Selfishness – a deadly sin. Selfishness is part of our human nature—sometimes we need to be selfish to survive. But what happens when selfishness is used as a way to gain personal pleasure over the needs of family or even the greater society? In Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies,” she explores the causes of family dysfunction through the lens of cultural complexity, deception, and secrets, while Ray Bradbury's short story “The Veldt” explores family dysfunction through the lens of technological addiction and neglectful parenting. Both Lahiri and Bradbury argue that parent-child relationships deteriorate due to selfishness and the pursuit of personal desires over family needs. Initially, Lahiri introduces the Das family through the …show more content…
and Mrs. Das. They met “when [they] were very young” (Lahiri 457) and married right off the bat. Mrs. Das explains that their parents might have intentionally set them up from the start. Mrs. Das blames her circumstances for becoming a mother so young, saying that “she was overwhelmed by it all, having a child so quickly, and nursing, and warming up bottles of milk” (Lahiri 457). She almost develops resentment for being a mother; she doesn’t enjoy the mundane activities that come with having a child, and she doesn’t see pleasure in nurturing. Slowly, this resentment manifested in her family’s well-being and children. She no longer behaves “in a romantic way toward her husband” (Lahiri 458) and no longer takes interest in her husband and children. Lahiri introduced Mrs. Das in this light to create awareness of the suffering of this character. At some point, Mrs. Das was so burned out and exhausted that she wanted “to throw everything I own out of the window.” (Lahiri 458) Her patience has been stretched for far too long. She is tired of feeling lonely in her marriage; therefore, she becomes vulnerable to external sources as a way to find a little escape from her loneliness and from her
Through his science fiction tales of misinterpreted, downcast protagonists and outrageous observations of real life, Vonnegut shines a light on America's problems, proposing a widespread cooperation of common decency and interdependence as viable solutions. Whether or not such notions actually augment the quality of relations, Vonnegut's well-reasoned and starkly ironic scenarios entertain, challenge, and enliven his design for relational welfare through synthetic families. Throughout his works Vonnegut's development of artificial families and expression of common decency between characters helps illuminate his universal theme of societal interdependence in family groups and proves that life is only worth living when individuals support each other.
Cleofilas’ disillusion is at an all time high during the crisis, when she needs to go to the doctor’s office for a pregnancy check up, yet she is too afraid to ask because they cannot afford it, she is scared of being physically accosted by her husband, and she does not know how to explain her bruises to the doctor. The climax then arises and Cleofilas, with the help of the doctor’s assistant and her friend, give her the opportunity to leave her husband. Cleofilas’ comes to the epiphany that her and her children do not deserve to be treated like this and her husband is not in love with her. The epiphany leads Cleofilas to the resolution to leave her husband and to no longer live with constant disillusion over her
The story The Veldt by Ray Bradbury can be an accurate depiction of human relationships in a family. This story focuses on George and Lydia Hadley, their two children, and the tragic events caused by the nursery that they have installed in their futuristic home. Their children Peter and Wendy are inseparable from the nursery. This short story mentions the strained and tense relationship George and Lydia have with their children. Like human relationships, This story shows common themes in family relationships such as the Hadley’s spoiling their children, Peter and Wendy talking back, and some exceptional themes as when the children threaten and then kill their parents. The children are seen complaining about having to do ‘work’, in addition this story also includes something
Journalist, Jane Howard in her argumentative essay, “ In Search of a Good Family “ emphasized the markers of a good family. Howard's purpose is to give her opinion on families, because she thinks human being should not be alone. She adopts an educated, factual and knowledgeable time in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences towards the whole country. Howard uses many rhetorical question, metaphors , repetition, and allusions to help her pull her argument together Howard argues how essential is to have a good family. All human being need a family , clan or a tribe in order to survive in the real world. No matter where you are or what are the circumstances you are going through. You would always have somewhere or someone to fall back to.
Confessions of an Erstwhile Child is an essay which analyses the concept of the nuclear family. At first the author explains the ideas of Thomas More’s Utopia, but afterwards narrows his content by going into explaining his thoughts on children raised in dysfunctional families. He very cleverly shows the reader part family model’s with current ones, allowing his audience to make the decision for themselves. His tone is a logical philosophical. The reader is told of his depressing childhood growing up in a dysfunctional family, and how it had a profound effect upon his life. The author uses his own personal experience and knowledge to express his opinions on his topic, but really doesn’t use much inference to other cases or factual evidence to back up his argument. All and all, the author wrote an essay which would prove to be thought provoking and well organized.
Goode (Hale 1995, 342-343) argues that the whole concept of a family is rooted in sexual drives and the imperative of reproduction and in the sociological imperative of creating a social being.
The meaning of life and the true meaning of happiness can be pin-pointed simply by: Grow up. Get married. Have children. These three ending sentences form the basis of the main argument in “About Love”, an excerpt from “What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman” by Danielle Crittenden. Crittenden does not limit the use of her emotional appeal to repeated use of terms like “love”, “friendship” and “independence”. One of the strongest qualities supporting the thesis of “About Love” is Crittenden’s ability to use both connotative and denotative language. Crittenden goes on to say “Too often, autonomy is merely the excuse of someone who is so fearful, so weak, that he or she can’t bear to take
desire to free this narrator from her husband and the rest of the males in
Before Mrs. Ames and the mother realize the restrictions of their old lives, their worlds have been full of disillusionment and ignorance. Mrs. Ames, for example, is oppressed by her husband’s silence and the search for love and tenderness from anyone, because she lives each day alone, ignored by her scornful husband. And, as a result of being left companionless, she does not mature, rather she longs for tenderness. In other words, Boyle explains her dysfunctional relationship with her husband, “The mystery and silence of her husband’s mind lay like a chiding finger of her lips. Her eyes were gray for the light had been extinguished in them” (57). That is, Mrs. Ames’ spirit remains oppressed by her husband who treats her as a child, and, in doing so, isolates her from his world.
...ragraph above, deputy and farmers collapse into a fatal quarrel to preserve their life. The given definition of selfishness above suggests that materialism identifies itself like a productive conception. In fact, materialism is related to selfishness because it is a belief in which one has to get more profit, no matter how. This materialistic conception is clearly exposed through “The Grapes of Wrath”.
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury deals with some of the same fundamental problems that we are now encountering in this modern day and age, such as the breakdown of family relationships due to technology. Ray Bradbury is an American writer who lived from 1920 to 2012 (Paradowski). Written in 1950, “The Veldt” is even more relevant to today than it was then. The fundamental issue, as Marcelene Cox said, “Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.” Technology creating dysfunctional families is an ever increasing problem. In the story, the Hadley family lives in a house that is entirely composed of machines. A major facet of the house is the nursery, where the childrens’ imagination becomes a land they can play in. When the parents become worried about their childrens’ violent imagination, as shown with their fascination with the African veldt, the children kill them to prevent them from turning it off. Ray Bradbury develops his theme that technology can break up families in his short story "The Veldt" through the use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and metaphor.
Most times, it is believed that happiness is a state-of-mind that is expected to might be a top priority among children. However, in The Veldt, Bradbury feels that parents hold a responsibility for making their children happy; parents must also enforce discipline to balance out the sense of happiness to raise a well-rounded child. In The Veldt, Bradbury introduces the Hadley family: the children Wendy and Peter grow up in a futuristic world where technology has over taken parental and household duties and has become the only source of reliance for the children. As the children grow more dependent on their technology, they grow more distant from their own parents. It is through the use of over indulgence in technology, allusions, and imagery,
45 million Americans with low income rely on at least one of the many welfare programs. Of these government assistance programs, many of them deal with fraud and abuse. “Some cases of government assistance misuse are more blatant than others, but some aid recipients are using sneaky tactics that give other needy Americans a bad reputation” (calonia 1). Clearly, people are abusing the system in order to receive money they do not deserve. This makes it harder for people who need the welfare programs to get the money they need to support a family.
In the industrial age before World War II, when individual psychotherapy was born and thrived, human beings were essentially seen as machines, with broken parts—including the mind—that could be repaired; after World War II, the dawning information technology age brought a paradigm shift in the view of human life from mechanical to relational, and communication and systems theories provided family therapy with increased validity and prominence. (White, 2009, pp. 200-201). The modern family systems theories that grew out of this paradigm viewed families narrowly as functional or dysfunctional according to the delineation of each theory. Today, postmodern theory suggests that no absolute truth governs individuals or families; instead, people are
How different are families compared to the past? Lately there has been some major changes in relationships, weather female dominance, or even just having no relationships at all. We also see that relationships are based only on a basis of reproduction and sometimes the child of the relationship is rather irrelevant. In a Temporary matter by Jhumpa Lahiri, the reader can see how relationships have developed with the rest of the world into failing, no relationship, and feminist relationships.