In Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt, Dicey, age 13, James, age 10, Maybeth, age 9, and Sammy, age 6, are abandoned by their mother in the middle of Connecticut in a parking lot. They have to find their way to Aunt Cilla’s house because she is their only relative Dicey knows. With very little money and food, the Tillermans walk all the way to Bridgeport to find out that Aunt Cilla is dead and their Cousin Eunice is the only one there. They live with Cousin Eunice for a while, then later travel to their Grandma’s house. One symbol in the story is the long road, and it symbolizes all four children’s hardships, their hopelessness, and their poverty. Another symbol is the sailboat, and it symbolizes the hope the children need and Dicey’s want to be accepted and taken in by her grandmother. Eunice’s dress for Maybeth is another symbol, and it symbolizes embarrassment and a desire to hide problems.
One symbol in the story is the long road the children travel on and it symbolizes all four children’s hardships, their hopelessness, and their poverty. Moreover, on the road, they had many difficulties, with no money, no idea of where they were going and no hope at all. For instance, when they were on the road, “No money, no food, no way to go forward [on the road]. The silence behind her told her that her brothers and sister were watching her. Maybe they could just all stay right here, without moving, and turn to stone. Then her troubles would be over. Dicey opened her eyes and studied the darkness of her knees. There was nothing more she could do. Nothing. That was it. The end,” (p.94). This exhibits that one symbol in the story is the long road and it symbolizes all four children’s hardships, their hopelessness, and their poverty because now tha...
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... Dicey reminds me of the character in Willow, Willow. After her parent’s die in an accident, Willow starts to cut herself with a razor blade because it seems like that is the only cure for her emotional pain. However, when she meets Guy, a boy as sensitive and complicated as her, she starts making decisions she would never do or even think of. Both Willow and Dicey find hope in themselves. In the beginning, they were struggling because of all the hardships they were facing and they didn’t know how to control them. Towards the end, they find hope in themselves because they realize that you can face your hardships with hope. Hope is something that you can cling on to when nothing is left for you to believe in; it keeps you going in life. It gives you a future. When Willow and Dicey had hope in themselves, it helped them keep going on in life instead of just giving up.
Various symbols are used in "The Lesson," by Toni Cade Bambara, to represent the social and economic inequality faced by the children in this story. The children, not that they asked for it, are dealt the bad hand by fate. It is up to them to decide what to do about it or even to do anything at all.
As the book opens, the reader learns about Charley’s disability. The author mentions about Charley’s peg leg, and then goes on to talk about how he came about to losing his leg. The lost leg can be interpreted in a very symbolic way. The loss of his leg signifies imbalance in his life. The fact that he lost it because of a gun beneath a “Rose” can also be interpreted as: the reason for his instability is his dead love, Rose. The character seems alienated, and Green uses Charley’s misfortunes to draw sympathy from the reader. Also, the author’s intention of mentioning that the bus and the passengers were departing could be to reemphasize Charley’s isolation. The author tends to list out Charley’s struggles and the events from the war to increase the effect left on the reader, emphasizing the grief in Charley’s life. As the passage progresses, the reader learns about the child who Charley ignores initially. However, the spatial description of Charley and the boy come to be very metaphoric. A key scene in the passage is that o...
There are more clues and subtle hints that reinforce these statements, most correlating to her mental illness and self-perception. The statements made through the use of said symbolism turns this story into an interesting viewpoint of a psychological breakdown.
The first symbol that really stuck out to me was when Della chopped off her knee length hair. The story cites, “Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.” She had obviously not cut her year since she was a young girl, so for her to cut her hair for her beloved husband is like her putting away her past and giving it to Jim. Another quote that adolescence shines through is “Cut it off and sold it,” said
innocence. Images of the sunset and of a journey and several others appear throughout the story to amplify the theme of Young Goodman Brown.
Symbolism shows the reader that there is a deeper message within the diction. “The Lottery” addresses the theme more successfully than “The Ones Who Walked Away from the Omelas” with the greater use of religious and traditional symbolism. The symbolisms in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” are various, but “The Lottery” uses symbolism for personal appeal and also makes a deeper connection between the symbols and the theme, making the short story more successful.
In her story “Currents” Hannah Vosckuil uses symbolism, and a reverse narrative structure to show the story of how unnamed sympathetic and antagonistic characters react differently to a traumatic event. Symbolism can be found in this story in the way that Gary does not mind sitting in the dark alone at the end of the day as well as how both of his girls are affected by the symbolism of hands. One holding a boy’s hand for the first time and the other becoming sick after seeing the dead boy’s hand fall off the stretcher. The sympathetic and antagonistic manner of these characters is shown when both girls are told by their grandmother that they must return to the water to swim the next day. The grandmother sees this simply as a way of encouraging them and keeping them from becoming afraid of the water. However, the girls see this as a scary proposition because of what had happened, showing the grandmother as an antagonist character to the little girls.
The poem contains the central idea that many of these children never understood what home really means. In Native American culture the people venerate earth and it is referred to as mother nature which we see in the poem. The rails cut right through their home but they don’t view them like the average person. They view the tracks as if they are scars across mother earths face and her face is the Native American’s homeland. She is scarred for eternity but she is perfect in their dreams. This symbolism is ironic because the children try to reach home using the railroad that ruined natural life for them and many other Native Americans. In the second stanza the speaker says “The worn-down welts of ancient punishments lead back and fourth” (15-16). Which can be talking about the marks on the children’s bodies after getting caught while running away. But the “word-down welts” can also symbolize the welts that were put on mother nature throughout history. The last five lines of the poem sums up the symbol of hope through their memories and dreams. The last line of the poem says, “the spines of names and leaves.” (20-24). The “spines” symbolize the physical strength of the children and their ability to maintain hope individually “names”, and for their tribe
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
Symbols find their place within a narrative through a conscious desire of the author to create a pattern of meaning, while the reader on the other hand, attempts to re-construct these meanings by drawing upon conventional associations with events. Conventional symbols are thus internalized in our mental consciousness and associated with what we take to be their predisposed meanings. That is, our minds works to form preconceived mental pictures of what these symbols should universally represent. "13 Happiness Street" is thus a narrative that gains much of its significance through the subversion of conventional symbols against our expectations.
Symbolism is the use of a person, place, or thing to represent an idea or quality. In the story The Yellow Wallpaper is filled with symbolism the pattern of the wallpaper, the moonlight, and the house. The pattern of the yellow wallpaper can be seen as a cage. This can be why the narrator feels like she is trapped inside the wallpaper. The moonlight can symbolize the narrator because during the day she remains motionless due to her husband watching her and at night she creeps through the room and remains alert and awake. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by...
The entire story was a symbol of Needy’s life. The setting in the story was symbolic to the way Needy was feeling. Needy’s life was diminishing right before his eyes, and he did not realize it. The different changes in the story represented how much Needy’s life had gradually changed over time. By reading the story the reader can tell that Needy was in a state of denial.
The two roads presented in this poem represent difficult decisions we are faced with in life. He uses the relationship between the paths and real life decisions throughout the whole poem. This is an example of extended metaphor, which is used to help the readers understand the analogy between the two. The man in the poem said: “long I stood” (3), which lets us know the decision was not made instantly. It was hard for the man to make a final judgment.
The overarching theme throughout the entire poem is that of choices. The concept of “two roads diverged,” or a split in the road, is a metaphor representing a choice which the narrator must make. Being “sorry [he] could not travel both… [being] one traveler” illustrates that, although he wishes he could see the results of both choices, as seen in saying he “looked as far as [he] could to where it bent,” he is but one pers...
The choice of words of the author also contributes to the development of the theme. For example, the use of words like "drafty," "half-heartedly," and "half-imagined" give the reader the idea of how faintly the dilemma was perceived and understood by the children, thus adding to the idea that the children cannot understand the burden the speaker has upon herself. In addition, referring to a Rembrandt as just a "picture" and to the woman as "old age," we can see that these two symbols, which are very important to the speaker and to the poem, are considered trivial by the children, thus contributing to the concept that the children cannot feel what the speaker is feeling.