When we think of romance novels, one's first thought might be of the kind we see at the newsstand while waiting to check out at the grocery store. Visions of a white knight like Fabio whisking away the fair damsel in distress. Romance novels for the young adult are appealing because many romantic symbols relate directly to what they're experiencing both physically and emotionally in their lives; that of youthfulness and hope.
The protagonist of Izzy, Willy-Nilly is Isobel Lingard, a/k/a Izzy; a 15 year old sophomore, who is a popular girl at school. When asked out by a senior, Marco Griggers, she becomes the envy of her friends. The ironic thing is that she wasn't even that interested in him, personally. It was more the fact that a senior was taking her out on a date and she was the first one of her group of friends to achieve that status.
A typical characteristic for this genre is that there is always some type of villain. Unfortunately, the villain, Marco, forever changed the future for Izzy. His carelessness and driving while under the influence caused them to have an accident. He, of course, was totally unharmed, while Izzy was permanently maimed. When she overheard the doctor explaining that they were going to have to amputate her lower leg, it didn't seem to be real to her, like a separate entity was the one who was going to be operated on, not her.
Throughout the story, whenever Izzy was faced with something too painful to accept, she would have visions of her alternate "little Izzy" taking over. One of the many examples throughout the story is at the beginning when she faces the fact that she is physically disabled. Her brain wasn't working. It was as if "little Izzy" was running around and aroun...
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...ife, and just how superficial and shallow she and her friends had always been. Even her own mother was upset and disappointed that her dreams of Izzy having a storybook princess life were not going to transpire in that way. Her acceptance of this compromised life caused Izzy to finally grow up and realize that she had more than looks to offer; she had a brain.
The physical challenges of this genre serve as a symbol for the deeper emotional ones. Izzy is stronger than she gives herself credit for. As in any romantic young adult novel, there is always a somewhat happy ending. Izzy progressed from a depressed, invalid in the hospital, to a girl who as "little Izzy" she could see standing. With her arms outstretched, looking like she was going to dance, her arms were really there to balance her as she took a hesitant step forward; ready to move on with her life.
In the book, Mattie starts out as a lazy teenager who needs to be told what to do by her over controlling mother, but throughout the story, she becomes more responsible and adult-like. For example, at the start of their adventure, Mattie leaves P...
‘[Izzy] Opportunity? For me, what is it? Or for you?’”(33) As shown in the text, Izzy doesn’t understand why she is being forced to go to New Mexico when she could go to the Costa Rica with her mom. Although her mother tells her that it is a good opportunity, she doesn’t see why and just sees it as a way for her mother to get rid of her.
Her struggles are of a flower trying to blossom in a pile of garbage. Growing up in the poor side of the southside of Chicago, Mexican music blasting early in the morning or ducking from the bullets flying in a drive-by shooting. Julia solace is found in her writing, and in her high school English class. Mr. Ingram her English teacher asks her what she wants out of life she cries “I want to go to school. I want to see the word” and “I want so many things sometimes I can’t even stand it. I feel like I’m going to explode.” But Ama doesn’t see it that way, she just tells, Julia, she is a bad daughter because she wants to leave her family. The world is not what it seems. It is filled with evil and bad people that just want to her hurt and take advantage of
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
The theme of the book is appearance shouldn’t matter. Like how Shay says that she doesn’t care about appearance or becoming a pretty.
Even though Melinda’s society rejected her, Ivy becomes an important friend to Melinda. Ivy supported Melinda and made her feel confident when Melinda wasn’t too happy. An instance of this is when Ivy helped Melinda feel better when she was down. After Melinda tried to talk to Rachel, and got rejected, Ivy noticed how depressed Melinda was and she tried to make her feel better. As the book states, “Someone touches my arm gently. ‘Melinda?’ It’s Ivy. ‘Can you take the late bus? I want to show you something.’... There’s more. Different pens, different handwriting, conversations between some writers, arrows to longer paragraphs. It’s better than taking out a billboard. I feel like I can fly” (Anderson 185-186). Ivy was trying to make Melinda feel better because she could tell how sad Melinda was. When the author writes “Different pends, different handwriting, conversations between some writers, arrows to longer paragraphs”, she’s trying to show the reader that Melinda has the support of many people so instead of being thrown around like a rag doll, these people gave her strength and became her backbone. They allowed her to stand up and resist being tossed around. As the
The immense pressure caused by always trying to prove to the world that she was enough resulted in a lacking of social awareness and identity. Andrea doesn’t appear to know how to act herself when she is around matty for example the text says “She was always bringing up sex around Matty so she could demonstrate how cool she was with it.”( 2) It doesn’t appear that Andrea has had a lot of practice with boys because she's been so focused on school and being accepted in society; so that now she’s trying to catch up awkwardly trying to feel her way through. This also shows that now she’s also trying to juggle being accepted by her peers and the difficulty she’s having with both. Andrea constantly tries to conform to what she thinks her peers views are before she knows them. For example, when she sees Parker for the first time in college and attempts to make conversation by ridiculing students who played in the mud only to find out Parker thought it seemed fun; the narrator says “Feeling drab to her core, Andrea searched for something else to say, but came up with nothing”.(9) Andrea is overcompensating for what she lacks by trying to act like someone she isn’t, but who she thinks Parker is. Andrea’s views on how things are or ought to be is a constant recurring flaw that prevents her from making the relationships she wants so desperately to
Having literature that can speak to your situation in life is what young adults need in their books. In Donna’s Norton Through the Eyes of a Child she lists seven characteristics of a good young adult novel and some of them are,“written from the viewpoint of an of young people, main characters must overcome their problem without help from the parent, deal with emotional problem of young adults and have fast paced storyline” (Norton, 2007). The Fault in Our Stars executed theses things perfectly. It is told from the perspective of a sixteen year old girl, living with cancer, but still going through what most sixteen year old’s go through, She has parents who do not understand her life and what she is going through so they cannot actually help her with her problems and she falls in love for the first time and experienced a tragic heartbreak. The story goes on how life does for a teenager, everything is happening fast and very out of their control, and they must live as best as they can with the circumstances of their life. John Green wrote more than just a teen cancer book, he told the experiences of not having any control in your teen years by using
...daries and what belongs to her. She seems to think that objects that are important in Mother and Maggie's life are just aesthetic pieces of art instead of real life tools. Her idea of reality became warped around the lack of respect she showed the rest of her family.
perceive the novel in the rational of an eleven-year-old girl. One short, simple sentence is followed by another , relating each in an easy flow of thoughts. Gibbons allows this stream of thoughts to again emphasize the childish perception of life’s greatest tragedies. For example, Gibbons uses the simple diction and stream of consciousness as Ellen searches herself for the true person she is. Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining.
These authors want us also to see the little girl as the main focus point of the picture and see the amount of pain she is showing us emotionally.
History is the story and knowledge of the past. There are individuals that are interested by history and wish to study it by learning more. It is very informative to know what has happened in the past for self-knowledge. An individual cannot be naïve to the past including but not limited to how literature came to. One can understand literature more when they understand the time period the author wrote during and the way they wrote. There are several time periods different authors have been through with each period having specific beliefs. Romanticism is the time period that interests me the most; it was a time during the eighteenth century and focused on nature along with the individual’s expression of imagination and emotion.
The heroine, Anne Elliot, is a 27-year-old "old maid," who devotes her life to caring for the needs of her family and friends. In the bloom of youth, her sense of duty to her mentor Lady Russell and her family compel her to decline marriage to Frederick Wentworth, the man she loves. Although an officer in the British Navy, Wentworth lacks the wealth and rank in society that is highly esteemed by Anne's associates. Austen's novelistic treatment of her characters means that as readers, we get to know them. The length of the novel allows for pacing. Austin can fully develop her characters and show them in many circumstances, in different contexts over time, a method that helps to flesh out the characters. For example, we observe Anne Elliot, dwarfed by the selfish concerns of her father and sister Elizabeth while at Kellynch Hall and Anne's lack of crit...
Roughly from 1815 to 1910, this period of time is called the romantic period. At this period, all arts are transforming from classic arts by having greater emphasis on the qualities of remoteness and strangeness in essence. The influence of romanticism in music particularly, has shown that romantic composers value the freedom of expression, movement, passion, and endless pursuit of the unattainable fantasy and imagination. The composers of the romantic period are in search of new subject matters, more emotional and are more expressive of their feelings as they are not bounded by structural rules in classical music where order, equilibrium, control and perfection are deemed important (Dorak, 2000).