Books: a group of blank white pages where authors record memories, reveal what they imagined, and take us along on a ride through their minds. These past few weeks, I had been reading two popular novels that did in fact take me on that journey: The Outsiders written by S.E. Hinton, and Miracle’s Boys by Jacqueline Woodson. In no uncertain terms, I did notice that these two books could be compared to one another. Although these are two separate books, written by two different authors with separate journeys, they actually have great similarities and differences in the characters and plot. The first character I read about was Lafayette Bailey from Miracle’s Boys. Appearance wise, the only detail in the book that described him was that he had dark and curly hair like his father. Age wise, Lafayette is a twelve year old seventh grader, and the youngest of the three Bailey brothers: Ty’ree, Charlie, and himself. Personality wise, Lafayette is a sensitive soul. He always seems to take things to heart. For example, in the …show more content…
first chapter, when Charlie was talking with Aaron, Lafayette stayed upset after Aaron called him “Lala”. This also proves that Lafayette seems to hold on to emotions for long periods of time. Another example is that he could never let forget the death of his mother, Milagro. I don’t really think that he fully let go of his emotions because every now and then, he mentions a memory of his mother. Lafayette also has a very unique way of thinking. For instance, Lafayette feels responsible for the passing of his mother Milagro, and regrets not being able to save her. The second character I read about was Ponyboy from The Outsiders. Appearance wise, unlike Lafayette, Ponyboy has reddish-brown hair and a grey-green eye color. Age wise, Ponyboy is fourteen years old, and the youngest of the three Curtis brothers: Darry, Sodapop, and himself. Like Lafayette, Ponyboy is very sensitive. In the book, Darry slaps Ponyboy for coming home to late, and apparently, Ponyboy overreacts and runs away. This means that Ponyboy apparently overreacts to most situations. Like Lafayette, Ponyboy also has his own unique way of thinking. Ponyboy assumes that since Darry, the eldest brother, gave up a lot just to raise him, that Darry hates him and holds grudges. This sort of thinking often makes Ponyboy feel guilty and unwanted, so he often looks for love and care from Sodapop, the middle brother. Now, let’s talk about the plot.
The story of Miracle’s Boys basically describes the struggle to keep three brothers together without the help or supervision of a parent/adult. The eldest brother, Ty’ree is taking care of his younger brothers, Lafayette, who blames himself for the passing of their mother, and Charlie, who was just released from a detention center after being of armed robbery. These brothers basically struggle to keep the family together, and help each other through the grieving after the death of their parents. The rising action of this story is when Charlie gets back from the detention center. He is now the reason there is tension in the family. The climax is when Lafayette realizes that Charlie has changed. Next, the falling action would have to be when Lafayette sits on the stoop with Charlie, and Charlie starts to open up a little bit. This lessens the tension. The ending basically shows how the brothers begin their road to
recovery. Next I would like to talk about the plot for The Outsiders. Similar to Miracle’s boys, the book describes the struggle between three brothers, when their parents pass away, how exactly to keep their relationship from falling apart. Basically, they are trying to find out how to not burn the bridges between them. The book also describes how these same brothers along with other friends form a gang, or as I like to call it, an alternative family, and the struggles they go through as they clash with other gangs, and how the group manages all off it. The rising action for this novel would have to be when Darry slaps Ponyboy, and Ponyboy runs away with Johnny. This sets a feeling of suspense as to what’s going to happen next. The climax is definitely when Johnny kills Bob. The falling action involves the death of Johnny and Darry, and how the rest of the gang tries to cope with it. This story also ends with the brothers’ relationship on its way to recovery. So now, I’m guessing you see my point. Although these are two separate books, written by two different authors, they actually have a great amount similarities and differences in the characters and plot. They both end in the same way, and although the main characters may not look alike, they do in fact have similar personalities, issues to deal with. Maybe the authors aren’t so different as well!
Throughout “A&P” and “Gryphon” the two characters found themselves facing a challenge that they had never had to face before. Reading both of the stories has shown that although different adversities were represented in the books they both had challenges and reactions that were similar to each other as well as very different. Sammy’s was about a store called “A&P” where the manager confronted three girls in bathing suits and Sammy had to stand up for them. Tommy’s was about a unique substitute teacher who he quite enjoyed and his journey with her, and his defending her to the other kids when one of the children gets her fired. Together and separately these two dynamic characters make up these unique stories that ensnared their reader with their thoughts, adversity and heroic actions throughout the story.
On April 24, 1967, a remarkable book was published by eighteen year old S. E. Hinton. Themed on a greaser named Ponyboy who him and his gang are treated badly by the Socs, the book is about Ponyboy and his best friend Johnny on the run after Johnny kills a Soc. With help from one of their gang members, they sneak on a train to get to a church in the countryside. While eating at a restaurant, the old church catches fire with kids stuck in it, leaving Johnny and Ponyboy the ones to save the kids. While saving the children, a large, scorching piece of timber falls on Johnny, putting him in critical condition. While Johnny is in the hospital, a ‘rumble’ goes on in which the Socs and greasers fight in the vacant lot,
In the book Miracle’s Boys written by Jacqueline Woodson, Lafayette (the main character) narrates the story. Lafayette, the youngest of three boys, becomes raised by the oldest brother, Ty’ree, after both parents passed away. Their father died a few years before their mother, due to developing hypothermia after trying to save a lady and her dog from freezing lake waters in Central Park. Their mother had diabetes complications. She went to sleep and didn’t wake up the next morning. Before she passed, Charlie (the middle son) gotten sent off to Rahway camp to help him lose his bad habits he started developing, and came back not long after his mother passed. Charlie came back really mean and cold-hearted, which explains why
Alexie divulges that he looks up to his father by saying, “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” (Alexie 12). Sherman Alexie, a young boy who loves his father, successfully utilizes apples to logos, pathos, and ethos. Since his father is his idol, he is a credible and reliable man in Alexie’s life, whom he loved, which logically explains that Alexie chose to love books. Because he loves his father, Alexie’s emotions of love and admiration drove him to follow in his father’s footsteps. His relationship with his father delves out necessary information for readers to tie his entire paper together by connecting the dots as to why Sherman Alexie is so entranced with literature, which corresponds with his love of
Many times in our lives we are compared to our siblings. On many occasions, I am compared to my brother. People say that we have the same physique facial features, and height. Although these traits run in the family, I truly only want to be my own person. Just the other day someone called me “Michael.” The burn from my anger showed on my face. “I am NOT Michael,” I screamed; I am my own person. Just as we see similarities in family members, people also see similarities in stories written by the same author. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” and “Rip Van Winkle” we see similarities in setting, male protagonist, a female antagonist, and a mystic character.
In the wilderness, all by himself, with no food or supplies; the only thing he had was one hatchet. A boy named Brian Robeson had to survive all of these hardships by himself. On the other side of the world, the engine of a plane rumbles as I sit with my two books: The Hatchet and The Giver. All I had with me was time, so I decided to start my summer reading. I thought the books would mean nothing to me, just like how Brian thought the hatchet was going to be useless. However, the books turned out to be remarkable and let me reflect on my way to Hill.
In her story, Boys and Girls, Alice Munro depicts the hardships and successes of the rite of passage into adulthood through her portrayal of a young narrator and her brother. Through the narrator, the subject of the profound unfairness of sex-role stereotyping, and the effect this has on the rites of passage into adulthood is presented. The protagonist in Munro's story, unidentified by a name, goes through an extreme and radical initiation into adulthood, similar to that of her younger brother. Munro proposes that gender stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence play an extreme, and often-controversial role in the growing and passing into adulthood for many young children. Initiation, or the rite of passage into adulthood, is, according to the theme of Munro’s story, both a mandatory and necessary experience.
The book “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff is a memoir written about the author’s childhood memories and experiences. The author shows many different characters within the book. Many of them are just minor character that does not affect the author much in his life choices and thoughts throughout his growth. But there are some that acts as the protagonist and some the antagonist. One of them is Dwight, the protagonist’s or Jack’s stepfather. This character seems to be one of the characters that inhibit Jack’s choices and decisions. This character plays a huge role in Jack’s life as it leaves a huge scar in his memory. The author here spends the majority of time in this character in the memoir to show the readers the relationship between Jack and Dwight.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.
In My Life with the Walter Boys, Jackie Howard’s life was one of luxury; she had the prestige of attending an elite all girls boarding school, was in line to become the head of her father's company upon graduation, and lived in an upscale penthouse in the middle of New York City. Jackie knew that everything in her life would fall into place as she spent her time writing lists so nothing would turn out less than perfect. However, her parents and her sister die in a car accident, leaving Jackie to pack up her belongings and move to Colorado, where she has no choice but to live with the Walters and their twelve boys. “As she struggles to make friends and acclimate to her new environment, she begins to embrace her newfound siblings, and all of
The short story, "Suzy and Leah," by Jane Yolen, is about two girls who have different views about each other. Each girl documents their feelings towards the other in their diaries. At first the girls didn’t get along, but after reading each other’s diaries, they got to know each other better and their relationship changed. Throughout the diary writing, both girls learn to see things from another perspective.
“Suzy and Leah” by Jane Yolen is about two girls who learn an important lesson about relationships. The girls judged each other based off of one meeting. Suzy, an American girl, disliked Leah, a German refugee, because she saw Leah as a “prickly porcupine”. Even though Suzy didn’t really know who Leah was in private, she still thought and wrote rude things about her. The abhor Suzy felt for Leah was neutral. Where Suzy found Leah to be uptight and standoffish, Leah thought of Suzy as a fake, snotty American girl “... the girl with the yellow hair who smiles so falsely at me.” Although neither of the girls took the time or effort to actually find out what kind of person each was, they still made judgements of one another.
When children are faced with emotional events that challenge their ideas, they take another step on the road to being “grown up” as they discover their identity. The short story “Boys and Girls” written by Alice Munro illustrates this coming of age by allowing us to follow the development of a young girl. We follow the main character, who narrates the story, as she changes from beginning to end. As the story opens, the narrator acts like a care free child, not paying heed to her gender. She then begins to react strongly to the way she is treated by her family and their expectations of her young womanhood. Once she realizes that some changes are inevitable she begins to adopt a new understanding of who she is which is evidence of a more mature way of thinking. This story demonstrates that difficult childhood experiences regarding gender contribute to a developing maturity and are frequently met with varying degrees of resistance.
The poems “The Little Blue Engine, “The Little Boy and the Old Man”, and “Ladies First” were all written by shel silverstein. Shel Silverstein attempted to break social norms to promote fun and imagination in the children who read his poems. Shel Silverstein used his poetry to challenge adults view on children’s literature His poetry deals with difficult subject matter with powerful imagery to convey a message to youth and adults. Silverstein’s poetry was written for the enjoyment of children. In addition he didn’t want them to conform to society.