Angeline Boulley's novel, “Firekeeper's Daughter”, is a young adult thriller that adds to the growing maze of identity, cultural history, and self-discovery. At the center of the story is an eighteen-year-old girl, Daunis Fontaine, whose mixed heritage—Native American and White—subjects her to countless issues. Personal problems, family secrets, and a dangerous undercover investigation regarding the new drug on the streets of her hometown develop into a rising conflict that will determine her life. Through rich use of cultural symbolism, compelling character development, and amazing plot structure, Boulley examines the complexities surrounding identity and the importance of embracing ancestry. Character development in "Firekeeper's Daughter" is outstanding, especially for Daunis. As she …show more content…
The protagonist's reflections are quite similar to the storytelling of a journey and about how everything is in the process of change, from uncertainty to clarity. "I had to see how far the darkness spread before I could find the light." This metaphor of emerging from darkness into light represents enlightenment and self-actualization, leading to an understanding and acceptance of oneself. The highly complex plot structure of "Firekeeper's Daughter" mirrors Daunis’s internal journey towards self-acceptance. In "Firekeeper's Daughter," rich cultural symbolism is displayed as the novel develops ideas of heritage and cultural practices. It is this role, described as "keeping the fire alive, a symbol of our people and our resilience," that signifies the persistence and strength of the Native community. In addition, it symbolizes continuity and nurturing of an individual's background and culture, as Daunis strives
In Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey sets her poems into three sections, each dealing with a different subject matter. One of her poems, “Blond,” is placed in the third section, a portion of the book that deals with a combination of personal and historical themes. “Blond” is vital in the section it lays in and the book as a whole, because its placement allows it to contribute a condemnation of whitewashed, racist beauty standards and her parents’ neglect of her own biracial identity.
This book report deal with the Native American culture and how a girl named Taylor got away from what was expected of her as a part of her rural town in Pittman, Kentucky. She struggles along the way with her old beat up car and gets as far west as she can. Along the way she take care of an abandoned child which she found in the backseat of her car and decides to take care of her. She end up in a town outside Tucson and soon makes friends which she will consider family in the end.
Bradbury first depicted fire as a hurtful force through Montag, a fireman, who burn books. With the converted mentality of his culture, “it was [Montag’s] pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (3). Montag’s culture sees burning as an enjoyment; however, the fire portrayed here demonstrates the destruction of knowledge and personality. While Montag’s profession brings him joy he does not understand that burning is the most permanent form of destruction. He is oblivious to his governments’ strong desire to eliminate the ideas and knowledge that books hold. In this society, where ignorance is bliss and their phobia of unhappiness controls all aspects of life, people believe that their destructive fire “is bright and…clean”, as it is used as a means to keep themselves oblivious and happy (60). In addition, Bradbury establishes the difference in the symbolisms of fire by naming part one of his novel “The Hearth and the Salamander”. The hearth is the fireplace of the home and is the most positive image of fire. This fire contributes warmth and restores relationships between people. The salamander, the symbol of the firemen, and who personify fire’s destruction is contrasted with the hearth, which represents restoration.
Women Hollering Creek is a collection of several seemingly unconnected stories beginning with adolescence transitioning to the teenage years and ending with adulthood. While the two stories seem to have little in common, a closer examination shows there are many similarities as well as differences. “Women Hollering Creek” is a fictional story written using life experience relating to cultural differences while “The Lone Ranger...” is a narrative story written by a Native American about the challenges he faced during his own personal experience while trying to fit into another culture. As minorities, the main character of each story strives in an atte...
The fire first helps him identify with his father, then realize the existence of a choice between blood and justice, and finally make a decision about which he prefers.
The imagery of fire continues in the story; the building of their fires, how the man molds the fires, and how they stoke the fire. When the boy gets sick the father is referred to many times of how he builds and rekindles the fire. This actual fire is a symbol for the fire that the man and the boy discuss carrying within in them. The man fights to save his son and the fire within the boy
Danielle Evans’ second story “Snakes” from the collection of short stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self depict a biracial girl who has been pressured due to her grandmother’s urge to dominate her. The story pictures her suffering with remarkable plot twist in the end of the story. Evans utilize a profound approach on how to bring readers to closely examine racism implicitly, to make readers recognize the actions may lead to social discrimination and its consequences that are often encountered in our daily life.
In conclusion, Fire has 3 different meanings which lead you to new thinking and insight towards the world. Fire represents change which is shown through Montag’s symbolic change from using fire to burn knowledge into using fire to help him find knowledge; fire can represent knowledge as demonstrated through Faber, and fire can represent rebirth of knowledge as demonstrated through the phoenix. Overall fires representation is not one of destruction but one of knowledge, thinking, new insight, and acknowledgment.
Must race confine us and define us?’ The story The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, written by Heidi W. Durrow, revolves around the protagonist Rachel, who has bi-racial parents. After her mother and two siblings plunge to their deaths from a Chicago building, young Rachel Morse survives and is sent to Portland. Furthermore, part of her story is learning about how she conform into the world while dealing with her ethnicity. Additionally, when Rachel’s moves in with her grandmother, she is faced with racial expectations at home and at school.
Culture has the power and ability to give someone spiritual and emotional distinction which shapes one's identity. Without culture society would be less and less diverse. Culture is what gives this earth warmth and color that expands across miles and miles. The author of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Zitkala Sa, incorporates the ideals of her Native American culture into her writing. Similarly, Sherman Alexie sheds light onto the hardships he struggled through growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in a chapter titled “Indian Education”. While both Zitkala Sa and Sherman Alexie were Native Americans, and take on a similar persona showcasing their native culture in their text, the two diverge in the situations that they face. Zitkala Sa’s writing takes on a more timid shade as she is incorporated into the “white” culture, whereas Alexie more boldly and willingly immerses himself into the culture of the white man. One must leave something in order to realize how
The father often uses the phrase “carrying the fire,” to suggest the knowledge the son must inherit from his father in order to one day continue the father's legacy. The father tries to educate his son in goodness, survival, and decency even though all such humanity has been extinguished. His efforts to preserve civilized manners reflect his nurturing and give purpose to his existence. Before the father dies he tells his son that all this fire—warmth, instinct for good, and knowledge—lives inside him: “You have to carry the fire. I don't know how to. Yes, you do. Is the fire real? The fire? Yes, it is. Where is it? I don't know where it is. Yes, you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it” (McCarthy 278-279). The fire has multiple symbolic meanings for the man and the boy. For the man the fire represents the love he has for his son because his son is his reason for continuing. It is also the man’s moral code, his way to refrain from turning evil and committing murder or cannibalism. For the boy the fire symbolizes the kindness he carries even when he has been exposed to evil. Since the boy was born after the catastrophic event, he embodies a sense of purity, an untainted fire within him. Consequently, the son is more naïve and trusting of others than his father. McCarthy's “carrying the fire” functions as a metaphor of knowledge and hope for humanity, the natural instinct to keep going and hope for something better along the
Fire gets a new meaning that helps support the idea of people being independent, and not fitting to the government's cookie cutter mold. The fire’s new meaning is rebellion and life. When the city is bombed and it all crumbles, fire is calming and sweet. Page 145 states, “The fire was gone, then back again, like a winking eye. He stopped, afraid he might blow the fire out with a single breath. But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off. It took the better part of fifteen minutes before he drew very close indeed to it, and then he stood looking at it from cover. That small motion, the white and red color, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him. It was not burning, it was warming.” The fire shows change in the world, and how good things can come from bad. Since the government has fell, and they were the ones controlling who can be what, all individuality is restored, and people are free to be who they so choose. Fire was once something to be fearful of, or something taking away people’s special qualities, is now something people can use to be inspired and reach for something more than what the government says they need to
Were Dash’s audience to return to the South Sea islands eighty years after “Daughters of the Dust” they might find the Gullah people and their lives similar to those of the Willow Springs of Naylor’s novel. Although nearly a century spans between them, these two people nevertheless share many traits. Many of the residents of Willow Springs answer to a nickname given them as a child; similarly, Viola Peazant reminisces about the nicknames given to children in Ibo Landing. Members of both communities, generations from Africa and steeped in “modernity,” still come to the traditional herbalist for help in matters of the body and spirit: Eula uses Nana’s medicine to contact the soul of her deceased mother; Bernice and Ambush come to Mama Day to heal Bernice when she becomes ill, and later for help in conceiving a child. Both Nana Peazant and Mama Day draw their knowledge from a life lived on their respective islands and their strength from their ancestors, whom they visit and tend at the village graveyards. And like Nana Peazant, Mama Day struggles to maintain a tie with her family members who have left the island and immersed themselves in the mainstream culture.
Fire-Shade conveys his family as an entity not as many different individuals. After feeling alone for many years the only persuasion some individuals need is the assurance that they will be part of a society and accepted unconditionally. Cult members know what type of individuals feel most alienated and alone, says Dr.
The story, “A Red Girl’s Reasoning” revolves around the cultural differences between the white North Americans and Native Indians. Author Emily Pauline Johnson writes about how the young Charlie McDonald is abandoned by his Native Indian wife due to his narrow minded beliefs. The story also plays the role of an allegorical representation of the trials and turbulences of cross cultural marriage in the 17th century. Around this time the Natives and Europeans did not accept each other’s cultures and deemed each other’s practices as illegal. The passage chosen highlights how the incompatibility between the two cultures ends up ruining the relationship between Christine and Charlie. This essay will argue that the ideologies and cultural values regarding