The poem Pumpkin Eater is inspired by the children’s rhyme Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. There are interesting aspects of the feminist view of this children’s rhyme. The rhyme and the poem both have differentiating and similar views on what relationships are like. Yet, the views expressed in the children’s rhyme aren’t how relationships are looked at today. The poem Pumpkin Eater by Sandra Cisneros is inspired by the children’s rhyme Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. It mentions how she “keeps inside a pumpkin shell”, as it says in the children’s rhyme. She states how she isn’t any trouble, and she’s not the type of women to call in the middle of the night, or who “slings words bigger than rocks.” The rhyme Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater mentions how Peter “had a wife but couldn’t keep her”, and how he put her in a pumpkin shell to keep her better. She references this in her poem, Pumpkin Eater. She tries to say she’s not hard to keep because she stays inside of her pumpkin shell. …show more content…
It says that in order to control women, men need to put them in a pumpkin shell. The pumpkin shell can be defined as a chastity belt, a cooking pot (domestic servitude), pregnancy, a suburban house, or even the walls of a house. In the next verse of the rhyme, it says Peter “had another, but didn’t love her”, then he “learned to read and spell, and loved her very well.” The thoughts that came to mind concerning this section of the rhyme was that it was trying to say the other wife was deaf and mute, and the only way he could communicate with her was to read and write, but he didn’t know
The essay Four Menus by Sheila Squillante challenges mainstream pieces of writing in various ways. This essay closely resembles poetry with its metaphors and symbolism. This similarity is not a surprise given that Squillante is also a poet. Most essays explain an idea in a structured format which is greatly different from this piece. Four Menus jumps from scenes starting at a Korean restaurant and later at a house. Within the essay she tells flashbacks of times with her friends. These flashbacks are rather random and there seems to be scattered ideas. While pondering all of these aspects of her work I came the conclusion that an essay does not have to be black and white; as long as a main idea is covered it can be left as is. Most of us grew
In the novel, Beauty by Robin Mc Kinley, the family of a wealthy merchant looses their wealth when the shipment boats get lost at sea. There are three daughters named Hope, Grace, and Honour, whom is nicknamed Beauty, and a father. The family is forced to move to the country and start a life more modest than accustomed. After the family adapts to country life, one of the older sisters gets married to an iron worker who used to work at the shipyard owned by the father. They have babies. Life goes on in the country.
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
...saying that marriage is a gamble, and that women risk failure by becoming married. Laux speaks to the women with the idyllic views of matrimony and she may be trying to issue a warning to them, or to teach them a lesson about how she feels. This is important to the narrator especially as she repeats the word “again” in the question she asks at the end of the poem. The juxtaposition of the free bird to the housewife constricted to a cluttered room is an important image and helps the reader see the differences between the two. Laux’s metaphor for the female condition is made clear by the end of the poem and is an attempt to make the reader question what the narrator has that women all over the world are so eager to partake in.
Diamant has Dinah effectively tell her story from three different narrative perspectives. The bulk of the novel is related by Dinah in first person, providing a private look at growing up and personal tragedy: "It seemed that I was the last person alive in the world" (Diamant 203). Dinah tells the story that she says was mangled in the bible.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The poem, “Field of Autumn”, by Laurie Lee exposes the languorous passage of time along with the unavoidability of closure, more precisely; death, by describing a shift of seasons. In six stanzas, with four sentences each, the author also contrasts two different branches of time; past and future. Death and slowness are the main motifs of this literary work, and are efficiently portrayed through the overall assonance of the letter “o”, which helps the reader understand the tranquility of the poem by creating an equally calmed atmosphere. This poem is to be analyzed by stanzas, one per paragraph, with the exception of the third and fourth stanzas, which will be analyzed as one for a better understanding of Lee’s poem.
Lauren Olamina, the protagonist in Parable of the Sower. She lives in the walled town of Robledo, near Southern California in 2024, which is a devastated world caused by the environmental degradation and economic, governmental corruption. Lauren’s father was a Baptist minister, who emphasize Bible based religion and also raising her under an intensely religious belief. Though Lauren admires her father she
The story begins in a rural house where a man and woman live without children, near a walled garden tended by a frightening witch. The first line of the story tells us that they yearn for a child. It is clear that there exists in this house an almost tangible feeling of desire to produce offspring. The Freudian concept of the libido or the life force explains this desire as a product of the unconscious id(Guerin 129). To show further the prevalence of the id in this house, which in itself is a symbol of the human mind, the wife covets a vegetable, rampion, which she sees in the neighboring garden from her tiny window to the outside. "I shall die unless I can have some of that rampion to eat."(Grimm 514) The wife comes to represent this selfish element of the mind, and this is her primary function in the story. When she speaks, both times she is only asking for something that she wants. She has no name, as she does not function as a full character.
In Pouliuli, a novel written by Albert Wendt, Faleasa Osovae awakens to find the life he’s been living all along is a mere façade. Pouliuli invites readers into the Samoan community of Malaelua, which is turned topsy-turvy when Faleasa misleads his aiga and community by acting maniacal. Albert Wendt ties a famous Malaelua saga about a mythological hero named Pili to Faleasa Osovae’s life. In the myth as well as in Faleasa’s story, they both had the same goal, which was to live the rest of their life “free”. To accomplish this goal, they both had to accomplish three tasks. Pilis’ tasks were to eat a mountain of fish which the giant’s had caught that day, to race the giants down a river, and make himself disappear. Faleasas’ tasks were to destroy Filemoni, Make Moaula the new leader, and remove Sau and Vaelupa as council leader. Of course they couldn’t have done these tasks alone so both of them enlisted help from friends. Pili enlisted the help of Tausamitele, Lelemalosi, and Pouliuli. Faleasa enlisted the help of his long time friend Laaumatua and his son Moaula. Finally to get the freedom they so wished for they had to complete one last task. In Pili’s case it was to divide his kingdom among his children while Faleasa had to remove Malaga as congress of the village. In the end, they both end up with nothing. Both ending up in the darkness of Pouliuli.
..., and then loved her very well” (Source). Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater is another dark tale which is candy-coated in order to hide the depraved behavior it presents. By taking a psychoanalytical view of the rhyme it is obvious the Peter’s treatment of his first wife exemplifies fear of and a desire to control women, as explained by Lucy Rollin in Cradle and All: a Cultural and Analytical Study of Nursery Rhymes. During the Victorian era keep would be used in a sense of providing for his wife, nut the image of his wife in an enclosed shell certainly implies keep in a more sinister and modern tone. There lies a hidden lesson in verse two of the rhyme, the association of marriage and learning how to spell might have a strong unconscious appeal for the child by repressing their unsatisfied curiosity about sexual matters in favor of the knowledge that adults offer instead.
The Flowers By Alice Walker Written in the 1970's The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop's exploration. In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop's purity and young innocence.
Wright was described as a beautiful women filled with such joy and life until she married John Wright. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale feels sorry for her because her husband treated her so bad. Due to female bonding and sympathy, the two women, becoming detectives, finds the truth and hides it from the men. The play shows you that emotions can play a part in your judgement. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale felt sorry that Mrs. Wright had one to keep her company no kids and she was always left alone at home. “yes good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debt. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that goes to the bone. I should of think she would have wanted a bird. But what you suppose went with it?” Later on in the play the women find out what happens to the bird. The bird was killed the same way Mrs. Wright husband which leads to the motive of why he was killed. Mrs. Wright was just like the bird beautiful but caged no freedom not being able to live a life of her own. Always stuck in the shadows of her husband being told what to do and