Finding yourself can be strenuous but is challenging everyone must face in life. The two protagonists Sarah Starzynski and Julia Jarmond go through the ultimate battle to find themselves, making life altering decisions in times of conflict. Sarah’s Key, a novel written by Tatiana de Rosnay’s, features two ongoing plot lines involving two protagonists. Sarah Starzynski, a 10 year-old Jewish girl, born in Paris is arrested with her family during the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup in July 1942. Before leaving Sarah locks her four-year-old brother in their secret cupboard, thinking her family would be returning in just a few hours. The second protagonist is Julia Jarmond, a middle aged American journalist, living in Paris. While working for a French-American …show more content…
Sarah and Julia are no exception to this feeling and the conflicts that are created by it. They end up using these experiences to reflect and to continue on their journey to authenticity. Everyone has experienced a passing relative or a disconnection with an old friend, these key moments in our lives make us step back and reevaluate ourselves. Sarah experiences great grief during her journey in July 1942. Once Sarah and her parents arrived at the Velodrome d’Hiver, Sarah continued to ask her father when they are going to go back to their apartment, Sarah’s father explains “There is nothing we can do… Nothing.” (de Rosnay 56). Sarah’s tried to gently tell Sarah there is no hope of getting back to her brother in time or at all. Sarah realizes the gravity in leaving Michael behind, “The girl understood. She was no longer a happy little ten-year-old girl. She was someone much older. Nothing would ever be the same again. For her. For her family. For her brother.” (de Rosnay 57) This moment of potential loss changes something in Sarah making her into a strong and harder little girl, trying to survive these horrendous circumstances and keeping hope for her brother's safety and survival in their secret cupboard. At the Drancy camp, Sarah and her mother are stripped from each other, in that moment she sees her mother break, crumble into something unknown. “Gone was the happy, loving woman. Gone was the mother who used to sweep …show more content…
Both protagonist have gone through tremendous conflict to define themselves as who they really are; Sarah loses her family and her childhood innocence after the arrest, while trying to put all the pieces together Sarah feels discriminated against by the French people and tries to grasp how the people of France can turn a blind eye on its people. Now that Sarah has discovered her authentic self, after all the years and horror, Sarah has become a hard and broken individual, experiencing France and the world's darkest days. Sarah can ultimately not live with what she has gone through. Julia confronts a vase about of problems surrounding her environment. Julia deals with her marriage and profound image of Paris is crumbling at her feet, as well as the discrimination she feels from her in laws for being an American, even after being in their family for fifteen years. Julia can no longer close her eyes on material issues at hand. As Julia becomes to uncover her authentic self are finds a strong, independent woman. Julia truly now understands what it is like to put herself first, choosing her daughter Zoè and her soon to be arriving daughter Sarah. These protagonists have overcame finding their authentic selves, from their conflict and life experience. Journeys of self discovery can be simply uncomplicated while others are treacherous, but while challenging adversity, those
While she might think that her plans are working, they only lead her down a path of destruction. She lands in a boarding house, when child services find her, she goes to jail, becomes pregnant by a man who she believed was rich. Also she becomes sentenced to 15 years in prison, over a street fight with a former friend she double crossed. In the end, she is still serving time and was freed by the warden to go to her mother’s funeral. To only discover that her two sisters were adopted by the man she once loved, her sister is with the man who impregnated her, and the younger sister has become just like her. She wants to warn her sister, but she realizes if she is just like her there is no use in giving her advice. She just decides that her sister must figure it out by
In conclusion, the story describes that life changes, and nothing stays the same throughout it. It is in the hands of the people to decide that how they want their life to be. They can make it as beautiful as they want to and they can also make it worse than it has ever been
When Marie tries to ask the protagonist to take a walk, this action shows that she is trying to achieve Pauline’s dream by getting her outside of the house. Therefore, she could finally feel the true meaning of freedom. Nevertheless, Pauline’s mother’s response demonstrates that she wants her daughter’s safety more than anything. The mother tries to keep Pauline away from the danger, so the protagonist can at last have a healthier life. However, Agathe’s reply shows that her mother is willing to sacrifice Pauline’s dream to keep her secure. Therefore, the author uses contrasting characters to mention that safety is more valuable. Furthermore, the protagonist starts to describe Tante Marie and reveals that she always has her hair “around her shoulder” (85). When Pauline describes Marie, Pauline shows how her Tante is open-minded. In fact, Marie helps Pauline to let go of her limitations and to get a taste of her dream. Therefore, Marie always wants Pauline to go outside and play hockey or even to take a walk. These actions that Pauline’s Tante takes show how she is determinate to make Pauline’s dream come true. Thus, the author
Book three of the novel “Bread Givers,” written by Anzia Yezierska, is set in New York. The story revolves around Sara Smolinsky, her family, and the struggles they face in their daily lives. The main conflict in book three is Sara’s guilt for leaving her family and pursuing her career without seeing them for six years. For example, when she comes back to see her family, she realizes she is too late. Her mother is dying of a stroke.
Her struggles are of a flower trying to blossom in a pile of garbage. Growing up in the poor side of the southside of Chicago, Mexican music blasting early in the morning or ducking from the bullets flying in a drive-by shooting. Julia solace is found in her writing, and in her high school English class. Mr. Ingram her English teacher asks her what she wants out of life she cries “I want to go to school. I want to see the word” and “I want so many things sometimes I can’t even stand it. I feel like I’m going to explode.” But Ama doesn’t see it that way, she just tells, Julia, she is a bad daughter because she wants to leave her family. The world is not what it seems. It is filled with evil and bad people that just want to her hurt and take advantage of
After Sarah escapes the unsanitary camp with Rachel, the two run until they find a place of beauty. “In the late afternoon, they came to a forest, a long, cool stretch of green leafiness. It smelled sweet and humid….a mysterious emerald world dappled with golden sunlight….The water felt wonderful to her skin, a soothing, velvety caress. She wet her shaved head, where the hair had started to grow back, a golden fuzz” (Rosnay 99). This description places images in the mind of the reader that allow for the reader to experience this moment in the forest with Sarah. Vivid descriptions of places and events are more common within Sarah’s story, as she is experiencing the horrors of the war, allowing the reader to visualize the tragedy through the descriptions in a book. Soon after the arrest, Sarah and her family are thrown into the Velodrome d’hiver with other Jews, where a woman jumps from “the highest railing” with her child in hand: “From where the girl sat, she could see the dislocated body of the woman, the bloody skull of the child, sliced open like a ripe tomato” (Rosnay 33). This description captures the horrifying sight Sarah has just witnessed, darkening the mood and tone of the book alike to the depressing events that occurred within the
Sarah and her mother are sought out by the French Police after an order goes out to arrest all French Jews. When Sarah’s little brother starts to feel the pressures of social injustice, he turns to his sister for guidance. Michel did not want to go with the French Police, so he asks Sarah to help him hide in their secret cupboard. Sarah does this because she loves Michel and does not want him to be discriminated against. Sarah, her mother, and her father get arrested for being Jewish and are taken to a concentration camp just outside their hometown. Sarah thinks Michel, her beloved brother, will be safe. She says, “Yes, he’d be safe there. She was sure of it. The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel. I’ll come back for you later. I promise” (Rosnay 9). During this time of inequality, where the French were removing Sarah and her mother just because they were Jewish, Sarah’s brother asked her for help. Sarah promised her brother she would be back for him and helped him escape his impending arrest. Sarah’s brother believed her because he looks up to her and loves her. As the story continues, when Sarah falls ill and is in pain, she also turns to her father for comfort, “at one point she had been sick, bringing up bile, moaning in pain. She had felt her father’s hand upon her, comforting her” (Rosnay 55).
At the end she risks her life and becomes a pretty to become and experiment to David’s moms to test a cure to the brain lesions created when they go ... ... middle of paper ... ... o save them from going through a transformation that will change them forever. The moral of the book is you don’t have to get surgery to look a certain way.
They are already in a compromising situation in celebrating her eighteenth birthday at a gas station having coffee which was already established as being not the norm earlier with Marie recounting her own large party where her “mother made a large party” (154). There reality is broken when the teenagers arrive and “One of the girls went to the juke box and put money in” and they are forced to leave because of Carol condition which causes her to have a breakdown from the noise (157). The arrival of the kids forced them to come into contact with their own reality which can never coincide with the one they have fabricated. This small reminder of what the norm is supposed to be is often brought to their attention through others such as when they “could see, in the light shaft of light, a boy, two girls and a dog” (155). In this instance, they are walking on the way to their weekly picnic, which is in itself repetitive, when they are shown the norm of other having fun “the boy splashing in the water with the dog” while they are forced to go through the motions without much emotion. This depiction of the norm unsettles their reality and, even though they don’t stop trying to alter reality to shelter Carol, shows how dysfunctional their own situation is as it can be seen as a potential version of themselves without Carol’s
correlates to the condition of society during the fifties, and conveys a momentous idea that the people living during this time should have faith in God and hope for the betterment of society in times of hardships, and should not focus on the injustice in the world. First, the reference to the death of millions of innocent people in the bombings of London, Hiroshima, and Dresden outrightly relates to the suffering that people have experienced both during and after the war, because many people innocent perished in WWII for no reason. In addition, David’s death also parallels to the post-WWII era, and relates to J.B. and Sarah’s responses to his death to the pain and devastation that families suffered when their young children who served as soldiers died in World War II. J.B. and Sarah’s discussion during their Thanksgiving meal is yet another parallel to the postwar era and portrays the two different outlooks that people had on life after the war. Finally, MacLeish uses J.B. to relate to the people living during the postwar era by concluding the play with J.B. and Sarah finding comfort in love and rebuilding their life together as a family to convey the message that they should try to alleviate their hardships and sorrow by viewing the situation optimistically and by seeking love in the
When Zora Hurston wrote this novel, she wanted to explain how a young women search for her own identity. This young woman would go through three relationships that took her to the end of the journey of a secure sense of independence. She wanted to find her own voice while in a relationship, but she also witnessed hate, pain, and love through the journey. When Logan Killicks came she witnessed the hate because he never connected physically or emotionally to her. Jody Starks, to what she assumed, as the ticket to freedom. What she did not know was the relationship came with control and pain. When she finally meets Tea Cake she was in love, but had to choose life over love in the end.
Mara, the main character, is a perfectionist. She has straight-As, is in National Honors Society, and is a future Yale student. She is competing with her only ex-boyfriend for the Valedictorian. Her life changes completely when her niece V, who is only a year younger than her, comes to live with Mara. V is a slutty, druggie that has an attitude. This story takes the reader on an adventure of two complete opposite girls who have to learn to love each other. Mara eventually learns that she cannot control everything and has to take life as it comes.
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
All in all, Jeannette’s character development through the course of the novel is immense. Her personality begins to ripen, and she starts to discover the truth about her life and family. Numerous instances occurred in the novel; firstly she discovers the truth about her parents and realizes that she misperceived their personalities. To continue, Jeannette begins to learn a bit more about the issues the Walls face. The life of adventure began to seem dangerous and unstable. Lastly Jeannette starts to develop her own personality and focus on her future. She never had these thoughts previously; she always concerned herself with the dilemmas of others. Throughout Jeannette develops tremendously, she begins to see the world through her own eyes and no longer has a barrier of youth to protect her.
woman she once knew. Both women only see the figure they imagine to be as the setting shows us this, in the end making them believe there is freedom through perseverance but ends in only despair.