“Shells” by Cynthia Rylant is a realistic short story about a boy that is scarred for life because of his parents death. In the beginning aunt Esther and Michael are fighting. Because aunt Esther keeps talking about Michael.Soon after that Michael gets lonely and gets a pet hermit crab and aunt Esther and Michael start to bond. In the beginning aunt Esther and Michael are very angry for example, in paragraph 9,the author says, “can't you leave me alone.” In paragraph 10, for example, the character slammed down his glass scraped his chair back and ran out the door. But in reality Michael does not hate aunt Esther they just said that because they were mad. Later on, Michael was feeling sad and lonely for example, in paragraph 24 the author
Michael is lonely and sad. his parents died and his Aunt Esther has to take him in (74). Cause of Michael’s parents being dead he is lonely. aunt Esther and Michael do not get along. That causes them to be even more lonely.
...es these primitive standards, she becomes melancholy because she does not attune into the gender roles of women, which particularly focus on marriage, maternity, and domesticity. Like other nineteen year old women, Esther has many goals and ambitions in her life. Nevertheless, Esther is disparaged by society’s blunt roles created for women. Although she experiences a tremendous psychological journey, she is able to liberate herself from society’s suffocating constraints. Esther is an excellent inspiration for women who are also currently battling with society’s degrading stereotypes. She is a persistent woman who perseveres to accomplish more than being a stay at home mother. Thus, Esther is a voice for women who are trying to abolish the airless conformism that is prevalent in 1950’s society.
Michael changed drastically over the course of only a few weeks. He learned more about his friends, family, and himself than he ever wanted to know.
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
The character of Esther is widely criticized for her perfection as a character, both receiving positive acclaims and negative feedback. Esther’s reserved, quiet character illustrates the role of women during the Victorian period and what little impact on society women played. Critics of Bleak House generally praise the narration and Dickens’s use of Esther’s character, which gives direction to the novel.
The snows of Stalingrad caused a lot of loss to him. Michael lost his brother Robert to the war but Michael managed to survive the war where he lost some of his fingers. Michael taunts himself asking why does he want to live and it starts to get to his head because a great deal of bad things happened to him as well as to the rest of his family and yet he still wants to live. “‘Why do I want to live? I shouldn’t want to, but I do” (Zusak 487) Since Michael kept asking himself why do I want to live his state of mind became to an unhealthy state and he just kept taunting himself until he died committing suicide. “Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.”(Zusak 503) Michael took his Survivor’s guilt in a different route for the reason it completely shattered his state of mind tearing him into
Fox, Michael V. Character and Ideology In The Book Of Esther. Columbia, SC: University of
...ese kind of foolish acts take place every day in society. Michael and Frances obviously love and care about each other; this was just a small bump in the road that they have overcome. It could have been a fork in the road, and they could have gone their separate ways. But they stuck through it, just like most of relationships. This is important because it shows that most people can overcome any problem if they really tried.
This vision places him back in his jail cell with his old jail mate Charles, the one who died in the process of the escape. As Michael sits with Charles he apologizes to him for all the lies he told him and all the pain he caused with his plan to break Lincoln out of prison. Michael feels like everything he did to get his brother out of prison was for nothing because he is under The Company’s possession. He cannot take the guilt anymore and needs to tell someone. Charles asks Michael why he feels like everything he did was for nothing if he managed to save his brother’s life. Michael agrees with him, but then asks “At what cost though? How many other people lost their lives in the process?” Charles then turns and asks him if he regrets it? Or if he would do it all over again to spare his brother’s life? As Michael is about to answer he tells Charles he feels like a murderer because he would do it all over
... mourning of his father), an encounter with a ghost who claims to be his father and asks him to exact revenge on his own uncle, and an innate sense of overly analytical and indecisive qualities which likely stem from the upbringing of the character in his youth. These perils which plague the character, along with the long drawn-out soliloquies the character delivers, all create for a character which is by definition, depressed.
Throughout the novel, her mother has contributed to Esther`s problems. From Esther`s point of view, consequences of her mother's actions have lead to further problems for her. It was her mother who denied Esther the right to go to her father's funeral:
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
The events in the novel are predicated upon the death of Joel's mother. The account of his mother's death and the upheaval it caused for him (p 10 ) is more poignant to a reader who has experienced the untimely death of a parent than to one who has not. The reader who has experienced the loss can identify with everyone “always smiling” and with the unexplainable changes in one's own behavior toward others as one adjusts to the emptiness.
The book “The Bell Jar” by Silvia Plath was different from other books assigned through-out my time at high school. Most of the other books, including for example “Of Mice and Men”, Lord of the Flies”, and “The Heart of darkness” were stories about mostly men and how they all turned against each other in some way and acted like animals instead of humans, and in the end of all of them someone dies. The book “The Bell Jar” though is without a doubt my favorite so far because it is about a female and about all the pressures of everyday life that run through her head. This is something that I can relate to because I too think about some of these same worries such a as virginity, looks, and morals to name a few. I am claiming that the theme or the meaning of this book is that in order to stay sane in this world, you can’t let the pressures and worries run your actions and decisions and your life or else you will not be able to function. I feel that this is what happened to Esther. I think that these pressures to Esther are what set her over the edge and made her think the way that she did and made her think that something was wrong with her.
Michael Henchard’s constant exercise of jealousy, pride, immature actions and overwhelming emotions bring him to his tragic end. Although Henchard might have you think he is a victim, the reader can see that his personality leads to the conclusion of his downfall and that Henchard’s inability to learn from his first mistakes takes him down a path no one wants to face. He might have been able to survive his mistakes had he not been so self-destructive. But because of the combination of his personality traits and the complexity of his character’s mind, he is eventually led to the nothingness that engulfs him.