The essay Four Menus by Sheila Squillante challenges mainstream pieces of writing in various ways. This essay closely resembles poetry with its metaphors and symbolism. This similarity is not a surprise given that Squillante is also a poet. Most essays explain an idea in a structured format which is greatly different from this piece. Four Menus jumps from scenes starting at a Korean restaurant and later at a house. Within the essay she tells flashbacks of times with her friends. These flashbacks are rather random and there seems to be scattered ideas. While pondering all of these aspects of her work I came the conclusion that an essay does not have to be black and white; as long as a main idea is covered it can be left as is. Most of us grew
While running the Whistle Stop Cafe, Idgie and Ruth help certain individuals, especially throughout the extraordinary misery, when the ladies sustain each eager individual – frequently at no charge – that passes through their entryways. Idgie likewise supports the "colored" occupants of Whistle Stop by serving them from the indirect access – despite the fact that isolation is strictly upheld – and treating her colored people with the same reasonableness with which she treats her white workers. A scene that was very gruesome which leads to a character development in Idgie is at the point when the forthcoming Bennett tries to take the infant from her house one night, a hued workers, Sipsey, kills him with a griddle, and her child, Huge George, discards the body in that week's barbecue, which he then proceeds to feed to the analysts performing the homicide investigation. Eventually when Idgie is captured for the wrongdoing years after the fact, she declines at fault Huge George or Sipsey, and dangers time in jail deceiving the jury by providing a plausible excuse for all of them. At the point when Ruth dies, Idgie's story basically ceases from all operations, however at the end of the novel, it is indicated that she is still alive. But when idgie was young it was quite clear that she was not always like this because she used to be the type that needed to run about and scratch her knees, get bruised eyes, and get messy, and that is simply what she did. Not much her own particular Momma could do to control her. Another side that reveals a character trait of Idgie’s is the point when Buddy dies Idgie runs off and doesn’t let anybody in her family draw close to her. She might go back just to check how her family was doing, yet she lived ...
Peter Kreeft says that there is a moral jungle in the world. The perversion and sin is enticing us every day, and if we lack of will and perseverance, we may fall in an immoral life. Nowadays, subjects like abortion, AIDS, rape, drugs and violence are torturing us. Our soul may be destroyed by the greed for money and riches. The twentieth century was supposed to be peaceful and prosperous, but the man invented The World War; therefore, genocides and starvation appeared. However, there is a being who encourages us to be moral people, and he is God. Bad times are no excuses for bad choices and bad lives. Moral rules and ideals are not designed for good times but for bad times. For example, the laws of a country are most needed when there is corruption and negligence. Bad times are for good people and good people are for bad times; only in a bad world can we become good. Therefore, times of crisis serve us to rise up and fight against them.
If two people love each other regardless of any difference they may have, then why are there” lots of things to consider”( paragraph 36)? Answer the question within the context of the story.
Michael Ondaatje is very much like the narrator of his novel. Both share similar aspects of their lives beginning with the fact they share the same name: Michael. It is perhaps because Ondaatje himself experienced the same voyage as eleven year old Michael that the novel seems so very realistic. Both are born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and each, at age eleven take the voyage of a lifetime by boat from Sri Lanka to England. It seems appropriate that as the narrator of the book recalls his past as a journalist deep in adulthood, the same may be said of the novels true real author. Only Ondaatje himself knows how connected the two journeys are and this blend of truth and fiction are married perfectly to create a dreamlike quality to young Michael’s story.
American consumers think of voting as something to be done in a booth when election season comes around. In fact, voting happens with every swipe of a credit card in a supermarket, and with every drive-through window order. Every bite taken in the United States has repercussions that are socially, politically, economically, and morally based. How food is produced and where it comes from is so much more complicated than the picture of the pastured cow on the packaging seen when placing a vote. So what happens when parents are forced to make a vote for their children each and every meal? This is the dilemma that Jonathan Safran Foer is faced with, and what prompted his novel, Eating Animals. Perhaps one of the core issues explored is the American factory farm. Although it is said that factory farms are the best way to produce a large amount of food at an affordable price, I agree with Foer that government subsidized factory farms use taxpayer dollars to exploit animals to feed citizens meat produced in a way that is unsustainable, unhealthy, immoral, and wasteful. Foer also argues for vegetarianism and decreased meat consumption overall, however based on the facts it seems more logical to take baby steps such as encouraging people to buy locally grown or at least family farmed meat, rather than from the big dogs. This will encourage the government to reevaluate the way meat is produced. People eat animals, but they should do so responsibly for their own benefit.
Diamant has Dinah effectively tell her story from three different narrative perspectives. The bulk of the novel is related by Dinah in first person, providing a private look at growing up and personal tragedy: "It seemed that I was the last person alive in the world" (Diamant 203). Dinah tells the story that she says was mangled in the bible.
In the opening statement of his satirical article "Fat and Happy?" Hillel Schwartz, who earned a Ph. D. in European History from Yale University, claims, "Fatness is fine" (Schwartz 179). The author states that weight is not the cause of an obese person's health, but rather, the constant losing and gain weight that occurs during dieting. He also expresses that fatness has not been proven to cut life short (180). Overweight people, in the mind of Schwartz, are treated like minorities. He elaborates by saying, "Like other minorities, fat people are treated like children, given silly nicknames, considered socially and sexually immature" (180). Schwartz also discredits physicians for not taking responsibility for their patients by mocking their tactics of browbeating a sense of fear upon their patients. He also mentions that
In "The Rules of the Game," a short story about a young Chinese-American girl, Waverly Jong, embarks journey to become a chess master. Waverly's mother believes she is a key component during this journey. Even though the mother actually has no true role in Waverly's adventure, she continues to believe it is her as the one who is succeeding. This belief is a necessity for Waverly's mother because she has nothing for herself. Waverly's mother has to live through her daughter because of her own lack of success.
Love as an impairer or love as an enhancer. As I went along reading these literary pieces, such as Proust’s Swann In Love, and Marquez’s Love In The Time Of Cholera, I couldn’t help but continuously see love being implicitly depicted as an impairer. I did manage to find a great example of love as an enhancer in Nussbaum’s Loves Knowledge. Love impairs our judgments and makes us do ridiculous things that we only do whilst in love. The impaired nature of our minds can be both beautifully displayed in the most innocent of ways or completely strange and misguided. But when enhanced, beautiful cognition of one’s self occurs. A jolt of something so real and all knowing happens, cataleptic impression.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
The Road, a thrilling novel about a post-apocalyptic world, demonstrates a great understanding of the reasoning behind the choices humans make. While living a normal life with his wife and child, some unknown disaster occurs leaving the world in ruins and a father caring for his son by himself. He continues to raise his son, facing difficult decisions everyday, but inclusively decides to continue living. Also after discovering a bunker full of nonperishable foods, the father makes the tough decision to leave. Finally, the father choices to take a robber’s clothes; which presumably leads to the thief’s death. However, the son states his disagreement with his father’s choice leading to a change of heart. The incredibly difficult choices the father makes throughout the novel demonstrates his commitment to a strong relationship between him and his son.
Sensory detail is a vital way authors show a story’s theme to the reader. For instance, Amy nauseatingly describes how her relatives “licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates of food” (Tan 353). The description of the mannerless acts by Amy gives you a clear image of how her relatives are acting during the Christmas dinner. Additionally, by the way Amy described the event it is obvious that she did not want to be compared to her relatives: She wanted, in vain, to be compared to Robert and his family. Through the use of sensory detail, the author shows the reader that one will find it hard to become something they are not.
"Singapore" is a poem written in which the author, Mary Oliver, compares a cleaning lady to nature with her use of imagery. Mary Oliver writes about how a woman, a tourist, is at an airport in Singapore. While at the airport the woman sees what seems to be a cleaning lady who is cleaning an ashtray in the toilet water and the author compares this to nature. The author was disgusted by what she saw so to rid her mind of this image she brings in images of nature to ease her discomfort. However, when the cleaning lady smiles at the tourist she then changes her mind, therefore, thinking that cleaning the ashtrays in the toilet can be blissful and beautiful. In the poem "Kingfisher", Mary Oliver, writes about the good found in the bad. With her poem Oliver shows us that death is an intricate part of life. The
In Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder teaches philosophy and it explains basic philosophical ideas better than any other reading book or textbook that I have ever read. The many philosophical lessons of the diversified thinkers of their own time were dexterously understood. The author has a wonderful knack for finding the heart of a concept and placing it on display. For example, he metamorphoses Democritus' atoms into Lego bricks and in a stroke makes the classical conception of the atom dexterously attainable. He relates all the abstract concepts about the world and what is real with straightforward everyday things that everyone can relate to which makes this whole philosophy course manageable. ''The best way of approaching philosophy is to ask a few philosophical questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there a life after death? How can we answer these questions? And most important, how ought we to live?'' (Gaarder, Jostein 15).