Cheryl Peck’s essay, “Fatso” and David Sedaris’, “Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa” both express some sort of emotion. However, the emotions that are shown between the two essays are quite different. In “Fatso”, you can see emotions such as anger and pain due to the discrimination against heavier people and Peck’s personal experience with her size. In Sedaris’ essay, you see mainly a reveal of being jealous of his partner Hugh, but later on you understand the appreciation he has of his own life. Because of the emotions used while writing the two essays, the writers have the ability of making us feel a certain way towards the subject of each. Although both essays show similarities in emotions to an extent, there are major differences between the two. While in the beginning of both essays, both writers, Peck and Sedaris, are telling us about a time that involves a friend of theirs, Peck chooses to approach her subject by using a sarcastic tone and Sedaris chooses a more practical way; reminiscing. Even though both essays have some irony within them, …show more content…
He comes off as envious toward Hugh life and you don’t start to see that until paragraph 7. He uses phrases such as, “Compared with Hugh’s, my childhood was unspeakably dull” and, “When I’m told such stories, it’s all I can do to hold back my feelings of jealousy.” (P. 227). He goes on and on about how Hugh has everything that he’s ever wanted until the end of the essay; where David sees himself as Hugh kind of. There’s some humor to this essay as well. For example, David finds himself praying for something interesting to happen while he’s at school. “No fifteen-foot python ever wandered on to my school’s basketball court. I begged, I prayed nightly, but it just never happened.” (P. 229) I think that this symbolizes the want for excitement that Sedaris craved when he was a
David, the main character in the book, realizes that his girlfriend Hilary has cheated on him. To make things even worse she is cheating with one of his friends from the football team, Sam. David tries to talk to Hilary but she thinks he hasn’t been the same since his mother died about a year ago. Later, David beats up Sam at a party.
Peggy talks about racism being a part everyday life even though we ignore it. Peggy’s main idea was to inform the readers that whites are taught to ignore the fact that they enjoy social privileges that people of color do not because we live in a society of white dominance. Even though society has come a long way, it still has a longer way to go in improving social profiling. There are many things minorities will never have the opportunity to experience or understand because they are not white. It doesn't matter what we do, how much we work, how much money we have, we’ll never experience white privileges. White people are not stereotyped like other races are. They are also not looked down upon other races. The list of daily effects that McIntosh describe are perfect examples of what minorities will never get to experience. Some of her points are, “ 13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my face on trial” she also points out that people of minority will not experience never being “ asked to speak for all the people of my social group” (McIntosh 99). No matter how one may try to analyze a situation, white people are privileged bottom line. Some are more privileged than others by way of money or reputation and others by are privileged just by skin
Everyday we observe people’s contrasting opinions. Whether it be in politics, school, or in one’s personal life, emotions are often a major factor when it comes to expressing one’s ideas. In writing, an audience must be aware this, and decide for themselves if an author is being bias or equally representing all sides to a situation. In both Into the Wild and In Cold Blood, the authors form distinct opinions about their main characters and believe family structure heavily influenced their future.
The author is attempting to teach the readers that no one should treat people this badly. David is an innocent child and does not deserve his bad childhood. David does not even do anything wrong, and his mother continued to treat him like an object. Pelzer succeeded in telling how cruel the mother is. He also teaches that people can be cruel to each other, and that it is important to teach people that kindness can go a long way. The whole book discusses his childhood. Pelzer wrote some sequels to tell the rest of his child life for the interested readers.
As she listens to the speaker she started to think about the opinions of others regarding her. She thought to herself, ´´It was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life¨. It was in that moment she realized that others do not see her as she sees herself. To them she's just a another black person in the world, but she does not see herself as that.
Zhang’s first person narrative, uncensored and informal diction makes her story and experience relatable and one that touches the reader in ways not many other works are able to. This could be because of the fact that Zhang addresses harder to talk about subjects, but for me it was mainly her ability to deliver her truth in all its raw, real and ugly that is uncommon to find. Zhang’s unique style of writing is bold yet does not alienate readers allowing her to be able to share her story, experiences, and thoughts of depression. Zhang believes that “everyone wants to make something touchable, but most of us don’t out of fear of being laughable (Zhang),” and through “How It Feels”, she has created something that is just that,
He tries to explain that in order to be happy, one must put himself in other people's shoes, to know that there is another world that you must enter that revolves around another individual. A person must learn that he must look at both sides of the road before crossing the road of judgment. Meaning that a person must think twice before judging someone due to the fact that you are incapable off reading other people's minds thus you cannot make a judgment about how tough their lives are and the daily hardships that they have to put up with. Before you start complaining about how long the line at the store is, realise that you are not the only person waiting in line and that there are other people waiting in line too just like you are. David uses plenty of metaphors and examples in order to further explain to the audience his statement. One example he uses in the beginning of the story is the fish example, where two young fish meet an older fish who asks them "how is the water", the two young fish then go on to reply by saying "what the hell is water?". After reading through the story, one realises that what the author means by 'water' is that in this scene, water is the representation of life. Thus you can think of it as the older fish asking the
For example, “Spare Change” uses emotions while “The Hunger Game” uses statistics. “Spare Change”, by Teresa Zsuaffa, is written in accordance with an experience in only one city in Canada (Toronto), and is immensely emotional whereas “The Hunger Game”, by Nick Saul, is written with work experience and consists of statistics and analysis and refers to whole of Canada. Saul, also, doesn’t use emotion filled words or personifications like Zsuaffa does. Targeting a more involved audience that gets riled up in the story being told, Zsuaffa writes about the insensitivity shown by the wealthy to a poor girl wearing worn and faded orange track pants and a large t-shirt, that’s far too big for her. Zsuaffa uses imagery and personification to get to the reader’s heart, writing “She must be about twenty-nine” (Zsuaffa, p. 151) though later in the essay revealing the girl’s actual age as eight years younger, giving the reader an idea of just how beaten-down the poor girl looked. On the other hand, Saul writes about, what he believes is the truth, about foodbanks in Canada. The essay opens describing a food warehouse in a positive way, which soon changes once the reader reaches paragraph three, where the negativity and truth of foodbanks start. Unlike Zsuaffa who wrote mainly based on her experience at one of the smallest cities in Canada, Saul considers all of Canada by adding in statistics such as “nearly 900,000 Canadians (38% of them children) turned to food banks each month last year” (Saul, 2013, p.356) to put more emphasis and stress on the need of more donations, charity and support from the wealthy and powerful of the
In Cry, the beloved country, Alan Paton tells the story of his journey across Africa, his experiences with the colonized Africa, and the destruction of the beautiful, pre-colonialism native land of Africa. Heart of Darkness also tells the story of a man and his experiences with colonialism, but a man who comes from a different time period and a very different background than Alan Paton’s Stephen Kumalo. Although, both Joseph Conrad and Alan Paton portray the colonized areas as very negative, death filled, and sinful places, it is when one analyzes the descriptions of the native lands of Africa that the authors reasons for their disapproval of colonialism are truly revealed. When comparing the writing styles of Alan Paton and Joseph Conrad, their descriptions of the land and the people in both works reveal their different attitudes and views towards colonialism. While Paton and Conrad ultimately oppose colonialism, Paton is concerned with the disappearance of African tribal tradition, whereas Conrad is concerned with the perceived corruption of the white colonists.
In the end, both essays revealed struggles the authors had to go through in their life and overcame the obstacles along the way. Amy’s essay showed there was more to a person than their language even if society deemed their language “broken”, while Sacha’s essay proved society should not have a say in finding one’s identity or to define themselves. Both essays help the reader relate to numerous struggles in society and how to overcome those hurdles even if the journey might be long, and in the end the journey will be worth all the effort.
Richard Gregory in ‘Shame’ described incidences of his childhood when he was made shameful every time by his ethnicity or by the fact that he did not have a dad. He describes a his childhood where he was humiliated in front of the whole class by his teacher and also loved helene . The teacher pointed out that he lived on the relief money collected by the class and had no dad which got him a scar in his memory as a shameful event . He could not forget how he was being on the side and everybody felt sorry for him, it was something that made him feel weak and guilty for no reason. Both of the essays portrayed the protagonists very strongly and had some of their weaknesses revealed which has notions connected with the perception of the people and society.
Assata’s childhood was filled with contradictions. Despite affirming that her family instilled in her “a sense of personal dignity” (Assata 19), she notes that, for them, “pride and dignity were hooked up to things like position and money” (20). In this way, her “awareness of class differences in the Black community came at an early age” (20-21). Her grandparents associated being good enough with having the same things white people had. Although she was raised to believe she was good enough, this was not the message that the environment constantly communicated to her. She attended segregated schools and grew up amidst an unconscious rhetoric of self-hatred fostered by beauty stereotypes that included skin bleaching, hair straightening, and the rejection of numerous body parts: thick lips, wide nose, kinky hair. All of these distorted beauty expectations disrupted her identity as a black girl. If she was expected to behave as whites did, why didn’t she have the same things as they? she wondered. This caused a great amount of resentment toward her mother, for example, for not having “freshly baked cookies” (37) upon her arrival from school —like white kids in commercials did—, and resentment towards having to do chores, which white kids did not have to do. The anger continues to build up and appears to reach its childhood peak when she tells the story of a white boy she attacked in the sixth grade because he accused her of stealing his pen. Assata states: “I was usually very quiet and well behaved. [The professors] acted like i had jumped on that boy for nothing, and they couldn’t understand why i was so angry. As a matter of fact, even i didn’t understand. Then” (42). This episode exemplifies the outbursts of rage that daily encounters with racism can lead to. Her incapacity to articulate the reasons for the anger show her inability to assimilate the condition of
“Bartleby the Scrivener,” by Herman Melville, and “Hills Like White Elephants,” by Ernest Hemingway, both present us with the theme of expressing one’s emotions to others and expectations placed upon us by societal gender roles. Bartleby is thought of as strange man by his peers, because he shows his emotions while working in the dog-eat-dog world of Wall Street. In comparison, Jig is also shown as an emotional character, due to the fact she expresses her concern with the decision of her abortion. However, Jig must suppress her emotions in order to please her significant other, because her male counterpart is unaware of how to acknowledge her emotions. These representations show that sex does not play a role when it comes to being an emotional
Whether a person’s life is something experienced authentically, or factually written down as literature, there are more complexities faced then there are simplicities on a daily basis. This multifariousness causes constant bewilderment and hesitation before any sort of important decision a person must make in his or her life. When it comes to characters of the written words, as soon sensations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paranoia form, the outlook and actions of these characters are what usually result in regrettable decisions and added anxiety for both that character as well as the reader. Examples of these themes affecting characters in the world of fiction are found in the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and the play Glengarry Glen Ross written by David Mamet. Throughout both of these texts, characters such as Oedipa Maas who allows these emotions to guide her in her journey of self discovery, and Shelly Levene who is so overcome with these emotions that they become his downfall. For both of these characters, these constant emotional themes are what guide their most impulsive actions, which can generally also become regrettable decisions. Even though it is a distinguishing factor of human beings, when these characters are portrayed in print, it somehow seems to affect the reader more, because they are able to see the fictional repercussions, and also know how they could have been avoided.
In this essay I will be talking about the life of King David. He was a man who