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Gloria naylor the meaning of a word
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Gloria Naylor begins her essay “The Meanings of a Word” with an analysis of words, their meaning, and why the power placed behind a word is more important than the word itself. This entire essay seemed to be about the weight a word can carry, and how no matter the permanent structure of the word itself, the weight can be shifted and transformed into something completely different. Specifically, the essay is about the word nigger, which feels as though it’s italicized constantly as some sort of defense mechanism for the writer. She goes on to describe the first time she heard the word, but by the end of the essay, we understand that this is only the first time that she recognized a hint of the cruel meaning behind it, because it is likely she heard the word many times before. This solidifies the idea that it is not actually the word that contains the power, nor the definition, but the connotation that the word …show more content…
In the same swing it can show you the best decision of your life, followed by a profound realization that it was actually your worst. It drastically influences words, turning “love” from a primal, unwavering desire to a background noise that holds together the fabric of one’s personal reality. “Dreams” alter between hopeful aspirations and lost opportunities. “Home” begins as some sort of containment chamber, but slowly reveals itself as a complex web of nostalgic memories, feelings, and relationships that represent an unmatched level of warmth and comfort. “Self” originates with a false confidence and structure, only for the façade to eventually crumble and shine light upon miles of unharvested land and incomplete blueprints, patiently waiting for their potential to be realized. Of course, these are just my experiences with these words. Countless interpretations can be found, and each of them are constantly evolving. Just goes to show the kind of silly and abstract disaster that words can
I decided to explore the effect that a white male audience has on the tone of a writer who primarily caters to a non-white audience when the speaker, subject, and context remain the same. I questioned how audience and purpose affect a text’s structure and content and found that by changing the audience, I was forced to go into descriptive detail to explain the oppression imposed upon African Americans to white men. By writing a speech, Toni Morrison’s serious and passionate tone towards both race and gender equity are not erased. I refer to the audience as “you” and bring up that they’re in a position of power to force a separation between Toni, an African American woman, and the audience, white men, because the point is not to establish a
Man's Search for Meaning is a book written in 1946 by Viktor Frankl. Frankl is a holocaust survivor who elaborates on his experiences of being an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. Being that Frankl is also a trained psychologist, he goes into detail about his psychotherapeutic method, which involved analyzing a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then imagining it being reality. According to Frankl, longevity was explained by the way a prisoner imagined how the future affected his durability of life. The book proposes to answer the question "How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" Part One establishes Frankl's dissection of his experiences in the concentration camps, while part two touches on his theory of logotherapy.
The speaker’s rocky encounter with her ex-lover is captured through personification, diction, and tone. Overall, the poem recaps the inner conflicts that the speak endures while speaking to her ex-lover. She ponders through stages of the past and present. Memories of how they were together and the present and how she feels about him. Never once did she broadcast her emotions towards him, demonstrating the strong facade on the outside, but the crumbling structure on the inside.
These lines demonstrate the stage of adulthood and the daily challenges that a person is faced with. The allusions in the poem enrich the meaning of the poem and force the reader to become more familiar with all of the meaning hidden behind the words. For example, she uses words such as innocence, imprisonment and captive to capture the feelings experienced in each of the stages. The form of the poem is open because there are no specific instances where the lines are similar. The words in each stanza are divided into each of the three growth stages or personal experiences.
The words Negro, nigger, and nigga have always been a sensitive topic, yet it is a topic that needs to be addressed in light of the more common use of its vernacular. One word is used to describe a color, while the others are used to define a people. It’s very clear to many the negative connotation these words carry, but where did these words come from? Furthermore, is there a difference between the word nigger and nigga; and why is it that African-Americans now use the word nigga to degrade each other in today’s society? These words, in spite of their spelling, still holds the same degrading power as it did during the time of slavery, and they are still spoken out of cruelty and ignorance, but who is to blame? Can one still blame the Spaniards for considering people of a darker skin tone –Black? Can we blame the Europeans for perpetuating their hatred and ignorance of superiority over a race of people to the point they felt it lawful to define and dehumanize them? Or does the blame lie with the African-American race as we use this degrading labeling on our own kind, thus becoming the victimizer. Either way nigger or nigga are words that should be eliminated from the vocabulary of every human being.
Geneva Smitherman of the Afro-American Studies department at Harvard University wrote in her paper “God Don’t Never Change”: Black English from a Black Perspective that English scholars and teachers should stop trying to correct “Black English” for being grammatically incorrect and assess the content for intellectual accuracy. She believes that no matter how different the grammar is from “White English”, “black English is still understandable and should be treated as if it is written correctly. Smitherman sites many examples throughout literary history highlighting moments where “Black English” has been battered for being incorrect, most notably using the story of a Wayne State freshman student who had a paper returned to them for being written in “Black English”. The student was told that the paper was grammatically incorrect and needed to be corrected without any further commentary. While Smitherman makes a strong argument for the equal treatment of “Black English” in literature, her writing is full of pathological bias and resentment toward her fellow English scholars causing her thesis to be overshadowed.
There are more clues and subtle hints that reinforce these statements, most correlating to her mental illness and self-perception. The statements made through the use of said symbolism turns this story into an interesting viewpoint of a psychological breakdown.
Beata Drozd’s piece, titled Lady in Blue, shows a figure, split in two, with one half black and one white. It was created in 2014 for the exhibit i found god in myself; the 40th anniversary of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls. i found god in myself originally debuted at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem, New York, but is currently at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The piece, which is quite large, is a collage on canvas, and hangs on a wall; there are two sections of the piece, the top is a vertical rectangle, showing the figures from the hips up, and the bottom is a triangle showing clasped hands, one white and one black. Drozd creates visual contrast to symbolize
From reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wall-Paper various opinions can be made about the novella and what it is portrayed to represent. Perhaps the simplest opinion could be that John, the husband of the main character, was married to an insane wife. This interpretation would not be false at all, in fact, it is indeed true however, the deeper meaning of this text lies between words and emotions that you feel coming from the character that Charlotte Perkins Gilman had created. The character that allows you to see that deeper meaning would be the wife of the husband John. Through her writings in the story she portrays a woman who is held captive by not only a house and society but she is also held captive by her spouse. These things
Gail Godwin's short story "A Sorrowful Woman" revolves around a wife and mother who becomes overwhelmed with her husband and child and withdraws from them, gradually shutting them completely out of her life. Unsatisfied with her role as dutiful mother and wife, she tries on other roles, but finds that none of them satisfy her either. She is accustomed to a specific role, and has a difficult time coping when a more extensive array of choices is presented to her. This is made clear in this section of the story.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by O’Connor Figurative language is used often by the characters, especially the grandmother who manipulates, which in return, leads to the families murder. In the short story the author gives small details of almost every character. When the author describes the mother’s face, she uses a simile writing, whose face is broad and innocent as a cabbage(pg 296). On the family drive, the author uses imagery to describes the beauty of the families surrounding using words like brilliant red and green lace-work that makes the drive seem relaxing.The author’s use of informal diction helps dictate the calmness of the events. I believe these calming words are the way the author is portraying the calm before the storm. What
It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.” -pg. 85
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been hardly recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman of society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women character in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a