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The story "O' Youth and Beauty!" by John Cheever is about the Bentley family, who live in Shady Hill as a happily married couple, who have their fair share ups and downs. Cash Bentley, the father of the household, is a former track star who has many money problems, and at times can be very touchy. Cash also had a charming quality of stubborn youthfulness, and felt they he always need to prove his youthfulness to his peers. Everytime the Bentleys went out drinking with their friends Cash would be reminded of his age and thinning hair and would feel the need to prove his youthfulness by hurtling living room furniture. One night Cash doesn't make one of his hurtles and ends up breaking his leg, and this has severe effects as everything around Cash begins to change for the worse. While Cash is out of work and unable to prove his youthfulness he begins to fall into a deep depression and begins to drink more alcohol than usual. Throughout the story events occur which make Cash fall deeper into depression and ultimately cause him to have a mid-life crisis. I feel that Cash's mid-life crisis is the main theme of the story and Cheever shows the effects and impacts that mid-life crisis can have on a person's life.
When reading about Cash Bentley I got the feeling that he has been depressed for years because of the way he drink everyday after work and becomes really irritable when
something simple goes wrong. An example of Cash being unreasonable is when he gets really angry when dinner isn't ready and drags the argument, with is wife Louise, on for
days and days. The only time cash ever seems to be happy is when he us proving his youthfulness ands athletic ability by hurtling living room furniture. I feel that once Cash breaks his leg this is the turning point of the story and triggers the mid-life crisis because of the way he becomes so depressed and consumed in his own self pity.
When Cash breaks his leg everything takes a turn for the worse. He becomes so depressed that his friends stop inviting him over to their parties. While forced to stay home Cash begins to grasp the reality of how quickly his youth is fading away. One night Cash looks tenderly toward Louise and realizes how discouraging her figure has become.
Andy goes back to school and talks to his basketball coach about how he feels about Rob's death and how his fiends and family feel about the accident. In addition, they discuss Andy's sentence because Andy keeps punishing himself for Rob's death. Everybody at school was crying during Rob's memorial service. Grief Counselors from downtown come to the school to try to get the kids to share their feelings.
Essentially this play can be regarded as the mid-life crisis of Walter Lee Younger, passionate for his family, ambitious, and bursting with energy and dreams. Walter cares about his family, and he hopes that buying the liquor store will being a brighter future to Travis, ?And-and I?ll say, all right son-it?s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you?ve decided?...Just tell me where you want to go to school and you?ll go. Just tell me, what it is you want to be ? and you?ll be it.?(Hansberry 109). Walter Lee, shackled by poverty and prejudice, and obsessed with his own sense of success, which he felt, would be the end of all of his social and economic problems. The dreams he had gave him a great sense of pride and self-satisfaction. Unfortunately Walter had to learn a hard lesson in life; pride and greed will eventually lead to unhappiness.
The world is filled with many different types of societies and cultures. This is due to the fact that many people share dissimilar beliefs and ideas, as well as diverse ways of life. People lived under different circumstances and stipulations, therefore forming cultures and societies with ideas they formulated, themselves. These two factors, society and culture, are what motivate people to execute the things that they do. Many times, however, society and culture can cause downgrading effects to an assemblage if ever it is corrupt or prejudiced. Society and culture not only influences the emotions individuals have toward things like age differences, religion, power, and equality but also the actions they perform as a result.
... love and happiness of one’s family. Walter changes from being self-centered to self-less. He gives up his dream of having a liquor store when Willy Harris runs away with the money. Walter does that so the Younger family can fill their lives with joy and do not have to struggle anymore. This is the biggest sacrifice that Walter makes for the family. This theme also applies to everyday life. Many people sacrifice their wishes and dreams that they have, so they could help their family through tough times and always keep a smile on their faces. Love, sacrifice, and happiness is a part of everyday life.
You ever wonder how money can effect and change your life? A great example is a play called A Raisin in the Sun, the play was writing by Lorraine Hansberry. The play debuted On Broadway in 1959. The play is narrates the life of an African American Family living in Chicago in the 1950s. The family is about to receive an insurance check for 10,000. This money comes from the dead of the Mr. Youngers for his life insurance. But who would have known this money would cause the family so many problems. During the play the Youngers faced racial problems, conflicts between each other but they all have dreams in which they are trying to obtain but sadly some of the family members are making difficult for them.
Delia, a flower in a rough of weeds. That is what I got from this story in one sentence, although knowing my grammar possibly not. Hurston’s tale of a shattered woman, gives us a glimpse into what was possibly the life of women at that time. There were many convictions against men in the story, although it may have been unintentional, not to say she was a hard-core feminist there were episodes of male remorse.
...runs away. This misfortune ruins all of the Youngers’ dreams which revolve around money, but sets those which are non-financial into motion.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain is her own story that she wrote about during the Great War otherwise known as World War One. The main theme of her story is the struggles that she had to face, whether it dealt with her family, or her personal goals such as attending college or the world that she was surrounded by. On page 17 Brittain stated that "When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans." Another important aspect of Vera's goals was the aspiration and ambition that she had, that aspiration allowed her to move forward in her life.
Hillary R. Clinton once said that “There cannot be true democracy unless Women’s voices are heard” (conference in Vienna, Austria 1997). That very brilliant quote relates to a very strong woman by the name of Maya Angelou. Angelou is “America’s most visible black female autobiographer and speakers” (scholar Joanne M. Braxton). She is known for her speeches, poems, and books, but what stood out to me the most was her 1993 inauguration speech when Bill Clinton was sworn into the White House. Ironically, in her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” Maya Angelou uses clear rhetoric, prehistoric metaphoric images, and inspirational concepts to alert her audience to treat the world differently.
Many people describe “The American Dream” as a life full of happiness and material comfort acquired by an individual but F. Scott Fitzgerald challenges this to elucidate the darkness that wealth can pull one in. As illustrated by characters such as Gatsby that is surrounded by so much materialism, for which his idealism is not primed for, leads to the tarnish of his dreams of success. He is too blinded to see the money could not buy love or happiness. Daisy and Tom, living a life full of lies and infidelity, serve as proof to the unhappiness that success can bring. Jordan Baker confirms that money dulls ones morals which only increases the speed of corruption. F. Scott Fitzgerald effectively offers a powerful message of a corrupt society due to its materialistic ideology and the destructive reality it provides.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
13th March, 2014 In the poem “Mirrors”, by Sylvia Plath, the speaker accentuates the importance of looks as an aging woman brawls with her inner and outward appearance. Employing an instance of self-refection, the speaker shifts to a lake and describes the discrepancies between inevitable old age and zealous youth. By means of sight and personification, shifts and metaphors, the orator initiates the change in appearance which relies on an individual’s decision to embrace and reject it. The author applies sight and personification to accentuate the mirror’s role.
“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but also juxtaposes the seasons and their order (or lack thereof) and relates them to the order that comes with solitude and the disorder that is attributed with relationships. She accomplishes this through her use of formal diction, which ties into both the meticulous structure and develops the visual imagery.
Upon seeing her husband alive and well Louise realizes that the life she has imagined is not to be. The return of Brently signals a return of the patriarchal oppression in her life, and after imagining herself as an individual and then to be denied the chance to live freely is a punishment far worse than the crime. Louise loses her identity and once again becomes "his wife." Richards once more tries to protect her, a helpless woman, by attempting to block her view from her husband, because of the fragile state of her heart. Mrs. Mallard's strengths are gone, never to be acknowledged by the men in her life. For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.