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Cultural differences in interpersonal relationships
Differences between western and cross-cultural forms of relationship
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Summary
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen is about an eighteen year old girl, Auden West, who finds herself in a small coastal beach town Colby. After receiving a cheap picture frame, from her brother in Europe, Auden decides to stay with her father, stepmother, and new baby sister. Unlike her peers, Auden doesn’t have many social skills. Auden was always very good at school, but she never learned how to have fun. Her parents attitudes and their separation caused her to grow up fast. Both her parents being writers, and her mom being a cynical English professor at Weymar College, Auden was always looking for acceptance. After arriving in Colby, Auden is skeptical about her relationship with her stepmother and her father. Auden soon gets hired
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Auden’s mom told her that “People don’t change” which leads Auden to believe that her father can’t change (14). Auden’s mom also states, on page 14, “If anything, you get more set in your ways as you get older, not less.” On pages 62 and 63, Auden’s parents have a disagreement before they go to a restaurant for a family meal. The book continues to read, on page 62, “Oh, boy, I thought. Change a few details-professorship for business, committees for employees-and this was the same fight [Auden’s father] had with my mom all those years ago.” It also states, “People don’t change, my mother had said, and of course she was right.” Throughout the book, Auden’s stepmother and her dad have differing opinions. Auden continuously reminds herself that people don’t change. When Auden and Eli go on a paper route, Auden stops by her house, and hears Heidi and her dad arguing. Eli explains to Auden that “people change” while discussing her parents’ argument (266). Auden answers, “‘Or they don’t… ‘Sometimes, they don’t.’” Auden’s dad leaves the house to stay on his own after the argument with Heidi. While babysitting, Auden realizes she should call her dad to push him to make a change, only to realize she should change her ways as “a quitter [herself]” and go after Eli (369). On page 380, it states, “The second message was from my dad. He was back at home with Heidi, giving it another shot, a decision he’d made the night of the prom, when he …show more content…
While changing, Auden obtains knowledge to get back up and try again, when she fails. Much like that, she also learns that life can give more than one chance, and sometimes it takes more than the first chance to get it right. Many things happen in life, and sometimes we aren’t given more than one chance. And when we do have a second chance, sometimes we make it right, but sometimes we botch that chance too. Before eating at the restaurant for the family meal, when Heidi and Auden’s dad were arguing, Auden’s father had a second chance in a situation which was very much like an altercation Auden remembers with her dad and her mom. Auden also realizes that her dad has a second chance not to leave his new family on page 302 after she visits him in his new living abode. On page 368 she calls her dad to address this second chance. “‘It’s just,’ I said, ‘you have the opportunity for a second chance here.’ ‘A second chance,’ he repeated. ‘Yeah,’ I said.” Then it continues, “‘But you won’t even take it. You’d rather just quit.’” Auden then presents herself with the fact that she was giving up as well. On at the end of page 369, it reads, “Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm. Standing there, a quitter myself, I figured I’d never know if I didn’t get back on that bike, one last time. Auden failed and she needed to try again, but she was also presented
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
Perspective allows people to see another person’s point of view. In the essay “The Cabdriver’s Daughter” by Waheeda Samady, she addresses her perception versus society’s opinion of her father. In her eyes, her father is a person capable of displaying kindness and expressing his profound knowledge while for some Americans, he is their preconceived notion of what a terrorist might look like. She challenges people to look past his scars and the color of skin, and “look at what the bombs did not destroy” (19). To her, he is the man that has lived through the Soviet-Afghan War, persevered through poverty, and denied these experiences the power of changing him into a cantankerous person. Samady feels prideful of her father’s grit through his past experiences yet feels sorrowful thinking about the life he could have lived if the war had never happened.
...s, and why he writes them at all. Instead of judging him, she tries to understand and fix it her own way, and it affects how he sees his writing:
This passage defines the character of the narrators’ father as an intelligent man who wants a better life for his children, as well as establishes the narrators’ mothers’ stubbornness and strong opposition to change as key elements of the plot.
Throughout a person’s lifetime, an individual will have encountered an array of people with different qualities that make up their personalities. In general, people who are characterized as strong-willed are the one who have the initiative and they are risk takers. Also, they deviate from normalcy by looking for something new, different, or other ways of doing things because of the tedious situations they wound up in. As once Philosopher David Hume stated two hundred and fifty years ago that unlike those who deviate from the world of normalcy and clichés, most of the people go on with their lives in a “dogmatic slumber… so ensnared in conventional notions of just about everything that we don’t see anything; we just rehearse what we’ve been told is there” (Rosenwasser 4). In the anecdotal piece “Terwilliger Bunts One”, Annie Dillard has expressed her feelings and emotions towards her mother. Writing from the first person point of view, Annie Dillard also explains to her audience the attitude her mother took through many different circumstances and anecdotes that Dillard revealed thus admiring the personality of her mother as a child. By mentioning the qualities that her mother possesses, she is putting the spotlight on the impact her mother has made on her life using her parenting philosophy. The first parenting philosophy Dillard’s mother has taught her is to be very expressive in everything using surprising and strange-sounding words as part of the observation to other people. As Dillard recalls in her story, it happened when her mother heard the announcer on the radio cried out “Terwilliger Bunts one” and she started using this phrase as part of her “surprising string of syllables… for the next seven or eight years” (Dillard). ...
...parents were much more successful in the working world encouraged him to complete many daily activities such as choir and piano lessons. His parents engaged him in conversations that promoted reasoning and negotiation and they showed interest in his daily life. Harold’s mother joked around with the children, simply asking them questions about television, but never engaged them in conversations that drew them out. She wasn’t aware of Harold’s education habits and was oblivious to his dropping grades because of his missing assignments. Instead of telling one of the children to seek help for a bullying problem she told them to simply beat up the child that was bothering them until they stopped. Alex’s parents on the other hand were very involved in his schooling and in turn he scored very well in his classes. Like Lareau suspected, growing up
Connie changes how she acts based on where she is. INTRODUCE QUOTE “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 1). Connie acts one way at home because her family is constantly comparing her to her sister. She goes out with her friends so she can be her own person. Connie looks forward to being an adult and likes having
Unrealistically, the narrator believes that she would be of use to her father more and more as she got older. However, as she grows older, the difference between boys and girls becomes more clear and conflicting to her.
The family dynamics of the household changed throughout the years of Dominic’s childhood. When Dominic was born, we lived in a rural neighborhood apartment that was not completely safe (My Virtual Child). Once Dominic’s sister Alexandra was born, we began saving more money and purchased a house in a safe rural neighborhood. At the end of Dominic’s childhood the household consisted of both parents and two children, Dominic and Alexandra. Throughout his childhood, his uncle stayed a summer and on another occasion a different uncle stayed for a few weeks. Both parents were employed throughout the entire childhood which resulted in placing Dominic in child-care as soon as possible (My Virtual Child).
"Two Kinds" is a powerful example of differing personalities causing struggles between parent and child. In every parent-child relationship, there are occurrences in which the parent places expectations on the child. Some children fall victim to a parent trying too hard or placing expectations too high, or, in the case of "Two Kinds," a parent trying to live her life through that of her child. However, the mother is also a victim in that she succumbs to her own foolish dream that "you could be anything you wanted to be in America." Knowing that her own time has passed, she wants her daughter to succeed by any means necessary, but she never stops to think of what her daughter might want. She strictly adheres to her plan, and her overbearing parenting only leaves the daughter with feelings of disapproval and questions of self-worth. The mother does not realize the controversy that she creates, and she cannot understand that her actions could be wrong. She also does not realize that she is hurting not only her daughter, but also the relationship that should bind the two of them ...
Social pressure to raise pleasant, good mannered children who become grounded and productive adults has been a driving influence for many generations. If our children do not fit into this mold then we’re considered failures are parents. Emily’s mother is tormented by the phone call which sets off a wave of maternal guilt. Emily’s mother was young and abandoned by her husband while Emily was still an infant so she had to rely on only herself and the advice of others while she raised her daughter. After Emily was born her mother, “with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, (I) did like the books said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.” (Olsen 174). Then when Emily was two she went against her own instincts about sending Emily to a nursery school while she worked which she considered merely “parking places for children.” (Olsen 174). Emily’s mother was also persuaded against her motherly instincts to send her off to a hospital when she did not get well from the measles and her mother had a new baby to tend to. Her mother even felt guilt for her second child, Susan, being everything society deemed worthy of attention. Emily was “thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blond replica of Shirley Temple.” (Olsen, 177) she was also neither “glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn.” (Olsen 177), which her sister Susan had in
The first story, The Jubilee Express, by Maureen Johnson, is about a girl names Jubilee and her trip to Florida. Jubilee is forced to ride a train to Florida and stay with her grandparents, after her parents were arrested for getting involved in a riot over a collectable village set called the Flobie Santa Village. It all gets worse when the train is caught in a snowstorm, making it impossible for them to continue driving. Jubilee continuously called her boyfriend Noah, who failed to answer her calls. She decided that she would trudge across the road to a nearby waffle house, for warmth and food. While there she met a guy named stuart, who felt sorry for her, and invited her to his house. Stuart walked Jubilee to his house and on the way
1. In “Feather’s,” the somewhat silent and solemn dinner the two couples share impacts Jack and Fran’s lives, as that night transpires into an attempted “change” within their marriage. While Fran pinpoints that evening as an immediate shift, Jack believes the change came later, after their child was born. Jack recalls, “The change came later—and when it came, it was like something that happened to other people, not something that could have happened to us” (Carver). Throughout the dinner, the author parallels Jack and Fran to Bud and Olla. Together, Bud and Olla exhibit characteristics that Jack and Fran’s relationship lacks: love, affection and the family they have created with Joey and Harold. Jack and Fran strive for this type of bond, and although they attempt to achieve it after being given a glimpse at the dinner, they fall short. As much as Jack and Fran want to aspire to be like Bud and Olla, they never reach that next level. They are never able to utilize the peacock feathers.
I think the author meant that a person never knows if something that happens to them is a second chance or the last chance. No one knows if their action will lead to them getting a second chance or if that action was their last chance. The other Wes’s last chance was when he got arrested for the murder of Sargent Prothero. Author Wes’s last chance was when he tried to escape from the military school and failed. The difference in each of the Wes’s use of that chance was that the other Wes’s was on his last chance and the author Wes’s was on his second chance. Other Wes’s didn’t have any other way to go and no reason to change his life until it was too late. Author Wes’s made the decision to start taking military school serious and turn his life
o The parents are pretty static characters, they do not change much through the story