As a result of her mother’s incarceration, Astrid is thrusted into a myriad of unmerited situations- the foster homes. One evil stepmother leads to another in this tale of adversity and just when Astrid’s prospects brighten under a shining sun, the clouds roll in and it begins to rain. “White Oleander” is a Cinderella story with all the ingredients of misery and misfortune but the wrong ending.
At the beginning of her first real encounter with calamity, Astrid is inundated with a deluge of emotions, leaving her dazed. It is during this time of bewilderment that the young girl is placed in her first foster home in the custody of a Sunday Christian named Starr. With the absence of a father figure in her life, Astrid’s feelings for Ray metamorphose into those of desire and what began as a timid liking, turns into something much more. The Oedipal feelings she harbors towards “Uncle” Ray, Starr’s boyfriend, lead ultimately her expulsion from the home.
Now crippled with the consequences of her desires, Astrid is relocated to the racially “opinionated” turquoise home of Marvel where she is exposed to the influence of the sophisticated Olivia. In her time of need for something beautiful when her own beauty has been marred by the Starr’s jealousy, Astrid idolizes the woman next door who is, in her eyes, perfect. She comes to depend on Olivia as a staple in her life, someone who will be there to teach her the things a woman should know. However, contact with her idol eventually leads Astrid to another home because of Marvel’s racist ideals.
Cut off from her hero, whom she reluctantly realizes is just like her mother, Astrid is placed in a beautiful home in the custody of a graceful Hispanic woman named Amelia. At this point, Astrid’s role changes from that of a babysitter. In Amelia’s home, she becomes money to pay for more remodeling. In this environment where she has nothing to eat, Astrid’s survival instincts come to play. What isn’t provided for her, she provides for herself. At the urging of her mother, Astrid asks for new placement and is, for once, lucky enough to have her case handed to a social worker that seems to care.
It is at this point that a ray of light breaks through the clouds. Though Claire seems extremely fragile and dependent, it is also evident that she is a caring person.
A breathtaking saga of a young girl’s tragic memories of her childhood. As with Ellen, Gibbons’ parents both died before she was twelve-years-old, forming the family. basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and actions of Ellen. The simplistic and humble attitude that both Gibbons and Ellen epitomizes in the novel is portrayed through diction and dialogue.
George and Ophelia grow up in significantly different environments with exposure to vastly dissimilar experiences; their diverse backgrounds have a profound impact on the way they interpret and react to situations as adults. George and Ophelia both grow up without their parents, but for different reasons. George grows up at the Wallace P. Andrews Shelter for Boys in New York. The Shelter’s strict surroundings did not provide the warm and inviting atmosphere that a mother strives for in a home. The employees at the Shelter are not “loving people,” (p. 23) but they are devoted to their job, and the boys. At a young age, Ophelia loses her mother. We learn very little about her apparently absent father. Mama Day and Abigail raise Ophelia. Abigail provides a source of comfort and love for Ophelia as she fulfills the role of mother figure. Mama day, Ophelia’s great aunt, acts more as a father figure. “If Grandma had been there, she would have held me when I broke down and cry. Mama Day only said that for a long time there would be something to bring on tears aplenty.” (p. 304). Ophelia grows up on the small island of Willow Springs. Everyone knows each other and their business, in the laid-back island community. The border between Georgia and South Carolina splits down the middle of the island. Instead of seeing any advantage to belonging to either state, the townspeople would prefer to operate independently. For George and Ophelia, the differences in their backgrounds will have a tremendous impact on many facets of their adult lives.
Working as a teacher serving at-risk four-year-old children, approximately six of her eighteen students lived in foster care. The environment introduced Kathy to the impact of domestic violence, drugs, and family instability on a developing child. Her family lineage had a history of social service and she found herself concerned with the wellbeing of one little girl. Angelica, a foster child in Kathy’s class soon to be displaced again was born the daughter of a drug addict. She had been labeled a troublemaker, yet the Harrisons took the thirty-hour training for foster and adoptive care and brought her home to adopt. Within six months, the family would also adopted Angie’s sister Neddy. This is when the Harrison family dynamic drastically changes and Kathy begins a journey with over a hundred foster children passing through her home seeking refuge.
The lack of support and affection protagonists, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, causes them to construct their lives on their own without a motherly figure. Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, displays the development of Sula and Nel through childhood into adulthood. Before Sula and Nel enter the story, Morrison describes the history of the Peace and Wright family. The Peace family live abnormally to their town of Medallion, Ohio. Whereas the Wrights have a conventional life style, living up to society’s expectations.The importance of a healthy mother-daughter relationship is shown through the interactions of Eva and Hannah Peace, Hannah and Sula, and between Helene Wright and Nel. When Sula and Nel become friends they realize the improper parenting they
What is Oleanna ? Is it a perfect world, or is it a world… The play
Her parents meet at a social gathering in town and where married shortly thereafter. Marie’s name was chosen by her grandmother and mother, “because they loved to read the list was quite long with much debate over each name.” If she was a boy her name would have been Francis, so she is very happy to have born a girl. Marie’s great uncle was a physician and delivered her in the local hospital. Her mother, was a housewife, as was the norm in those days and her father ran his own business. Her mother was very close with her parents, two brothers, and two sisters. When her grandmother was diagnosed with asthma the family had to move. In those days a warm and dry climate was recommended, Arizona was the chosen state. Because her grandma could never quite leave home, KY, the family made many trips between the states. These trips back and forth dominated Marie’s childhood with her uncles and aunts being her childhood playmates.
Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, “ These things come and go but they are unexplainable”. This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.
One of the main themes of this novel is the discomfort of adolescence. Frankie occasionally fantasizes herself in the world of adult people - joining the army, going to Hollywood to be a movie star- ; noises from the outside, which children make while playing irritates Frankie. She refers to those children “‘just a lot of ugly silly children.’” Her father once tells her that summer that she was too old to sleep with him and this makes her insecure and anxious about maturing. While she is so eager to be a grown up, she still has all those childish fears. The intimacy she used to share with her father is now gone, and since her mother has died when she was born, she does not have any woman, a motherlike figure other than the housemaid, Berenice.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Dorothea Brooke is a very bright and beautiful young lady that does not much care for frills or getting ahead in society. She wants more than anything to help those around her, starting with the tenants of her uncle. She desires to redesign their cottages, but Arthur Brooke, her elderly uncle with whom she and her younger sister Celia Brooke lives with, does not want to spend the money required. So Dorothea shares her dream with Sir James Chettam, who finds her fascinating, and encourages her to use the plans she has drawn up for the tenants on his land instead. He falls in love with her, but does not share his feelings for her quickly enough. Edward Casaubon, an older scholarly clergyman asks Dorothea to marry him, she does not accept until she finds out Sir James means to seriously court her, then turns around and tells Casaubon yes. What she does not te...
Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story, but give significance as well. The point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel. The author chooses to write the novel through the eyes of the main character and narrator, Jack. Jack’s perception of the world is confined to an eleven foot square room.
The narrator, Twyla, begins by recalling the time she spent with her friend, Roberta, at the St. Bonaventure orphanage. From the beginning of the story, the only fact that is confirmed by the author is that Twyla and Roberta are of a different race, saying, “they looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison, 2254). They were eight-years old. In the beginning of the story, Twyla says, “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” This line sets the tone of the story from the start. This quote begins to separate the two girls i...
Her mother and her lover, both glad to her take her in to clean up and rest, but before the day’s end her mother tells her she needs to return to her father. Fully aware of the extent of her ex-husband 's brutality she still insists that her own daughter must go back for fear of prosecution by lawyers. Nieve sums up the emotional betrayal by her mother “After my mom covered me with kisses and hugged me tight, she said that if the lawyers didn 't give her permission, she couldn’t let me stay the night because she’d sign a paper that very clearly said she wouldn’t do that. Never in my life did I imagine I’d ever hear my mother say something like that” (75).This statement shattered Nieve’s hopeful view of her mother as her saviour. And with this betrayal she began the learn the true nature of man’s fear and strength. At the age of just nine, she had no trust in her parents, she only had herself. Shortly after this blow, agents of the CDR take Nieve to an orphanage disgussed as a boarding school. Her mother and father again battle for custody of Nieve, but as far as Nieve is concerned, she is an orphan. This point of view is shared by Nieve when her mom comes to discuss Nieve’s potential adoption “Norma is the woman who wants to adopt me. My mother was ashamed because she never imagined the school would ever ask her to come in to talk about such a thing. ‘How can a girl
As a girl, she had an extremely difficult childhood as an orphan and was passed around from orphanage to orphanage. The author has absolute admiration for how his mother overcame her upbringing. He opens the third chapter by saying, “She was whatever the opposite of a juvenile delinquent is, and this was not due to her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, since whatever it was in her that was the opposite of a juvenile delinquent was too strong to have been due to the effect of any environment…the life where life had thrown her was deep and dirty” (40). By saying that she was ‘the opposite of a juvenile delinquent’, he makes her appear as almost a saintly figure, as he looks up to her with profound admiration. He defends his views on his mother’s saintly status as not being an effect of being in a Catholic orphanage, rather, due to her own strong will. O’Connor acknowledges to the extent that her childhood was difficult through his diction of life ‘throwing’ her rather than her being in control of it. As a result, she ended up in unsanitary and uncomfortable orphanages, a ‘deep and dirty’ circumstance that was out of her control. Because of this, the author recognizes that although his childhood was troublesome, his mother’s was much worse. She was still able to overcome it, and because of it, he can overcome
The old fear of falling through the cracks of the jetty’s boardwalk came over her once again even though she was grown up. The anxiety and adrenaline of fear came over her and she was now regretting the decision to leave parents. As she boards the small boat that will soon take her to the large ship, she has one last chance to say good bye to her family. Annie now boards the ship and gives her family one last wave of the red handkerchief that her mother gave her. She can see the tears on her mother as she slowly floats away. She makes her way to the cabin where she will stay for the long trip. How she feels now contradicts how she felt then. Though in the back of her mind she still feels that the decision she made was for the best. Yet now with time to regather her thoughts she is beginning to wonder if this was really what she wanted. Was it really the best decision to leave Antigua in order to embark on nursing school or any other life than what she lived before or was it never the real desire. Now we look back at Marita , She is deep into her semester of school and she is on the right track to succeed. Though the times she use to spend after school with her best friend having fun now have turned into times of study, She rarely goes to her best friend’s house and when she does it is to work on an assignment together or to study. Marita has sacrificed all of her time to the school. School starts at seven twenty-five