Ann Petry’s Short Story Like a Winding Sheet

443 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racism short story essay

Ann Petry’s Short Story "Like a Winding Sheet"

In Ann Petry’s 1945 short story "Like a Winding Sheet,". Johnson is a black male struggling with racism and societal pressures. Johnson faces many challenges. As one reads, one cannot help but feel his anger, frustration and tenseness. Petry tells it in the following way, "The knowledge that he had struck her seeped through him slowly and he was appalled but he couldn’t drag his hands away from her face." Petry goes on further to tell us, "He had lost all control over his hands." This rage Johnson is experiencing is described as a "winding sheet".

Johnson’s everyday routine causes anger and frustration to build up inside him. Get up, go to work and come home; get up, go to work and come home. The routines...

Show More
Related

  • Andrew Curry's Why We Work By Barbara Ehrenreich

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Curry agrees that work is a job that takes over a person’s life and claims, “The job penetrates every aspect of life. Americans don’t exercise they work out” (15). In his perspective, a job has created this sense of “working out”, in which not the actual going to the gym to workout is being used, but jobs are the place of working out. In his mind working out at the gym has been replaced with typical long houred jobs. This is the case for many people, including the life of Ehrenreich in which the juggling of two jobs, consists of her whole day. She proclaims:

    Read More

  • Singapore by author Mary Oliver

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    This paper focuses mainly on the sincereity as well as the passion with which we do our job. Human body is a very sophisticated machine created by God himself. It can do all sorts of things but there are a few things at which the human body gets very perfect.And that perfectness comes from practice, devotion,love,sincerity and responsibility towards that particular thing. Let me associate the word "thing" in the previous sentence as working. Working for living. Reason I chose to write on this topic was that the Poem " Singapore" written by author Mary Oliver that I read in the book by John Schilb and John Clifford influenced me alot. The Poem narrates the life of a woman which works on an aeroplane and is cleaning teh restrooms which are very dirty. She visually and physically finds the job dirty. But while cleaning that restrooms she sees it in her own world.She finds her hands working in pleasure as she is wondering the scenes of rivers. She realises the truth of life that she has to work to earn her living.

    Read More

  • Work In An Industrial Society By Erich Fromm

    1647 Words  | 4 Pages

    Currently, human beings are thinking more on the line of they need work in order to make a living. For that reason, work has become meaningless, disagreeable, and unnatural. Many view work as a way to obtain money and not a meaningful human activity that one does for themselves. The author states that there are two reactions of the alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of the modern industrial work. One being the ideal of complete laziness and the other, hostility towards work. Fromm believes the reason why people have animosity regarding work is due to their unconscious mind. Subconsciously, a person has “a deep-seated, hostility towards work and all that is connected to it” says Fromm. I believe what Fromm is saying to be true, after all I witness it everyday. Millions of people each day goes to a work which they are dissatisfied with and that can negatively impact their attitude

    Read More

  • Weather And Crime Case Study

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    Just because the sun is bright and shining in the summer does not mean that people are at their happiest moment. It is a regular hot summer’s day where you wake up to a hot apartment due to a broken A/C. The sun is not even completely out and you are already sweating, starting your day with the wrong foot. You lose time trying to see what is going on with your air conditioning system. As if your luck could not get any worse, your car’s A/C is broken as well. So, by now, you are late for work and completely sweaty, but finally on your way. While driving to work you take the route you take every morning and to your surprise one of the roads is closed due to an accident that happened earlier. A police officer that is controlling traffic approaches your car and asks you to please back your car and take another road. At this time you explode and you snap at the police officer. Why this aggression? It could be by the series of unfortunate events you just experienced, or maybe something else could be influencing your behavior. Research has shown that emotional aggressive outbursts are frequently caused by harsh or unpleasant events such as provocation, frustration, uncomfortable temperatures, loud noise, unpleasant odors, and smoke. (Anderson, Groom,

    Read More

  • The Frustration-Aggression Theory

    97 Words  | 1 Pages

    Social psychologists conclude that the frustration-aggression hypothesis remains tentative and that multiple factors may be associated with the expression of aggressive behavior. Critics of the frustration aggression theory point out that frustration does tend to lead to aggression in some circumstances but not always (Berkowitz, 1990). Theorists also suggested that a broader term than frustration should be used as the source of aggression because aggression can be elicited or instigated by other factors, such as the character and perceived intent of the instigator, personality factors and life experiences of the frustrated individual, and environmental conditions (Meyer,

    Read More

  • A Case Against Gun-Control

    1838 Words  | 4 Pages

    Morse, John. "Rampage. Regret. Repeat." Newsweek Global 161.33 (2013): 1. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • Discovering Books

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    Headed along the yellow brick road towards the registration office, I was intercepted by my malevolent manager, the “Ineffable John” as he was called by my fellow co-workers, and he said unto me, “Michael, you don’t want to go to college, stay here and you shall have bestowed upon your unworthy head all which you need to know. Here, fill up my coffee cup.” With his words still echoing in my mind, I wanted to sprint down the hallway, pole-vault over the cubicle prisons, hurdle the water ration cooler, and dive through the double-paned sliding glass doors. This spectacular display of athletic ability would have been terrific, but the ball and chain still shackled to my ankles would have slightly hindered my escape.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Immigration Reform

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    With an estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today, immigration reform has been a volatile issue that hasn’t been adequately addressed throughout the 21st century. With the last major overhaul occurring in 1986, when over 3 million immigrants were granted U.S. citizenship, politicians are saying another major overhaul is needed to address the newer generation of illegal immigrants. Legislations including the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, and the DREAM act of 2012 have all tried to address the depressing need for immigration reform but have failed due to lack of bipartisan support. Still, political leaders urge for immigration reform that is unlikely to pass with such divided political parties. Luckily, the solution was already passed in 1986 but hasn’t been sufficiently enforced for the past twenty years. In order to stop the flood of illegals crossing U.S. borders, the U.S. should enforce the law against hiring illegal immigrants.

    Read More

  • The Taint of Money in “Life in the Iron Mills”

    1644 Words  | 4 Pages

    The story of “Life in the Iron Mills” enters around Hugh Wolfe, a mill hand whose difference from his faceless, machine-like colleagues is established even before Hugh himself makes an appearance. The main narrative begins, not with Hugh, but with his cousin Deborah; the third-person point of view allows the reader to see Deborah in an apparently objective light as she stumbles tiredly home from work in the cotton mills at eleven at night. The description of this woman reveals that she does not drink as her fellow cotton pickers do, and conjectures that “perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up, some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need” (5). Deborah is described as “flaccid,” a word that connotes both limpness and impotence, suggesting that she is not only worn out, but also powerless to change her situation; meanwhile, her life is “pale” and without the vivid moments we all desire. Yet even this “wretch” has something to sti...

    Read More

  • Adolescence Sexual Development

    827 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hartel, C. E., Zerbe, W. J., & Ashkanasy, N. M. (2005). EMOTIONS INORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Read More

  • Alcoholics Anonymous Field Visit Report

    2152 Words  | 5 Pages

    Kinney, Jean; Leaton, Gwen. Loosening The Grip. Mosby-Year Book, Inc., St. Louis, 1995. (Page 268).

    Read More

  • Use Of Morality In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    “It was becoming a habit—this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.” (Morrison 35).

    Read More

  • Effect of Conflict Management on Team Dynamics

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the video, they described multiple situations in which individuals experienced extreme negative emotional reactions to conflict; for example, her father’s angry outburst at the dinner table, her own emotional trauma as a result, the men from the executive team angrily shouting at Jane, and the people in the work shop expressing their anger about the priest. In the article by Way and Jimmieson (2016), they reported that negative affective reactions and increased anxiety are direct outcomes of relationship conflicts such as

    Read More

  • To what extend personality predicts employee performance?

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    Judge, T. A., Locke E.A., (1993). Effect of dysfunctional thought processes on a subjective well-being and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 475-490.

    Read More

  • The Trait Anger

    1729 Words  | 4 Pages

    Martin, R., Watson, D., & Wan, C. K. (2000). A Three-Factor Model of Trait Anger: Dimensions of Affect, Behavior, and Cognition. Journal of Personality, 68(5), 870-892.

    Read More

More about Ann Petry’s Short Story Like a Winding Sheet

Open Document