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Compare and contrast essay on mother to son langston hughes
Raymond Carver's "Cathedral
Raymond Carver's "Cathedral
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Relationships in Raymond Carver’s Cathedral and Langston Hughes' Mother To Son
My Idea of family honestly didn't begin until I agreed to marriage and children. Until that moment, in my laxity, I hadn't even considered the many aspects and values a family should consist of. My experience needless to say, laid in shattered pieces long before I took over the reins of raising myself and built a blockade fortress of stoicism. In all seriousness, I often considered never having a relationship, thinking I was incapable of possessing the experience it would take to pursue such an endeavor. Needless to say, I didn't say 'yes' the first time. In spite of this, I did marry; yet my idea of family was built without preconceived ideologies. I've done what I felt was nurturing and beneficial for my children both environmentally and educationally. All in all, my family is successful though we are a work in progress. I'm often overly diligent in their wellbeing out of my heightened need for them what I never had; the experience of a wonderful family that sets the basis for a successful life when life beyond the days of a dreamy child are a hardship all their own. Family relationships, be it any form, is as always a work in progress, yet, with the fiction work of Cathedral by Raymond Carver and with Langston Hughes' poem Mother To Son, we see those with steadfast nerves and unwavering determination can succeed in this precious and challenging undertaking.
When concentrating on the foundation of a promising family, being that of love in marriage in reference to the fiction "Cathedral," I come to see some semblance between my idea of an assuring affinity told by the husband, only referred to as "Bub." Although not blatantly apparent is the husband's love for his wife, he does show it with a bit of a jealous disposition. When referring to his wife's ex-husband, he purposely neglects to even give the guy a name as a result of his envious attitude jeering, "Her officer-why should he have a name? He was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want? (818). Besides jealousy, he also expresses many other emotions of a typical loving husband such as: protection, affection, consideration and hurt, with regards to his wife's relationship with her friend Robert, he pouts,
I didn't want him (Robert) to think I'd left the room, and I didn't want her to think I was feeling left out.
Families are becoming more diverse and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some people consider families to be strictly biological, while others consider people they love to be their family. Although two-parent families, also known as a nuclear family are the majority, one-parent families are becoming more common in today’s society. A sole-parent is considered to be a parent without a partner or spouse who is the primary care giver of one or more children in a household (Ministry of Social Development, 2010). From the age of 14 onward I was raised by m...
Throughout high school, I had always judged people based on the social groups they were associated with. I tended to spend my time with friends who were in the same clique as me and didn’t give others a chance. This all changed once I met a girl in my PE class, who later became my best friend. I hadn’t considered her to be much like me because she hung out with a different, less popular crowd. However as she began to talk to me and we started to spend more time together I realized what an amazing person she was. I regretted letting our social differences set us apart in the first place. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator has difficulty feeling any sense of empathy towards his wife’s blind friend; but with the help of the blind man’s
It’s not easy to build an ideal family. In the article “The American Family” by Stephanie Coontz, she argued that during this century families succeed more when they discuss problems openly, and when social institutions are flexible in meeting families’ needs. When women have more choices to make their own decisions. She also argued that to have an ideal family women can expect a lot from men especially when it comes to his involvement in the house. Raymond Carver, the author of “Where He Was: Memories of My Father”, argued how his upbringing and lack of social institutions prevented him from building an ideal family. He showed the readers that his mother hide all the problems instead of solving them. She also didn’t have any choice but to stay with his drunk father, who was barely involved in the house. Carvers’ memoir is relevant to Coontz argument about what is needed to have an ideal family.
Family as defined by Webster’s College Dictionary can be one of many different people. Family can be your parents, spouse, children, brother, sister, grandmother, uncle, any blood relative, or even people who are not blood related that share that common bond (Webster 475). My definition of family is similar to Webster’s, but I feel that there is more to it than just being a blood relative or close friend. A person’s actions, beliefs, and morals play a major role in deciding who makes it into that “family” group. Family becomes more of an idea or feeling, like love or hate, than just who a person is or where they fall in your family tree. There have been people that I have considered closer than family just by their actions, even though they were nowhere near related to me. Fortunately, I have not had any blood relation family members make me wish they were not in my “family” (maybe my older sister when we were younger, but that doesn’t count). While reading from Children and Families in our text, I came across many readings that I feel were inspired in many different ways by what the author believed was “family.” There were two readings that jumped out at me and reminded me of my view of how a family should be in their interactions with each other. They were the short story “Flight” by Doris Lessing and the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. There was also one writing that I read that went against my idea of family and made me happy that this wasn’t the way that my family acted as I grew up, that was “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. And while some authors lean their writing one direction or another, Adrienn...
What's important to note is that family, or even the concept of family itself, doesn't appear in any of those ideals. Holmes and Holmes (2002) observed that “The family reunions of yesterday are now rare, and when they occur they are often a source of stress.” (p. 19) That quote solidifies one reason why family interaction today is: “It’s just too stressful, so we avoid it. Where does marriage fit into our culture of individuals?
Since the 20th century, researchers have sought out solutions to help assist families and the individual components that make up family systems overcome the challenges and schisms that can inhibit individuation and stability. Two theoretical perspectives, the family-systems theory and the family-development theory, were conceived to gain as Balswick & Balswick (2014) noted, gain “a wide-angle view of family life” (p. 22). Though these two theories have merit, one I found to be more advantageous in gaining a better understanding of the family as an actively metastasizing organism, which needs to be approached more adaptively.
The argument over how divorce affects children is one that has been going on for a very long time. Some people believe when parents get a divorce the children are not affected at all, while others believe when parents get a divorce the children are affected by the impact of divorce more than anyone in the family. In some cases, married couples can be in such a terrible marriage that divorce can in no way be avoided, and these divorces are usually the ones that children benefit from and are affected in a positive way. Many times though, a couple will choose to get a divorce because their marriage is not exactly the way it used to be, and they want that aspect of life back; these are the divorces that negatively affect children. Even though in some cases divorce does not affect children negatively, many times when parents obtain a divorce, the children are negatively harmed in many different ways that will forever change their lives.
Society seems to have many different opinions when it comes to relationships and families and what is ideal. The ideal family may not exist anymore. We now have in our society families that are complete that do not necessarily contain the traditional material. The traditional family, as society would see it; usually consist of a married, mother and father and usually children. Moms are supposed to stay at home while dads work the forty-hour a week job. However, in our 2003 world, families exist in a lot of non-traditional ways. A lot of families now consist of single parent families, or same sex parents and their children, or even couples that are unmarried but live together. And even now, if a family contains what society sees as traditional as far as having a mom, dad, and kids, other aspects are not traditional anymore. Women now have more opportunity in the workplace than they have ever had, therefore, many moms are career moms and dads are sometimes staying at home. Years ago, these types of families were given labels for being dysfunctional or abnormal, however, this label is not holding up as well as it did years ago. There are many non-traditional families that are raising children in a loving, nurturing home with a substantial amount of quality love. Quality is the key in any relationship between anyone. Society is finding out that it is not the traditional image that makes a loving family, but the quality of a relationship that people give to each other is what really makes a family. In the essay "The Myth of the "Normal" Family", written by Lousie B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach, they make references to the cultural idea of what a "normal" family should be and what i...
Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Sixth edition. Eds. X.J. Dennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
Tuten, Nancy. Alice Walker's "Everyday Use." N.p.: Taylor&Francis, 1993. Print. Vol. 51 of The Explicator.
Amato, P. R. (2000). The consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4), 1269-1287.
The comparison between two poems are best analyzed through the form and meaning of the pieces. “Mother to Son” and “Harlem (A Dream Deferred)” both written by the profound poet Langston Hughes, depicts many similarities and differences between the poems. Between these two poems the reader can identify his flow of writing through analyzing the form and meaning of each line.
To me, family is the most important thing in my life. They always encourage me to be the best I can be and nothing more. A quote that I think describes family to me is one by Alex Haley that states, “In every conceivable manner, the family is the link to our past, and bridge to our future.” Through the stories I hear from my mother and grandmother, I have a clear link to my families past and the generation of women that led to me. All the values these women held close to them throughout the years have led to the formation of myself and my values. Over the past three generations, the women in my family have overcome oppression. My mother, growing up in a time where women could never have aspirations to be CEO’s or politicians, somehow came out stronger. She saw what she didn’t want for her future, and jumped at the chance to start a new life in America. No single model of family life characterizes the American family, despite ideological beliefs to the contrary (Andersen). My family couldn’t be labeled an “Italian family” or an “American family.” We are a mix of the two cultures and ideologies, which is what makes us different. I am the first women in my mother’s family to be born and raised in America. My great grandmother had a complete different childhood and adolescence experience than I yet we still have a common cultural base. All her ideals were passed onto my grandmother, than all the down to me, a hundred years in the making to become who I am
Out of the numerous commodities and resources that are scarce on the planet in which we inhabit a family, or even a family system, can never be parallel to even an iota of them. This is due to the fact that everyone, no matter what age at what time period of their life, has a family. That family may not be the cookie cutter family that society imposes on the media world. People develop without knowing their family, people create new families of their own, or they can even find something or someone to call family because of this family will never be scarce. Family is an objective concept to every single person and the definition varies significantly from being as simple as the smallest of toys to as complex as a group of people interconnected
To them he is a celebrity, a man who supports non-violent acts even when facing aggression, he is a man who supports Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist policies, he is a man of peace who represents one of the major religions in the world ‘Tibetan Buddhism’, which in the eyes of the Western people it is a religion of peace and wisdom. And even though Buddhism has always been a missionary religion, the Dalai Lama stated that his positive views of the future has no intentions to make people convert into the religion that he represents, and he believes that each person has the right to choose any religion that they prefer, but at the same time they also has the right to change their religion if they’ve found another religion is more appealing to them spiritually, but most importantly he asks them to be genuine and dedicated to whichever religion that they choose. Here is what Dalai Lama had to say in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech; “In general I am in favor of people continuing to follow the religion of their own culture and inheritance. Of course, individuals have every right to change if they find that a new religion is more effective or suitable for their spiritual needs. But generally speaking, it is better to experience the value of one’s own religious tradition. […] If you are a Christian, it is better to develop spiritually within your religion and be a genuine, good Christian. If you are a Buddhist, be