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The effects of an unhealthy lifestyle
Effects of unhealthy lifestyle Essay
Effects of unhealthy lifestyle Essay
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In her autobiography, ‘Chinese Cinderella’, Adeline Yen Mah recounts painful memories of a childhood of neglect. The main themes explored in the text are family, abandonment, and self-esteem. Yen Mah’s portrayal of difficult situations in her home life, encourages readers to sympathise with her difficulty, although it is Adeline’s tenacious will to never give up as a child, despite trying circumstances, that enables readers to also like her as a character and hope that she will ultimately succeed in her goal to be recognised by her father. Yen Mah’s first person account of her tragic childhood encourages the audience to see the value of resilience in the face of adversity and reveals that with a positive attitude and belief in your own abilities, …show more content…
Her big sister, Lydia, treats her poorly, as shown when she accuses her of thinking she’s better than her, and being a show off, ‘suddenly, she grabbed my medal and jerked it, becoming enraged because I was pushing her away. “Take that medal winner! Teachers pet! Who do you think you are? Showing off week after week!” Big sister cried as she slapped me with her strong right hand.’ The combination of Big sister’s accusatory tone and violent actions further estranges Adeline from her family as she is once again made to feel that she not wanted and that being smart is not good. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards big sister for her lack of compassion towards Adeline, which reinforces her feelings of isolation from her family. Adeline’s fractured relationship with her family is further revealed through her reflections about school, as she is contrasting about how her classmates treat her differently from her family, ‘I loved everything about my school...my classmates made me feel like I belonged. Unlike my siblings, nobody looked down on me.’ In this text she is contrasting about how her friends makes her feel like she belonged, unlike her family, excluding her and not caring about her. The audience is positioned to feel sympathetic towards Adeline because her family should be the place where she belongs, she’s appreciated, and …show more content…
Readers are positioned to sympathise with Adeline, who struggles to maintain staying with her family and not leaving. Her stepmother, Niang diminishes more and more of her thought of running away, as she is putting her down that she can’t even have fun and celebrate a good friend’s birthday, ‘her face suffused with rage, she slapped me. I felt dizzy and my ears hummed...girls like you should be set away. You don’t belong in this house!’ The combination of being slapped and hearing ‘you don't belong in this house’, further diminishes her thought of running away as she is being called to leave creates a feeling that she doesn't belong. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards Niang for her lack of compassion towards Adeline, which reinforces her feelings of not belonging in her family. Adeline’s continual abandonment can be attributed to her family, which evokes feelings of anger in the audience, who forgot about Adeline and left her at school, ‘one by one they were greeted and led away by their anxiously hovering mothers. Eventually, I was the only one left. Nobody had come for me.’ The juxtaposition of the ‘anxiously hovering’ mothers with the absence of her own loving family emphasises her feeling of abandonment and evokes sadness in the audience who are confronted with the dire reality of her situation. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards Adeline’s family
Adeline had been treated like trash all of her life by her parents. “Nothing will ever come to you.”(Yen Mah 103) Niang is a very strict, distasteful, and hated person in the book. This is important because it shows that Niang is cruel. “Girls like you should be sent away.”(Yen Mah 103) This is important because it shows that Niang hates Adeline. All in all, this shows that when Adeline was a child, she was treated like trash by Niang.
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
...en-year-old girl”. She has now changed mentally into “someone much older”. The loss of her beloved brother means “nothing [will] ever be the same again, for her, for her family, for her brother”. She is losing her “happy” character, and now has a “viole[nt]” personality, that “[is] new to her”. A child losing its family causes a loss of innocence.
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
In reading this story we find a woman tired of being a mother, a wife and of her life in general. "The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to ever see them again" (35). Do you not see what she is thinking? They are sucking the life out of me. Why did I choose to get married? I could have been anything, instead I am the mother of this child and the wife of this man and am here to take care of their needs. Who will take care of my needs? She feels that she is some how letting herself ease away and needs to regain her identity. She soon isolates herself even more by moving into another room maybe thinking she will be able to find the part of herself she has lost. "She was a young queen, a virgin in a tower, she was the previous inhabitant, the girl with all the energies. She tried these personalities on like costumes" (38).
Naomi’s childhood, a terrible and brutal struggle for such a young delicate flower, yields to a blossoming adulthood of understanding and compassion. Although her wounds will never fully heal, Naomi has come to terms with her mother’s absence and her family’s silence. While Stephen does not adapt at all, and instead runs from his problems, Naomi allows herself to become immersed in the flood of her problems. Naomi Nakane spends the early years of her life trying to determine where in the confusion she will take her stand in the battle between verbal communication and silent acceptance, only to find that she has no choice and fate has decided that she will remain silent, longing to speak.
“...Aunt Baba sitting by the dressing table, crying. I crawled into her lap and put my arms around her to comfort her.” (Yen Mah 19). This shows that Adeline truly cares about Aunt Baba even from a young age and aims to make her feel better when she is distraught. It also shows that Aunt Baba also admires Adeline for her strength to get past this horrible event. In the book it states, “Your future is limitless and I shall always be proud of you…” (Yen Mah 197). This means that Aunt Baba knows that Adeline will go on to do great things in her life and makes her feel better about her current situation. She shows Adeline that even though she is facing a hardship now, it will still pay off later. Aunt Baba truly make Adeline feel better about herself and along the way makes herself feel
The narrator’s inner conflict can be seen when she says, “ I had indeed lost my mind, for all the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me and burst—the great need for my mother who was never there, the hopelessness of our poverty and degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and yet both at once, the fear unleashed by my father’s tears. (9) Through this quote, we can see how Lizbeth struggled greatly with what has happened in her life and all the things she had to go through. The unfortunate, sad resolution to this conflict further develops the theme that growing up can be hard and things will happen that you may not like or have control of what happens. When Lizbeth says, “ ‘M-miss Lottie!’ I scrambled to my feet and just stood there and stared at her, and that was the moment when childhood faded and womanhood began. (10) This resolution shows that we can allow guilt and shame to show us that their are not always a happy ending in every story. Therefore, the plot elements of conflict and resolution further develop the
Helene was raised by her grandmother because she mother was a prostitute in the New Orleans. When Helene has a family of her own, she refuses to make her background be known. Helene raises Nel with fear because she doesn’t want her to have the lifestyle she grew up in. Helene controls Nel’s life and makes her see the world how it is. Nel and her mother go on a train to New Orleans to attend the funeral for her great grandmother. On the train, Nel witnessed racial situation between her mother and the white conductor. “Pulling Nel by the arm, she pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in front of a wooden seat… at least no reason that anyone could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood,” (21). Nel was very uncomfortable throughout the trip and wasn’t able to communicate with her mother because she never learned how to since her mother was not supportive of her. Nel views her mother very negatively for the way she raised her. Nel starts to determine her life and great her identity when she became friends with Sula. The effect of negative maternal interactions on an individual is explained by Diane Gillespie and Missy Dehn Kubitschek as they discuss
Jimmy, her boyfriend, is deeply connected to his family and community and he declares in the novel that he would "never leave the village" (Robinson 153). This representation can be seen as a kind of connectedness that Adelaine longs and does not want to lose. Moreover, she does not want to stay in Vancouver, where she is safe from her uncle’s abuse, she does not want to be away from her boyfriend and home, but neither does she want to stay in a situation where her own mother can not defend and protect her: "I knew that she knew. I thought she’d say something then, but we ate breakfast in silence" (Robinson 154). Fagan states that Adelaine is able to utilize humour as a means to communicate without directly speaking about her abuse and manipulate an impossible
... The mother's approach is a source of terror for the child, written as if it is a horror movie, suspense created with the footsteps, the physical embodiment of fear, the doorknob turns. His terror as he tries to run, but her large hands hold him fast, is indicative of his powerless plight. The phrase, 'She loves him.' reiterates that this act signifies entrapment as there is no reciprocation of the ‘love’.
Adeline Yen Mah’s literary skills explain comprehensively how Niang’s flawed personality cause great agony for Adeline. However, it is being mistreated by Niang that ultimately fuels her to undertake the seemingly impossible task of trying to succeed in life. Adeline’s great accomplishments in life were the result of her unfaltering determination in the face of injustice. Niang inadvertently helped her achieve that.
Compromising her individuality, her emotional stability, and her dreams mark Nel's banal and unfulfilling life.Early in Nel's life during a trip to New Orleans, she watches as her mother is humiliated by a train's white, racist conductor; she watches the indignity of her mother's having to squat in an open field to urinate while white train passengers gaze; and she watches her mother's shame at her own Creole mother's libidinous lifestyle. Her mother's submissiveness and humiliation evokes a fear, an anger, and an energy in Nel. Her emotions intensify as she makes a declaration to never be her mother, to never compromise her individuality, "I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me.
Adeline had a very rough childhood, but at least Aunt Baba helps her to get back up when she is knocked down by the people in her family who treat her as unwanted. For instance, one of the quotes in the book said “The truth is that as soon as I had heard Aunt Baba’s footsteps, I had started feeling better immediately. Knowing there was someone who cared for and believed in me had revived my spirit” (Yen Mah 79). This passage from the novel describes how Adeline knows how much Aunt Baba cares for her. Aunt Baba is a huge part of Adeline’s life and
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.