant to the concept of blood being thicker than water. The importance of family, as indicated in No Great Mischief, is very apparent in regards to the main point of prominence in this deeply emotional Gaelic- Canadian tale.
Family-like relationships are hard to come by but when they do they may be interrupted by bloodshed, changes in identity,as well as advances in modern technology. Although modern technology may help in certain scenarios overall it seems to replace the meaning of family and take over lives instead of enhancing them. This book is a warning to the future so far Bradbury has been spot on, this is your warning weather you listen to it or not is up to you.
In this first paragraph, the author battles with a commonly held belief that children are the “property” of their parents for a certain amount of time in their lives. The author constructs upon the topic slowly by disclosing his problem with the idea of children as property, only to bring his own life experiences into count by explaining his adolescence with a dysfunctional family. By bringing in his personal experiences, the author is in some sense considered an authority figure on the topic of a child’s life with a dysfunctional family. He compares the concept of parental custody with apprenticeship, and he puts it all together by creating a practical solution to the problem. His true thesis sentence is seen in the last paragraph where he says, “We have invested far too heavily in the unproved “equity” called the nuclear family; that stock is about to crash and we ought to being finding escape options” (p 196). By gradually giving the reader background info on the problems of the modern dysfunctional family, and then stating the thesis at the end, he very clearly gets his argument across.
2. Coontz talks a lot about how people use to define family, not too long ago did family just start to mean a married couple and their kids. Family use to mean many different things back in the day: a large kinship group in which they derived their claims and property, as the European nobility described it, or middle class Europeans and North Americans described
"…family is like a hand, of which they are fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are little aware of being individuals. […] Five severed fingers do not make a hand." (13)
Any story that begins with a mother fantasizing about reuniting with her daughter on T. V talk show is going to have something to tell us about their family. Probably a lot to tell us in fact. As the narrator herself points out, though, there’s a lot that television wouldn’t be able to show the family members and their complex relationships to one another in this story. The conflict, in fact, concerns competing ideas about what tradition (or heritage) even means. In a classic rock song, the Rolling Stones sing, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.” In this paper, I’m going to relate this quote to my own personal experiences. I’m going to closely analyze the two sisters, Maggie,
In the depiction of the century quilt, the author touches upon how each quilt square “holds a sweet gum leaf,” before furthering the description by relating the leaves as having fingers that would “caress [me] into silence.” Such description of the quilt’s embroidery further reiterates the quilt’s metaphorical representation of familial bonds. When constructing a family tree, the grouping is divvied up into differentiating sides known as branches, upon which each individual can be considered a leaf. Though each leaf is relatively small in relation to the tree as a whole, it is the entirety of the leaves that provide a tree with a structure and shape. In this same vein, the characterization of each quilt square in possession of a leaf parallels each leaf to a member of the lineage. However, the author chooses particular words to describe the quilt squares and the leaves, noting that the squares are not the leaves themselves, but merely holders of them. This particularity in language indicates that while each square belongs to an individual, the leaf itself is not a part of that being—merely a placeholder. The leaves prove to be the common entity bonding the differing squares together, and their function is analogous to that of a common ancestor; though family members differs in origin and history, they are united under the visage of a particular individual. As was mentioned earlier, the
The dominant characteristics found within ‘Competitive Brothers’ focuses on the familial dynamics, son’s duty to his father, and test of will and character. All three stories shared the same family unit, which was made up of one parental figure that serves to
“In my mind, they seemed happy together, in the bantering, ironic manner of sitcom couples, and their arguments seemed full of comedy, as if a laugh track might ring out after their best put-down lines.” (p.54). It’s all a part of an elaborate fantasy he’s created in order to ignore reality. There are also times in the story where the Narrator’s doesn't comprehend the situation--at one point he describes his mother’s drunkenness, “She looked sad, and for a moment lost her balance slightly as she reached down to run a palm across my cheek” (p.59-60). Whether his lack of comprehension is because of his youth, or intentional is unknown. His relationship with his brother is also indicative of a troubled youth. In the imaginary city, the Narrator’s brother is his “nemesis”. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue--there’s nothing strange about sibling rivalry, however, in this case the Narrator never really grows out of it. He doesn’t actively hate his brother, but he does seem to carry a certain amount of disdain for him. When describing how their family went in
The bond between the Bennett sisters portrays the simplest form of relationships; each sister relies on her sisters to guide her through her conflicts. According to May, “The primary sibling relationship occurs in a social environment involving networks of human interaction in which pairs of siblings of varying significance typically frame the main action of the plot, providing a background of fraternal and sororal 'white noise' against which the main discourse is set forth” (336). The sisters posses different personalities; their personalities foreshadow the success of their future relationships. Jane, the oldest Bennett, presents herself as polite and shy, wh...
In her passage she imagines what it may have been like had William Shakespeare had a sister. She notices how difficult it would be even given...
The nuclear family, consisting of a mother, father, and children, is something very familiar to our society. We hold these relations as ideal and form our lives around their bonds. In the Republic, Plato suggests to abolish families and replace them with the Guardians. This is easily one of Plato’s most controversial ideas; it contains positive elements, but is seen as impractical to undesirable by many. The rationale behind Plato’s idea consists of many different parts, which are focused on a main goal of unity. The belief is that if a society rids itself of these families, they will favor unity and strive towards the enrichment of society as a whole. Although this may have its positive impacts on society, I personally believe that it goes against the nature of humans.
...e dysfunctional families we are all familiar with -- the overcrowded, meddling, abusive, alcoholic, substance controlled individuals that can make family life miserable and destroy the self esteem of the children they control. These families become encapsulated unable to function within the norm of the general population. Their children face the same trouble dealing with peers and finding their place in the world – because they haven’t been given the tools with which to work out their problems within their own family much less the rest of the world. In essence, it does take a village to raise a child – but it also helps if all of the tribe members have the child’s best interest at heart.