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Implications of mentoring
Implications of mentoring
What is the importance of character development in literature
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“A mentor is someone who sees more ability and talent within you, than you see in yourself, and helps it bring it out” (Bob Proctor). Mentors are great people who inspire, nurture, and brings out the best of you. They incessantly persevere and struggle for our welfare and well-being in the future. In Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” she portrays Mrs. Flowers as a great mentor whom she will always look up to. Angelou emphasizes the importance of a mentor and brilliantly develops the theme of a mentor through characterization of Mrs. Flower’s character. She conveys to the reader that Mrs. Flowers is sophisticated woman, demonstrates a benevolent heart, and teaches with a sagacious mind. As an aristocrat in Black Stamps, Mrs. Flowers is a revered woman. She dresses in a sophisticated way and possesses a graceful demeanor. She acts in a refined manner, and it is proven in line 4: “She had the grace of control to appear warm in the coldest weather,”. As a gentlewoman, Mrs. Flowers acts with elegance, thus according to Marguerite, she is the epitome of a human being. Mrs. Flowers also wears elaborate dresses which include “her printed voile dresses and flowered hats which were …show more content…
Flowers’ demeanor is not the only thing that deserves acclaim; her benevolent heart deserves admiration as well. She has the willingness to sacrifice her time and energy to be a mentor for Marguerite. Marguerite contemplates the memories she had Mrs. Flower’s and states, “To be allowed, no, invited to the private lives of strangers, and to share joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.” As Marguerite reflects on her past, she is exceedingly grateful for Mr. Flower’s benevolence and lessons. It is exceedingly improbable that a stranger would invite someone to their lives, but Mrs. Flowers had a sincere, kind heart to care, nurture, and guide
Klein, Maxwell. The Images and Metaphors of Flower Children. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988.
Pontellier does not doubt nor desire for something beyond society’s standard for women. Leonce Pontellier, Edna’s husband, is about fifteen years older than Edna; this age divide causes a drift in what principles Leonce feels that Edna must adhere to. He maintains his belief that Edna should follow a pattern of behavior that is in conformity with what society expects of a mother-woman. A mother-woman, was defined to be one “who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals…” (Chopin 16). This principle definition of a ‘mother-woman’ was expected to be followed by the women of the late 18th century; and was viewed as an ‘unwritten law’, or simply a regulation known to obey but not question. At first, Edna does not object to this expected behavior as Leonce’s wife. She fulfills her domestic duties without complaining and she stays loyal to her husband. Mrs. Pontellier never protests or confronts any inward doubt or apprehensions she may have imagined. Instead, Edna conforms by being quiet, reserved and calm; she suppresses her own feelings to try and please society and its strict standards. Yet, all this external conformity and compliance forces Edna to question her role in the society. Is this all she can expect in
The tableaux vivants scene in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth is pivotal to the understanding of Lily Bart as a character. The passage not only highlights her precarious state in high-society, but it also contains one of the only instances where Lily feels truly comfortable and confident. Over the course of the description of Lily’s staging of her own tableaux, she goes from being a piece of art on display, to an artist carefully working to exhibit her own beauty. However, the contradictory reception from the audience to her intentions when her tableaux is presented, conveys her hubris in both her beauty and her ability to create visual representations of art. The scene concludes with, Gerty Farish, in response to seeing Lily’s tableaux, saying,
This anxiety is at the heart of Lily’s conflict with her society. The choice of the |Mrs. Lloyd” painting also hearkens to this theme. Reynolds made the choice to depict his subject wrapped in the cloths of antiquity. In his epoch, at the late 18th century, the neoclassical genre was in its heyday and just as the New Yorkers of the Gilded Age looked to Europe for cultural esteem, so too were the neoclassicist looking backwards, but to ancient Rome and Greece. The anxiety of influence in the scene from the novel is thus tripled upon itself so that the reader experiences it as the influence of Rome, on Europe, on New York, and finally on Lily. As the tip of this inverted pyramid, Lily must perform a fine balancing act and be representative of the natural beauty of classical forms, the elegance and refinement of aristocratic Europe, and the culmination of both in the great American experiment. She literally represents herself as all of these facets in the tableaux vivants, and as such achieves a sense of “eternal harmony” that Selden notes in her in that
The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.
Another factor that clearly brings out the theme is the fact that she claims that orderliness of family roses is her pride. However she may not necessarily be that orderly as depicted in the development of that story. The author of the story Shirley Jackson uses the author and her ambiguous cha...
As the poem progresses, the flower blooms underneath the touch of the man, representing that their passion for each other allows her spirit to bloom just as a flower does. Philip Jason notes the effectiveness of Williams’ metaphor to Queen Anne’s lace, writing, “…it is mainly through metaphor that he transforms his observation, his still life, into a dynamic field of action that reveals the life and energy hidden.” Just as Jason proves, the metaph...
The main character in John Steinback’s short story: The Chrysanthemums, is a married woman named Elisa Allen. She is a hardworking diligent young woman. In the opening chapters of The Chrysanthemums, Elisa is seen heartily in a great degree tendering to her gentle flowers. Powerful she is – gentle and conservative with her strength. She knows her weakness. Like the gentle calm flow of water embedding itself into layers of strata – which forms the highest peaks and grandest canyons.
Maya Angelou’s excerpt from her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” reveals the challenges facing a young black girl in the south. The prologue of the book tells of a young Angelou in church trying to recite a poem she has forgotten. She describes the dress her grandmother has made her and imagines a day where she wakes up out of her black nightmare. Angelou was raised in a time where segregation and racism were prevalent in society. She uses repetition, diction, and themes to explore the struggle of a black girl while growing up. Angelou produces a feeling of compassion and poignancy within the reader by revealing racial stereotypes, appearance-related insecurities, and negative connotations associated with being a black girl. By doing this she forces the
Walker, Pierre A. Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Vol. 22. West Chester: Collage Literature, n.d. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is an affront to the false social values of fashionable New York society. The heroine is Lily Bart, a woman who is destroyed by the very society that produces her. Lily is well-born but poor. The story traces the decline of Lily as she moves through a series of living residences, from houses to hotel lodgings. Lily lives in a New York society where appearances are all. Women have a decorative function in such an environment, and even her name, Lily, suggests she is a flower of femininity, i.e. an object of decoration as well as of desirability to the male element. We see this is very true once Lily's bloom fades, as it were, a time when she is cast aside by her peers no longer being useful as something to admire on the surface. The theme of the novel in this aspect is that identity based on mere appearance is not enough to sustain the human soul physically or metaphysically. Once she is no longer able to keep the "eye" of her peers, Lily finds herself with no identity and dies. This analysis will discuss the theme of the objectification of women in a male dominated society inherent throughout the novel.
Although imagery and symbolism does little to help prepare an expected ending in “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, setting is the singular element that clearly reasons out an ending that correlates with the predominant theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing a grim realism from the cruel world. Despite the joyous atmosphere of an apparently beautiful world of abundant corn and cotton, death and hatred lies on in the woods just beyond the sharecropper cabin. Myop’s flowers are laid down as she blooms into maturity in the face of her fallen kinsman, and the life of summer dies along with her innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to the innocent children.
The book thus explores a lot of important issues, such as: sexuality and race relations, and shows us how society violated her as a young African American female. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou clearly expresses the physical pain of sexual assault, the mental anguish of not daring to tell, and her guilt and shame for having been raped. Her timidity and fear of telling magnify the brutality of the rape. For more than a year after the rape she lives in self-imposed silence, speaking only very rarely. This childhood rape reveals the pain that African American women suffered as victims not only of racism but also sexism.
When women are kept in their classical role of mother and caretaker, all is well and their lives are simple. Children relate positively to their mothers in this typical setting; while Dantés was in prison, during a time of distress, he remembered something his mother had done for him. For example, Dumas writes, “He remembered the prayers his mother had taught him and found meanings in them which he had formerly been unaware.” (41). Mothers teach their children to the best of their ability, evidenced in Dantés, as well as when Caderousse says Mercédès is instructing her son, Albert. It is in these moments that a mother’s love, compassion, and necessity are revealed. Lives are calm and enriched as long as women are in their niche. This includes non-maternal nurturing roles, for example, Mercédès attentiveness to Dantés father and Valentine’s special ability to care for Nortier. This loyalty is valued and shown as essential for the stability of life. Though The Count of Monte Cristo depicted women as best suited to the home, they intermittently stepped further out of that r...
Throughout I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, racism is a frequent obstacle that non-whites had to overcome. When Maya is young, she doesn’t recognize the racism and discrimination as well as her grandmother does. As Maya gets older, she begins to recognize and take notice to the racism and discrimination towards her and African Americans everywhere. Maya may not recognize the racism and discrimination very well at her young age, but it still affects her outlook on life the same way it would if she had recognized it. The racism and discrimination Maya faced throughout I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, affected her attitude, personality, and overall outlook on life in a positive way.