Alden Nowlan The Glass Roses

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The setting of the glass roses was in a Canadian logging company shortly after WW2 and during a cold Canadian Winter. This impacts the people there who have grown up believing “There ain’t no room for kids in the pulp woods”. This refers to how in order to survive you have to be tough and demonstrate signs of being tough, such as stoicism, because the only alternative is to perish. This is shown further when Leka/ The Polack claimed that “sometimes I think this country does not like people” referring to how people are very delicate animals who are not naturally supposed to be living in conditions such as the Canadian winter and that is only possible because people were so dedicated to doing so. This is further supported when the Polack said, …show more content…

What is the difference between a'smart' and a'smart'? The author Alden Nowlan used the glass roses several times throughout the story to refer to the childlike innocence of people and how fragile roses can easily be broken by others. The roses can refer to any individual however when they are first introduced in the story from the Polack they are referring to how the innocent was broken at the start of WW2 shown when his mothers glass roses “broke in a million pieces”. The Polack later exclaims how “there is not much room in the world for glass roses” referring to how people who are innocent will easily be broken by those around them and will not survive the harsh conditions that most people are born into. When Stephen asked about the roses that got smashed the Polack responded with “the roses that got smashed”... “they were very pretty, those little glass roses, I need only close my eyes and I can see them”. This can be taken literally of him being able to clearly remember his mother's glass roses. On the other hand, it also symbolises how the Polack can remember the joy of childhood innocence before the war started and he recalls how “very pretty” his childhood was before it was prematurely taken from him by Hitler and the …show more content…

Stephen believed that the people around him would only give him kindness if he matured and fit in with the rest of them. This resulted in him giving up his child innocence and in return would get the respect from the people around him as that is what he has always been told he should want. Stephen has spent his whole life wanting to fit in with those around him and in order to do so he wants to prove how tough and mature he has become to survive. He wants to fit in because he has been led to believe that the only way he can receive his father’s kindness is in which he has craved his entire life. This is a common theme in the story where Stephan admires the physiques of those around him while simultaneously ashamed of his own 15 year old body. When Stephen first meets the Polack, he is very skeptical of him because of his father’s belief that “Them Wops and Bohunks and Polacks” has gotta lotta funny ideas. They ain’t our kind of people. You gotta watch them.” and as a result of wanting to be more like his father, Stephan adopts the same mindset. However, it is only after being forced to work with the Polack to cut down trees that his opinion

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