Everyone in life has caused mischief or trouble to the community during their lifetime. There is always reasoning behind these acts whether it creates memory for one or just due to immaturity of a person. In the short story, “A Small Crime” by Jerry Wexler, a young boy, at the age of nine years old, commits a crime of plagiarism and is later disciplined by his parents. However, his father eventually tells him his own personal experience of writing on a wall in the railway station. The age of a person highly affects their reasoning behind the actions they perform, as one ages, one is able to have a more valid reasoning for their actions due to one’s greater knowledge and familiarity with society. When the boy was first caught by the police of the crime he committed, his parents brought him back home in order to correct his inappropriate behaviour. The boy’s emotions gradually begin to change as he experiences anxiousness to sadness and later to loneliness. The boy is unable to provide a justified reason for the crime he committed in public. He felt guilty of committing an act due to his innocence and confusion at a young age. This can be demonstrated as his parents prohibit from giving him more allowance and “he could not help but be apprehensive”. Later on, when he is not invited to enjoy supper with his parents he is deeply saddened since he values his relationships with his parents, especially telling his father about his adventures. Finally, the boy experiences loneliness as he has gradually begins to understand the consequences of the choice he decided to make as a child. The author use of explaining a young tree that his grandfather had planted is a sign of symbolism. As the plant begins to sprout leaves, it eventually g... ... middle of paper ... ...tand the impacts of his acts. Even though the father performed a wrongful act, his logical and understandable reasoning allows him to be seen in a more positive light than his son. Sometimes when one commits a disgraceful act to the community, there will sometimes be a proper motive that initiates them do it. The author displays irony that even though the father and his son performed the same crime, the audience will have a different viewpoint towards each person. They understand and can excuse the father’s behaviour due to his longer experience in life which caused him to have a specific intention for doing the act he did. However, the audience will have a more difficult time trying to connect and defend the boy since, due to his premature age and inexperience, he is unable to properly justify the reasoning behind his actions and the benefits it provides himself.
In a restaurant, picture a young boy enjoying breakfast with his mother. Then suddenly, the child’s gesture expresses how his life was good until “a man started changing it all” (285). This passage reflects how writer, Dagoberto Gilb, in his short story, “Uncle Rock,” sets a tone of displeasure in Erick’s character as he writes a story about the emotions of a child while experiencing his mother’s attempt to find a suitable husband who can provide for her, and who can become a father to him. Erick’s quiet demeanor serves to emphasis how children may express their feelings of disapproval. By communicating through his silence or gestures, Erick shows his disapproval towards the men in a relationship with his mother as he experiences them.
A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard is an autobiography recounting the chilling memories that make up the author’s past. She abducted when she was eleven years old by a man named Phillip Garrido with the help of his wife Nancy. “I was kept in a backyard and not allowed to say my own name,” (Dugard ix). She began her life relatively normally. She had a wonderful loving mother, a beautiful baby sister,, and some really good friends at school. Her outlook on life was bright until June 10th, 1991, the day of her abduction. The story was published a little while after her liberation from the backyard nightmare. She attended multiple therapy sessions to help her cope before she had the courage to share her amazing story. For example she says, “My growth has not been an overnight phenomenon…it has slowly and surely come about,” (D 261). She finally began to put the pieces of her life back together and decided to go a leap further and reach out to other families in similar situations. She has founded the J A Y C Foundation or Just Ask Yourself to Care. One of her goals was, amazingly, to ensure that other families have the help that they need. Another motive for writing the book may have also been to become a concrete form of closure for Miss Dugard and her family. It shows her amazing recovery while also retelling of all of the hardships she had to endure and overcome. She also writes the memoir in a very powerful and curious way. She writes with very simple language and sentence structures. This becomes a constant reminder for the reader that she was a very young girl when she was taken. She was stripped of the knowledge many people take for granted. She writes for her last level of education. She also describes all of the even...
Racism and segregation among different races took place since the beginning of time, “Accordion Crimes” by E. Annie Proulx explores a similar situation of new immigrants coming to America seeking for a better life also known as the American dream but soon realize what its all about. The story spreads over about 100 years. The life that immigrants were living was very difficult. Racism and discrimination was part of every day life, it can be pretty similar to what Muslims have to go through since the catastrophe of September 11, 2001 that changed the world for ever. When new coming Italians arrived to United-States, they were all seen as part of some mafia, generalization was punishing those that had nothing to do with it like the Muslims today. What can be done to stop hatred between races? The easy answer is education, but that’s not the only solution.
Suffering from the death of a close friend, the boy tries to ignore his feelings and jokes on his sister. His friend was a mental patient who threw himself off a building. Being really young and unable to cope with this tragedy, the boy jokes to his sister about the bridge collapsing. "The mention of the suicide and of the bridge collapsing set a depressing tone for the rest of the story" (Baker 170). Arguments about Raisinettes force the father to settle it by saying, "you will both spoil your lunch." As their day continues, their arguments become more serious and present concern for the father who is trying to understand his children better. In complete agreement with Justin Oeltzes’ paper, "A Sad Story," I also feel that this dark foreshadowing of time to come is an indication of the author’s direct intention to write a sad story.
...e treated his family. The kids were raised in an environment of fear and punishment. This affected every relationship, even with other children, they had established. Being bound to one’s culture is not necessarily a bad thing. The kids are disciplined and respectful, at least in the presence of other adults. The problem with the father was not understanding that some values are expired and do not fit society's norms. Traditions that bring families together should be kept not the opposite. Since society's norms are constantly changing, we have to keep traditions alive that correlate. Good traditions and cultural values should be passed on from generation to generation not the traditions that bring children down.
This story makes the reader wonder, why must parents do this to their children, what kinds of motifs do they have for essentially ruining their child’s life. I believe
Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy. When Tim O’Brien kills a man during the Vietnam War, he is shocked that the man is not the buff, wicked, and terrifying enemy he was expecting. This realization overwhelms him in guilt. O’Brien’s guilt has him so fixated on the life of his victim that his own presence in the story—as protagonist and narrator—fades to the black. Since he doesn’t use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans. In The Man I Killed, Tim O’Brien explores the truth of The Vietnam War by vividly describing the dead body and the imagined life of the man he has killed to question the morality of killing in a war that seems to have no point to him.
“The Pain Tree” written by Olive Senior tells the story of a woman who comes back home after many years and begins to think about her childhood in a new light, which changes much of what she thought she knew of her family and childhood. The story shows the main character, Lorraine, revisiting the memories of her family and the woman who had taken care of her as a child, Larissa. Children mainly focus on the happy memories which may be tied to more important topics that they do not understand until they are older. Most children do not pick up on many of the complicated things happening around them. Lorraine can now see the bigger picture of her relationship with Larissa and how large the divides were between Lorraine’s family and Larissa’s
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
The boy appears to play the role of the responsible adult more so than the father does. The boy has typical signs of a child from today’s broken family relationships; he does not want to disappoint either parent. The boy s...
In the “Prodigal”, the boy whom the speaker is addressing to yearns to accomplish his own goals by leaving his hometown behind and entering the urbanized world that is filled with endless opportunities and possibilities, including “[becoming] an artist of the provocative gesture”, “wanting the world and return carrying it”, and “[reclaiming] Main Street in a limo.” However, despite all these ambitious opportunities the boy wishes to pursue, he is ultimately unable to alter the perception of others who are the most familiar with his character. Rather, the people who are the most acquainted with the boy will perceive him with the same view as in the past. The thought of a newly changed boy that embraced a completely different identity while accomplishing several achievements, is incapable of affecting their perception of the past young boy from the county. This is illustrated when the speaker describes that even if the boy “stood in the field [he’d] disappear” and was still “aiming [his] eyes down the road” of opportunity, in the eyes of people who are most familiar with him, they will be unable to acknowledge this significantly changed individual. In complete contrast with those who are most familiar with him are others who are unfamiliar with his past. These individuals, whom the boy must have encountered while achieving his accomplishments,
The story provides many sources for the boy's animosity. Beginning with his home and overall environment, and reaching all the way to the adults that surround him. However, it is clear that all of these causes of the boy's isolation have something in common, he has control over none of these factors. While many of these circumstances no one can expect to have control over, it is the culmination of all these elements that lead to the boy’s undeniable feeling of lack of control.
which is the second theme of the story. He quickly grew from an innocent, young boy into a confused, disillusioned adolescent. The boy arrived ...
The study of infanticide is connected to a visual drama of a family corruption. Tilden, a burnt out has been a failure in life and banned from New Mexico due to some trouble has come home. His incestuous relationship with Halie his mother caused the child to be born and the incident was the catalyst of the crime. Dodge who knew that the child was not his destroyed it. This infanticide though committed by Dodge was a sin shared by the actions of all these three characters. It weighed upon the family as a whole leading to alienation and dissociation.
Adam, a corporal officer, starts as man who works everyday to catch the ‘villains’ of society, but is not spending enough time with his family, especially his son. He favors his nine year old daughter over his fifteen year old son. Adam views his daughter as a sweet child, and his son as a stubborn teenager who is going through a rebellious stage. However, when his daughter is killed in an accident, his perspective of family changes. In his grief, he states that he wishes he had been a better father. His wife reminds him that he still is a father and he realizes that he still has a chance with his son, Dylan. After his Daughter’s death, he creates a resolution from scriptures that states how he will be a better father. Because of the resolution he creates, he opens up to and spends more time with his son. By th...