Center stage in Kaye Gibbons’ inspiring bildungsroman, Ellen Foster, is the spunky heroine Ellen Foster. At the start of the novel, Ellen is a fiery nine-year old girl. Her whole life, especially the three years depicted in Ellen Foster, Ellen is exposed to death, neglect, hunger and emotional and physical abuse. Despite the atrocities surrounding her, Ellen asks for nothing more than to find a “new mama” to love her. She avoids facing the harsh reality of strangers and her own family’s cruelty towards her by using different forms of escapism. Thrice Ellen is exposed to death (Gibbons 27). Each time, Ellen has a conversation with a magician to cope with the trauma (Gibbons 22-145). Many times Ellen’s actions and words cause it to be difficult to tell that she is still a child. However, in order to distract herself, Ellen will play meaningful games (Gibbons 26). These games become a fulcrum for Ellen’s inner child to express itself. Frequently, Ellen will lapse into a daydream (Gibbons 67). Usually, these daydreams are meant to protect herself from the harsh reality around her. Ellen Foster’s unique use of escapism resounds as the theme of Kaye Gibbon’s Ellen Foster. To illustrate Ellen’s ability to survive traumas such as death and abuse, one might look to her imagination. Ellen is still a small girl when the novel takes place, so it seems normal for her to have a vivid imagination. Ellen goes to numerous funerals, and she witnesses two deaths (Gibbons 22-30, 114-130). While at these funerals, or around the lifeless body of a supposed loved one, Ellen has a small talk with the character known as “the magician” (Gibbons 22-145). Ellen calls upon this character to help explain the finality of death. Since she is still a child... ... middle of paper ... ...). When working in the fields, Ellen mentally recites poetry while imagining herself speaking in front of others, strongly (Rambo 670). This daydream keeps Ellen from breaking down while working in her grandmother’s cotton fields (Rambo 668). When her Mama’s Mama gets sick, Ellen is forced to care for her. When her Mama’s Mama falls asleep, Ellen fantasizes being at an ocean, far away (Gibbons 79). These and many more daydreams Ellen experiences throughout Ellen Foster ring true to Ellen’s desire to break away from her harsh life. Ellen Foster’s use of escapism reverberates as the theme of Kaye Gibbons’ novel. Her imagination, determination, tenacity and innocence allow her to escape, to break away from all of the unfathomable cruelty surrounding her. Without her unique and clever use of escapism, the heroine of Ellen Foster would have been easily overwhelmed.
Ellen Foster lived through a disturbed childhood. Within that unique childhood, there is a few things I can relate to like the resembles of Ellen to her parents, the lack of love and affection from her parents, and a fragile and feeble mother.
Helena Maria Veramontes writes her short story “The Moths” from the first person point of view, placing her fourteen year old protagonist female character as a guide through the process of spiritual re-birth. The girl begins the story with a description of the debt she owes her Abuelita—the only adult who has treated her with kindness and respect. She describes her Apa (Father) and Ama (Mother), along with two sisters as if they live in the same household, yet are born from two different worlds. Her father is abusive, her mother chooses to stay in the background and her sisters evoke a kind of femininity that she does not possess. The girl is angry at her masculine differences and strikes out at her sisters physically. Apa tries to make his daughter conform to his strict religious beliefs, which she refuses to do and her defiance evokes abuse. The girl’s Abuelita is dying and she immerses herself in caring for her, partly to repay a debt and partly out of the deep love she has for her. As her grandmother lay dying, she begins the process of letting go. The moth helps to portray a sense of spirituality, re-birth and becomes, finally, an incarnation of the grandmother. The theme of the story is spiritual growth is born from human suffering.
Misery, trauma, and isolation all have connections to the war time settings in “The Thing in the Forest.” In the short story, A.S. Byatt depicts elements captured from both fairy tale and horror genres in war times. During World War II, the two young girls Penny and Primrose endure the 1940s Blitz together but in different psychological ways. In their childhood, they learn how to use gas masks and carry their belongings in oversized suitcases. Both Penny and Primrose suffer psychologically effects by being isolated from their families’ before and after the war. Byatt depicts haunting effects in her short story by placing graphic details on the girls’ childhood experiences. Maria Margaronis, an author of a critical essay entitled “Where the Wild Things Are,” states that “Byatt’s tales of the supernatural depend on an almost hallucinatory precision for their haunting effects.” The hallucinatory details Byatt displays in her story have an almost unbelievable psychological reality for the girls. Penny and Primrose endure the psychological consequences and horrifying times during the Blitz along with the magical ideas they encounter as children. As adults they must return to the forest of their childhood and as individuals and take separate paths to confront the Thing, acknowledge its significance in their childhoods, and release themselves from the grip of the psychological trauma of war.
At the age of ten, most children are dependent on their parents for everything in their lives, needing a great deal of attention and care. However, Ellen, the main character and protagonist of the novel Ellen Foster, exemplifies a substantial amount of independence and mature, rational thought as a ten-year-old girl. The recent death of her mother sends her on a quest for the ideal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown apathy to both she and her fragile mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’ use of simple diction, unmarked dialogue, and a unique story structure in her first novel, Ellen Foster, allows the reader to explore the emotions and thoughts of this heroic, ten-year-old girl modeled after Gibbons’ own experiences as a young girl. Kaye Gibbons’ experiences as a child are the foundations for this.
An outcast from society Ellen was looked down upon; everyone loathed her, except Newland; he saw the predicament that she was in. Newland liked her outlandish ways; he admired her love of art and her abi...
...family that she grew up in was such a negative environment. It is very possible that she will grow up to be an art teacher. One might think this because she looked up to her art teacher so much and admired her; Ellen’s mind is full of creativity and ideas. When Ellen’s school found out that her dad was abusive to her they put her up at her art teacher’s house. Ellen says “I came a long way to get here but when you think about it really hard you will see that old Starletta came even farther… And all this time I thought I had the hardest row to hoe” Like Ellen did, it is important for everyone to look back into their life and see what they have learned. Doing so cannot change ones past but only add to their future. Ellen will always carry the horrors of her childhood with her but by using all of her assets that she gained throughout the book her future can be enriched.
‘Some idea of a child or childhood motivates writers and determines both the form and content of what they write.’ -- Hunt The above statement is incomplete, as Hunt not only states that the writer has an idea of a child but in the concluding part, he states that the reader also has their own assumptions and perceptions of a child and childhood. Therefore, in order to consider Hunt’s statement, this essay will look at the different ideologies surrounding the concept of a child and childhood, the form and content in which writers inform the reader about their ideas of childhood concluding with what the selected set books state about childhood in particular gender. The set books used are Voices In The Park by Browne, Mortal Engines by Reeve and Little Women by Alcott to illustrate different formats, authorial craft and concepts about childhood. For clarity, the page numbers used in Voices In The Park are ordinal (1-30) starting at Voice 1.
Carol Shields's novel “Unless” describes a story of Reta Winters, a happy and successful 44-year-old writer who married a doctor, Tom, for 26 years, and has three lovely daughters in her family. Her life should be perfect until her eldest daughter Norah drops out of university and begs on a street corner in Toronto with a hand-lettered sign around her neck that says a word "Goodness." The novel is written in Reta’s first person, readers will have a direct vision on how her thinking changes, how she become more matured after Norah’s leaving home, and how she thinks, communicates and interacts with other characters such as her husband Tom, her other daughters, her friends, and her writing career. In this essay, analysis and discussions Reta’s
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
Stein, Karen F. "Amy Tan." Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition (2001): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.
This is seen in Ellen Foster as Ellen continues to struggle to cope with her mother’s suicide. Ellen’s mother knowingly over doses and dies with Ellen lying next to her and it is from then on Ellen struggles with her death as she has nobody to go to for support. In order to cope with the loss Ellen instead thinks of her mother’s death as a magic trick and at her mother’s funeral she thinks to herself, “It is all done with lights said the magician. Where is she? Not in the box. You cannot rest in a box” (Gibbons 22). Rather than face the fact that her mother is dead, Ellen comforts herself by believing that her mother will return. She makes herself believe this mainly due to the fact that she has never faced trauma like this before and she has nobody she can turn to for help with her grief. Moreover, in Me & Emma, Carrie also struggles to deal with seeing her father get murdered along with Richard’s abuse and in order to cope with the trauma she creates an imaginary sister Emma. It is Emma that saw her father die and it is also Emma who experiences the majority of the abuse from Richard. When Carrie’s mother finally tells her that Emma is not real, Carrie thinks to herself, “Emma was there. She was real. Emma was the one who pushed me out of the way when Richard called up from the bedroom. It was Emma he did things
Innocence is something always expected to be lost sooner or later in life, an inevitable event that comes of growing up and realizing the world for what it truly is. Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” portrays an event in which a ten year old girl’s loss of innocence after unveiling a relatively shocking towards the end of the story. Set in post-Civil War America, the literary piece holds very particular fragments of imagery and symbolism that describe the ultimate maturing of Myop, the young female protagonist of the story. In “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, the literary elements of imagery, symbolism, and setting “The Flowers” help to set up a reasonably surprising unveiling of the gruesome ending, as well as to convey the theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing the harsh reality of this world.
William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” are two short stories which incorporate many similarities, both stories are about the emotional and psychological experiences of two women living in a reclusive environment. The women presented in both of the stories experience moments of insanity, loneliness, feelings of being controlled by others, and of loss of psychological self-control. In both of the stories, each of the women experience similar situations, in a complete different environment, and while one is practically force to refrain for outside stimulation, the other voluntarily avoids them.
The documentary starts by giving a brief biographical introduction to Ellen White. Ellen Gould Harmon was born in Gorham, Maine on November 26, 1827. Her date of conversion to Seventh-Day Adventism occurred in March of 1840. Six years later in August 1864, Ellen Harmon married a young Adventist preacher named James White. Soon afterwards, the two were inspired by God to the life ministry not long after having four sons—Henry Nicholas, James Edison, William, and John Herbert. As a result of traveling with her husband in service to God, there children were often left in the care of someone else. Henry, their first born son, was left in the care of the Howlands, a trusted family friend of the Whites, for five years. Ten years later, in December 1863, Henry passed away from pneumonia. Despite Henry’s death, Ellen White continued to exercise insurmountable faith stating that she had hope in seeing her son in the coming resurrection.