Victor Turner, through his studies and analysis, developed the concept of liminality which was first introduced by Arnold van Gennep. He focused on social change and revealed the processes that individuals go through in their rites of passage. The Devil’s Playground is a documentary film which depicts the social changes that is experienced by Amish youth in their rites of passage during ‘rumspringa’. This study focuses on applying Turner’s ideas of liminality, communitas, rituals of status elevation, and rituals of status reversal and religions of humility to illustrate the social changes in the lives of the Amish youth.
Turner stated that rites of passage are marked by three phases which include; separation, margin and aggregation. Separation,
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In the film, the rituals of status elevation can be illustrated when the teenager makes up the decision of joining the church. The teenager is baptized and is considered to be in a stable state whereby they follow the Amish rules and customs. On the other hand, Turner’s description of the rituals of status reversal refers to the humbling of an individual in the society. This ritual can be illustrated in the film by the shunning of individuals that occurs when one marries outside the religious guidelines. Moreover, the ritual of status reversal can also be illustrated by the shunning of Velda by her family. She was baptized but decided to leave the church which made her family shun her. In the Amish society, the ritual of status reversal is also achieved once the individuals are alienated from the outside world by separation from electronics, alcohol and other vices considered being sinful to the society. They undergo baptism as a sign of status reversal and are accepted back in the society. Turner’s idea of religion of humility is demonstrated in the film by the equality exercised in the Amish society through alienation from material things that would bring
The work, the Souls of Black Folk explains the problem of color-line in the twentieth century. Examining the time following the civil war the author, W.E.B. Dubois, explains the African American experience of living behind the “veil”. To fully explain the experience of living behind the veil, he provides the reader with situations that a black race experiences in reconstruction. This allowed the readers to metaphorically step into the veil with him. He accomplishes this with the use of “songs of sorrow” with were at the beginning of each chapter, and with the use of anecdotes.
In The Kingdom of Matthias by Johnson and Wilentz, the authors clearly show the significance that the historical events had on the larger economic, social, and religious changes occurring in the United States during the 1820s and 1830s. Both social hierarchy and gender played a large role in the changes during that time period. The effect of the large differences in gender roles exhibited in the The Kingdom of Matthias is still visible and relevant in America’s society today.
Many cultures make clear distinctions between the social status of males and females. In most places, the man is the one who carries leadership roles and the woman is the one who supports the man, but even so, the future is not always guaranteed. The woman will always have a little bit of want for freedom and need for acknowledgement within her heart. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price, the male authority figure of the household, limits the Price women’s ability to aim for higher goals in life, which includes a better living environment and education.
Devil in the Grove is a non-fictional book written by Gilbert King. Kings takes an outside, as well as, unbiased perspective on Thurgood Marshall’s life and the story of the Groveland boys. King’s unbiased view caters to the story well, because it doesn’t cause him to bring much emotion from himself into the story, which can be problem from writers especially in a dispiriting story such as this one. The style of this work is uniform throughout. However, the selection of details jumps around a lot. Although they play a key part in developing the story it does take a couple chapters to actually get into the Groveland Boys. In the beginning, he writes a lot about Marshall and establishes his career well. One man called him the, “Founding Father
Octavia Butler’s trilogy Lilith’s Brood contains a myriad of characters who would be marked as “different” in contemporary American society, whether it is because of their race, gender, sex, or species. Their differences are often the catalyst for conflict between others who see themselves as more normal and, therefore, better and higher ranked in the human hierarchy. Butler’s disdain for human hierarchical tendencies is clear in Lilith’s Brood as she often calls human intelligence and hierarchy “the human contradiction”. Using the protagonists Lilith, Akin, and Jodahs, Butler criticizes the misconceptions formulated about race, sex, and gender and, through their interactions with others, underlines the illogical harassment that often derives from the fear of what we do not yet understand.
While Caucasians are now referred to as sienna and African-Americans are now called umber, race is not a common determining factor in the decision for one to be unwound. However, teenagers are treated differently and discriminated against based on their title. Children that are set to be unwound or “Unwinds” are seen as troublemakers by their peers, whereas tithes are seen as angelic children of God. In harvest camps, the Unwinds or “Terribles” are forced to workout and be at their physical peak before their unwinding. Tithes, on the other hand, are put on a metaphorical pedestal and paraded around the athletic fields in white, silk outfits (Shusterman, 272-274). People in Unwind are not judged by their race, but instead their social and legal statuses and their fate.
The lives we lead and the type of character we possess are said to be individual decisions. Yet from early stages in our life, our character is shaped by the values, customs and mindsets of those who surround us. The characteristics of this environment affect the way we think and behave ultimately shaping us into a product of the environment we are raised in. Lily Bart, the protagonist in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, is an exceedingly beautiful bachelorette who grows up accustomed to living a life of luxury amongst New York City’s upper-class in the 20th century. When her family goes bankrupt, Lily is left searching for security and stability, both of which, she is taught can be only be attained through a wealthy marriage. Although, Lily is ashamed of her society’s tendencies, she is afraid that the values taught in her upbringing shaped her into “an organism so helpless outside of its narrow range” (Wharton 423). For Lily, it comes down to a choice between two antagonistic forces: the life she desires with a happiness, freedom and love and the life she was cut out to live with wealth, prestige and power. Although, Lily’s upbringing conditioned her to desire wealth and prestige, Lily’s more significant desires happiness, freedom and love ultimately allow her to break free.
On March 26, 1997, in what has become known as one of the most noteworthy mass suicides in history, thirty-nine men and women affiliated with the Heavens Gate cult took their own lives by ingesting a combination of Phenobarbitals mixed with applesauce and alcohol. Each was dressed all in black, their faces covered by a purple shroud. Those who wore glasses had them neatly folded next to their body, and all had identification papers for the authorities to find. The house was immaculate, tidier even than before the victims had moved in. It was as if, in preparing for their death, they were heeding the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” And while their abrupt end may seem rather strange, the way they lived is even more perplexing.
Each culture has its own way of living based upon the expectations of family living. Within those expectations, there is a dominant gender role that comes into play. In the essay “Once More to the Lake,” White lives a traditional life, where men play the more dominant role. In the essay “Street Scenes”, Hood brings the reader back to her home town through vivid memories of her modernized life, where she and her mother play the female dominant role in society. E.B White and Hood represent entirely different gender roles that are acquired in society within contrasting generations, containing similar values.
The De Lacey’s are of low socioeconomic status, and throughout the monster’s encounter with the De Lacey family, Felix, Safie, and the monster “lament their singularity and long for companionship,” establishing “the principal task the novel sets for its characters [to be] the project of community building, that is, of specifying the basis and boundaries of shared life” (Bentley, 326). This initially demonstrates how low socioeconomic status can decrease social interactions with outsiders, thus making compassion and acceptance towards those outsiders increasingly difficult. Additionally, Shelley, as interpreted by Bentley, “develops a theory of political community,” with the story of Safie’s father and the exile of Felix and the De Lacey family. (Bentley, 326). After the betrayal, where this political community was put above human ties, the De Lacey family is increasingly likely to become deterred from accepting people outside of their family. The De Lacey's “violent aversion to the benevolent stranger in their midst suggests that an antisocial impulse is bound up with their domestic bliss;” Komisaruk theorizes, “Shelley links this tendency carefully to their socioeconomic circumstances” (Komisaruk, 432). With this, Shelley uses the De Lacey family to demonstrate how their low socioeconomic
Many critics notice the connection between recurring themes such as seclusion and sexuality to differentiate each parallel and topic shown in Anderson’s work. Both stories are from Sherwood Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio that is set during the latter part of the 19th century. The stories “catalog Anderson’s negative reaction to the transformation of Ohi...
In the poem, "Rite of Passage," by Sharon Olds, the speaker, who is a mother, goes into detail about her son's birthday party celebration. Let us first begin by analyzing the title of the poem, "Rite of Passage," Encyclopedia Britannica describes a rite of passage as a ceremonial event, existing in all historically known societies, that marks the passage from one social or religious status to another. Given the plot of the poem about a young boy having his peers over celebrate his birthday, one might be automatically compelled to say the rite of passage is for him, however with a closer analysis of the poem in its entirety, one can argue the title and the plot hold deeper meaning.
A rite of passage is defined as a ceremony marking a significant transition or an important event or achievement, both regarded as having great meaning in lives of individuals. In Sharon Olds' moving poem "Rite of Passage", these definitions are illustrated in the lives of a mother and her seven-year-old son. The seriousness and significance of these events are represented in the author's tone, which undergoes many of its own changes as the poem progresses.
The novels Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness are illustrations of the baser aspects of human nature, both in their content and the manner in which they deal with the subject of subjugation, violence, and suffering during historical interracial confluences. This fact is illus...
Throughout the story, the boy went through a variety of changes that will pose as different themes of the story including alienation, transformation, and the meaning of religion. The themes of this story are important to show the growth of the young boy into a man. Without alienation, he wouldn't have understand the complexity of his feelings and learned to accept faults. With transformation, he would have continued his boyish games and wouldn't be able to grow as a person and adolescence. And finally, without understanding the religious aspects of his life, he would go on pretending he is somebody that he's not. He wouldn't understand that there is inconsistency between the real and ideal life (Brooks et al.).