How do two of the stories you have studied explore the difficulty of growing up? ‘Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit’ by Sylvia Plath and ‘Your Shoes’ by Michele Roberts both explore the difficulty of growing up. However, we are presented with two different aspects. Plath’s story explores the idea of a child being exposed to the war and the realisation that parents are not omnipotent and omniscient from a naive child narrator’s stance. While, Robert’s story deals with the difficult subject of parents-children relationship, parents not understanding their children and the children’s needs for support when making mistakes. The narrator is a naive mother; the story is written as a monologue and portrays solely the mother’s point of view. In ‘Paula …show more content…
She lives with her mother and Uncle Frank, as her father sadly passed away before the war, as stated by her mother “I’m only glad Otto didn’t live to see this”. She believes that Uncle Frank has “an extraordinary resemblance to Superman incognito”, and that he is powerful as implied by “strongest man he’d ever known” and “could do lots of tricks”. In her eyes, Uncle Frank has all the qualities of Superman as stated in “while waiting to be drafted” which suggests he is ready to fight the bad and protect the innocent, and is therefore a good man, just as Superman. This also implies that the narrator pictures her uncle as a built-up, protective, brave warrior and hero. As a result, she looks up to him as father figure, and an idol that could promise her safety, security and long-lasting happiness. One cannot be certain how Uncle Frank is related to the narrator; however, he is very protective and affectionate to her. One can tell this when he lifts her up and speaks with “a big love in his voice that drowned out the shouting”. In contrast, the narrator feels lonely and lacks trust and support from her mother and uncle after the incident when she is wrongly blamed for pushing Paula Brown into an oil puddle whilst playing tag and destroying her new “powder blue” snowsuit that she received for her birthday. They do not believe the …show more content…
In ‘Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit’, the child needs support when she is wrongly blamed, while in ‘Your Shoes’, the daughter needs support and guidance when she is making mistakes such as use of alcohol and smoking pot, getting involved in bad friendships (influences), having sex and suffering from food disorder. The mother was brought up in an old-fashioned way and is not equipped to help and support her daughter through difficult times; therefore, she treats her daughter in the same way she was treated. She believes that men need to be respected and treated differently, and she is misogynistic as well. So, she does not stand up for her daughter when the father called “a dirty slut”, but, she took his side by saying, “he didn’t mean you to take it personally. It was just a manner of speaking”. Furthermore, she makes it clear that the father is the main bread earner and has the right to be angry in “Of course your father was angry. After all it is his house”. The mother treats the father as a tyrant figure, as in what he says goes and in a way is disloyal to women. This situation could have been sorted in a more sophisticated yet strict way in order to educate the daughter about what she has done wrong and shouldn't do, assist her to make the right decisions and to maintain a stable family relationship. What the mother and father do not understand in this story is
Throughout Baby’s life she has experienced many cases where she has lost her innocence. Baby is young enough to bring her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase, yet old enough to experience more than she should about the world’s hardships. Baby and Jules had a lot of misfortunes in their life, and Baby’s vulnerability contributes to her misfortune, in being unable to differentiate between right and wrong, due to her desire to be loved; which Jules always failed to show her. There are many reasons why young adults feel the need to grow up fast in the adulthood world but in the end it’s not worth it. The childhood stage is overlooked and that’s the most important stage of life that young adults should cherish, because you only live through it once.
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
Susie’s mother opened the door to let Molly, Susie’s babysitter, inside. Ten-month old Susie seemed happy to see Molly. Susie then observed her mother put her jacket on and Susie’s face turned from smiling to sad as she realized that her mother was going out. Molly had sat for Susie many times in the past month, and Susie had never reacted like this before. When Susie’s mother returned home, the sitter told her that Susie had cried until she knew that her mother had left and then they had a nice time playing with toys until she heard her mother’s key in the door. Then Susie began crying once again.
Janie's outlook on life stems from the system of beliefs that her grandmother, Nanny instills in her during life. These beliefs include how women should act in a society and in a marriage. Nanny and her daughter, Janie's mother, were both raped and left with bastard children, this experience is the catalyst for Nanny’s desire to see Janie be married of to a well-to-do gentleman. She desires to see Janie married off to a well to do gentleman because she wants to see that Janie is well cared for throughout her life.
The girl's mother is associated with comfort and nurturing, embodied in a "honeyed edge of light." As she puts her daughter to bed, she doesn't shut the door, she "close[s] the door to." There are no harsh sounds, compared to the "buzz-saw whine" of the father, as the mother is portrayed in a gentle, positive figure in whom the girl finds solace. However, this "honeyed edge of li...
A breathtaking saga of a young girl’s tragic memories of her childhood. As with Ellen, Gibbons’ parents both died before she was twelve-years-old, forming the family. basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and actions of Ellen. The simplistic and humble attitude that both Gibbons and Ellen epitomizes in the novel is portrayed through diction and dialogue.
Did you know that according to a recent study, approximately one in ten girls have been victims of rape or forced sexual acts? In other words, women and girls are seen and reduced to their bodies, rather than human beings. Even girls are forced to be treated as objects, and are oppressed at a young age. This is an ongoing issue, as women across the globe are being objectified. This is also true in family life. Men treat women as if they were something that they have a right to own and use, which is toxic for both sides of the relationship. Linda Pastan, in her poem Marks, finds that instrumentality, denial of subjectivity, and ownership cause the narrator to rethink and reject her
”(3) Marie, Jeannette’s mother, completely refuses to take care of her own children. She doesn’t care for her children as any mother should. Any child, even at the age of three, should not be making hotdogs in a hot oven. This act shows how much independence her father has instilled in her.
. . .” implies the narrator can only see through so much of the door, his sight is restricted to only his father. This allows for a very strong description of his father in the moment. The narrators’ father was walking towards his bedroom with his back to his wife. He had clearly dismissed his wife’s’ argument until she cruelly remarked “Well, I hope you 'll be satisfied when they come home knocked up and you 'll have had your way.” (Alistair Macleod 229). Without stopping, revealing how shocked he was to hear this, he turns around. He is mid stride, but so taken back that he spins to face her. The offence that he feels is a result of his opinion that it would be best for his children to find a better way of life than his own. His children have an opportunity for a much more fulfilling life and he wants nothing more than for them to pursue it. This would seemingly be a goodtime for him to explain to his wife the way he feels; instead he holds it in, knowing that she would not understand. By turning back around without saying a word the only statement he makes is that he is mad. In this moment he is described as looking old and hard worked, though very
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
The novel The Namesake is clearly able to reflect my life, both showing that children are unable to view their parents as a human being unless the parent is triggered by a traumatic event. This causes the child to feel empathy for the parent figure and suddenly be able to mature so that they can humanize their parents. In this way, traumatic events to the family can often be healthy and necessary for the maturity of the child. After all, if he or she is unable to see their parents at their weakest, the child may take a considerably longer time to discover their gratitude and express the love that is owed.
In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes, “for in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be”. Does one’s childhood truly have an effect on the person one someday becomes? In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, this question is tackled through the recounting of Jeannette and Amir’s childhoods from the perspectives of their older, more developed selves. In the novels, an emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the relationships Jeannette and Amir have with their fathers while growing up, and the effects that these relations have on the people they each become. The environment to which they are both exposed as children is also described, and proves to have an influence on the characteristics of Jeannette and Amir’s adult personalities. Finally, through the journeys of other people in Jeannette and Amir’s lives, it is demonstrated that the sustainment of traumatic experiences as a child also has a large influence on the development of one’s character while become an adult. Therefore, through the analysis of the effects of these factors on various characters’ development, it is proven that the experiences and realities that one endures as a child ultimately shape one’s identity in the future.
This paper argued that the mother in Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” is loving towards her daughter because the mother is taking time to teaching her daughter how to be a woman, and because she wants to protect her in the future from society’s judgment. Kincaid showed that the mother cared and loved her daughter. The mother wants her daughter to know how to run a home and how to keep her life in order to societies standards. Alongside practical advice, the mother instructs her daughter on how to live a fulfilling
The narrator, Twyla, begins by recalling the time she spent with her friend, Roberta, at the St. Bonaventure orphanage. From the beginning of the story, the only fact that is confirmed by the author is that Twyla and Roberta are of a different race, saying, “they looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison, 2254). They were eight-years old. In the beginning of the story, Twyla says, “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” This line sets the tone of the story from the start. This quote begins to separate the two girls i...
...n her mind is more important than his words. It is an example of the patriarchal society that they live in; although he is her father and has the parental power over her he would most likely not speak to a son in such a demeaning tone. He makes her seem to be slow, as if she cannot carry on a conversation or listen to him, which is quite demeaning.