The hardships of the need of acceptance from others makes peoples lives complicated and confusing. These hardships affect people differently and each person deals with hardships in different ways. The decisions people make due to hardships can change who they are as a person. Jean Howarth examines the idea of responses to hardship in her short story, “The Novitiate”. She writes about a girl who must go through the hardship of choosing between her brother and her morals. The author utilizes character development to suggest that the need of acceptance can cause people to make difficult decisions in hardships, which can lead to a person breaking their own morals for the satisfaction of others. Initially the girl is naïve and does not understand the reality of the gopher hunt, her only hardship is the yearn for acceptance from her brother. When the girls brother is forced by their mother to take her on a hunting expedition, she feels accepted by him. The girl is constantly “[working] hard to please” her brother because she craves his affection and attention. The girl and her brother have different views of the gopher. The girl sees the gophers as “little dog[s]”, …show more content…
Her brother leaves her alone because he trusts her to be able to deal catch gophers on her own. He showed her how to get gophers and believed in her to get them on her own. As she was “all by herself” she contemplated the hardship she faced and how she would deal with it. The girls “mind went running” as she laid still on the grass to “Judy Craig’s gopher” but that quickly left her mind and all she could think about was the hardship of acceptance from her brother. The girls brother leaving her alone with the job of catching gophers shows that he is finally willing to accept her, but because of this acceptance he expects her to do something against her own morals. The girl was faced with an ambivalent
This story represents the suffering induced by the isolation. In the time period on which this history was reflected, it was socially tolerable for wives to be
When her father and the others began to gut the deer, Andy feels terrible and starts running away. The men began calling out to her, “Charlie Spoon and Mac and her father—crying Andy, Andy (but that wasn’t her name, she would no longer be called that)" (397). She is running away Andy the tomboy and is running towards Andrea the mature woman. At that moment she realizes the truth about herself. She no longer wants to be Andy, she wants to be herself, Andrea. She ran just as she ran away from her mother in the ocean. She began to understand that growing up and becoming a woman is unavoidable. The theme of the story is the idea that to mature, a child must reconcile life with the reality of death. "While all around her roared the mocking of the terrible, now inevitable sea" (397). She is no longer interested in hunting, a male activity, she is now disgusted by it. She's accepting towards the changes and can now tolerate the "ocean" or the idea of womanhood.
Nearly everyone has a dream in life that they desperately want to accomplish. Without these dreams people wouldn’t strive to accomplish what makes them happy. Sometimes happiness might be hard to reach because of obstacles faced in life. The obstacles which one faces and how they can overcome them are remarked in Anne Lauren’s Carter short story “Leaving the Iron Lung”. In order for the author to show that one must overcome faced obstacles to pursue their dreams, she uses the protagonist transformation, contrasting characters and settings.
The form of the novel’s initiatory journey’s corresponds to the three-stage progression in the anthropological studies of rites of passage. The novel begins with alienation from a close-knit and securely placed niche as Naomi Nakane lives in her warm and joyful family within Vancouver. Then, the passage proceeds to isolation in a deathlike state in which Naomi is stripped of everything. Her family is removed from its previous social niche and exiled into concentration camps. Naomi is forced to separate with parents and sent to live with aunt Obasan. Finally, the journey concludes with reintegration accompanied by an elevated status as the result of the second stage. Naomi accepts the surrogate family and develops a recognition of her past. When she gets her family’s documents and letters, Naomi finally shatters the personal and cultural veils of reticence and secrecy that have clouded her past, and reconciles herself with the facts. The three-stage initiatory journey helps to transform the protagonist from a victim of the society to a hero. The protagonist transformation illuminates the values such as redemption of sins, willing forgiveness of offenses, and so forth. Along with its motifs and symbols that allude to Christian rituals, thus, the heroic figure, Naomi, serves as a role model and gives meaning and guidance to the lives of readers thereby
...eives nothing from the children. It should be obvious to the reader at this point that the children are obviously in no way doing any wrong and are telling the truth to the best of their knowledge. The continual obsession of the governess over maintaining the protection and innocence of the children gets so severe that it causes Flora to come down with a serious fever and Miles grows seemingly weaker and sicker without his sister there with her.
middle of paper ... ... de. Those who face their weaknesses and accept themselves are successful in the manner that they obtain complete control of their lives instead of letting society influence their decisions. Rebelliousness of this force results in complications and dissatisfaction of those who uphold its values. A choice must be made whether to walk in that straight line of society or branch out to the new world.
Society tends to encourage virtuous qualities such as kindness, patience and optimism, indeed, these are virtuous qualities that could make up potential leaders and role models. But, the irony is that in some circumstances virtues can become a hindrance not just to yourself, but the people around you as well. This happened to Aunt Burnie, a gentle caretaker of the narrator and two girls Min and Jade, in George Saunders’ “Sea Oak”. Due to burglary, Aunt Burnie’s life came to an end, but due to strange circumstances she was resurrected. This resurrection changed her completely Aunt Burnie was no longer her pleasant self but full of spite and anger due to her life experiences and her compensation in death. Though she worked hard and was complacent
One example demonstrates Prynne’s conflict with society and her punishment. After Prynne’s public punishment on the scaffold, she obtained a shameful reputation throughout society. For Prynne, “the days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame” (73). This sad description of Prynne’s life shows how the unending waves of pain become more unbearable as the days go by. However, Prynne accepts her punishment with patience while maintaining a sense of humility. Hawthorne uses this conflict to reveal Prynne’s humility and patience in the midst of a painful
This creates a nostalgic and warm mood. As she reminisces about the vivid imagery surrounding surrounding her during her childhood, the mood greatly develops. It is extremely visible when the author says “learning how to stalk wild raspberries before breakfast, and how to find fungus in the forest”. The current connotations about foraging seem to always include a rustic and natural feeling, and
In many short stories, characters face binding situations in their lives that make them realize more about themselves when they finally overcome such factors. These lively binding factors can result based on the instructions imposed by culture, custom, or society. They are able to over come these situations be realizing a greater potential for themselves outside of the normality of their lives. Characters find such realizations through certain hardships such as tragedy and insanity.
People in society strive to find happiness in ones self, others and their community. What factors are there to obtain ultimate happiness in one’s life? What ethical decisions does one have to overcome to obtain this supreme happiness that every individual endeavours? The citizens of Omelas have a difficult time achieving the goal of making the right ethical decision. In exchange for their ultimate happiness and success, is one child’s misery. In order to live their “perfect” lives the citizens of Omelas must accept the suffering of the child. To make the right ethical decision is difficult, but necessary to end the injustice of the society. Failing to overcome the ethical issues in the city of Omelas is displayed through three different characters in the story. There are those who choose to ignore the situation, those who observe the child in misery, and those who feel that they must walk away. In the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” characters fail to overcome the ethical issues in their society, and the reader is taught the importance of moral responsibility and the implications of the difficult task to make the right ethical decision.
Everyday, one has to make thousands of choices about their actions. These actions have consequences. Throughout The Other Side Of The Bridge, by Mary Lawson, characters are constantly dealing with the consequences of their actions. This novel demonstrates that despite the impending consequences, emotions strongly dictate one’s actions. Emotions such as hatred between two individuals, significantly impacts one’s choices and causes one to not consider the repercussions. In addition to hatred, obsessing over another, causes one to make choices in spite of the consequences. Finally, jealousy, like hatred and obsession, causes one to make choices without considering the consequences. Many times during The Other Side Of The Bridge, characters
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her
Sylvia is?a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town?, but she is innocent and pure. ? The little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away.? Sylvia was more alarmed than before. when the hunter appears and talks to her. She easily agrees to help the hunter by providing food and a place to sleep, although she initially stayed alert with the hunter....
Ian McEwan illustrates a profound theme that builds details throughout the novel Atonement, the use of guilt and the quest for atonement are used with in the novel to convey the central dynamic aspect in the novel. McEwan constructs the emotion of guilt that is explored through the main character, Briony Tallis. The transition of child and entering the adult world, focus on the behavior and motivation of the young narrator Briony. Briony writes passages that entail her attempt to wash away her guilt as well find forgiveness for her sins. In which Briony ruined the lives and the happiness of her sister, Cecilia, and her lover Robbie. The reality of the events, attempts to achieve forgiveness for her actions. She is unable to understand the consequences of the actions as a child but grows to develop the understanding of the consequence with age. McEwan exemplifies an emotional novel that alters reality as he amplifies the creative acts of literature. In this essay I will be arguing that, the power of guilt prevents people from moving on from obstacles that hold them in the past.