The brain starts the size of a seed and develops along the growth of a person. A brain holds a hundred billion cells, but even with this capacity, its potential is easily stunuted. Poems help turn the science of life into a fresh analytical perspective. The challenge poems offer is stretching the mind to see the world from a new perspective. The poems “Barbie Doll”, by Marge Piercy, and “Kitchenette Building”, by Gwendolyn Brooks, provide twisting plots that offer a new fresh and personal perspective of society's views. The poems “Barbie Doll” and “Kitchenette Building” show how society limits the potential of its own people. The restrictions are seen through the examination of the judgment from bystanders, suppressed dreams, and self dissatisfaction …show more content…
how people’s potential is limited. The brain attempts to grow each day but fails mentally because many try to reckon those of their own, controlling potential. The two poems show how judgement brought by society limits the potential in many people’s lives.
The poems, when put together, exemplify how constant judgement shapes people’s lives. In the poem “Barbie Doll”, the narrator first shares how the students quickly judge their own female classmate, “Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs” (11). The classmates quickly judge the girl from what they perceive on the outside while ignoring her beauty on the inside. Their obstinate and childish minds shield them from seeing past the physical features of her nose and legs. However later in the poem, after the girl dies and her dead body no longer consists of these “flaws”, the bystanders act completely different, “In the casket displayed on satin she lay; with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on/ a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie/ Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said” (19-23). The bystanders only judge the living, but begin to pretend to stop judging and start respecting once the child’s life was gone. The poem “Kitchenette Building”, displays societies the judgement too, but in a more subtle way. In “Kitchenette Building”, the characters feel the judgement of society within their daily lives. In the poem, this is exemplified when the narrator states, “We wonder. But not well! Not for a minute” (11). The character in the poem begins to wonder what life could be like, a life where he followed his ambitions. However, he quickly stops wondering, because reality …show more content…
catches up to him. He feels society has set boundaries that he can not pass. He shuts his mind to the outside and stays powerless in the inside. Together the poems bounce off each other and create a bigger image. The judgements within the poems can transform into stereotypes lingering in society. The characters in both poems battle with the stereotypes set by society and struggle to conform to this desired perfection. The poems display how the characters dream but can not attain their full potential. The two poems have two different messages. Through a dark tone, “Barbie Doll” pushes the message of how the mindless reckoning by bystanders on the image girls affects their lives. The poem continues its dark message when the narrator says, “So she cut off her nose and her legs/ and offered them up” (17-18). The young girl in the story hears what the classmates say about her “fat nose on thick legs.” Being a teenage girl comes with various challenges. There are struggles of wanting to fit in and dreaming of being accepted. A life full of potential laid inside this girl but she ended her life to in with society. She desperately dreamed of being like everyone else and her life went along with it. The poem however stresses how the girl must have a happy ending, “To every woman a happy ending” (25). Because she looks pretty, even though she is dead, she lives a happy ending. The poem “Kitchenette Building” has a much softer tone. The poem shares simple moments in the character’s life but still hides a deep message. The main character in the poem dreams of what his life could be like however he can not attain his dreams. His dreams stay confined in the walls of his kitchen, “Grayed in, and gray. ‘Dream’ makes a giddy sound, not strong/ Like ‘rent,’ ‘feeding a wife,’ ‘satisfying a man’” (2-3).The assumed man in the poem thinks of his dreams as weak and something than is just not good enough. He quickly stops his dreams and places himself back into his contained box, where he knows he can not grow. The poems squeeze out the idea of dreams being ruined before they can develop and thrive. Through the characters within the poems, it is seen how the dissatisfaction of people prevents them from reaching their full potential. The poems have an effect when put together that spreads awareness to stop allowing society shape character. However, the poems also show how society creates an inner battle. In the poem “Barbie Doll”, the girl constantly competes with herself. Demonstrated in the text when saying, “She went to and fro apologizing” (10). The discriminated girl in the story wants to confide into the ways of society. She feels she holds no purpose as the girl people make fun of. In the end, she kills herself after feeling not worthy of herself. The drastic measure taken from the girl was a cry for help. She was dying on the inside while letting herself wither away because she did not feel worthy. The poem “Kitchenette Building” demonstrates the characters dissatisfaction within themselves through the death of their dreams, “Even if we were willing to let it in/ Had time to warm it, keep it very clean/ Anticipate a message, let it begin(?)” (8-10). The characters are suspicious of anything hopeful and positive because their past has held much disappointment. The characters doubt themselves while thinking that if the dream could not come true before, why would it succeed now? The character in the poem lives in his suffocated life with the weight of his self dissatisfaction pulling him down. In both poems, it is shown how you are your own worst enemy. A human loses about 200,000 cells from their brain each day.
However, humans function each day perfectly fine. It is not science killing society, it is society’s people killing their fellow people. The poems “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy and “Kitchenette Building” by Gwendolyn Brooks demonstrate how society itself limits the potential of its own people. When comparing the two poems together, the central ideas combine and the harsh tone of “Barbie Doll” collides with the soft tone of “Kitchenette Building.” The poems show how stereotypes with women and economics limits society from achieving their full potential. By giving personal perspectives of characters and storylines with imagery and metaphors, it makes you think how discrimination affects all different types of people. Imagine where the world could be if dreams were not suffocated by
reality.
As people grow up and experience life more and more, their personalities are revealed more. In the story “Barbie-Q”, Sandra Cisneros describes what it feels like to still be searching for one's identity. “Barbie-Q” is about a little girl and her sister that have dolls that don’t compare to others. There Barbies don’t have new dresses, and fancy red stilettos, but instead they have homemade sock dresses, and bubbleheads. This changes when these two girls go to a flea market, and find new dolls that were damaged in a fire. They may have been damaged with water and had melted limbs but it still meant a lot to these little girls. Sandra Cisneros expresses how these girls have struggled with self identity and how they have finally came to be there
“Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy and “ David Talamentez on the Last Day of Second Grade” by Rosemary Catacalos are two poems that show a unique view into society and the roles society expects people to fill. Sometimes those expectations can lead people to take drastic measures or even cause defiance in some people. The irony of this is that it seems the more we push people to be what society wants the more it drives them to be what they don’t want.
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
In both poem “ Barbie Doll” by Merge Piercy and “ homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton, they both expressed the different way on how our society wants us, women to look and act in order to be except into the society. Our society condemned any women who are to act differently from our norms. In this society and in every culture aspect they are always stereotype, women always been taking advantage of no matter what century we are on. In “Barbie Doll” the author tend to provide more effective critique of society expectation about our body image than “homage to my hips”.
Author, Marge Piercy, introduces us to a young adolescent girl without a care in the world until puberty begins. The cruelty of her friends emerges and ultimately she takes her own life to achieve perfection in “Barbie Dolls” (648). At the time when all children are adjusting to their ever changing bodies, the insults and cruelties of their peers begin and children who were once friends for many years, become strangers over night caught in a world of bullying. A child who is bullied can develop severe depression which can lead to suicide; and although schools have been educated in recognizing the signs of bullying, there is an epidemic that has yet to be fully addressed within our schools or society.
In the poem “Barbie Doll” the speaker take more drastic measures to make herself acceptable to society. In line12 the speaker takes drastic measures to fix herself, “So she cut off her nose and legs.” This action will lead to her death in the end of the poem which would not have happened if her peers did not mock her about the way her nose and legs looked. People are aware of their own imperfections, but when people mock them and do not accept them because of it, that is when the drastic measures of starvation, excessive exercising, and depression can begin. It can happen without the pressures of society, but if society mocks them, it pushes the person further in to a state of
The narrator is a young girl from a lower class neighborhood, who has difficulty affording new toys and accessories that are a necessity for her reputation around her friend group. In the story, she explains, “So what if our Barbie’s smell like smoke when you hold them up to your nose even after you wash them and wash them and wash them.” (Barbie Q). This quote infers that the narrator is upset with the circumstances she has around getting new dolls, and that she doesn’t care that her toys come reused from a neighborhood market. Throughout the story, the author uses figurative language to describe the way poverty can affect the childhood innocence of the narrator. Even though we can infer that the girl is from a lower class neighborhood, the narrator still explains that she is able to be creative in solving problems from economic difficulty. As the girl is playing with her dolls, she says, “This and a dress invented from an old sock when we cut holes here, here, and here, the cuff rolled over for a glamorous, fancy free, off the shoulder look.” (Barbie Q). From this quote, we can infer that the narrator is from a lower class neighborhood, and is unable to afford new toys, so she improvises by creating her own Barbie fashion. This short story uses figurative language to describe the way childhood innocence is affected through socioeconomic
The treatment of females from the 18th century through the 21st century have only gotten worse due to society’s ignorant judgment of the gender. Of which, is the change from the previous housewife like actions to the modern day body figure. This repulsive transaction is perceived throughout literature. From the 19th century’s short story, “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin in 1894 and the 20th century’s poem, “Barbie Doll” composed by Marge Piercy in 1971.
The poem starts with the line, “This girlchild was born as usual,” which suggests that as soon as a girl is born, society already expects her to learn the role she will soon play in when she hits puberty (1). Thus, showing why we are given dolls as little girls to illustrate how we should act and appear according to society. After we learn all the roles we will soon take part in, “the magic of puberty,” hits and girls immediately begin applying the ideals to their own lives (5). As if this attempt to conform is not enough we have other people telling us we are not to perfect. “You have a great big nose and fat legs,” says a classmate to the girl (6). This type of pressure can slowly but surely destroy even the little confidence women do have in themselves.
The girls feel that people need to mask their imperfections and true selves to uphold the image of how they are supposed to be. These dolls were found in a less than desirable place, such as “Lying on the street next to some tool bits ,and platform shoes with the heels all squashed, and a florescent green wicker wastebasket, and aluminum foil, and hubcaps, and a pink shag rug, and windshield wiper blades, and dusty mason jars, and a coffee can full of rusty nails”. They find another Barbie with heals in the depths of junk. They cover up the physical flaws of the burnt barbies with pretty outfits such as the “Prom Pinks” dress. One of the girls state “as long as you don't lift her dress, right? - who’s to know.” This attempt to cover up where the dolls came from and their imperfections seem to parallel their feelings about themselves and where they come from. The girls have an image of how their dolls would be if they were new. This could be the role society plays on the image of how women are supposed to be and look
In the beginning, the “girlchild” being discussed is described as “healthy, tested intelligent,/ possessed strong arms and back,/ abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.” (lines 7-9) Yet throughout the poem, all that is pointed out is her fat nose and thick legs. As the poem progresses, she is told how to improve her flaws, through diet, exercise and acting dumb. By the end the girl commits suicide after exhausting her efforts to conform to society. The final lines show the people attending her funeral discussing how pretty she looks, emphasizing the idea that she finally achieved her “happy ending”. The poem as a whole demonstrates a type of satire called Juvenalian satire, which is a formal version in which the speaker (or writer) attacks the vices and error of society with contempt and indignation. Through Ms. Piercy’s use of description and words choice that implies contempt and sarcasm, the reader is able to identify how society’s standards for women’s looks greatly overshadow other talents and abilities they may have. It is demonstrated that if one is not skinny, and petite with perfect hair and a “turned up...nose” (line 21) then other traits such as intelligence, kindness, and strength are not worth
Marge Peircy's "Barbie Doll" and Sharon Olds' "The Death of Marilyn Monroe" are two poems that deal with society's influence over women. However, the two women describe in the story are completely different on the outside, but the inside is much more similar. The female in "Barbie Doll" has no identity and no name, where as the female in "The Death of Marilyn Monore" is the icon Marilyn Monroe. Although these two women remarkably appear to be opposite, they have one thing in common - their own death- and society's opinions, stereotypes, and expectations murdered these two women.
In the beginning of “Barbie Doll”, pleasurable and unpleasurable imagery is given so that the reader can see the extremes girls go through to be considered perfect.
Those perfect days as a child when your countless days were filled with playtime. The time to set up those houses and dress the dolls up, and act out the future. “Through their play Barbara imagined their lives as adults. They used the dolls to reflect the adult world around them. They would sit and carry on conversations, making the dolls real people” (Ruth Handler). As a young child, it is all you look forward to in your future: being successful and confident, loved and cherished. Many dolls were used to project this. Specifically, the Barbie. Barbie is a positive role model girl should look up to for confidence and inspiration. She is a talented and educated career woman, self-sufficient in every aspect of her life, and a stunning example to young girls the body that is healthy and fit.
The speaker reflects on the teenage girl’s childhood as she recalls the girl played with “dolls that did pee-pee” (2). This childish description allows the speaker to explain the innocence of the little girl. As a result, the reader immediately feels connected to this cute and innocent young girl. However, the speaker’s diction evolves as the girl grew into a teenager as she proclaims: “She was healthy, tested intelligent, / possessed strong arms and back, / abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” (7-9). The speaker applies polished language to illustrate the teen. This causes the reader not only to see the girl as an adult, but also to begin to grasp the importance of her situation. The speaker expresses what the bullies told this girl as she explains: “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty” (12-13). The sophisticated diction shifts towards the girl’s oppressors and their cruel demands of her. Because of this, the reader is aware of the extent of the girl’s abuse. The speaker utilizes an intriguing simile as she announces: “Her good nature wore out / like a fan belt” (15-16). The maturity of the speaker’s word choice becomes evident as she uses a simile a young reader would not understand. This keeps the mature reader focused and allows him to fully understand the somberness of this poem. The speaker concludes the poem as she depicts the teenage girl’s appearance at her funeral: “In the casket displayed on satin she lay / with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on” (19-20). The speaker elects not to describe the dead girl in an unclear and ingenuous manner. Rather, she is very clear and