Trustworthiness is an important element in a relationship. It is the groundwork for dependability between two people, and from it, relationships grow and mature. When that trust is shattered, it creates a barrier between the two people. What defines a legal agreement with a business partner from a silly promise made to a child? In a child’s eyes, there is no distinction. A promise is a promise. In Toni Cade Bambara’s “Gorilla, My Love,” the evolving perspective of the distinction between an act of betrayal and the breaking of a juvenile pact is scrutinized through an incident between a child, Hazel, and her uncle, Hunca Bubba.
Hazel is a fiery little girl. She is strong-willed and openly opinionated, and believes that “when you got something on your mind, speak up and let the chips fall where they may” (Bambara 297). Although she is still very young, she has principles of what she believes to be wrong and right. She believes that her Hunca Bubba is not who he used to be since he has fallen in love and become engaged. Hazel feels betrayed by Hunca Bubba because when she was a little girl, he promised he would marry her. He is no longer Hazel’s Hunca Bubba; now, he is Jefferson Winston Vale. Hazel is befuddled with the entire situation. She is heartbroken that he seems to undermine the importance of his promise, by saying, “I was just teasin’” (298). He seems to be completely unaware that by breaking this promise, he has distorted Hazel’s entire outlook on trustworthiness. Hazel expresses her concrete belief that people should follow through with what they say, when she is commenting on the incident at the movie theater, “ I mean even gangsters in the movies say My word is my bond. So don’t nobody get away with nothing far as...
... middle of paper ...
...ts set for them. Children are constantly aware of adults’ choices, and they begin to formulate their own understanding of general values at a young age. When adults are hypocritical of their pre-set standards, it sends children into a state of discombobulation. Staying true to one’s values as an example for children will be beneficial to them as they travel along the highway of childhood and come upon the exit necessary to reach the interstate of adulthood.
Works Cited
Bambara, Toni Cade. “Gorilla, My Love.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 294-298. Print.
Muther, Elizabeth. "Bambara's Feisty Girls: Resistance Narratives in "Gorilla, My Love"." African American Review 36.3 (2002):447-459. Web.
Robbins, Dorothy Dodge. "Gorilla, My Love." Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006):1. Web.
Kherdian, David, and Cheng'en Wu. Monkey: A Journey to the West : a Retelling of the Chinese Folk Novel. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. Print.
DeFalco, Amelia. "Jungle creatures and dancing apes: modern primitivism and Nella Larsen's Quicksand." Mosaic [Winnipeg] 38.2 (2005): 19+. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.
Perkins, George B., and Barbara Perkins. "The Beast in the Jungle." The American Tradition in Literature (concise). 12th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. 1148-1177. Print.
Hazel overanalyzes everything adults say and takes things too personal. As Hazel is in the car with her Granddaddy, her uncle Hunca Bubba, and her younger brother Baby Jason, Hunca Bubba asks to be called by his full name, Jefferson Winston Vale. Hazel asks Hunca Bubba if he will marry his girlfriend. When he confirms that he will, she accuses him of lying, since he had once promised to marry her. Although this promise was a joke, Hazel takes it seriously. Hunca Bubba finds the misunderstanding to be small, however, Hazel is devastated and hur...
How does a child feel when their parents conceive destructive values and manipulative connotations? To any child a parent is the person that they look up to and in most cases look for encouragement. However, some parents tend to value destruction and their own self-gain more than the life of their child. Both William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” demonstrating a principle that when parents are bound to their twisted, manipulative, and even immoral values that their children will ultimately be the ones to pay the price as they either embrace the similar hollow values themselves or set out to fulfill their own desires through often times self-destructive means.
James, Johson Weldon. Comp. Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 832. Print.
James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle." The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Seventh Edition. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 335-376.
... the gorillas are taken away from their family and are living in captivity. It is still important to study primates in-depth, and a solution to the ethical issues may be to breed primates within the conservatory.
Parents and guardians are the foundations of a child’s morality. If a juvenile grows up without a guardian present, they are consequently more susceptible to media influences than teachers in the classroom. Barber studied the hours of kids in and out of school, “Our kids spend 900 hours in school and from 1,200 to 1,800 hours a year in front of the television set.” Children without a parent present believe the influences they view on television more than what they learn in the classroom. But, if a guardian teaches their child about the value of education, children will be active in the classroom and will be motivated to achieve academic excellence. But, if a parent takes an active role in a child’s life, and they expound on the importance of education, their child will strive to value education as well. If a parent is present in a child’s life and deems education unimportant, this will cause their child to not value education either. Barber did a study on what seventeen-year-olds know and what forty-seven-year-olds know and the results were the same. In response to the study, Barber says, “The illiteracy of the young turns out to be our own reflected back to us with embarrassing force.” Children look up to their parents and if parent’s value materialism, but preach about school, children ultimately value materialism because of their
The adult world is a cold and terrifying place. There are robberies, shootings, murders, suicides, and much more. If you were to be a small child, perhaps age 5, and you were to look in at this world, you would never know how bad it actually was, just from a single glance. Children have a small slice of ignorant bliss, which helps to keep them away from the harsh of reality. It isn’t until later, when they encounter something that opens their eyes and shows them, that they truly start to understand the world we live it. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird shows the many differences between the simplicity of being a kid and the tough decisions and problems that adults must face every day.
Brown, Rosellen. “Honey Child.” Women’s Review of Books. Vol. 19. No. 7. Philadelphia: Old City Publishing. 2002. 11. Print.
The most successful way to instill righteous and moral behavior and thoughts is by demonstrating our respectable interactions and honest problem solving approaches during difficult times of our lives. “As adults we should dare to be adults that we want our children to be”. They learn by watching and are quick to mimic our behavior with their peers outside of home. The author writes that “we should strive to raise children who: engage with the world from a place of worthiness, embrace their vulnerabilities and imperfections, feel a deep sense of love and compassion for themselves and others, value hard work, perseverance, and respect, and also move through our rapidly changing world with courage and a resilient spirit” (214, 218-219). All of these elements will help to transform the way we live, love, and
When children grow up they start straying from their roots and begin to mature, and as children mature they grow out of their parents ideas of who they should be and
Mountain gorillas are one of the largest primates in the world. African rainforests are the only habitat for mountain gorillas and the place where these great apes face a lot of daily threats, which placed them in the critically endangered rank because their numbers are decreasing rapidly in the wild.
We teach the children only the highest of our ideals, the most virtuous of our values. An integral part of our “code of chivalry” is Immanuel Kant’s Golden Rule: Do as you would be done by. It is taught as a rule to be followed not only in school, but one to live by. Children never fail to imitate the behavior of their elders. This is a beckoning to us, the people of the village who will raise the child, to illustrate our words, to show that the Golden Rule isn’t just an empty cliché.