The theme that will be explored in this essay will be the dominant culture, prevailing cultural attitudes, and the mental environment/state. The two short stories that will be discussed in this essay are Marianne Villanueva's Siko and Silence. In both short stories the leading characters show signs of breaking down because of physical, but also their mental stress. Marian Villanueva's Short stories Siko, and Silance can relate in many ways. For instance the main characters of both stories seem to face relatively similar struggle, but in different context. In this essay the struggle the main characters comprehend such dominant culture surrounding them, the prevailing cultural attitudes they encounter daily bases and their mental state will be compared to get a better understanding of type of themes and characterization the author Marianne Villanueva aspires to base her stories on.
Culture: The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.( www.umanitoba.ca)
The cultural environment Marian Villanueva writes about in her short stories and novels are dominantly centered on Filipino culture and Americanized Filipino culture. These are two cultures the author is familiar with through experience of living and being part of the cultural environment she writes about. In her short stories Siko, and Silence cultural environment author writes about are different, because the stories take place in different environments. But that said the culture the author is writing about in these short stories is the Filipino culture in different environments. In Siko you immediately get sense of feeling for the culture in the beginning of the story when the author is describing how villagers felt about the disappearance of the main character Aling Saturnina and her daughter Ana. How the villagers avoided to talk to journalist or even avoided discussing among themselves about the disappearance of a neighbor. In line 16 "The villagers don't like to talk about the events that led to Aling Saturnina's disappearance" (Siko,Geri&Mei, Stories about us, P.483). This quote indicates to me that the culture this short is betraying is closed culture, in that the people in that culture don't interfere with affairs other than their own. The culture, also seem to indicate to me culture of fear from authority. Although the main character Therese in the short story Silence is Filipino.
In conclusion, all three stories are unique in their use of culture. Each uses clashes in culture or a unique cultural setting to convey a message. In each story, this culture gives us a unique perspective into other people's lives and the conflicts they face. The way the conflict is handled is a decision left to the individual, who is guided by his cultural upbringing. Each culture handles the problem differently giving us a multitude of different points of view. Three of such perspectives are examined by Everyday Use, A & P, and Blue Winds Dancing.
In this paper. I will discuss how in the case study " Shame and Making truth". The author M. Cameron Hay tries to solve the conflict between high and low context culture and high low uncertainty avoidance in his new family in Indonesia. I will discuss the problems the author faced by using examples from the case, my personal experienced and an article called culture and conflicts by Michael LeBaron.
Culture is an important part of anyone's life, religious or not. The women acted out various references to traditional behaviour. For instance the mi...
The cultural studies approach is only one way of analyzing an open text such as the story "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", but it is one of the best ways to determine the social actions of a society and the reasons for their cultural beliefs. Having knowledge of tools such as gender construction, levels of power, and the theme of isolation, the reader becomes personally involved with the characters and the ways in which they are coerced to live their lives.
In this analysis includes a summary of the characters and the issues they are dealing with, as well as concepts that are seen that we have discussed in class. Such as stereotyping and the lack of discrimination and prejudice, then finally I suggest a few actions that can be taken to help solve the issues at hand, allowing the involved parties to explain their positions and give them a few immersion opportunities to experience their individual cultures.
...al influences. In LWC, the Mexican culture plays huge role in the novel introducing the reader to a unique lifestyle packed with cooking, love affairs, attractive dramas, and oppressed dreams. In ODLID, the Russian culture also flavors the novel by creating a very vapid and listless stage on which Ivan Denisovich's daily routine is delineated as realistic as possible. It would be tedious to point out all the ways, in which culture influences each novel, but it is important to take into account the prominent role culture plays in the formation of the individual novels. Like Water for Chocolate (LWC) written by Laura Esquivel and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (ODLID) written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn do not only exemplify great pieces of literature, instead they also serve as tools to map out and comprehend the cultures they were built upon.
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
This book serves to teach readers about the varieties of cultures, social
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
Culture is a set of beliefs, values and attitudes that a person inherits from a society or a group that they are in and they learn how to view the world and how to behave, these principles can then be passed down from generation to generation so that the culture that has been inherited can live on for
What is meant by the word culture? Culture, according to Websters Dictionary, is the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. These patterns, traits, and products are considere...
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
What is culture? Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving
Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects and behavior. It includes the ideas, value, customs and artifacts of a group of people (Schaefer, 2002). Culture is a pattern of human activities and the symbols that give these activities significance. It is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold and activities they engage in. It is the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenges of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of organization thus distinguishing people from their neighbors.
The term “culture” refers to the complex accumulation of knowledge, folklore, language, rules, rituals, habits, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and customs that link and provide a general identity to a group of people. Cultures take a long time to develop. There are many things that establish identity give meaning to life, define what one becomes, and how one should behave.