“The Dead”
Some say that people never change. They may be right, but no one really knows. What people do know is that every living person has one thing in common, something that will never change. Everyone will die, there’s no way around it. Every “new” and “old” generation will succumb to the same ghastly fate. The differences in the “old” generation and “new” generation sometimes collide in life. The contrast between generations in James Joyce’s “The Dead” is similar to the contrast in the generations today. The “baby boomer” generation is the old fashioned generation preoccupied with hospitality and tradition, where as, “generation x” is the new generation, preoccupied with knowledge and intellect.
The “old” generation that James Joyce writes about is a generation of “humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour…”(pg 127). The qualities of this generation seem to be fading away. The older generation mentions that they no longer know of any singers that were as good as those of the present time. The old generation is to be remembered with “…pride and affection…”(pg 127). The memories of the old will never die and will always be cherished. The old generation is good at keeping in touch with their past. They are proud of their heritage, one of which they mention is their good old Irish hospitality. The qualities of the past are qualities of passion and humanity, differing greatly from the qualities of the new generat...
In many scenarios, it is the younger generations who represent new times and challenge old tradition to be left in the past. Considering the reading of “Hangzhou” by Chang, Shitai, the fortune teller exhorts Chanyi, the illustrator grandma, to adapt to the modern generation where their “own ideas of love and power” (Chang 103) will decide the faith of their future. Taken by surprise, Chanyi disagrees, rationalizing and remaining silent on the topic. In similarity, Alice Walker relates to this reaction by echoing the illustrator of “Everyday Use” as she is informed of her daughter’s name change from Dee to Wangero. Asserted by Dee, it was a burden to be named after the people who oppress her” (Walker 318). This proves to the reader that in both families an adaptation is required by the mother. Therefore, both families have been driven to the similar situations regardless of their origin or ethnicity. Modern times request for new changes, a difficulty that families must
Anne Moody’s memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, is an influential insight into the existence of a young girl growing up in the South during the Civil-Rights Movement. Moody’s book records her coming of age as a woman, and possibly more significantly, it chronicles her coming of age as a politically active Negro woman. She is faced with countless problems dealing with the racism and threat of the South as a poor African American female. Her childhood and early years in school set up groundwork for her racial consciousness. Moody assembled that foundation as she went to college and scatter the seeds of political activism. During her later years in college, Moody became active in numerous organizations devoted to creating changes to the civil rights of her people. These actions ultimately led to her disillusionment with the success of the movement, despite her constant action. These factors have contributed in shaping her attitude towards race and her skepticism about fundamental change in society.
In Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, she describes what it was like to grow up during the Jim Crow era of the Deep South in poverty in a household of five and constantly growing. As Moody developed into a woman she dealt with many hardships. She overcame the adversities of being a girl of color during this time. Moody’s education helped her understand the full effects of everything happening around her.
Growing up as the young child of sharecroppers in Mississippi, Essie Mae Moody experienced and observed the social and economic deprivation of Southern Blacks. As a young girl Essie Mae and her family struggled to survive, often by the table scraps of the white families her mother worked for. Knowing little other than the squalor of their living conditions, she realizes this disparity while living in a two-room house off the Johnson’s property, whom her mother worked for, watching the white children play, “Here they were playing in a house that was nicer than any house I could have dreamed of”(p. 33). Additionally, the segregated school she attends was a “one room rotten wood building.” (p. 14), but Essie Mae manages to get straight A’s while caring for her younger sibli...
The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a New York Time’s bestseller, and with good reason. This work explores and uncovers numerous amounts of topics other books and writers would shy away from. Such as, but not limited to, racism, discrimination, prejudice, and segregation in the South during the nineteen-sixties. It also examines the lives of multiple characters including Skeeter Phelan, a writer determined to expose the hidden lives of the black maids in her community, Minny Jackson and Aibileen Clark, two colored maids living in Jackson, Mississippi during this time period. In addition to that, this novel helps create a sense of clarity and understanding of the lives of the colored in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement. Also, this work contains numerous important plot points that help reel readers in, creating a whirlwind of events that anyone would be interested in. However, none of this would be important without the location this novel takes place. Being the south, Mississippi provides the perfect setting to help add more roadblocks to the quest of three women against the world.
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi glimpse into the past is an exemplary look into Black life in Mississippi after the turn of the century. Mississippi, being one of the hardest slave states in the American south, and still just as arduous, if not more, after the reconstruction and clearly throughout the Civil Rights Movements. Moody, elegantly describes her life and those close around her. This essay will explore Moody’s account and how she carefully and meticulously expressed the details her life. Also, this opinion piece will prove how the behavior, culture and actions during Anne Moody’s time is still alive and well today.
The postwar England of the twenties and thirties was the setting of Evelyn Waugh’s first satirical novels, among which was the Vile Bodies. Waugh, an author mostly known for his highly satirical fiction, published his novel Vile Bodies in 1930 right in the middle of the time-period between the Great Wars. Because of the historical evens that occupied England at that time, much of British Literature of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s was concerned with the Modernist movement, which was occupied with the idea of individualism of the young generation. Through the use of prominent and yet highly satirical characters, Waugh strives to criticize his Modernist generation for its unsuccessful movement into Modernism, both on the individual and political/institutional level. He does so by defining his type-characters as ignorant, self-centered and hypocritical in their disastrous movement toward individualism.
In the last two decades, there has been a revival in generational theorizing by a handful of scholars outside the United States. Inspired by the cultural turn in the social sciences, these scholars have brought a more explicitly cultural perspective to bear on Mannheim’s original formulation of “The Problem of Generations”. Scholars have thus begun to theorize the generation concept in Bourdieuian terms of “habitus, hexis, and culture” (Eyerman and Turner, 1998), “cultural fields” (Gilleard, 2004), and in terms of “cultural circles” (Corsten, 1999). The Bourdieuian influence can be seen when Eyerman and Turner describe the generation as “a mode of distinction” and when Gilleard describes the generation as
Love, Lust and Death are universal human experiences and perpetual literary themes. "The Loving Dead" blends them in a way that I have never seen before. Amelia Beamer's debut novel involves: Oakland California, twenty-something slackers, their angsts and relationships, and a zombie apocalypse. Its characters are realistically self-centered, its apocalypse realistically dealt with more through text messaging and comment threads than through the main stream media, and its ending is different than any horror/zombie/apocalypse story ending I've ever read or heard of. Frankly, I think that the last ten pages alone are worth the price of admission, but overall this is a fast and rewarding read.
James Joyce was born in Ireland to a borderline destitute/middle-class family. After his graduation from the University College, he moved to Paris to study medicine only to be called back to Dublin to care for his mother during her last days (O’Conner). He remained in his home country for a year, publishing short stories in “The Irish Homestead” newspaper (O’Conner). Joyce was a failure at many different occupations: teaching, journalism, and accounting; however, he is one of the few authors to have known success in his own lifetime (Bulson 17). Living in the 1910s era, which found pride in formal diction and savvy language, Joyce found many publishers were wary of his work, which pushed the social limits with bitter language and brash subjects (Bulson 18). Bulson quotes Joyce’s argument with publishers as he refused to grant their wishes of revision, “I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished mirror” (33). This was his attitude towards the eventually published collection of short stories, Dubliners, confirming the beginning of modern literature.
Every person belongs to a generation: you associate yourselves with a particular set of people usually based on age such as “Baby Boomers” from 1946 to 1964, “Generation X” from 1965 to 1979, and “Millennials” from 1980 to 2000, (Smola, 364). Parents’ generations differ from their children, and sometimes within their significant other. My parents, separated by two years, are both considered “Baby Boomers”, and my sister and I, also separated by two years are both considered “Millennials”. “Generation X” separates our generations, and as you can assume there are many differences between the two: “Baby Boomers” experienced the immense development of the economy and education (Kupperschmidt, 4).
The purpose of this essay is to connect the feminist theory to the film “The Help,” and underlie certain ideas that are demonstrated throughout the film. I specifically chose this film, because it takes place in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 19060s during the time Jim Crow laws were still very much alive, and practiced. Skeeter, a young white Caucasian woman has just graduated and returned home from attending Ole Miss to take care of her fairly sick mother. Aside from her associates and colleagues, who are more into finding a husband on their time off from Ole Miss, Skeeter focuses all of her time into becoming a journalist. Throughout the film family servants are well within each white family social circle, they are referred to as “The Help,” and are exclusively black women. As tradition the servants are passed down throughout family generations, which means the child they raised would become their boss in the future. Each servant had their own story to tell and conflicts of their own to deal with, including Skeeter. As time progresses Skeeter decides to write a column on the black servants in relation to their white bosses, with the help of her fifty-year-old servant Aibileen Clark. Hesitant to help, Aibleen along with other black servants gather to tell their different stories while accepting the consequences it will bring. As a feminist, it is one who supports feminism, which is the advocacy of women’s right on the grounds of politics, social, and equality to men, but in this case white women as well. Throughout the essay are explorations of the different issues relevant to feminism.
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she “came of age” with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.
Racial discrimination still exists in these days with the institutional racism which is described groups of people against certain groups of people to limit their privileges. The United States is a country that has more than one ethnic and everyone is different to each other. In the past, I have seen many groups of people are discriminate to other groups based on their skin color, ethnic and personal identity. Institutional racism happened in school as well as in public. People discriminate others by looking at their skin and their race. People need to adapt to the new world and find out more about others culture to stop the institutional racism toward other races or ethnics.
Although a scene of a funeral home might come to mind when a reader first hears a short story aptly named “The Dead,” the tale actually takes place in the festive setting of a winter dance at the home of the two aunts of the main character, Gabriel Conroy. James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” has a literal title, because its main concept is death – both physical death and spiritual death.