As people grow older their view of the world changes; the innocence that they once approached life with fades and reality sets in. “The Watcher” by Guy Vanderhaeghe tells the storey of Charlie a young boy who is removed from his sheltered home and must open his eyes to harsh world that surrounds him. Charlie suffered from frequent illness at home, giving him the freedom to watch adults function in their daily lives though never truly grasping the events being played out in front of him. When Charlie’s mother Mable becomes ill herself, Charlie is sent to Grandma Bradley’s farm for the summer. Shortly after Charlie settles in at the farm his aunt Evelyn arrives with her boyfriend Thompson hoping that Grandma Bradley will resolve her problems. Grandma Bradley cares for her daughter but not Thompson. She is willing to do whatever it takes to get him out of her house. By the end Grandma succeeds in removing Thompson from her home, with help from the Ogden brothers, liberating Evelyn and showing Charlie that life is not always as simple as it seems. Tracking the food imagery within the locations of the text highlights the intricacies involved in relationships as well as Charlie’s realization that the world is an unsympathetic place, as he struggles to find balance between childhood and adulthood.
In the beginning the food imagery shows Charlie’s unrealistic sense of control and inflated notion of self. Charlie takes great comfort at home as a child, he has the freedom to manage his own life and observe others from a distance. Life at home is “a piece of cake” for Charlie. His description of life as “a piece of cake” (195) shows the softness and leniency of his surroundings. Charlie feels satisfied at home he creates a routine, a recipe...
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...tanding alone; explaining why Grandma Bradley’s children always ended up on her doorstep when they were confronted with trouble. Parents fear that their children will grow up too fast, being exposed to reality before they are ready but until children experience life for themselves, with all its complications, they can never truly learn the importance of family; as it is family that will stand behind its members no matter the situation. Charlie did grow up during the summer, he saw things he would not have otherwise seen but he learned the strength of family, something he could not have learned at home where he passively watched the world go by.
Works Cited
Vanderhaeghe, Guy. “The Watcher.” Custom Course Materials: ENGL 1204 Readings for English 1204. Ed. Betty Anne Buirs. Spring ed. Langley, BC: Kwantlen Polytechnic University Bookstore, 2011. 195-220. Print.
As strong, independent, self-driven individuals, it is not surprising that Chris McCandless and Lily Owens constantly clashed with their parents. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, Chris was a twenty-four-year-old man that decided to escape the materialistic world of his time for a life based on the simplistic beauty of nature. He graduated at the top of his class at Emory University and grew up in affluent Annandale, Virginia, during the early 1980’s. In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily was a fourteen-year-old girl who grew up in the 1960’s, a time when racial equality was a struggle. She had an intense desire to learn about her deceased mother. Her nanny, Rosaleen, with whom she grew very close over the years, raised Lily with little help from her abusive father. When her father failed to help Rosaleen after three white men hospitalized her, Lily was hysterical. Later, Lily decided to break Rosaleen out of the hospital and leave town for good. While there are differences between Chris McCandless and Lily Owens, they share striking similarities. Chris McCandless’ and Lily Owens’s inconsistencies of forgiveness with their parents resulted in damaged relationships and an escape into the unknown.
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
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For the next few years, Ella struggles to raise her children in Memphis, Tennessee. Her long hours of work leave her little time to supervise Richard and his brother. Not surprisingly, Richard gets into all sorts of trouble, spying on people in outhouses and becoming a regular at the local saloonand an alcoholicby the age of six. Ella's worsening health prevents her from raising two children by herself and often leaves her unable to work. During these times, Richard does whatever odd jobs a child can do to bring in some money for the family. School is hardly an option for him. At one point, the family's troubles are so severe that Ella must place her children in an orphanage for a few weeks.
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With experience comes information and awareness. Every person interprets experiences differently, which in turn makes it difficult to determine the morality of something. In Alan Moore’s novel, Watchmen, Moore uses the marriage between pictures and words to present the different personalities of various characters and what they think is best for society. Throughout the story, Alan Moore explains that ignorance is humility and humility is wisdom, which is the only way of achieving true knowledge.
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