As children, we never thought about the difficult tasks in life. We would worry about when is the next time you're going to the park or getting a new toy. Overtime we come to understand not everything is unicorns and rainbows and with increasing age, you develop more responsibility, which comes with the making of hard adult life decisions. That’s not the case for 11 year old Ellen Foster, who was forced to make those demanding choices that you endure later in life. In Kaye Gibbons’s novel, Ellen Foster, the main character, Ellen, is forced to care for herself and her household due to her father’s alcoholism. Leaving her to make it her mission to generate a better life for herself. In Ellen Foster, Ellen journeys through the novel with determination …show more content…
Alice Hoffman in her article, Summer; Shopping for a New Family, she explains that: “Ellen lives in fear of him, particularly when the men to whom he sells liquor come to her house and drink themselves into a frenzy.”(Hoffman 2). While entertaining some of his repugnant male friends, Ellen’s father, drunk and delusional, attacks her thinking Ellen is her mother. During the act Ellen exclaims, “I am Ellen. I am Ellen”(Gibbons 38) trying to convince her father during his fallacy that she is not her mother, followed by: “He pulls the evil back into hisself and Lord I run. Run down the road to Starletta. Now to the smoke coming out of the chimney against the night sky I run. Down the path in the darkness I gather my head and all that is spinning and flying out from me and wonder oh you just have to wonder what the world has come to”(Gibbons 38). Being put through all this drama makes Ellen a stronger person overall and encourages her to still search for that ideal family. In the beginning of the novel she states: “When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this way or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy”(Gibbons 1). During this time Ellen is in the present looking back onto her progression in life and shows her true feelings towards her father even before the horrific events that
Life has been tough for the teenagers on the street, they all find out about the struggles of living in these cold hard streets. Barbara Haworth-Attard shows us life on the streets of the four main characters in her book theories of relativity. Living on the streets is tough, and these four kids found out the hard way. Most of them will be stuck on the streets forever such as amber, twitch, and Jenna, but Dylan might be able to make it out
This book is about a girl name Ellen Foster who is ten years old. Her mother committed suicide by over dosing on her medication. When Ellen tried to go look for help for her mother her father stopped her. He told them that if she looked for helped he would kill them both. After her mother died she was left under her fathers custody. Her father was a drunk. He would physically and mentally abuse her. Ellen was forced to pay bills, go grocery shopping, cook for herself, and do everything else for herself. Ellen couldn't take it any more so she ran away her friends house. Starletta and her parents lived in a small cabin with one small bathroom. One day at school a teacher found a bruise on Ellen's arm. She sends Ellen to live with Julia the school's art teacher. Julia had a husband named Roy. They were both hippies. Julia and Roy cared a lot about Ellen. After Ellen turned 11 years old she was forced to go live with her grandmother. Ellen didn't want to leave Julia and Roy but her grandmother had won custody. Her grandmother was a cruel old lady. Ellen spends the summer with her grandmother. Living with her makes her very unhappy. Since her grandmother owns farmland she forces Ellen to work on the field with her black servants. Ellen meets a black woman named Mavis. Mavis and her become good friends. Mavis would talk about how she knew Ellen's mother and how much Ellen resembled her mother. Her grandmother didn't think the same. She thought that Ellen resembled her father. She also hated that man. Her grandmother would often compare her with her father. Her grandmother would torture her because she wanted revenge from her father. Her grandmother also blames her for the death of her mother. While Ellen was staying with her grandmother her father died. When her father died she didn't feel sad because she had always fantasized about killing her father. Ellen just felt a distant sadness. Ellen cried just a little bit. Her grandmother was furious because Ellen showed some emotions. She told her to never cry again. After that Ellen becomes scarred for a long time. One day her uncle Rudolph bought the flag that had been on Ellen's father's casket. Her grandmother turns him away. Later that day she burned the flag.
The Power of an Author Authors have the ability justify the worst actions. Authors have a way of romanticizing certain situations in order to convey a specific message. A good author has power to influence the reader into believing whatever it is the author wants. When it comes to the story of Hannah Dustan, authors such as John Greenleaf Whittier have romanticized her captivity story along with the actions she took throughout her journey. Introducing a character that will be seen in the story is one of the most vital parts when creating a piece of literature.
A doctor, a firefighter, a teacher, an astronaut: these are the kind of answers children give when asked the infamous question: What do you want to be when you grow up? As you grow older, this repetitive question becomes annoying because it forces you to confront and decide what exactly you want to do when you have been through adolescence. This conundrum is what plagues two characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams.” In this story, Judy Jones and Dexter Green chase after their own dreams and collide multiple times along the way. Jones wants to continue in her current lifestyle of freedom, power, and fame which seems attainable with her charm; however, Jones’ manipulative tendencies make her unappealing to people after a time.
In the great story of a young girls triumph over poverty, rejection and innumerable failures as a child, she will unfortunately never truly prosper as an adult in the world in which she lives. Our protagonist, Sara Smolinsky who is the youngest of the four Smolinsky girls, has the most motivation in life to be independent, and fend for herself. However to achieve this goal she would need to break loose of the family chain and peruse a life elsewhere. It appears she has done so as she runs away from home seeking an education. Six years or so go by and she has more than fulfilled her dream of independence, however as members of her family take on life threatening sickness she once again feels the need to come home, and falls back under the spell of family obligation. As for other characters in the book, the same problem with familial duties always interferes with what one truly wants.
Ellen Foster lived through a disturbed childhood. Within that unique childhood, there is a few things I can relate to like the resembles of Ellen to her parents, the lack of love and affection from her parents, and a fragile and feeble mother.
One can learn responsibility through experience, whether the experience is great, or if it is tragic. In The Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, twelve year old Lanesha demonstrates her growth by bringing her and others to safety during a deadly storm. Once nurtured and cared for by her non-biological grandmother, Lanesha learns to take care of herself and others. This significance shows her transitioning from a girl to a young woman.
Ellen is also one of the main characters in this book , she’s also the same age as her best friend annemarie. Even though she is a very shy girl she wants to be an actress, in order to fufill this dream she first has to survive the horrible, disgusting holocaust. with the help of her best friend ann she may just be able to live her dream. “thats the worst thing in the world..to be dead so young.I wouldn’t want the germans to take my family away to makes us live some place else.but still,it wouldn’t be as bad as being dead”.
Ellen Foster’s use of escapism reverberates as the theme of Kaye Gibbons’ novel. Her imagination, determination, tenacity and innocence allow her to escape, to break away from all of the unfathomable cruelty surrounding her. Without her unique and clever use of escapism, the heroine of Ellen Foster would have been easily overwhelmed.
Speak, by Laurie Halse anderson is novel about a girl known by the name of Melinda Sordano.In the novel Melindas transforamtion as the main protagoinst is represented by a tree. Three ways in which a tree represents Melinda are through the strugle to find who she is, her growth, amd life.
In the story Ellen Foster, Ellen was a great example of a dynamic character. Ellen had a very tough life. Ellen’s life was like a rollercoaster going up and down dramatically not knowing what was going to happen next. Ellen was a racist child at the beginning but changes her opinion after going through many challenges throughout the story.
absence of parental guidance in the novel and in which she explores the individual’s search for
At the age of ten, most children are dependent on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of attention and care. However, Ellen, the main character and protagonist of the novel Ellen Foster, exemplifies a substantial amount of independence and mature, rational thought as a ten-year-old girl. The recent death of her mother sends her on a quest for the ideal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown apathy to both she and her fragile mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’ use of simple diction, unmarked dialogue, and a unique story structure in her first novel, Ellen Foster, allows the reader to explore the emotions and thoughts of this heroic, ten-year-old girl modeled after Gibbons’ own experiences as a young girl.
In the story, Young Goodman Brown, the character, Goodman Brown changes throughout the story. In the beginning he was a kind man, loving husband with nothing holding him down, not even the warnings of his wife, Faith. As he walked and talked with the Devil, he became more aware of what had happened in the past with his own family. When he saw the Devil talk with Goody Cloyse on the path in the woods, he figured out by the nature of their conversation that the Devil was more mischievous than he thought. He started to have uncertainties about the errand he was on. At that point, Goodman Brown told the devil he was not going another step. Shortly after the Devil left him in the path, Brown found a ribbon on a branch of a tree
The writer of this novel, Alice Hoffman, is commonly known for her well developed characterization, her choice and use of language and realistic plot events. Born in New York City on March 16, 1952, Hoffman has become a very distinguished novelist. She attended Adelphi University and later the Stanford University Creative Writin...