A residence often has a very different meaning from a home. Where a person grows up and the people that surround him/her can have a tremendous impact on one’s adulthood. Throughout the novel, Bread Givers, Sara’s idea of home has a significant influence on her feelings and actions. The opposition she has faced from her father constantly causes Sara to question her decisions. However, the solace Sara experienced from her mother and sisters can serve as a comforting reminder of her childhood. While Sara struggles to achieve her independent identity, the companionship she once knew continuously draws her back to her oppressive home. From a young age, Sara developed a sense of comfort in her home. It was where she grew up with people that she …show more content…
knew and loved. However, after Sara leaves her oppressive father, the demand of her job as well as school leaves her worn out and vulnerable. When Sara’s mother arrives on her doorstep, though, a feeling of connection to her home resurfaces. Upon seeing her mother again, Sara reflects that “[it] seemed to [her that she] never knew ‘till now how close to [her] heart [her] mother was” (170). The visit brings up memories of the life Sara left behind, as well as the love and support she lost when she left her mother. At the same time, Sara reminisces about the simple pleasures that home represents to her, such as food on the table and a simple, yet comforting atmosphere. As Sara toils during her laundry work, she loses herself in “the thought of Mother’s cooking. Why is it that Mother’s simplest dishes, her plain potato soup, her gefülte fish, were so filling?” (165 - 166). As she adjusts to a life on her own, she misses the daily routines from her previous life, and now faces an inconsistent future instead. Similarly, Sara’s private room becomes a sort of representation of the neglect and harshness of her new life. When Sara first sees the room she compares it to “a dark hole on the ground floor, opening into a narrow shaft. The only window where some light might have come in was thick with black dust” (158). Compared to Sara’s crowded yet comfortable home on Hester Street, this bleak residence bears no feelings to Sara. Eventually, Sara’s harsh memories of home fade, leaving her with a few happy moments to remember. These moments make Sara realize the importance of home and her close ties to her family. Sara’s constant struggle through poverty, as well as academic achievement, creates a life of solitude in which she often longs for her home.
While living on her own, Sara adapts to her newly found independence in ways that demonstrate the desire for her roots. When Sara begins to cook and eat by herself every day, she feels “a longing [...] for the old kitchen in Hester Street. Even in [the] worst poverty, [they] sat around the table together, like people. Even Father’s preaching and Mother’s worrying made mealtimes something higher than mere eating and filling the stomach” (173). Though Sara’s family often had a shortage of food, they suffered in poverty together. Now, Sara feels as if she has no one. Again, when she starts to feel a loss of company after rejecting Max Goldstein, she desires the companionship of yet another negative man in her life; her father. Now she sees him as “rich with the sap of centuries...his words of wisdom….he seemed….like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Solomon, and David, all joined together in the one wise old face. And this man with all the ancient prophets shining out of his eyes -- father” (202-203). Sara’s lonely life has made her forget the negativity and adversity of her father’s beliefs. She has forgotten the harm of her home, which subconsciously lures her back to it. When Sara finishes night school and moves on to college, this ache for community finds her again. She goes to a freshmen dance and after, concludes that “[e]ven in college, [she] had …show more content…
not escaped from the ghetto. Here loneliness hounded [her] even worse than on Hester Street” (220). Sara continues to find herself isolated from her peers because of the poverty of her childhood. The alienation she feels doesn’t necessarily make her desire home, but it still ties her back to her roots. No matter where she goes, Sara finds connection to her family and her idea of home. After Sara graduates, her loneliness, as well as the success has achieved, brings her back to her family on Hester Street after six long years. As she enters her family’s home, Sara reflects on how “[t]ill now, [she] had no time to be human or enjoy sociability with people […] Love ached in [her] more than if [she] had been with them all the time. It was like a secret wound [she] had kept covered for six years” (242). Sara addresses the persistent lack of love and comfort that existed within her all these years, and she recognizes the hurt she had endured. By understanding the painful aspects of her time away, Sara acknowledges the positive facets of home and her continual need to be reminded of her roots. Ultimately, the solitude of independence draws Sara closer to home. Along with acknowledging the positive aspects of home, Sara comes to understand that her struggle to achieve solitude from her family is a lost cause.
No matter how hard she tries to separate herself from her family, she still feels an obligation to take care of them. When she was younger, Sara believed “[she] could escape [home] by running away” (295), but when she visits her father, she “realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and here [she] stood face to face with it again” (295). Sara no longer views home as merely a location, but a sense of tradition that had been enforced by her father. Over the years, her father put his family through poverty and caused anguish for Sara and her sisters because of his unwillingness to stray from Jewish traditions. Sara developed a loathing toward her father and left him after he was cheated by the grocery store owner. However, Sara's anger and hatred toward her father dissipates once she understands that he is a true part of her. The values and ideals he always tried to impose upon her are the legacy of generations before him. Sara realizes that she had gained everything from him regardless of her hatred and therefore maintains her sense of family obligation. In understanding the motives of her father’s actions, Sara learns to love herself and the duty she feels toward her family. She concludes that she could no longer hate herself by hating her father, “Can I hate my arm, my hand that is part of me? [...] If
I grow, if I rise, if I ever amount to something, is it not his spirit burning in me” (286)? The traditions and values of her father are embedded in Sara, and she constantly influenced by their role in her sense of home. Sara now understands that her father was the product of his parents and the traditions they enforced upon him. She finds a new respect for her father and the traditions he was attempting to teach her. Sara no longer views home as a burden, but as a connection to her heritage. She remembers her roots as she thinks "[...] I felt the shadow [of burden] still there, over me. It wasn't just my father, but the generations who made my father whose weight was still upon me" (297). Sara has pioneered so much for herself after abandoning her family, but at last she understands the importance of the roots from which she originated. Sonsyrea Tate, an author and journalist wrote, “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you.” Throughout the novel, Sara discovers that despite her efforts to separate herself from her family, the values and people she grew up with will never cease to influence her life. Loneliness, poverty, and a need for support challenge Sara in her quest to leave her home in the past. Though cliche, the proverb “home is where the heart is” continuously manifests itself in Sara’s life. No matter how hard she tries to rid herself of her father’s oppressive beliefs, both the support she experienced in the midst of misery lead Sara to reconnect with her family in times of need. As she finally identifies her place as an independent young woman, Sara is pulled back to the companionship her home provides.
For awhile she feels deathly lonely "cheated and robbed of the life that more fortunate girls seemed to have (Chapter 16)." However, Sara manages to get into college and despite all the discouragement and hard work she graduates and gets a job as a teacher. She gets her own apartment, which she vowed to keep clean and empty, a dramatic change from her small and filthy childhood home she shared with her whole family on Hester Street. And even despite her mother's death, her father's rapid remarriage, and then his diamond earring wearing new wife's attempt to blackmail her into losing her teaching job, Sara still manages to find happiness. She gets married to the principal at her school, even when she thinks that her step mother drove him away. Yet, in the midst of all her good fortune, "[her] joy hurt like guilt (Chapter 21)." So much in fact that even through all her hatred for him, she still developed a longing to see her
“Picking up the pieces of their shattered lives was very, very difficult, but most survivors found a way to begin again.” Once again, Helen was faced with the struggle of living life day-to-day, trying not to continue feeling the pain of her past.
For an immigrant, entering into the United States during the early 1900s was a time in search for new beginnings, new possibilities, and a new life. Similarly, this concept was the same for Sara. In the early chapters of the novel, Sara's character is introduced as a young, courageous girl who works hard every day providing money and food for her family. Her job consisted of working in shops and going out into the streets of New York as a beggar
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen” (“Brainy Quotes” 1). In Edith Wharton’s framed novel, Ethan Frome, the main protagonist encounters “lost opportunity, failed romance, and disappointed dreams” with a regretful ending (Lilburn 1). Ethan Frome lives in the isolated fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts with his irritable spouse, Zenobia Frome. Ever since marriage, Zenobia, also referred to as Zeena, revolves around her illness. Furthermore, she is prone to silence, rage, and querulously shouting.
... while she still has time (257). She fails at first, thinking her father is “bereft of his senses” in his second marriage (258). She believes this despite the Torah saying, “a man must have a wife to keep him pure, otherwise his eyes are tempted by evil” (259). Gradually, Sara begins to understand her father: the only thing he has in life is his fanatical adherence to traditions; “In a world where all is changed, he alone remained unchanged” (296). Reb has a deep and true fear of God, to expect him to change beliefs that he believes have been handed down by God, beliefs that have persisted for thousands of years, is illogical. It is impossible to reconcile fully the New World with the Old, and it is the responsibility of the New to be the more flexible, unfair as it may be.
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
Walk through a door, and enter a new world. For John, raised in home resplendent with comfort and fine things, Ginny’s family’s apartment above the fruit market is a radically different environment than his own. Economic differences literally smack him in the face, as he enters the door and walks into towel hung to dry. “First lesson: how the poor do laundry” (Rylant 34). In this brief, potent scene, amidst “shirts, towels, underwear, pillowcases” hanging in a room strung with clotheslines, historical fiction finds crucial expression in the uncomfortable blush of a boy ready for a first date and unprepared for the world in which he finds himself.
It is the first time that Lizabeth hears a man cry. She could not believe herself because her father is “a strong man who could whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing through the house.” As the centre of the family and a hero in her heart, Lizabeth’s dad is “sobbing like the tiniest child”She discovers that her parents are not as powerful or stable as she thought they were. The feeling of powerlessness and fear surges within her as she loses the perfect relying on her dad. She says, “the world had lost its boundary lines.” the “smoldering emotions” and “fear unleashed by my father’s tears” had “combined in one great impulse toward
Before Mrs. Ames and the mother realize the restrictions of their old lives, their worlds have been full of disillusionment and ignorance. Mrs. Ames, for example, is oppressed by her husband’s silence and the search for love and tenderness from anyone, because she lives each day alone, ignored by her scornful husband. And, as a result of being left companionless, she does not mature, rather she longs for tenderness. In other words, Boyle explains her dysfunctional relationship with her husband, “The mystery and silence of her husband’s mind lay like a chiding finger of her lips. Her eyes were gray for the light had been extinguished in them” (57). That is, Mrs. Ames’ spirit remains oppressed by her husband who treats her as a child, and, in doing so, isolates her from his world.
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
It shows her desire to assert what little independence and control she has in the face of the strict gender roles she experiences within her society. She explains to Frank that she believes that the “idea that people have to resign from real life and ‘settle down’ when they have families… [is] the great sentimental lie of the suburbs” (117). She finds it difficult, like many women of her time, to find a medium between who she is and who she is expected to be, but tries to create a balance. Nevertheless, her efforts to do so are consistently ruined by the variables around her, causing her to become more and more frustrated with her
Sara’s life, like any other great quest, started with a rough beginning: a poor family, sexist society, and the struggle to find true happiness. And sadly enough for her and her sisters, it does not get better quickly enough. Even their mother, who remarks, “And woe to us women who got to live in a Torah-made world that’s only for men”, points out the bigoted nature of their culture, despite
In the opening line “I’d long quit the idea of living away from home”, she begins to tell her story as to why she now does not want to be away from home. As her flashback
The boy is haplessly subject to the city’s dark, despondent conformity, and his tragic thirst for the unusual in the face of a monotonous, disagreeable reality, forms the heart of the story. The narrator’s ultimate disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him and his eventual recognition and awareness of his own existence within that miserable setting. The gaudy superficiality of the bazaar, which in the boy’s mind had been an “oriental enchantment,” shreds away his protective blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love contrast sharply from his dream (Joyce). Just as the bazaar is dark and empty, flourishing through the same profit motivation of the market place, love is represented as an empty, fleeting illusion. Similarly, the nameless narrator can no longer view his world passively, incapable of continually ignoring the hypocrisy and pretension of his neighborhood. No longer can the boy overlook the surrounding prejudice, dramatized by his aunt’s hopes that Araby, the bazaar he visited, is not “some Freemason affair,” and by the satirical and ironic gossiping of Mrs. Mercer while collecting stamps for “some pious purpose” (Joyce). The house, in the same fashion as the aunt, the uncle, and the entire neighborhood, reflects people