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Essay on loneliness in the elderly
Essay on loneliness in the elderly
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"A Lady of Letters" and "Cream Cracker under the Settee" by Alan Bennett The two monologues I am going to be writing about are two elderly women who are lonely and trapped in their own homes. I will be talking about how Doris, one lady from 'Cream cracker under the settee' and Irene, the other lady in 'Lady of letters' are suffering from loneliness. Doris and Irene both live alone. They don't seem to have any special friends. For example, Irene doesn't like being people calling her Irene. People who come across Irene must call her Miss.Ruddock; nobody has called her Irene since her mother died. Only real friends may call 'Miss Ruddock' Irene. But both Doris and Irene have people who do you look out for them like the policeman who calls in to check on Doris from time to time. Both monologues are talking, and looking directly into the camera, at many different angles. This gives a great effect, as the person talking in the monologue seems to be talking to 'YOU', in the audience. In the monologues the women mainly talk about the past and by comparing the day they were 'kiddies' to the days of today. This is how monologues are a lot different to dramas. Monologues are an interesting way for the people in the audience to see the opinions and thoughts of another person, maybe older or maybe younger. Both these monologues don't have a grouped name such as, action, horror or comedy but if I had to catorgise these monologues, I would say they are 'real life tragedy's'. There are the little side comments which the author for both monologues, Bennett, has made to make the make the audience giggle but the whereas the individuals in the monologue, in this case Doris or Irene, aren't aware that whate... ... middle of paper ... ...the Settee' my emotions stayed practically the same all the way through the monologue, as for 'Lady of Letter' I felt a number of emotions for Irene, Happy, angry, sad. I felt a lot of sympathy for Doris when she was talking about her family but i feel no sympathy for Irene. As I said, my feelings stayed the same for Doris but I did feel frustrated at times, as it is frustrating when 'you' know what's best for someone but that someone doesn't understand. My feelings varied a huge amount for Irene mainly because Irene's feelings varied an amount. Both monologue were encouraging in there own ways. 'Cream cracker under the settee' did get a bit tedious at times and sometimes made me want to fall asleep due to the same tone of voice droning on and on. I had a lot more to write about for Lady of Letters because I thought there was a much better story line.
Before the Civil War, blacks suffered oppression: slaves to the white man and unable to prosper as individuals. However as Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, author of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, explains, “After the Civil War blacks existed free to begin their own communities… and become members of the buying public” (29). With the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, and with the 14th Amendment, which established equal protection under the law for African Americans, the black community slowly saw improvements, including economic prosperity. However, even then, they confronted discrimination and humiliation. For instance, many “advertisers created campaigns [using] blacks in their advertisements but in demeaning postures that appealed to the white majority” not African Americans (29). The early 1960s marked a critical time for advancement; the Civil Rights Movement with its boycotts and marches demanded real equality. African American leaders called Jim Crow Laws into question and insisted on the integration of schools, businesses, and public transportation. As Brian L. Goff, Robert E. McCormick and Robert D. Tollinson explain in their piece, “Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues,” “the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 1950’s and 60’s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of Jim Crow rule in the American south” (16). This pivotal moment within American history provoked profound changes in the ways Americans interacted with each other.
Annie Dillard, in “A Christmas Story,” demonstrates for the audience that is so easy to miss the true meaning of life. The story “A Christmas Story,” begins with a setting of a enormous feast. The banquet hall decorated with expensive materials, for example, “two thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling, parti-colored floor of lumber.” The atmosphere was lively. There were many guests attending the banquet. The food that was served was a soup, which was said to have all the perfect ingredients as well as it “seemed to contain all other dishes.” The host of the banquet was a young man. The young man observed carefully as the people stuffed themselves and the young man thought, “No one person has seen nor understood the excellence of that soup.”
Jeannette Walls, the author of the memoir, The Glass Castle, was raised by parents whose relentless nonconformity and radical ideals were both positive and negative aspects to their wellbeing. Their names were Rex and Rosemary Walls, and they were the parents of four children. While the kids were still young, the family moved from town to town, camping in the wilderness and sleeping in the car, and sometimes even had a small place to stay. Rose Mary, who was both an artist and an author, identified herself as an “excitement addict”. As a mother who despised the responsibility of caring for her family, Rose Mary preferred making a painting that will last forever over making meals for her hungry children. Rex was an alcoholic who, when sober, was a charming and intelligent man that educated his children through geology, physics, mathematics, and how to live life fearlessly.
The world is filled with many different types of societies and cultures. This is due to the fact that many people share dissimilar beliefs and ideas, as well as diverse ways of life. People lived under different circumstances and stipulations, therefore forming cultures and societies with ideas they formulated, themselves. These two factors, society and culture, are what motivate people to execute the things that they do. Many times, however, society and culture can cause downgrading effects to an assemblage if ever it is corrupt or prejudiced. Society and culture not only influences the emotions individuals have toward things like age differences, religion, power, and equality but also the actions they perform as a result.
In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.
BIOGRAPHY: According to the entry « Eudora Welty » found on Wikipedia, Eudora Alice Welty was an American author and photographer, well-known for working on the South American theme. She began higher education at the University of Wisconsin, then went to New York, where she studied at Columbia University until 1931. Unable to find a job on the East Coast because of unemployment due to the Great Depression, she went back to her her native city Jackson, Mississippi. She started to publish short stories in magazines from 1936 and rapidly acquired notoriety as a short story writer, managing to carefully describe the culture and the racial issues of the South. Each publication of her short stories collections was considered as a literary event. In 1956, her novel The Pounder Heart, adapted by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, achieved great success on Broadway. In 1975, her enchanting novel The Robber Bridegroom became a musical. In 1973, Eudora Welty received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter. Three years earlier, she published a collection of photographs that she had taken herself in the years 1930 and 1940, One Time, one Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a work intending to depict the harsh living conditions in Mississippi during the Great Depression. In 1984, at the request of Harvard University Press, she put on paper a lecture that she gave the year before to the students: the work became a bestseller. She died of pneumonia in 2001.
In the short stories "The Story of an Hour," by Chopin and "A Rose for
While Doris Goodwin’s mother and father were a very important part of her life growing up her sisters were just as important. She talks about how while Charlotte, her oldest sister was not around as much as her other older sister, Jeanne she was still very important to her. She goes into detail about a shopping trip that was taken with the oldest and youngest siblings and how after the shopping trip to Sa...
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talk about how two women are experiencing the same emotional situations they have to endure. Both of these stories express the emotional and physical trials the characters have to endure on an everyday basis. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” it shows a woman who is oppressed and is suffering from depression and loneliness. In “A Rose for Emily” it is showing the struggle of maintaining a tradition and struggling with depression. Both of the stories resemble uncontrollable changes and the struggles of acceptance the characters face during those changes.
The poem “The Old Maid”, by Sara Teasdale, takes place on a sidewalk on Broadway. The speaker in the poem is a woman walking with who you can infer to be her fiancée and she is describing a brief encounter she had with another woman in the car driving by her. The speaker describes the woman as “The woman I might grow to be,” She then notices how her hair color “…was as mine” and how “Her eyes were strangely like my eyes”. However, despite all these similarities the woman’s hair compared to the speaker’s was “…dull and drew no light”. Her eyes also did not shine like the speaker’s. The speaker assumed that the reason for the woman’s frail appearance was because she had never had the opportunity to know what it was like to be in love. In the last stanza, the speaker no longer looks upon the old maid but to her lover and knows that even though they may look similar she will never be like her.
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of a lonely, English lady in France. Miss Brill is a quiet person who believes herself to be important. The whole afternoon at the gardens, Miss Brill does not converse with anyone, nor does anyone show any inclination to talk with her. She merely watches others and listens to their conversations. This provides her with a sense of companionship; she feels as if she is a part of other people’s lives. Miss Brill is also slightly self-conceited. She believes that she is so important that people would notice if she ever missed a Sunday at the park. It does not occur to her that other people may not want her to be there.
Alan Bennett's A Cream Cracker Under The Settee Alan Bennett's purpose in writing "A Cream Cracker Under The Settee" is to highlight the problems old people face. He points out that obsession with hygiene can be destructive "I never should have tried to dust." Everytime the old lady cleans she gets into trouble. He criticises society for neglecting the old "Home help. Home hindrance."
Despite being within the dark aspect, Irene still benefits from her first encounter with her grandmother and thus undergoes a small change. Due to meeting her grandmother, Irene realizes that sometimes it is wise to keep her own counsel.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.