When one peeled back the layers of the soul, the parts weren’t so imperceptible. If you looked close enough, you could see that everything had structure and function, purpose and place, even a soul.
Melissa’s sister, Annette, kept their mother’s in a mason jar in her bedroom closet on the top shelf, said I’ll never let the bitch free. One might say Annette had a sore spot when it came to their mother, and it must have throbbed like a nailed thumb the day doctors handed them their mother’s soul in a white, plastic box with a folding top lid. Annette wanted nothing to do with it and turned her back with crossed arms. From the doctors’ expressions alone it was self-evident that no pretty soul rested in that box, and neither sister expected otherwise. Still, disappoint stung once more, but hopefully for Annette and Melissa, that was the last one of Prudence Jacobson.
“You should move in with me,” Annette had said to her that night. “I basically raised you myself.”
Melissa was 17 and Annette was 24. Their father passed away years ago to cancer. Despite his weight and hair loss and all the agonizing days filled with fetal-curled pain, nausea, and tick-tock long appointments, it never bled his spirit, never darkened his striking, vibrant soul.
“As long as I can bring Fido?” Melissa said.
“Okay, but keep him in your room.”
Fido was Melissa’s pet tarantula. She won it at the Canby County fair last year. Her mother had hated it, threatened to stomp on it numerous occasions, so subsequently, Melissa grew fond of it. All those eyes seemed to be taking in something noteworthy, at least more than her mother would ever see. It wasn’t that Prudence was a terrible person, ugly soul or not. It was just that when it came down to i...
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...d castles, and Melissa liked to think he’d found one to call home.
“Then can I at least put her in Fido’s cage?” she asked Annette. “He’s lonely.”
Annette pursed her lips in thought, then conceded. “All right. Just don’t forget to close the lid.”
Melissa picked up the unsightly thing of their mother’s soul and set her down in the cage with Fido. Fido leaned against the opposite wall, one furry leg distended up the glass. His pedipalp appendages twitched in the air as though sensing something. Six black eyes glistened with light and landed on their mother’s soul. Fido crawled towards her and wrapped his two front legs over the backside of her rough shell. Their mother’s soul squeaked and gears clanked in her belly.
Melissa put the pliers back in the drawer. Everything had purpose and place, structure and function, she thought again. Even good-ol’ Fido.
In her article, Quindlen delivers her position to the massive mixed audience of the New York Times, drawing in readers with an emotional and humanizing lure; opening up about her family life and the deaths she endured. Later presenting the loss of her brother's wife and motherless children, Quindlen use this moment to start the engine of her position. Quindlen uses her experiences coupled with other authority figures, such as, the poet Emily Dickenson, Sherwin Nuland, doctor and professor from Yale, author Hope Edelman, and the President. These testimonies all connect to the lasting effects of death on the living, grief. She comes full circle, returning to her recently deceased sister-in-law; begging t...
The book starts off with Jeannette, a successful adult, taking a taxi to a nice party. When she looked out the window, she saw a woman digging through the garbage. The woman was her mother. Rather than calling out to her or saying hi, Jeannette slid down into the seat in fear that her mother would see her. When asking her mother what she should say when people ask about her family, Rose Mary Walls only told her, “Ju...
...om her mother and transported to a pet store where she was locked in a cage until she was purchased by my friend Hailey. I want you to think about her excitement to have a home and Hailey’s excitement to have a new pet to love. Now I want you to think about Hailey receiving the devastating news that her puppy had to be euthanized and Daisy’s fear as she was taken from her owner’s hands and put to death.
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...
That what we, humans, call a soul is the way that we experience the workings of our brain (introspection experienced). This often
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
...ses represent the physical absence of her mother. Implicitly, however, these objects symbolize the lost memories of her mother. The possessive nature of the “mother’s watch” shows that its loss was not welcome. In Morrison’s story when Twyla and Roberta connect many years after staying at the orphanage, Roberta suggests that Maggie, the “kitchen woman with legs like parentheses,” was black (Morrison, 245). Twyla then claims that Maggie was her “dancing mother,” meaning that she was “dead” and “dumb” in addition to being “nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night” (259). The grief Twyla experiences suggests that she felt as though no one cared, that no one had cared for her mother either.
"Her father's death left her not only with a hoard of unresolved grief, but it also left her defenseless against her mother's unintended vampirish harm. She...
..., a loss that everyone can either sympathize or empathize. However, instead of focusing on the pain and heartbreak of not having a mother, the narrator instead takes strength in the fact that her mother is connected to nature. Although her mother is not physically in her life, her body has, instead, been buried in the ground like a seed. This brings the narrator solace because at least her mother’s essence will always be present as long as there are trees, grass, and animals.
But this does not irrefutably destroy the belief in Soul. It is much more complex, which is unnerving because a thorough explanation demands numerous paragraphs.
Mrs. Mallard is an ill woman who is “afflicted with heart trouble” and had to be told very carefully by her sister and husband’s friend that her husband had died (1609). Her illness can be concluded to have been brought upon her by her marriage. She was under a great amount of stress from her unwillingness to be a part of the relationship. Before her marriage, she had a youthful glow, but now “there was a dull stare in her eyes” (1610). Being married to Mr. Mallard stifled the joy of life that she once had. When she realizes the implications of her husband’s death, she exclaims “Free! Body and soul free!” (1610). She feels as though a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and instead of grieving for him, she rejoices for herself. His death is seen as the beginn...
In a time where science and materialism reign, the topic of the soul is rarely mentioned, ostensibly left in the past with the philosophers of old. Nichols, however, candidly broaches this difficult topic and gives new life to the argument that humans do indeed have an immaterial, immortal soul. Nichols summarizes several popular arguments for the existence of the soul as he builds his own argument, which discusses a soul as limited in relation to its environment as well as a soul that is one with the mind and a controller of the body. He discusses both the strengths and challenges to his argument, offering rebuttals to the challenges. Because this soul is the organizing principle of the body it is involved in the Resurrection as well, bridging the gap between the material and spiritual worlds. However, I disagree with Nichols’ assessment, instead choosing the side of materialism where an immaterial soul does not exist.
In the short story “ A Dead Woman’s Secret by Guy de Maupassant, the basic theme is devoted to family and private relationships. The main characters in the story are Marguerite (the daughter), the judge (the son), the priest, and the deceased mother. Marguerite is a nun and she is very religious. The dead woman’s son, the Judge, handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity. The story begins by telling the reader that the woman had died quietly, without pain. The author is very descriptive when explaining the woman’s appearance - “Now she was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been” (1). The children had been kneeling by their mother’s bed for awhile just admiring her. The priest had stopped by to help the children pass by the next hours of great sadness, but the children decided that they wanted to be alone as they spend the last few hours with their mother. Within in the story, the author discusses the relationship between the children’s father and their mother. The father was said to make the mother most unhappy. Great
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
Mare and her family lived in New York City. Her mother was a single parent who tried all her best to make sure that her children had all that the need. Sometimes Mara’s mother Shana didn’t have money, so they went to bed without food. Mara’s life was not how she wanted it to be. She wanted a big house, a father, and a happy big family. Instead her life was the opposite. Her dad died when she was only seven. When her father died, it ruined the family. Her father was the backbone of th...