How Jane Gardam Reveals the Extraordinariness of Ordinary People
Jane Gardam uses a variety of writing styles to give the characters
and narrators a sense of extraordinariness. She does this, for
example, through her choice of language that gives life to the
characters. Three stories in this collection that show this are The
First Adam, Stone Trees and An Unknown Child.
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One of the ways in which Jane Gardam explores the unusual features of
every day people is the use of narrative voice, in first or third
person. The First Adam, is a story of a man named Bull. After finding
retirement boring, Bull returned to work in Drab. The analogy of the
orang-outang is a symbol of Bull's lonely life, which also comes
across through the use of monologue throughout the story. The audience
are first introduced to Bull's extraordinary way of life when he uses
the phrase "My tender mistress" to describe his work. This story is
written using a first person narrator and so he expresses his own
thoughts and feelings to the reader. This is useful for the reader as
they are seeing exactly the same as Bull and so gain an understanding
of the way he views Drab, his work and his life. This is similar to
the style chosen for Stone Treeswhich is about the narrator, her life
and told using stream of consciousness. The story starts on a journey
to the Isle of Wight where the reader realise that her husband has
recently died. One of the most important points of this story is the
narrator repeatedly telling the audience that she did not want
children but she discovers that her husband al...
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.... In Stone Trees, the narrator
is amazed at how kindly Peter is treating her, "even though he is only
seven". This evokes a moment of realisation when she sees the pink
starfish and sees the, "growing things that are there all the time,
though only now and then seen."
All these characters experience "The Pangs of Love" which shows them
to be different and in some cases extraordinary. Jane Gardam's use of
writing styles, for example first and third person, monologue, stream
of consciousness and use of metaphors of motifs teach the audience
different features of the characters so that they are seen as
individuals. The fact that the characters thoughts are all told to the
reader helps them to empathise with the characters and see them as
surprising for coping with their difficult situations in the ways that
they do.
“He uses similes such as the breeze that ‘blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale frogs’ and that also made a shadow on the ‘wine-colored rug’ as ‘wind does on the sea’.”
For example, a person usually has a negative point of view about the people who treat him or her unjustly when he or she works for them. Consequently, this person would feel dissatisfied with his or her work or even hate it. Maggie Holmes reveals that when she worked at her host’s house, her host says she does not have a mop. But the true is that she hides the mop in the clothes closet. This is the reason “why many black women here got rheumatism in their legs, knees” when they use their knee to mop the cold floor many times (Terkel 113). Holmes’s host not only lie to her but also try to call Holmes “nigger”. As a result, Holmes indicates that “most time I don’t call her” (Terkel 115). Through a series of unjust treatments on Holmes, she begins to feel unfair about being a domestic, especially when she talks about her kids. She illustrates “I don’t want my kids to come up and do domestic work… You can’t see no tomorrow there” (Terkel 116). From Holmes’s description about her work experience, audiences can feel that Holmes’s depression, but she needs this job in order to survive. On the other hand, Dave Bender would like to be called Dave instead of Mr. Bender. “When they called me Mr. Bender, I think they’re being sarcastic. I don’t feel like a boss to them. I feel like a chum-buddy” (Terkel 396). Perhaps some people might say the Bender is phony because he doesn’t
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person than he does about the actual personality of the person. In the story a
Jane Addams was a Victorian woman born into a male-dominated society on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father was a wealthy landowner and an Illinois senator who did not object to his daughter’s choice to further her education, but who wanted her to have a traditional life. For years after his death, Addams tried to reconcile the family role she was expected to play with her need to achieve personal fulfillment.
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that this old man didn’t stand well in society due to the characterization. The comprehension of
Gail Godwin's short story "A Sorrowful Woman" revolves around a wife and mother who becomes overwhelmed with her husband and child and withdraws from them, gradually shutting them completely out of her life. Unsatisfied with her role as dutiful mother and wife, she tries on other roles, but finds that none of them satisfy her either. She is accustomed to a specific role, and has a difficult time coping when a more extensive array of choices is presented to her. This is made clear in this section of the story.
Describe the social and historical context of the story (see chapter 1 of "Learning in Adulthood"). If you are working with a historical movie you will want to address both the social and historical context of the story and the social and historical context of the time in which the film was made. For example, if you are working with a movie made in the 1980s about the Civil War you will need to talk about the social and cultural influences of the time of the Civil War and any influences that you see from the 1980s.
Adolescence and its impact on a character is a common theme throughout literature. Adolescence describes the period after childhood and before adulthood in one’s life. Childhood can impact one’s future course in life, whilst adulthood will receive the lasting effects of adolescence. In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre it is possible to see Jane’s adolescence as shaped by her childhood and impacting her adulthood. Jane’s difficult childhood leaves her with warped ideas of love and power. Jane’s adolescence is the first time she receives any love and learns how to love. Lastly, Jane’s adulthood decisions are influenced by her ideas on love and power that have been shaped by her childhood and adolescence.
In her autobiography, “The Life of an Ordinary Woman, Anne Ellis describes just that; the life of an ordinary woman. Ellis reveals much about her early—ordinary if you will—life during the nineteenth-century. She describes what daily life was like, living a pioneer-like lifestyle. Her memoir is ‘Ordinary’ as it is full of many occurrences that the average woman experiences. Such as taking care of her children, cleaning, cooking the—world’s greatest—meals. It also contains many themes such as dysfunctional families, insensitive men, and negligent parents that are seen in modern life. The life of Anne Ellis is relatable. Her life is relatable to modern day life, however, very different.
The novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, has a plot that is filled with an extraordinary amount of problems. Or so it seems as you are reading it. However, it comes to your attention after you have finished it, that there is a common thread running throughout the book. There are many little difficulties that the main character, the indomitable Jane Eyre, must deal with, but once you reach the end of the book you begin to realize that all of Jane's problems are based around one thing. Jane searches throughout the book for love and acceptance, and is forced to endure many hardships before finding them. First, she must cope with the betrayal of the people who are supposed to be her family - her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. Then there is the issue of Jane's time at Lowood School, and how Jane goes out on her own after her best friend leaves. She takes a position at Thornfield Hall as a tutor, and makes some new friendships and even a romance. Yet her newfound happiness is taken away from her and she once again must start over. Then finally, after enduring so much, during the course of the book, Jane finally finds a true family and love, in rather unexpected places.
In "A Woman's Beauty: Put-down or Power Source," Susan Sontag portrays how a woman's beauty has been degraded while being called beautiful and how that conceives their true identity as it seems to portray innocence and honesty while hiding the ugliness of the truth. Over the years, women have being classified as the gentler sex and regarded as the fairer gender. Sontag uses narrative structure to express the conventional attitude, which defines beauty as a concept applied today only to women and their outward appearance. She accomplishes this by using the technique of contrast to distinguish the beauty between men and women and establishing a variation in her essay, by using effective language.
...a character shift through unearthing the reality of fate; by refuting the unjust inequality of society as pointless due to the inescapability, he establishes his detachment from appraisal whilst combating societal standards of judgment due to status one possesses.