Community building can depict an idea of people coming together for a common purpose. The purpose may be unclear on why people are becoming a union, though it may involve the inclusion of people. In “Once Upon a Time” and “Rituals of Memory” both include the gathering of people, however the reasons for their togetherness are very different. In “Once Upon a Time”, the author paints a picture of a family where they protect themselves and confide themselves with people that are just like them. The family represents the community and how they work, the community works to include people that are similar to them and exclude people that are not like them by protecting themselves to the extremes. According to the passage, “They were inscribed in a …show more content…
This community is built on the gathering of people coming from different backgrounds, while still embracing their differences. “We stood, all of us – those descended from settlers of Norwegian, German, or other European origins, and those descended from Anishinaabe or other Indian people.” Although having different cultural backgrounds, they were all able to join together to mourn the past lives of others. The author uses words like we or together symbolize the relationship of the community, “We stood together in a great ceremonial loop of our humanity, in our desire to immerse ourselves in their honor, to always carry those memories forward with us, to be ourselves somehow made holy by the rituals of those memories.” The gathering of the people was something natural even though they were facing the tensions within society they still were able to join together as one. “Together in a moment out of ordinary time, we paused in the little opening at the wooden grave houses, oblivious to the wood ticks, which must later be picked carefully from our clothes and our flesh, oblivious to the buzzing of mosquitoes or sand flies, oblivious as well to the more trivial tensions of contemporary politics.” The tensions of modern politics did not interfere with the way the community acted together. Being close together for this moment, but later on they would all eventually go back to their own families, “The men brought out drinks from the trunks of their cars, laughter and talk sprang up, picnic foods came out, and people would disperse again – to their own families.” A community together as one and then eventually separating into their own
A need for both socialization and a sense of identity forge tight community bonds that many maintain throughout their life. Their life may center on religion, race, or even the socioeconomic class to which they belong. Communities reflect these aspects by grouping together individuals in similar situations and beliefs. Pang-Mei Natasha Chang’s Bound Feet & Western Dress expresses the importance of tradition and culture in community identification by detailing the life of the conventional Chang Yu-i and her relationship with a westernized Hsü Chih-mo. Susanna Kaysen depicts her personal struggles with finding the community that she belongs to in Girl, Interrupted. Both Yu-i and Kaysen learn that community is not assigned, rather it is chosen by a self motivated individual wanting inclusion. Community is formed from a group of people with similar goals and beliefs who obtain identity and strength in numbers. The member is forever bound to his or her community thus preserving the ideals in association which makes finding a new identity is impossible. The effect a community has on its constituents is profound in that it governs the way one looks at the world.
Family was a place of gathering where people met to eat, drink and socialize. The people in the story were also religious as shown by Mrs. Knox as she prayed for her family. The narrator described th...
He makes a point of how American’s place an extreme emphasis on “lineal order”, we take pride in “lining things up, getting thing in line… We have it all neatly separated and categorized” (16). This statement is absolutely true, if we look about our society, the city we live in, the design of our houses, the way desks are arranged in a school, everything is in straight, orderly lines. In contrast, in Native American communities “the reverse is true… instead of separating into categories of the sort, family groups sit in circles, meeting are in circles” (17). These are examples of how the Native American culture places great value on coming together and including people in their traditions. In Toelken opinion, these differences in spatial systems also affect our relationships with
This theme of community is present throughout the book; for example, Muley Graves says that if a man has food, and sees a fellow man hungry, he must share it (Lisca 102). This sense of community is present throughout the book as many migrant workers who are in the same pair of shoes find a need for another family and fill it as best they can. For example, instead of splitting their train car with another family, Jenkins 2 Al tears down the tarpaulin between the two families and the family welcomes them (Lisca 102). Finally, Casy is killed in a strike advocating for what he believed in. It wasn’t for himself; it was for others he died, just as Jesus Christ did.
The tenement promotes the "brotherhood of man and the union of Christendom" in that people of different nationalities and also people of different religions in the tenements are living together, helping each other, and mourning deaths together at funerals.
History has shown us that in order for a society to flourish there must be some commonality within the society. Sharing similar values, interests and cultures may be the basis for forming a community. The true test of a society is when communities can comprise, merging together as a larger, stronger, united society. For this process to even begin, there must be a common factor, be it foe, economic reasons, etc., a common goal amongst the communities. A prime example is the creation of a united American society. To truly appreciate the complexity of forming a united society you must first understand why these groups of people came to this strange new land. What similarities they shared, the differences which divided them and the force which unified them.
“‘I thought, with modern technology,’ said my sister, ‘I could separate our parents from these large groups. I took these pictures to isolate our parents and then have their individual photographs enlarged…The photo studio tried, but it would not work. As the photographs became larger the individual features of their faces became more blurred. It was as if coming closer they became more indistinct. After a while I stopped. I left them with their group. It seemed the only thing to do’” (240-241). The inability to separate the parents from the group photograph shows how imbedded their family values were in their beings. By removing the rest of their family, they became less themselves. The parents become blurry, ambiguous shapes lacking distinct features that identify them as individuals. Family was an integral part of the parents’ lives. By removing their family, the sister is removing the context through which her parents lived and loved. This also shows clan members being valuable and discernible members of the clan when within its confines, but self-worth lessens the further they are from the clan. Once again, modernity collides with tradition. In this passage, it is the modern technology that the sister wanted to use to separate her parents from the rest of her family. This shows the modern
mother and her husband after her mother’s death. But Eudora Welty deliberately includes a selfish character of Fay in the family to shows the important of the memories they have. Laurel discovers the significant meaning of the memories and past to her, yet she could not survive in staying fully attached to it.
A sense of community was a necessity for many Americans during the era of the Great Depression. With the drought in the Dust Bowl and other catastrophes, many were forced to relocate elsewhere in attempt to survive. The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck, illustrates the importance of unity during privation through the idea that members of society must work in unison to achieve a common goal. Steinbeck demonstrates this theme through multiple aspects in the book. Being united in a group provides people the intrepidity to accomplish tasks they would not be able to as individuals. Unity is the utmost importance during a hopeless situation as it restores faith and optimism. Without the cohesion of individuals, families begin to stray from their intended purpose and sense of direction. In his novel, Steinbeck elaborates on the idea that unity is imperative because it is necessary for the survival of all, it restores faith when all hope is lost and grants a deliberate focus on an individual’s choices.
their actions down to bare human nature, as the author has shown them to be carrying no
The main point Perry stresses in Population 485, is the important role community plays in helping a person feel at home. The definition argument plays an important role in conveying Perry’s message of the importance of community, using both the operational and example definition methods. The example definition method is exemplified numerous times throughout the story, as Michael Perry uses his own personal examples to display how crucial those in his community are in providing him with a sense of belonging. Additionally, Perry employs the operational definition method by including tragedy in the majority of his stories. The inclusion of tragedy in his stories create allow readers to conclude that tragedy brings people closer together. While this may be true in this case, tragedy does not always bring people closer together. Belonging, in the eyes of Michael Perry, is the feeling of finding family inside his community, rather than simply knowing the people in his community.
How does this text either help you to explore and understand the possibilities of belonging or exclude you from connecting with the world it represents?
Socrates’ Doctrine of Recollection is invalid because of the flawed procedure that was employed to prove it, its inability to apply to all types of knowledge, and the weakness of the premises that it is based on.
...kinson and Shriffin model: the parallel- distributed and processing connectionistic. The parallel-distributed processing model states that information is processed simultaneously by several different parts of the memory system. Since the time of the first experiment on grouping, psychologists have consistently found that
Should the most selfish elite individual take heed and meditate on the ideology behind community, he/she may awaken to the fact that many persons looking after one person has more advantages and a better survival rate than one trying to preserve one. The needs of the one will never outweigh the needs of the collective group. In the end individuality inevitably leads to self-destruction; therefore, commitment to community is a requirement for contemporary Americans and vital to its survival.