Judith Ortiz Cofer takes a unusual approach to writing the double narrative, "The Witch 's Husband". A variety of themes could be drawn from this unique story within a story. A couple that struck a deep resounding chord in this mysteriously thought provoking tale are unconditional love and the carefully hidden family secrets within. Can someone really love you, no matter what conditions may arise? Can a family permanently keep things hidden from each other? And if so, at what cost? The well-standing granddaughter of a woman gets swept up in a tale her grandmother strategically unfolds as she struggles in an attempt to convey a message from the rest of the family. Unconditional love ends up testing the people involved, and family secrets buried …show more content…
Her grandmother looked at her knowingly and told her it was because she wanted to leave."You mean abandon your family?" the granddaughter asked, and in turn the answer was yes. She had wanted to leave and never come back. Of course this was very shocking, this secret that had been kept so many years. The grandmother she had known and loved so long had actually wanted to abandon her family and leave forever. She was young and pretty, full of her own dreams and aspirations, and found herself with four children and a husband. Feeling stuck and restless in a family where she was constantly expected to do more and more, she no doubt felt overwhelmed. So, the granddaughter challenged, she left her husband and children and ran away to New York. "I had left him once before," her grandmother explained, "but he found me. I came back home, but on the condition that he never follow me anywhere again. I told him the next time I would not return." At this point things began to fall into place as her grandmother relealed her secret, hidden awa for so long. Her going away to New York had actually been her own husband 's idea. He knew the sickness in her heart was one not physical. He gave her money and made all the arrangments for her to leave and not worry about anything. All she had to do was leave, no obligations. That year, her granmother explained, she lived. Really lived. So the question the granddaughter next asked, was what had made her come back. The answer brings tears to her eyes as her grandmother explains it was because she loved her husband and missed her children, and discovered a newfound appreciation for the sacrifice her grandfather had made to give an entire year of complete freedom to his wife, never knowing if she would return. Then she whispers softly to her granddaughter, "and in time, the husband
The notion behind loving someone is simply a very complicated and esoteric in nature. People often describe a certain chemistry, as in a certain attraction, needed between two individuals who are in love but Barbara Fredrickson is able to coordinate the definition of love on the basis of chemicals. Barbara Fredrickson is able to provide the definition of love on the deductive reasoning based on chemistry, biology, and neurology explained in Love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything we Feel, Think, Do, and Become. As Barbara explains "With each micro-moment of love, then, you climb another rung on the spiraling ladder that lifts you up to your higher ground, to richer and more compassionate social relationships, to greater resilience
Although most people would not be able to give someone so much forgiveness for such dishonorable acts, author Jeannette Walls and her siblings knew it was the only way out. Throughout the book The Glass Castle, Walls writes about hardship in life and overcoming most things through forgiveness and constant love for family. Therefore, it is evident that the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, makes it clear that being able to let go of things for the better is a tremendously important trait to possess when living with a dysfunctional family. These ideas that Walls shares throughout the novel heavily rely on the appeal of pathos and attaining sympathy from the reading through writing about all of the hardships she had to face at such
...seems to have endured the most in his life. Not only did he spend his youth caring for his sick mother and then wife, but he now must live in the painful memory of how his life could have been if the accident never happened. The end of the book leaves the readers saddened and frustrated. Though the novella began with a plotline seemingly leading to an ending as cheery as that of Snow White, in the end, this beautiful maiden turned sour. In this storybook tragedy, “the lovers do not live happily ever after. The witch wins” (Ammons 1).
The grandmother starts the story by trying to manipulate her own son into traveling to a different state than usual. O`Connor in the first two sentences already shows the grandmother’s motive when
Throughout the course of our lives we will experience the deterioration of a loved one due to illness or aging. This may cause us to make a choice of how and where we choose our loved one to die. Authors, Carolyn Jaffe and Carol H. Ehrlich, in their book All Kinds of Love, illustrate how the relationships between doctors, patients', family, friends, hospice volunteers, and hospice nurses all play an important role during he patients last days as they try to reach a "good death". In the book's foreword, Rabbi Earl A. Grollman comments on Jaffe's history of nursing experience and states "Her stories bring alive the concerns, the surprises, the victories, the disappointments, the mistakes, the uncertainties, the joys, and the pain that are part of one's dying" (1, p. v).
While showing how brave and unselfish she was, she also showed that she was fragile and not as strong as she used to be. “A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.” Even though she hit the dog only a little, it caused her to fall into a ditch. At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke. "My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip." This shows how her mind went blank, causing her to forget why she had made the journey.
saying "she has a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal to the very
I rushed out of the bedroom confused. I began to realize what was going on. I ran to where I last saw her and she was not there. Never before I felt my heart sank. My eyes filled with tears. I dropped to my knees and felt the cold white tile she last swept and mopped for my family. I look up and around seeing picture frames of of her kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren smiling. I turn my head to the right and see the that little statue of the Virgin Mary, the last gift we gave her. I began to cry and walked to my mother hugging her. My father walked dreadfully inside the house. He had rushed my great grandmother to the hospital but time has not on his side. She had a bad heart and was not taking her medication. Later that morning, many people I have never seen before came by to pray. I wandered why this had to happen to her. So much grief and sadness came upon
Pure Love in Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood, through a series of different situations, depicts the lives of typical people facing various obstacles in her short story “Happy Endings”. Despite their individual differences, the stories of each of the characters ultimately end in the same way. In her writing she clearly makes a point of commenting on how everybody dies in the same manner, regardless of their life experiences. Behind the obvious meaning of these seemingly pointless stories lies a deeper and more profound meaning. Love plays a central role in each story, and thus it seems that love is the ultimate goal in life.
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
In the Prologue, Miguel De Cervantes describes a parent’s unconditional love. It states, “It sometimes happens that a father has an ugly son with no redeeming grace whatever, yet love will draw a veil over the parental eyes which then behold only cleverness and beauty in place in defects out to be the signs of comeliness and intellect. In my opinion, I believe that he is not describing a physically ugly son, but instead a person with an ugly personality or ugly character. This describes a person who is unkind, mean, rude, disrespectful, or selfish. A parent’s unconditional love is what leads to the veil pulled over the eyes that is described in Don Quixote. Parents mainly see the good in their kids because they love their kids and want the
The purpose of the article “Navigating Love and Autism” by Amy Harmon is to emphasize that autistic people can achieve love, even though the struggles of autism are present. In this article, Jack and Kirsten both have autism and are working to build a dating relationship. For Kirsten and Jack, being comfortable is a huge aspect in their relationship. After their first night together,
... she was scared and alone. With the Grandmother, she already prepared to die if anything happens. She doesn’t have to wear the fancy outfit for the trip but she did it anyways. At the end, she refuses to die and begs for survival. In the end, she realized the error of her ways in the story and that even with the difference between her and The Misfit, they are both the same in sin. Both the grandmother has reach an understanding of fear of death and have self-discover who they really are their whole lives.
One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she had never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friend’s houses. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them. Now, she realizes that they went to make funeral arrangements for her grandmother.
Janice A. Radway teaches in the literature program at Duke University. Before moving to Duke, she taught in the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She says that her teaching and research interests include the history of books and literary production in the United States, together with the history of reading and consumer culture, particularly as they bear on the lives of women. Radway also teaches cultural studies and feminist theory. A writer for Chronicle of Higher Education described Radway as "one of the leaders in the booming interdisciplinary field of cultural studies." Her first book, Reading the Romance (1984) has sold more than 30,00 copies in two editions. Her second book, A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire appeared in October of 1997. What follows is a topic-outline of the introduction to the English version of her first book.