I’m sitting in the sunroom, turning the delicate pages of Flowers for Algernon, and feeling the artificial breeze through my hair. I love listening to the sounds of the creek and the songs of the distant birds as I read. It is my only glimpse into what the outside world feels like. The gray storm clouds coming in are reminiscent of pocket lint as I dive deeper into the story. I read about the betrayal that Charlie Gordon felt when he realized the world was a bitter place, and the people that he trusted turned out to be against him. I wonder if that is really how the world is. How can something so vast and free be so unforgiving?
I look up from my book when I hear a thud near where I assume the back gate is. I’ve never been able to see that
…show more content…
“Yes. I have SCID. I can’t leave my house. I am a freak who is going to die alone in this house! I am falling in love with this guy, and when I am with him it is so great, but there is like a 100% chance that he will kill me if we spend any time together!” I’ve started yelling now. “Does it look like I want to live this life? Doing the same thing every day? Only being able to talk to my mother?!” Redhead and Madame Alexander look at each other blankly, and then turn back to me. Madame Alexander mouths some words at me until Redhead yanks on her pigtail. The two of them disappear from the yard, and I am left alone again, …show more content…
The two girls giggled at each other.
“Why this yard?” I ask, expecting the answer to be something like they wanted to see if the rumors about a trapped sick girl were true.
“You have the highest fence” scribbles Madame Alexander. I immediately feel a wave of relief wash over me when I realize that I am not the circus freak that I assumed I was. These girls couldn’t be much older than six or seven, and the thought that they would have heard rumors of my existence now seems ridiculous.
“Where do you guys live?” I inquire, pondering why I’ve never seen them out of my bedroom window.
The two look at each other and Redhead nods and scratches something onto the paper, “Next door. Over there” she points to the other side of the house, the one opposite to Olly’s. Maybe that is why I’ve never seen them. I have been obsessing over Olly this whole time instead of seeing the rest of the neighborhood. The storm clouds seem to be clearing up as the sun peeks through them. It dawns on me that that is exactly what I have been doing my entire life. I have been so closed off and sheltered that I haven’t been able to look around and really feel what the world is
Henderson, Gloria M., Anna Dunlap Higgins, Bill Day, and Sandra Stevenson Waller. Fences. Literature and Ourselves 2009 Mla Update. Sixth ed. N.p.: Pearson College Div, 2011. 143-97. Print.
As a child you do many things that are horrible but you do them because you either do not care or do not know the consequences to their actions. Percy was a teen who lived in Bend, Oregon and he was happy to live there. He started to see people from California, Seattle, and Portland come to his town which he felt they were invading his territory. Percy and his friends would do many bad things to the rich people because they hated them and wanted them out. Bend was a place where there was a lot of empty land usually grass field. “ When I go back to Bend now, I don't recognize it. I get lost driving around. There are roads where there were none before. There are roundabouts where there were once intersections. Acres of sagebrush have given way to big box stores”. Percy left Oregon for a long time, but when he came back he saw something he had never expected to occur. As he drove around Percy got lost because this was a new...
...r own “sweet” part in the most bitter of times by writing about the his personal experiences of discovering human kindness during the Vietnam War. The deepest moral of the novel is hope. He tries to send out a message that people will be able to endure anything if they can find hope. When the shock of Kiowa’s death shocked O’Brien, he found hope that things would get better and recovered to later honor his friend through writing and freeing his spirit. When Mitchell Sanders was stuck in living hell, he takes a second to notice how perfect nature was, despite the ongoing war, and understands that nature and life shall never cease existence and uses it to motivate himself. This revelation and positivity of all the joyous moments that are possible during war make this story easily relatable to any person of the “real world” that has had to endure anguish and suffering.
Charlie Gordon is a thirty-two year old man who is diagnosed mentally challenged but, is very eager to be smart. In order for this to happen Charlie will have to have surgery. There will be two doctors assisting Charlie; Dr.Strauss and Dr.Nemur. In the novel the two doctors are to totally different in how they motivated Charlie, treatment for Charlie and their reasoning for helping him.
"I am from a little town called Hazard," I replied reluctantly, realizing exactly where this conversation was headed.
High expectations for parties and a hope to make it across the country using only one road are just two examples of the blind optimism seen throughout the novel. While the headstrong characters of the novel run about the country thinking that everything will be all right, the reality remains that most situations end in sorrow or adversely affected lives. Picking up hitchhikers who ultimately fail to have the gas money they promised, parties that end in disaster or argument, and emotionally abused wives and lovers almost always win out over the brand new car that might take them to Mexico or exultation that is sure to find them within the walls of a jazz club.
There is a destructive nature of man is shown in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon through the absence of family. Sci...
Goodman Brown does not emerge from the forest tougher or braver but hateful and spiteful because he becomes enlightened to the ways of world. He comes to terms with the reality tha...
“Where are they going to take us?” my 7 year old brother Dominique asked nervously.
He states, “Waves of anger and fear circulate over the bright and darkened lands of the earth” (6-8). Auden’s use of oxymoron and personification serve as a guide here as he begins to allude to the current conflicts that are beginning. More importantly H.W Auden is also attempting to get the reader’s attention, by stating that people are oblivious to the horrific events that are unfolding. He is disillusioned because humanity as a whole, had become so consumed by their personal affairs, that they became oblivious to the great evils that where unfolding. He elaborates “Obsessing our private lives” and “the unmentionable odor of death offends the September night” (9-11). Again Auden’s use of imagery and personification both allow the reader to visualize the problems that surround the globe and additionally support his enragement with
Wilson, August. “Fences.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 7th ed. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston: Wadsworth CENGAGE, 2010. 1572-1625. Print.
The world contains many recurring events that remind humans of morals or things that are important. In the novel “A Farewell to Arms” many events come again and again. Usually, these events that repeat or come again have a deeper message inscribed in the text. This is not unlike whereas the novel “The Great Gatsby” has weather that unfailingly matches up with the tone and mood of the text. The author Ernest Hemingway has created “A Farewell to Arms” with a motif that is very precise. The motif of rain and nature in Hemingway’s novel divulges that there are things that a human beings cannot control; making them recognize what they lack and how life can bring sadness.
The entirety of the Nadel’s article sheds light on a topic that is not easy for many authors to use without creating caricatures or exaggerated images of a stereotype. At first reading, the content is a little confusing, and somewhat daunting. However, after another reading, the text is easier to grasp. Nadel’s article would have been much stronger if he took time to mention other characters than Troy. Adding more about the character of Rose in this article created a fuller and better grasp on the topic of the fence, which Nadel...
Robert Frost once said, “Don 't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” This quote can be seen as someone broken with such high defenses being loved by another who doesn’t understand the pain and tries to destroy all those defenses. This is exactly the kind of perception that Frost had, everything is dangerous, fear and cautiousness are the supposed answer. While Frost’s work is full of fear it does relate to contemporary people. Contemporary souls have much of the same problems that Frost’s society had to endure such as fear of the unknown or lost. While his society can be seen as rural, and fearful of change, which is a contrast to the contemporary society so ever-present, it is also similar do to his view that the world
He has grown up in the backwash of a dying city and has developed into an individual sensitive to the fact that his town’s vivacity has receded, leaving the faintest echoes of romance, a residue of empty piety, and symbolic memories of an active concern for God and mankind that no longer exists. Although the young boy cannot fully comprehend it intellectually, he feels that his surroundings have become malformed and ostentatious. He is at first as blind as his surroundings, but Joyce prepares us for his eventual perceptive awakening by mitigating his carelessness with an unconscious rejection of the spiritual stagnation of his community. Upon hitting Araby, the boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist outside of his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and comes to realize his self-deception, describing himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity”, a vanity all his own (Joyce). This, inherently, represents the archetypal Joycean epiphany, a small but definitive moment after which life is never quite the same. This epiphany, in which the boy lives a dream in spite of the disagreeable and the material, is brought to its inevitable conclusion, with the single sensation of life disintegrating. At the moment of his realization, the narrator finds that he is able to better understand his particular circumstance, but, unfortunately, this