Karen Hesse An American Author
A Look at the Life of Karen Hesse
As children, we all had magnificent dreams and aspirations. Whether they were to walk on the moon or to discover a new plant species, dreams were the things that kept us going; kept us striving towards obtaining what we wanted. For Karen Hesse, many dreams came and went throughout her life, but the idea of becoming a published author was always instilled in her mind.
Karen Hesse was born August 29, 1952 and was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Not much is mentioned about her childhood or her family, but one source states that Hesse basically enjoyed participating in normal childhood activities such as catching lightning bugs, taking part in talent shows, and swimming (Wilson 1). Meanwhile, Karen always had a passion for writing. She’d sit in her small closet and write poetry for hours. In regard to her family, Hesse stated they were always supportive of her passion and encouraged creativity (Wilson 2). This is one source of her inspiration. Mainly, however, it was Karen’s fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Datnoff, who truly encouraged her to follow her dream and really believed in her (Scholastic 1).
Hesse attended college at Towson State and later transferred to the University of Maryland, from which she graduated in 1975. She majored in theater, anthropology, psychology, and even English (Wilson 1,2). She earned a BA in English with double minors in psychology and anthropology. During college, Hesse found herself to be quite “good with words” and began writing a lot more (Scholastic 1). After graduating, Hesse took a trip across country with her future husband on which she visited many national parks and became very in touch with nature and learned how much she loved life and loved meeting people (Wilson 1).
Before becoming an author, Karen had many, many jobs. Many of these jobs helped to enrich her chances of making it as a successful author. The rest, however, helped Karen to find herself and earn wages while being an aspiring writer. A few jobs which helped to enrich her future career were as a proofreader, typesetter, librarian, and a book reviewer. Her other jobs were as an advertising secretary, actress, waitress, nanny, personnel officer, agricultural laborer, mental-health care provider, substitute teacher, and a member of the school board. As a child, Hesse hoped to become an archeologist, an ambassador, or an actress (Scholastic 1,2 ; Conant 1).
Sharon Creech’s childhood memories, college experiences, and creative brain significantly affected her writings. She rarely thought of being an author growing up, but as time progressed, she began to really think about it. Creech first became interested when she entered college and something sparked her career. She wrote multiple books with her much thought and creativeness leading her to an outstanding writing career.
“I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.” Throughout the novel, The Catcher in The Rye, Holden Caulfield is shown to have multiple manic and depressive episodes within the course of a few days, hinting at him having Manic Depression in ultradian cycling.
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
I believe that Holden Caulfield is mentally disturbed and shows many signs of it throughout the novel. Problems in Holden’s life that have led him to this rest home are the death of his brother Allie, his multiple failures throughout his academic career, and his distress about moving on in life. Holden deals with these problems by drinking and smoking throughout the novel. He also shows depression throughout the novel by being kicked out of multiple schools and being over-critical of people when he describes them. I feel that he is very disturbed and had not been able to deal with his problems before. Unfortunately his feelings such as the loss of Allie ha...
Elizabeth always had the dream of becoming a writer one day, she did not realize however just how close she was to reaching her long held dream.
...ddicted to having complete control over his people and would have reigned chaos if he wanted. Emerson was a pioneer of self-reliance: the art of relying on yourself rather than relying on others. He was a well-educated man who went to Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School, and Boston Latin College. He not only believed that education goes further than just reading text but delving further into those words and dissecting them to attain the purest form of knowledge and also being one with nature and learning the what nature does as far as educating young scholars. Mussolini and Emerson were two different people you have addiction, greed, and pure chaos on one end and then you have Emerson thinker, philosopher, and educator. If Mussolini and Emerson listened to one another, Benito would have been deemed one of the greatest most prolific leaders of all time.
Trafton, A. (2013, June 23). MIT News. Enhancing RNA Interference, pp. 1-2. Retrieved 12 16, 2013, from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/enhancing-rna-interference-0623.html
On the darker and more atypical side of Holden Caulfield's character is the alarming mental health issues. Holden Cauldfield sadly has a plethora of these types of internal conflicts. Holden Caulfield is a pathological liar, “ If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even if somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. “(16). Holden is also constantly changing his name throughout the novel. Holden is sel...
In the book, “The Catcher in The Rye” by J.D. Salinger, the main character is very strange in numerous ways. His name is Holden Caulfield and boy has he got something wrong with him. He rambles on and on about nonsense for the first 20-something chapters of the book. He only likes 3-4 people in the book. He smokes and drinks heavily at the ripe age of seventeen. He has been expelled out of numerous prep schools, and feels abandoned and not wanted. He has some sort of mental illness and I think I know what it is. I believe that Holden Caulfield has a mental illness known as Borderline Personality Disorder, also known as BPD. The reasoning for my thinking is that Holden’s actions match up with the symptoms of this illness and the isolation he
“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” This quote from Walt Disney addressing the concept of achieving dreams is very accurate, and can be seen throughout literature today and in the past. Dreams can give people power or take away hope, and influence how people live their lives based upon whether they have the determination to attack their dreams or not; as seen through characters like the speaker in Harlem by Langston Hughes and Lena and Walter Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in The Sun.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about one in four American adults suffer from a mental disorder. This means that 57.7 out of 217.8 million people over the age of 18 are ill; never mind that mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in Canada and the United States. Holden Caulfield, the controversial main character of J.D Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, spends much of the book wandering through the streets of New York City. Kicked out of boarding school for the umpteenth time, he does many odd things: he calls a prostitute, tries to befriend a taxi driver, drinks with middle aged women, and sneaks into his own house in the middle of the night. While many of these things seem outré, some may even go as far as to say that he is mentally disturbed. From a psychiatric standpoint, main character Holden Caulfield exhibits the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder (manic depression), and psychosis throughout the infamous novel Catcher in the Rye.
As every well-read person knows, the background in which you grow up plays a huge role in how you write and your opinions. Fuller grew up with a very strict education, learning multiple classic languages before she was eight years old. Fern grew up with writers all throughout her family and had a traditional education and saw first hand the iniquities of what hard-working had to contend with. Through close analysis of their work, a reader can quickly find the connections between their tone, style, content, and purpose and their history of their lives and their educational upbringing.
Kate Chopin was such a polymath, that she wanted to improve her skill so much more and decided to attend Sacred Heart Academy in St. Louis to improve her literacy. The Sacred Heart Academy was focused on producing better Catholic wives and mothers, by the nuns. They made it an all-women’s school, but for most women there was no further education for the women after high school. There were a selective few women who were admitted in the American college, and maybe one proper profession was open to married women of writing in this
These three texts contain the search for dreams, whether they be absurd, simple, or take you on a journey. Throughout the texts, the protagonists realise their dreams, each represented in a different way. In Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys, Charlie’s dream is to be intelligent, not so that he can be normal, but so people will like him. Charlie knows that his retardation has cut him off from most of society, and has limited his ability to connect with people, but he does not mind. Charlie does not long to join society to increase his social standing; rather, he longs to join primarily because he is lonely. In Charlie’s mind, intelligence is the quality that will gain him entry into a world of friends. The resulting irony is that when Charlie does become incredibly intelligent, he finds himself even lonelier than before.
For more than 20 years, formative assessment has been highly researched and even accredited as a critical part of a teacher’s pedagogy. In the last decade it (formative assessment has become something of a buzzword and in some cases a mandate in k-12 schools across the country. Formative assessment can be defined as a part of the instructional process intended to gather information and provide feedback for both students and teachers that allow for needed