In Melinda Sordino’s freshman year of high school she encounters many conflicts, one of the biggest is that she must communicate with her parents about what is taking place in her life. On Thanksgiving morning, Melinda’s mother struggles preparing her store for Black Friday and the big dinner for that night. When Melinda enters the kitchen her mother sends her to the TV to watch the parades. After a while, she decides to go back to the kitchen for soda, where her mother instead, “pours her orange juice, which [she] can’t drink because it burns [her] scabby lips” (58). Mrs. Sordino’s oblivion towards Melinda makes it harder for her to communicate with her parents.The miscommunication throughout the family is what tears it apart, separating it
Conflict between the main characters in fictional stories can be so thick, you need a razor-sharp knife to cut it; that is definitely the case in the two literary texts I recently analyzed titled “Confetti Girl” by Diana Lopez and “Tortilla Sun” by Jennifer Cervantes. In the first text, tensions mount when a social butterfly of a teenage girl and her oblivious father lock horns over the subject of homework. In the second passage, drama runs high when a lonely child and her career-driven mother battle over the concept of spending the summer apart. Unfortunately, by the end of both excerpts, the relationships of these characters seem damaged beyond repair due to their differing points of view - the children end up locked behind their barrier-like
Could you imagine what your home life would be like if you and your parents didn’t agree on anything? There would be constant fighting and tension would be everywhere. This is the case of two young girls in the stories “Confetti Girl” and “Tortilla Sun”. The narrators in these stories are the young girls, and they don’t agree with their parent on very important topics in these stories. Because the narrator and their parent don’t have the same point of view in these stories, tension builds up. In, “Confetti Girl”, the narrator disagrees with her father and questions how much he cares about her and in “Tortilla Girl”, the narrator questions if her mother was taking her into account of her new plans. Tension is shown to be caused in the
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
Each one complimented the other and it was as if they were two halves of one whole. Like many things in life, they each secretly enjoyed the immediate surroundings of the other. As much as Nel regarded the neatness of her house with dread, Sula felt the house to be comfortable and relished the neatness. On the same token, Sula disliked the disarray and lack of privacy in her house, but Nel found it to be a welcome change and a taste of real life. Sula and Nel found friendship in each other, because they were both lonely people. When they were young girls, they would go to Edna Finch’s Mellow House together to purchase ice cream. The ice cream representing the end of one’s life, the real treat was on getting there. They looked forward to the looks and sly comments of the boys as they made their way to the ice cream parlor, and as most girls do, exhibited an air of indifference while secretly relishing in the attention they received. It was an ...
First, home shaped Melinda’s identity. They noticed. “A sketch pad with charcoal pencils. They say they have noticed her drawing” (Anderson 72). This shapes Melinda’s identity, because it shows her that even when she thinks no one cares about her, her parents are always there. In the end that experience showed her if she ever wanted to talk about what happened her
Laura Brown is a fragile middleclass housewife and mother in 1951. She lives a miserable life trying to play the model suburban housewife. Throughout The Hours, Laura is reading Mrs. Dalloway, which is Virginia's novel. Her obvious mental illness doesn't allow her to always connect and understand her environment. Situations that seem simple to the average person, such as making a cake, are beyond difficu...
The novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of Tyler’s more complex because it involves not only the growth of the mother, Pearl Tull, but each of her children as well. Pearl must except her faults in raising her children, and her children must all face their own loneliness, jealousy, or imperfection. It is in doing this that they find connections to their family. They find growth through suffering.
The summer before ninth grade, Melinda and her friends attend their first high school party. Melinda meets a senior named Andy Evans. The two dance, talk, and kiss. As the night goes on, Andy becomes aggressive and rapes Melinda. In her drunken and terrified state, Melinda calls the cops but won’t tell anyone what happened to her. The entire school finds out Melinda is who crashed the party and everyone ditches her. During the early months of freshmen year, Melinda is without friends, and falls into a depressive state. She befriends a girl named Heather, who later ditches her due to her “low social hierarchy”. Rachel, Melinda’s former best friend, begins to date Andy. Scared and worried for her friend, Melinda decides she must tell her about that night. Rachel refuses to believe what she has to say and storms out. However, Rachel eventually believes Melinda the more she thinks about the story, and calls Andy out. When Melinda finally has enough courage to leave her closet for good, Andy locks her inside. The fuming man attempts to rape her again, but Melinda is not the same girl anymore. She slaps and scratches a...
Gloria Naylor’s novel, Mama Day, shows how two loving people can unite in marriage, while being from two separate worlds. The way that Naylor creates the anxiety between these two characters is by the differences in their backgrounds--including their families, traditions and their geographical origins. Cocoa and George are extremely different; however, this is what makes their marriage so strong. Raised by the two most respected women in the town, Cocoa grew up on a small southern island with a loving family, while George grew up in a boys’ home without a family in urban New York. These differences in background bring George and Cocoa together, while helping to instill traditions and values in George. In the end, George has changed his point of view of the island and the way Cocoa acts in her home so dramatically that he sacrifices his life for her. Mama Day illustrates differences that are all around us through one couple’s marriage and the two places they call home.
Most parents with adult children tend to have some tension and issues in their relationship, but some have more of a problem than others. In many literary works, one of the antagonists or sources of conflict for the protagonist is a parental figure. This conflict also frequently contributes to the true meaning of the work. With the close relationship between family, and the possession of knowledge on how to aggravate one another, there is bound to be some sort of trouble at some point that conveys some deeper meaning in the work. In Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, the main character, Tita, and her mother, Mama Elena, are very distant from one another and have many arguments and issues between them throughout the novel.
In the story, Melinda’s parents bring her pain for always making her feel unwanted. If she was not around her parents would not be married.
Melinda desperately wanted to explain and rely on someone. Rachel showed indifference as she invited Melinda to the party and Melinda did something that she should not have, which could affect her potential high school status. After Melinda calls the cops at the party, nobody bothers to ask what’s wrong, not even Rachel/Rachelle, who was Melinda's best friend. The first interaction that Melinda had after the event was in the cafeteria with Rachel, where she whispers, “i hate you,” from where she is seated (5). Since the people involved are not even slightly curious as to why or what could have happened to make Melinda call the cops, she becomes alienated. Melinda later becomes friends with Heather, their relationship is based on using each other. Melinda uses Heather so she is not alone. While Heather uses Melinda, so she can help her complete activities to join the Martha’s. When you start relying on someone and you still get omitted, it doesn’t make you overcome the wound, in fact, it adds more injuries. Compared to Heather and Rachel, when Melinda meets Ivy and David Petrakis she starts opening up. David is a role-model as he is the only one who helps her speak up. David does not know what Melinda has been through, yet Melinda still went to him when she didn't want to speak for her suffragette presentation. He helps her but later tells her that,"The suffragettes were all about speaking up, [and she] can't speak up for [her] right to be silent." This connects Melinda to the women in the past, who spoke for their rights. In contradiction, Melinda stays silent for hers, which won't have as great an effect (159). Ivy is the first person to understand and agree with Melinda. She also thinks that Andy Evans, Melinda's assaulter is bad news. When Melinda realizes
On an everyday basis teens all around the world fight and disagree with their parents. In the passages Confetti Girl and Tortilla Sun this very thing is clearly demonstrated. Both stories feature two teenage girls that have lost one of their parents. They both now face the daily struggle of agreeing and relating to their remaining parent. In Confetti Girl, the narrator is constantly overlooked and out shadowed by her father’s favorite thing, books and literacy.
Connie’s mother is jealous of Connie and her appearance. She tries to rob Connie of her blessing by depressing her. She castigates Connie by saying, “Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty? (1)” In addition to her jealousy, Connie’s mother once was alluring, the old photo albums doesn’t lie. Her looks faded away with time and that’s why she makes it a mission to criticize Connie. Due to animosity between Connie and her mother, June is always praised for. June is characterized as “so plain and chunky and steady (1)” and a goody goody. It was always said, “June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother... (1)” Connie’s mother wants Connie to be like her sister. Always chastising, “Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? [...]—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk.” Connie could only block out so much before her emotions started to unravel. She wished for the worst wish imaginable. “Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it “[would be]” all over.
The Lisbon family has always been a source of fascination to their 1960s suburban neighborhood. Mr. Lisbon, a high school math teacher, has trouble socializing with the other neighborhood fathers and Mrs. Lisbon, a religious fanatic, does not allow her daughters to wear makeup or anything deemed scandalous (Griffith). Kenneth Womack stated, “Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon exert a similar, if not more totalitarian sense of parental control as their five daughters plunge into the enervating throes of adolescence. The Lisbon parents, jostled by fears of the rampant promiscuity sometimes desired by pubescent girls en route to sexual maturity, inhibit excessive amounts of social interaction between their daughters and others in their age bracket of the opposite sex.” After the suicides of the Lisbon daughters, many people hold the parents to blame, including themselves. This guilt eventually leads to their divorce years later; something the Cat...