Detroit House Of Correction And Began My Life Over Again Analysis

639 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Dubliners james joyce themes

I will explore the themes in Joyce Carol Oates’s emotional roller-coaster, “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life over Again.” The themes in this story are love, the hardships people go through, and how money cannot buy happiness. Throughout the story, the girl struggles with feeling love from her parents. That is why the girl steals and goes to downtown Detroit. She does this to get her parents’ attention because she wants to feel loved and accepted by them. The girl’s mother is more obsessed and worried about objects and social events than spending time with her daughter. Also, her father is too busy to spend any time with her too. Then, the girl starts dating Simon because she wants to feel …show more content…

Since Clarita has always lived on the streets, her surroundings and experiences made her go into prostitution and drugs instead of going to school or getting a real job. In reality, a lot of people who live on the streets are more susceptible to crime, drugs, violence, and even prostitution. Thus, Joyce showed the hardships people went through in reality in her story too. The last important theme in this story is money cannot buy happiness. The main character in this story, the fifteen year-old girl, is never happy with her luxurious, money-filled life. For instance, she steals despite knowing that she could buy the things she steals. She steals because she likes the feeling and attention her parents give her. However, this story shows money does not buy happiness because the main character never cared about the luxurious things or the money. The girl only cared about feeling loved and accepted by her parents and the world. The lessons I took away from this story is money cannot buy happiness, but love is the key to happiness. The girl realizes when she returns home at the end that she missed running water and her bed not the rich things she

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of One Dead In Attic By Chris Rose

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,

    Read More

  • My Antonia Essay: Jim Burden

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Most children learn this proverb and immediately try to disprove it, or simply do not believe it. However, age allows one to see the truth in this phrase. In My Antonia, a novel by Willa Cather, the protagonist, Jim Burden, reflects on his childhood in the American frontier. Despite achieving wealth and an elevated social position, benefits most associate with attaining the American Dream, Jim Burden eventually realizes that true success, and happiness, is found in strong emotional connections.

    Read More

  • Social Class In Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle

    1160 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ever since she was a young girl. Jeannette had set high goals for herself. Since she was so advanced in school and genuinely enjoyed learning, it made sense that she would want to do big things with her life. Whether it was being a veterinarian or a geologist, her dreams extended far beyond her homes in little desert towns or Welch, West Virginia. However, because of her poverty-stricken home life, many people believed it didn’t seem likely that she would be so successful. One day, while living in Welch, Jeannette goes to the bar to drag her drunk father back home. A neighborhood man offers them a ride back to their house, and on the ride up he and Jeannette start a conversation about school. When Jeannette tells the man that she works so hard in school because of her dream careers, the man laughs saying, “for the daughter of the town drunk, you sure got big plans” (Walls 183). Immediately, Jeannette tells the man to stop the car and gets out, taking her father with her. This seems to be a defining moment in which Jeannette is first exposed to the idea that she is inferior to others. Although this man said what he did not mean to offend her, Jeannette is clearly very hurt by his comment. To the reader, it seems as if she had never thought that her family’s situation made her subordinate to those

    Read More

  • Connie´s Coming of Age

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her famous short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Joyce Carol Oates shows the transition from childhood to adulthood through her character Connie. Each person experiences this transition in their own way and time. For some it is leaving home for the first time to go to college, for others it might be having to step up to a leadership position. No matter what, this transition affects everyone; it just happens to everyone differently. Oates describes Connie's unfortunate coming of age in a much more violent and unexpected way than the typical coming of age story for a fifteen year old girl.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Where The Girls Are And Coming Of Age In Mississippi

    1208 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the books Where the Girls are and Coming of Age in Mississippi, the authors portray how they questioned their place within the American society, and how they found their voice to seek opportunities for themselves and others. The childhoods of Douglas and Moody are major factors in these women’s lives and character development. It is through these experiences that they formed their views of the world and learned to understand the world’s view of women. Douglas and Moody had very different experiences for they grew up in different decades, social and economic classes, and races. It is these differences that cause them to have different reactions. Susan Douglass in Where the Girls are and Anne Moody in Coming of Age in Mississippi have different critiques of American society and solutions, because of the differences of what they were exposed to.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Mary Flannery O Connor

    1769 Words  | 4 Pages

    O’Connell, Michael. Getting to "Judgment Day ': Flannery O’Connor’s Representation of personal dislocation. 2013. Web.

    Read More

  • The House of Mirth: Breaking free from the Reins of Luxury

    1665 Words  | 4 Pages

    The world in which Lily grows up in is one where money is the standard by which everyone is judged. In a setting like this, “money stands for all kinds of things- its purchasing quality isn’t limited to diamonds and motor cars” (Wharton 66). Therefore, even small things such as the way a person dresses or the places someone frequents become of high importance as they are representative of how much money a person possesses. This materialistic tendency ...

    Read More

  • Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the teenage years they no longer want to be labeled the “child; matter of fact, they have a strong desire to rebel against the family norms and move quickly into adulthood. This transition and want for freedom can be a very powerful and frightening thing as there are evils in this world that cannot be explained. Most parents try to understand and give their teens certain freedoms, but at what expense? Joyce Oates gives us a chilly story about a teenager that wanted and craved this freedom of adulthood called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. This is a haunting story of a young girl by the name of Connie who gives us a glimpse of teenager transitioning from childhood with the need for freedom and the consequences of her actions. Connie is described as a very attractive girl who did not like her role in the family unit. She was the daughter who could not compare to her older sister and she felt her Mom showed favoritism towards her sister. Connie is your average teen who loves music, going out with friends, and she likes the attention she receives from boys. During this time, Connie is also growing into her sexuality and is obsessing with her looks as she wants and likes to be noticed by the opposite sex. Her sexual persona and need to be free will be what is fatal to her character’s life and well-being.

    Read More

  • Symbols and Symbolism Essay - Imagery and Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story begins when she and her husband have just moved into a colonial mansion to relieve her chronic nervousness.  An ailment her husband has conveniently diagnosed.  The husband is a physician and in the beginning of her writing she has nothing but good things to say about him, which is very obedient of her.  She speaks of her husband as if he is a father figure and nothing like an equal, which is so important in a relationship.  She writes, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction."  It is in this manner that she first delicately speaks of his total control over her without meaning to and how she has no choices whatsoever.  This control is perhaps so imbedded in our main character that it is even seen in her secret writing; "John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition...so I will let it alone and talk about the house."  Her husband suggests enormous amounts of bed rest and no human interaction at all.  He chooses a "prison-like" room for them to reside in that he anticipates will calm our main character even more into a comma like life but instead awakens her and slowly but surely opens her eyes to a woman tearing the walls down to freedom.

    Read More

  • Flannery O’Conner: Deep South Scribe

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dead at the age of thirty nine years young, Flannery O’Conner lost her fight with lupus, but had won her place as one of America’s great short story writers and essayist. Born in Savannah, Georgia, within the borders of America’s “Bible Belt”, she is raised Catholic, making O’Connor a minority in the midst of the conservative Protestant and Baptist faiths observed in the Southern United States. In the midst of losing her father at the age fifteen, followed by her diagnosis and struggle with the same physical illness that took him, as well as her strong unwavering faith in the Catholic Church are crucial components of O’Connor’s literary style which mold and guide her stories of loss, regret, and redemption. Flannery O’Connor’s writings may be difficult to comprehend at times, but the overall theme of finding grace, sometimes in the midst of violence or tragedy, can be recognized in the body of her works. O’Connor’s stories are written about family dysfunction, internal angst towards life or a loved one, and commonly take place on a farm, plantation or a family home in the American South. Her stories of ethical and moral challenge blur the boundaries between her Catholic faith and values, which also include the values of the other religious faiths surrounding her in her youth, simply writing of the pain and struggles which people from all walks of life commonly share.

    Read More

  • Essay On The American Dream In The Great Gatsby

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many people describe “The American Dream” as a life full of happiness and material comfort acquired by an individual but F. Scott Fitzgerald challenges this to elucidate the darkness that wealth can pull one in. As illustrated by characters such as Gatsby that is surrounded by so much materialism, for which his idealism is not primed for, leads to the tarnish of his dreams of success. He is too blinded to see the money could not buy love or happiness. Daisy and Tom, living a life full of lies and infidelity, serve as proof to the unhappiness that success can bring. Jordan Baker confirms that money dulls ones morals which only increases the speed of corruption. F. Scott Fitzgerald effectively offers a powerful message of a corrupt society due to its materialistic ideology and the destructive reality it provides.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby - Dreams of Happiness

    1685 Words  | 4 Pages

    Every character in the novel has moments of feeling happy and endures a moment where they believe that they are about to achieve their dreams. Naturally everyone dreams of being a better person, having better things and in 1920’s America, the scheme of get rich quick. However each character had their dreams crushed in the novel mainly because of social and economical situations and their dream of happiness becomes a ‘dead dream’ leading them back to their ‘shallow lives’ or no life at all.

    Read More

  • Story Of An Hour Analysis Essay

    651 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...

    Read More

  • Eveline´s Decision in Eveline by James Joyce

    341 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the short story “Eveline “ by James Joyce, Eveline, the protagonist is given the opportunity to escape from her hard unendurable life at home and live a life of true happiness at Buenos Ayres with Frank, her lover. Throughout the story, Eveline is faced with a few good memories of her past from her childhood and her mother, but she also faces the horrible flashbacks of her mother’s illness and her father’s violence. In the end, she does not leave with Frank, Eveline’s indecisiveness and the burden of her family’s duties makes her stay.

    Read More

  • Paralysis In James Joyce's Dubliners

    1855 Words  | 4 Pages

    Joyce’s portrayal of Dublin in Dubliners is certainly not one of praise or fanfare. Rather, Joyce’s Dublin is a slumbering and pathetic portrayal of a metropolis in which her citizens cannot exercise the ability to break free from the city’s frigid grasp. Therefore, the Dubliners struggle to carve out a distinct identity that contains meaningful aspects of human life. Somerville states that “Dublin has suffered a sickness of the heart,” an assentation that certainly captures the undertones of paralysis in Dubliners (Somerville 109). If it is indeed true that Dublin has lost her heart, she has also lost important emotional contexts that help sustain one’s livelihood. Without a heart, Dublin becomes a city “locked in place” with inadequate chances for forward progress from a socioeconomic perspective (Somerville 112). Yet, if Dublin’s heart is sick, it is only logical to assume that a “cure” is needed; the “cure” that the Dubliners seek, is money. As a result of Dublin’s paralysis and subsequent lack of basic societal values, Dublin’s citizens utilize money as a means of escaping the city in order to fully exercise their selfhood and free-will, which is compromised

    Read More

More about Detroit House Of Correction And Began My Life Over Again Analysis

Open Document