Aurora is a Typical Teenager in Among The Mourners
In the classical short story 'Among the Mourners', written by Ellen Gilchrist, a thirteen year old female deals with 'difficult' times. Aurora, the protagonist, is an average teenager who is faced with emotions of mortification and lust. 'Among the Mourners' conveys Aurora's feelings through the wake her parents have at her house, her new boyfriend, Giorgio, and her parent's marriage. Many times Aurora seems to be being over-dramatic through actions towards her family and boyfriend. Also, Aurora has the predisposition to tell lies, extend the truth, or even make her own belief up about a particular event. Finally, like any adolescent boy or girl, Aurora is boy crazy. Therefore, Aurora is a typical teenager because she is over-dramatic, stretches the truth, and is boy crazy.
Aurora tends to over dramatize a lot of events taking place. At the wake her father was holding because a close friend, Mr. Alter, had committed suicide, ?[Aurora] was mortified? (93) because ?there were cars parked all over the yard and police cars in the driveway? (93). One can say that under the circumstances it was expected for people to draw together, to pay reverence to a love one, but Aurora saw it as an inconvenience or an embarrassment. As well as when Mr. Seats, a close friend of Mr. Alter, came to stay, Aurora did not want to give up her room, she states ?I did not kill him. Why should I give up my room?? (94). Again, Aurora makes a big deal over giving up her room, in understandable circumstances. In addition, when she describes her new boyfriend, Giorgio, ?[he] speaks about fifteen languages and he is so good-looking [one] wouldn?t believe it? (93), her description goes a little too far, bec...
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... ?Among the Mourners?, one can see Aurora acts as a typical teenager. She over dramatizes many events in her life, just as if the world is coming to an end. Likewise, Aurora stretches the truth to get what she wants or to possibly get attention. Still, she is boy crazy and curious of what the opposite sex has to offer with her relationship with Giorgio. Aurora is a typical teenager, just like any teenager in today?s times. Many teenagers tend to get embarrassed or become over-dramatic for attention. Also, telling lies to get what they want, because normally teenagers feel as if they are more responsible that what people give them. In Aurora?s case was she was Gifted and Talented. In short, teenagers today end up experimenting or even getting pregnant at a young age, therefore, it is not surprising for Aurora to be curious. Nonetheless, Aurora is a typical teenager.
They are already in a compromising situation in celebrating her eighteenth birthday at a gas station having coffee which was already established as being not the norm earlier with Marie recounting her own large party where her “mother made a large party” (154). There reality is broken when the teenagers arrive and “One of the girls went to the juke box and put money in” and they are forced to leave because of Carol condition which causes her to have a breakdown from the noise (157). The arrival of the kids forced them to come into contact with their own reality which can never coincide with the one they have fabricated. This small reminder of what the norm is supposed to be is often brought to their attention through others such as when they “could see, in the light shaft of light, a boy, two girls and a dog” (155). In this instance, they are walking on the way to their weekly picnic, which is in itself repetitive, when they are shown the norm of other having fun “the boy splashing in the water with the dog” while they are forced to go through the motions without much emotion. This depiction of the norm unsettles their reality and, even though they don’t stop trying to alter reality to shelter Carol, shows how dysfunctional their own situation is as it can be seen as a potential version of themselves without Carol’s
Sandra Cisneros writes a memoir through the eyes of an eleven year old. Turning eleven happens to be a tragic day for the main character, Rachel. Through various literary techniques such as hyperbole, simile, and syntax, Rachel is characterized. Rachel is a fresh turning eleven year old who finds herself in an awful situation on her birthday. Forced to wear a raggedy old sweater that doesn’t belong to her, she makes it defiantly clear her feelings towards the clothing item, and we see this through use of hyperboles. Rachel describes the sweater as ugly and too “stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope.” This extreme exaggeration demonstrates the fire within Rachel. She is a defiant and pouty little girl who out of stubbornness has to defy the sweater in her mind. “It’s maybe a thousand years old”, she says to herself in act to degrade the filthy red sweater even more. The sweater to Rachel has become an eternal battle of ages. She is torn on whether or not to stand up and act bigger th...
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
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.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Diary of a Young Girl.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
In “Eleven”, written by Sandra Cisneros, Cisneros uses literary techniques such as diction and imagery to characterize Rachel’s character during her transition from age ten to age 11. These literary techniques help to describe how Rachel feels in certain situations while also explaining her qualities and traits. Through the use of these literary techniques Cisneros also collaborated on Rachel’s feelings when she was other ages and how she felt at that time during her life.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Instead, the novel begins with the seemingly disappointed statement: "There was no possibility of taking a walk that [rainy] day," and counters almost immediately with, "I was glad of it; I never liked long walks." When excluded from Christmas revelries in the Reed household, the child Jane says, "To speak the truth, I had not the least wish to go into company." Jane's defiance, which doesn't exclude childlike fears, strikes us as forthright in the way of the adolescent temperaments of other famous literary voices -- Jo March of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield and their now-countless younger siblings.
Displaying one's emotions in public is often not planned nor wanted especially when it comes to crying due to humiliation and shame. In the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, literary terms such as simile, diction, and repetition are utilized in characterizing emotional “eleven” year old Rachel. The figurative language used, support the images that were intended for the reader to perceive. Diction and repetition help guide the audience with a certain point of view towards the characters. Not only does Cisneros exploit these literary terms to explain and characterize Rachel's feelings but to exhibit how one may not always have the courage, personal strength, or maturity to handle certain situations.
Over the course of the last century, a young orphan by the name of Annie has been plastered amongst a media-driven world. Crawling into the minds and hearts of many, the iconic tale of Annie and her exposure to the world of the social elite has made way for a magnitude of adaptations. Deriving from a 1885 poem, Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley, Annie and her adventures has been illustrated as comic strips (Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray), books (Annie by Thomas Meehan), and musicals (Annie and Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge by Thomas Meehan) (“Little Orphant Annie”)(Cronin)(“Annie {Musical} Plot & Characters”). The latest takes on an Annie adaptation has been met with the big screens. Within the last thirty years, directors John Huston and Will Gluck have released two different versions of the life and journey of a young girl (“Annie” {1982})(“Annie” {2014}) .
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
... not as they conceptualized. As adulthood is commonly linked with age, the shift from adolescence to maturity arises with experience. In Joyce’s “Araby”, the emotional journey for the narrator, begins with the infatuation with his best friend’s sister, and ends with his disillusionment for love. In Mansfield’s “The Garden-Party”, Laura acts as a tie between the brightness and wealth of the Sheridan’s contrasted with the darkness and sorrow of the Scotts. While struggling with inner confusion, she attempts to build a unique identity for herself. Her emotional journey culminates with the viewing of the deceased man, and her powerful realization of life, where her life is put into perspective of life on a universal level. Both main characters experience major changes in their personality, as well as their psychology, and these insights change both of them incredibly.
The coming of age novel, Atonement by Ian McEwan, discusses guilt, forgiveness, and the complicated nature of love through the struggles of growing up. The novel begins in England during World War II, where 13-year-old Briony Tallis is part of a family with dysfunctional dynamics. Her older sister, Cecilia, experiences true love with the family’s gardener, who is the son of their housekeeper, but their relationship is riddled with many obstacles. Most troubling is that Briony naively imagines their intimacy as something more aggressive towards her sister. Her innocence and shielded view of the world causes an unfortunate series of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of Briony’s life. In Atonement, McEwan demonstrates the maturation of love and how prosperous, yet destructive love can be between lovers and family alike.
Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf give great significance to the families of their respective main characters in The Return of the Soldier and Jacob’s Room because it gives the reader a greater insight to the formation of and reasoning for both Chris and Jacob’s nature. Each of these characters have multiple families to deal with: Chris has Kitty and Jenny on the one hand, and Margaret on the other, while Jacob deals with his mother and brother as well as his connections to society and academia. The distinctions between each character’s multiple families cause them to behave differently in various situations, and provide reasons for their actions. It is said that we are shaped by our surroundings and molded by our families, and Woolf and West’s male protagonists prove to be no exception to this rule.
The persuasive attempts in both literary works produce different results. The effectiveness of the mother’s guidance to her daughter is questioned since the girl cannot recognize the essence of her mother’s lesson. Despite that, the mother’s beneficial instruction serves as a standard for the daughter to reflect her future behaviors in order to live up to the community’s expectations. On the other hand, Anne’s value of candid expression and lasting relationship dissuades her from obliging to her family’s meaningless duty to place her love and interest above to experience fulfillment in life.