Before we were Free Before we were Free, by Julia Alvarez, captures the experiences and the challenges of twelve year-old Anita de la Torre living in the oppressed Dominican Republic. Anita has spent most of her years as an ebullient adolescent, thriving in the comfort and luxury found within the gates of her family’s lush compound. Anita is torn from her euphoric life around her twelfth birthday in 1960, when the walls of her safe haven seemingly crumble as she discovers more and more about the reality of her broken country, it’s threatening dictator, and her family’s involvement in a plan to overthrow him. Before we were Free boasts a similarity to The Book Thief. Both of these books focus on a torn nation and a dictator. Perhaps the most similar feature in these two books lies in the personalities that they revolve around--teen girls facing increasing dangers, yet managing to persevere even when they feel as though they cannot go on any longer. Although the books revolve around different eras and different dictators, they closely mirror one another. This book explored what it meant to be coming-of-age during a time of conflict. Throughout these times in history, we often …show more content…
remember the Joan-of-Arcs; the ones that we consider “heroes”. This book focused on someone different. This book saw life through Anita’s eyes, a girl fleeing incrimination who daydreamed about her crush while she hid in the back of a closet. She lost her father, her uncle, her home, and some of her childhood. Before we were Free witnessed Anita, a twelve year old girl, display immeasurable strength when her homeland was filled with fear, hostility, and a longing for emancipation. After seeing how Anita matured into a selfless young woman, I would consider her as much of a hero as anybody else in the history books. One of the most significant quotes in Before we were Free was uttered by Chucha, the eccentric Haitian housemaid who supposedly saw the future in her dreams.
Chucha said,“Things will be happening soon for which there is no protection. No protection but silence, no protection but dark hiding places, wings, and prayers” (pg. 50). This quote is so important because it foreshadows the events to come. Throughout the book, Anita and her mother had to hide in a closet, pray for survival, and eventually clamour onto a dragonfly helicopter headed for New York. Julia Alvarez, the author of the book, also utilized a metaphor, the wings, to refer to their plane ride, and also to them “flying free” of their country. Chucha’s message gave the reader slight insight into the future of Anita’s
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Nothing in life is permanent, everything one day will have to change. A basic necessity of life, change is the fuel that keeps our society moving. In the novel Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain, a fourteen-year-old boy gifted in craftsmanship, experiences changes in all aspects of his life. From a crippled hand to fighting against the British for his country's independence, war transforms Johnny Tremain from a selfish child into a patriotic hero. As the war relentlessly continues, Johnny learns the effects that it has on him as he must focus on the real issue rather than centering around his individual concerns. By reading this novel, we can learn from Johnny how in times of conflict, young men like him must mature into men who
get older they start to realize what is really going on in the Dominican Republic. This book takes you
I read the book Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez. Anita, an eleven year old girl, is suddenly sent into a very scary and unknown world, right in her own home. Her cousins are running away to the United states, but to get away from what? Her parents are keeping secrets and she tries to get information from her sister, but finds out very little. Anita finds herself struggling when she is forced to grow up very quickly and try not to act as scared as she feels at times.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
during the war. This novel is able to portray the overwhelming effects and power war has
A Separate Peace shows the kind of war that exists between childhood and adulthood life. There is a significant difference in the behaviors of individuals in these two stages of life. It is a difficult task to transform from childhood to adulthood. One has to undergo a lot of changes to turn entirely to the next phase. The novel reveals that there are
In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried the issue of maturity is an ever occurring theme within the novel that sets out to tackle and open up for discussion of it on a broader level. Specifically within the chapters "Friends" and "Enemies" it is clear that both Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen are wedged in a personal psychological war. This issue faces many young adults but is perverted by the war and the tragic loss of innocent life. Many feel that the purpose of O'Brien's The Things They Carried is to show hardships and reality of war. While that is true, the most important issue and debate brought up is the rapid transformation of our young soldiers while they have to face the atrocities of war. Although, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen originate as bitter enemies, they conclude there relationship as friends who have maturely evolved due to there encounters in war and self reflection.
When the war was over, the survivors went home and the world tried to return to normalcy. Unfortunately, settling down in peacetime proved more difficult than expected. During the war, the boys had fought against both the enemy and death in far away lands; the girls had bought into the patriotic fervor and aggressively entered the workforce. During the war, both the boys and the girls of this generation had broken out of society's structure; they found it very difficult to return.
Throughout A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses semiotic codes to express an adolescent’s transition into adulthood in a time of conflict and war. Barthes writes, “Ideological imperatives express themselves through a multiplicity of codes which ‘invade’ the text in the form of key signifiers. Each of these signifiers represents a digression outside of the text to an established body of knowledge which it connotes; each one functions as an abbreviated version of the entire system (code) of which it is a part,” (Semiotics, 31). These semiotic codes are often looked at as social enigmas that relate to the rules and ideologies developed by the culture of the time period, in this case at Devon Prep School in New Hampshire in 1942-43 during World War II. Codes are where semiotics, cultural values, and social structures mesh. The ideals and challenges of war parallel the friendship between the two main characters, Gene and Finny, and particularly relate to Gene’s obsession with competition and envy of his best friend and enemy. These codes impose ideological imperatives that translate from Gene and Finny’s friendship to the larger picture; they connote the loss of innocence and transformation into adulthood, and ultimately define the dominant values of the time period’s culture, as well as the overall meaning of Knowles’ text. Through the use
The book, A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, can be related to adolescence in several ways. The attendants of this school face many new experiences during the course of their stay, many of which occur in their last year. This is where the book picks up. The book takes place at the Devon School, in the summer session of 1942. Throughout this book, the children are constantly fighting and fearing adulthood and their future. The pressure to be successful and layout a plan for the future is always upon students in school. Also, the constant reminder of World War || lays like heavy blankets over them, smothering at all times. Many of the students at the Devon School accept this pressure and continue to press on, while others may crack. Adolescence is conveyed throughout this book through many points. One of which is the society established by both Gene and Finny, known as the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session.
The simple definition of war is a state of armed competition, conflict, or hostility between different nations or groups; however war differs drastically in the eyes of naive children or experienced soldiers. Whether one is a young boy or a soldier, war is never as easy to understand as the definition. comprehend. There will inevitably be an event or circumstance where one is befuddled by the horror of war. For a young boy, it may occur when war first breaks out in his country, such as in “Song of Becoming.” Yet, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” it took a man dying in front of a soldier's face for the soldier to realize how awful war truly is. Both “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” are poems about people experiencing the monstrosity of war for the first time. One is told from the perspective of young boys who were stripped of their joyful innocence and forced to experience war first hand. The other is from the perspective of a soldier, reflecting on the death of one of his fellow soldiers and realizing that there is nothing he can do to save him. While “Song of Becoming” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” both focus on the theme of the loss of innocence, “Song of Becoming” illustrates how war affects the lives of young boys, whereas “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the affect on an experienced soldier.
Sin Sun Far’s “In the Land of the Free” explores the theme of maternal love through the characterization of Lae Choo as a symbol of the sacrifice immigrant parents make for their children’s’ futures. The mother speaks about the severance of her son being away from her. “You do not know –man- what it is to miss the feel of the little fingers and the little toes and the soft round limbs of your little one” (133).
To make this argument I will first outline this thought with regard to this issue. Second, I will address an argument in support of Rousseau’s view. Third, I will entertain the strongest possible counterargument to my view; namely, the idea that the general will contradicts itself by forcing freedom upon those who gain no freedom from the general will. Fourth, I will rebut that counter argument by providing evidence that the general will is always in favor of the common good. Finally, I will conclude my paper by summarizing the main lines of the argument of my paper and reiterate my thesis that we can force people to be free.
The book Girl at War, written by Sarah Nović takes place from the point of view of a naїve, young girl growing up in Croatia during times of civil war. Young Ana is curious and wants to know more about the war. There is something very intriguing about reading a book from the point of view of a youthful child who is so innocent and the reader knows more about the situation than the narrator. Sarah Nović does an exceptional job of keeping the reader aware of the conflicts through the use many literary devices while the reader still can capture the beauty and keep the purity of the ingenuous child, Ana.
In example, within the American culture the concept of the “American Dream”. For many people within the US, the idea is to “keep up with the Jones’ “ or to even do better than our parents. For many, it is nearly impossible to gain such social change without a period of liminality. (VT: 106) This concept is the basis of colleges, and the American military. Young Americans enter this period of liminality and obtain social change through such communitas with others.