In a flea market, a shoe box filled with photographs. This is all we have. Whose lives might be recovered, if only the box had been labelled? I found it laying in a corner of the street, near an old manor where we live, my brother and me. There were men and women neatly tucked in pressed suits and fine linen dresses. They are our family, I imagine. Nameless faces attentively listening to our stories, witnessing the cold lifeless concrete of a flea market; it’s parched landscape that otherwise looks beautiful in the orange twilight. We have more money than it can last us a lifetime, but it cannot buy us our family back. I stare enraptured as strangers scurry down their separate ways, unknown to the solace they and the nameless faces in the photographs provide me, but my brother, he hates them. A single conversation with him, and one would say he hates the face of humanity itself. “Never trust anyone,” he constantly warns. “They leave you when you need them the most.” Our parents leaving us had scarred him deeply. He does not like coming here, but I know that there is a small part of him, albeit hidden away, that craves for company. On this particular day, the sun bathes me in sunlight from behind my brother’s head making me squint up at his silhouette. My thoughts are interrupted by a loud crash of porcelain china doll falling of our stand, its pieces damaged beyond repair. Dozens of dolls lay on our stand that my brother bought from a rather expensive antique store, in a futile attempt to blend in with the rest of the commoners. My fingers clench the rough table, knuckles white from brute force. I close my eyes as the unforgiving sun glares at me clouding my vision and I ask myself, yet again, for the umpteenth time the reason... ... middle of paper ... ...ed eyes, vision growing fainter, body becoming paralyzed, and the hum of the hospital machines muting to a dull throb. And slowly I rise, rise into the escape of pure bliss. “It will be okay,” she had said. My sister never lies, but that day she did, taking a rather large part of me with her, leaving behind an empty shell that searches for a glimpse of her in the busy marketplace. I grasp the shoebox tightly, suddenly coming to a realization. It was never her harbouring hope of a family from the photographs, rather me hoping it would be enough to anchor her to me. I close my tired eyes, vision growing fainter, body becoming paralyzed, and the busy voices of the flea market muting to a dull throb. And slowly I fall, fall into the dark abyss of my mind, memories blurring out the present for the past, until all that remains (of us) is a shoebox filled with photographs.
She thought about her family, and the neighbors, and the town, and the dogs next door, and everyone and everything she has ever met or seen. As she began to cry harder, she looked out the window at the stores and buildings drifting past, becoming intoxicated suddenly with the view before her. She noticed a young woman at the bus stop, juggling her children on one side of her, shielding them from the bus fumes.
As he looked at the picture, his eyes welled up with tears. It was a picture of him with his little sister, whom he would never play with again. Being only nine years old, he had not been through the deaths of any family members, except for his grandma he never even met, who passed away only months after he was born. But this tragedy turned him into an emotional wreck, as he would never be with his four year old sister again. It all happened in a heartbeat, he woke up on the first day of Spring Break and found his little sister lying silent in her bed, not breathing. And now, two days later, he finds himself at her funeral. The picture that stood out was of him and his sister showing off the vegetables they had picked in their garden
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
The landscape is blackened, and mankind is almost extinct “The mummied dead everywhere. ”(McCarthy 24). As I read on, I noticed myself connecting more deeply with the characters. When the boy’s mother took her own life, I was deeply saddened and my heart broke for “the boy” simply because his mom, someone he cherished and loved so much, had given up on hope and faith and deserted him. I just wanted to take hold of the child and comfort him even though at this moment he has no clue his mother has left....
In today’s society not many people realize that they are thankful to wake up and live another day. Just imagine being lost at night in an area you are completely unfamiliar with. Imagine it being cold, and you having no clothing. You don’t have any money and you are starving. Now, all your ears hear are the screams of the one’s around you being killed. To add to the torture, you are unable to control your next move, nor the next. There is constant death, starvation, and suffering happening all around you, but you cannot do anything to help the situation besides fending for yourself to survive. This is the devastating and cruel world that Chanrithy Him’s When Broken Glass Floats introduces to its readers.
Gazing upon my sister, it was as though she had been replaced by her complete opposite. Where once her face had been covered with smiles all of the time, her face was now contorted with grief, and it looked like she would never smile again. Her look could only be described as a small child who has lost a toy in the sand box.
Louisa’s feelings for her lover have disappeared throughout the years and when her lover returns to marry her, she feels very uncertain of the marriage. Similarly, many engagements are broken due to the fact that the feelings between couples fade after there is a distance between them, for years. Another example that relates to life is, “[i]n that length of time much had happened. Louisa's mother and brother had died, and she was all alone in the world” (Freeman p). When immigrants return to their country, many deaths have occurred in the time period of their absence and sometimes the deaths include their own relatives. To their misfortune, they never have a chance to say a last good bye. The story, A new England’s Nun is very similar to the lives of many people and in many cases the same.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Shaymus’ point of view is influenced by his mother’s cognitive dissonance on how he perceives the world. His father rented “The Breakers” cottage online, and pictures online were far more appealing than the reality. Shaymus knew that in reality, the depiction of the cottage was deceiving. He noted that “a picture might be worth a thousand words but it might be all lies” (3). In contrast, the mother deludes herself into thinking that “she loves them ‘cause it reminds her of the house she used to live in.” This illusion also reflects the idea of the Walsh’s happy family appearances. Like the pictures online, they try to simulate a happy family, but in reality, they are dysfunctional at best. The author introduces to the readers that this is a significant illusion, and there is more beneath the surface where one’s reality clashes with another’s
The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.
... scenario of her sister coming to the post office and begging, and at the end of this unrealistic scenario, she clearly declares that she will not have anything to do with her sister. By doing this, she rules out reconciling with her sister and gives up on ever having a relationship with her sister. It seems that, now, Sister is bitter. Most importantly, when Sister says, “But here I am, and here I’ll stay” (49), Welty shows the severe need for all families to work at being a healthy functional family by ending the short story with Sister being alone and bitter at the post office. Human beings need other human beings for survival; without this, we perish.
The street lights outside flickered with age, popping and gently fizzing with every stream of electricity that ran through the bulb. Sat inside of the laundromat and watching the flickering lights, I was awaiting the wash cycle’s end. Clothes that were dirtied from last night were being rehabilitated by vicious lashes of water and soap. It was the holy cleansing we all deserved. The shirts, pants and socks all pushed up against the restricting glass of the washing machine’s door, fighting for freedom while I just sat there, aware of the cruelty and the drowning but yawning my cares away. The inside of the laundromat was cast in a harsh cyan light that pained the eyes at such late times as these. It was around 9 p.m., and the only people present included myself and a
I stood at the end of the driveway with a bag of clothes and my little sisters by my side. My dad pulled up, we got in the truck, and we drove about 10 minutes until we got to his shop. This would seem like a normal day, but things were different this time. We weren 't at the shop to ride the four wheelers around or to play basketball in the garage or to mess with the pinball machines. There was a gloomy feel about everything around us. Even though I didn’t say anything, I knew things were changing.
The story is about a old man learning that he has to let go of his dead wife and his children, but his children would not let him do that for their own benefits. It explores a family’s trauma when a family member passed away and how children can be insensitive and selfish enough to ignore their parent’s need fro intimacy and companionship.
.... Finally, my parents arrived, riding the sound of their running footsteps on the hollow wooden dock. Dad immediately relieved my weary arms of their burden and pulled my brother out of the cold blue lake. I looked up into my Mom's face to see tears of mixed panic and joy as she embraced my younger brother, heedless of the world that surrounded the two of them. She focused only on her son, who looked back at her silently with deep brown chestnut eyes.