“I didn’t know anything else. I thought drive-by shootings, drug deals, and beatings were normal,”(Page 1) in “I Escaped a Violent Gang” by Cate Baily. In the short story, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, the children train lion for about 2 months to kill their parents if they threaten to take away the nursery. They use the nursery to do this miraculous work. The nursery has turned into the children's parents. In “I escaped a Violent Gang” by Cate Baily, a girl struggles to get out of a gang. She was called to the witness stand, to tell the truth about a murder. Releasing her from the gang. The theme “your environment changes the way you think” is developed in both texts through actions, conflict, and characters.
Both stories develop the theme “your environment changes the way you think” through actions. In the story “The Veldt,” a physiologist tells the father “This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents,” (Page 9). The room returns the affections to them and cares for them. The children think this room is more important, and the nursery is their new parents now.
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The physiologist states, "You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's affections."(Page 9) The room is very important to the children. After the children spend too much time in the room, the nursery becomes more important to the children than their real parents. The mother confesses, "That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you. You've been awfully nervous lately,” (Page 3). The mom feels like the room replaced her. Her hunch is correct. The children have replaced her for the nursery. “The Veldt” develops the theme through
May, Rollo. "The Dangers of Innocence." Meeting the Shadow. Ed Connie Zwieg and Jeremiah Abrams. Los Angeles: Jeremy Teacher, Inc. 1991.
The spacious, sunlit room has yellow wallpaper with a hideous, chaotic pattern that is stripped in multiple places. The bed is bolted to the ground and the windows are closed. Jane despises the space and its wallpaper, but John refuses to change rooms, arguing that the nursery is best-suited for her recovery. Because the two characters, Emily and Jane, are forced to become isolated, they turn for the worst. Isolation made the two become psychotic.
Often things that we experience as children have lasting affects on us that creep up when we least expect them. In Judith Minty's story "Killing the Bear", a woman finds herself in just such a situation. She finally deals with something that happened to her as a young child that she probably never even realized was bothering her. In this story the central character painfully comes to grips with a major loss of security from her childhood.
Inevitably, there comes a point in everybody’s life at which they have an experience that completely alters their view of the world. This moment is when one loses his or her innocence, or comes of age, and he or she realizes that they do not live in a utopian Golden Age. Parents are charged with the monumental duty of protecting their children’s innocence, but everybody inescapably grows up. This experience can be anything from an embarrassing situation at school to coming within seconds of death. In the short story “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien, the author tells the true story of his daughter confronting him and asked him if he had ever killed anyone. In an effort to be a good parent and protect the nine-year-old’s innocence, the author does not share with her the story he goes on to tell to the reader. He explains how many years ago, he was serving in the army and was taking a shift guarding his troop’s campsite when all of a sudden, a young man from the opposing army came walking up the trail. Without a second thought, O’Brien killed the boy with a grenade, and he lost his innocence after realizing he had killed a defenseless man without hesitation. Tim O’Brien develops Ambush as a coming of age story through the use of literary devices.
“The Veldt” has a particular way of telling the story, dark and deep. This story shows exactly how everything that seems so perfect could really go wrong. The story is about two kids named Peter and Wendy and how they kill their parents because their parents shut down the nursery. The kids have a high tech nursery that can realistically show any scene the kids can think of. The kids are relying on mechanisms and machines for every single thing. The machines and mechanics seem so perfect and have no way of making any mistake.This can be shown on page 9, “We’ve been contemplating our mechanical for too long…” But because the parents are letting children doing everything with mechanics and machines, it makes the children think that the mechanics are there “real” parents. So this is the reason why the children are so angry when the parents are shutting off the whole house. Everything in the house is all an illusion of
The central characters in both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and A Doll’s House are fully aware of their niche in society. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband believes her illness to be a slight depression, and although she states "personally, I disagree with their ideas,” she knows she must acquiesce their requests anyway (Gilman 1). She says, “What is one to do?” (Gilman 1) The narrator continues to follow her husband’s ideals, although she knows them to be incorrect. She feels trapped in her relationship with her husband, as she has no free will and must stay in the nursery all day. She projects these feelings of entrapment onto the yellow wallpaper. She sees a complex and frustrating pattern, and hidden in the pattern are herself and othe...
The adult world is a cold and terrifying place. There are robberies, shootings, murders, suicides, and much more. If you were to be a small child, perhaps age 5, and you were to look in at this world, you would never know how bad it actually was, just from a single glance. Children have a small slice of ignorant bliss, which helps to keep them away from the harsh of reality. It isn’t until later, when they encounter something that opens their eyes and shows them, that they truly start to understand the world we live it. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird shows the many differences between the simplicity of being a kid and the tough decisions and problems that adults must face every day.
While crime is abundant throughout our world, it’s image is often magnified in urban cities. In the book, There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz describes the striking story of two brothers, Lafayette and Pharoah, struggling to survive in the community of Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex on the West Side of Chicago disfigured by crime and neglect. With their mother’s permission, Kotlowitz follows the lives of the brothers for two years, taking note of their disappointments, joys, and tragedies along the way. Throughout the book, the environment that the boys are forced to live in acts as a predictor for their potential crime-filled future. Using environmental theories, such as James Wilson’s broken windows theory, we, as readers,
The nursery in the story symbolizes the way women were treated like children. In the story, the narrator's husband places her in a nursery room, because she was going through post pardon depression, and he felt she shouldn't be able to see her child while she was sick. As she starts settle into the room, the more she begins to act like a child. Like a baby she could not leave the room whenever she wanted to, she couldn't do nothing but look at the wall and ceiling, and she was kept in one place under the care of her husband. John would treat her like a child by calling her names like "blessed little goose," and "little girl." Just like a baby she would cry for nothing most of the...
Often when children are spoiled, they develop a sense of superiority to those around them. However, after leaving the closed environment of a household, the need for authority and supremacy can create unintended consequences imbedded with sorrow. The fallout from this misfortune is seen in “Why I Live at the P.O.” in the family quarrel that ensues due to the return of Stella-Rondo. Throughout the narration, the author asserts that because, the world is apathetic to one’s dilemmas, a shielded and pampered upbringing can only hamper personal development. Through the denial of truth that the family exhibits in attempts to improve relations and through the jealousy that Sister experiences as inferior to Stella-Rondo, the source of hindered maturity
Every child searches for individuality; what makes everyone unique? As a child, surroundings will shape who a person becomes. So a child raised in secure suburbs might be more trusting than a child who lives in a large city. Different environments will without a doubt put people in uncomfortable and sometimes unfortunate circumstances. Environment as a whole is what affects how a child behaves, thinks, and reacts to certain situations. In the novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou exposes her own struggle to find identity as she endured racial hardships and sexual abuse.
The gang members in Graham Greene’s “The Destructors” are catastrophic young children and teenagers who are unfortunately being greatly affected by their surroundings. Placed in wartime London, their town is in rubble from bombings. Peer pressure is no help when a destructive surrounding and vulnerable ages are strongly influencing the instinctive human behavior of the members, which causes many of their horrific actions.
...f destruction. Actually, the children whom with Mary associated often played within the abandoned houses. Shaw and McKay found that neighborhoods with significantly low socio-economic status had a correlation with higher crime rates. Arguably, one could say that children being able to play in abandoned houses or building, as if playing on a playground, lack significant social control in their neighborhood. It should be argued that for Mary Bell to go undetected in her behaviors, and for her personal abuse to continue for so long, shows that there was a failure in both formal and informal social control. Therefore, her neighborhood was socially disorganized and lead to the deviant behavior of Mary’s neighbors––and ultimately Mary’s. Sadly, if only some form of social control was present in Mary’s life, even in a minute form, possibly the two boys may never have died.
Imagine an inner city kid having grown u in an environment where real life street violence is a way of life. His body, having survived personal experiences of violence, endured barely life sustained conditions, and many sleepless nights caused by the constant yet unpredictable call of death. His mind doubtful over where his next meal will come from, lost in search of some higher guidance, struggling through a world, not of innocent childish fantasies, but trapped in a forced reality. His only outlet is the loud blaring music coddling his already pent-up rage, an escape from these harsh realities, seducing him to a life of violence. In him is created a “me against the world” mentality that is manifested in the rap and hip-hop music that dominates his culture.
... growth where a child is forced to start looking for solutions for everything that is wrong instead of simply being a child. This analysis prove that children have their own way of seeing things and interpreting them. Their defense mechanisms allow them to live through hard and difficult times by creating jokes and games out of the real situation. This enables then to escape the difficulties of the real world.