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The orphan train essay
Essay about the orphan train
The orphan train essay
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Writing Styles and Language in the book “The Orphan Train”
The author, Christina Baker Kline uses a variety of different writing styles in the story “The Orphan Train” there are two stories that flip back and forth which makes it a bit confusing as well as engaging. In addition, she flips between two different points of views, first person and third person. “We are headed toward the unknown, and have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.” The first person point of view here has an intriguing effect as the author has put the reader in the character’s shoes. The other fascinating part of her writing style for this novel is how she goes from present day to the past. One telling the story of Vivian when
The Orphan Train is a compelling story about a young girl, Molly Ayer, and an older woman, Vivian Daly. These two live two completely different yet similar lives. This book goes back and forth between the point of views of Molly and Vivian. Molly is seventeen and lives with her foster parents, Ralph and Dina, in Spruce Harbor, Maine. Vivian is a ninety-one year old widow from Ireland who moved to the United States at a young age. Molly soon gets into trouble with the law and has to do community service. Molly’s boyfriend, Jack, gets his mom to get her some service to do. Jack’s mom allows her to help Vivian clean out her attic. While Molly is getting her hours completed, Vivian explains her past to her. Vivian tells her about all the good times and bad in her life. She tells her about how she had to take a train, the orphan train, all around the country after her family died in a fire. She told her about all the families she stayed with and all the friends she made along the way, especially about Dutchy. Dutchy is a boy she met on the orphan train and lost contact with for numerous years, but then found each other again and got married and pregnant. Sadly, Dutchy died when he was away in the army shortly after Vivian got pregnant. When Vivian had her child, she decided to give her up for adoption. Molly and Vivian grew very close throughout the time they spent together. Molly knows that Dina, her foster mother, is not very fond of her and tells her to leave. Having no place to go, Vivian let her stay at her house.
She sees her father old and suffering, his wife sent him out to get money through begging; and he rants on about how his daughters left him to basically rot and how they have not honored him nor do they show gratitude towards him for all that he has done for them (Chapter 21). She gives into her feelings of shame at leaving him to become the withered old man that he is and she takes him in believing that she must take care of him because no one else would; because it is his spirit and willpower burning inside of her. But soon she understands her mistake in letting her father back into he life. "[She] suddenly realized that [she] had come back to where [she] had started twenty years ago when [she] began [her] fight for freedom. But in [her] rebellious youth, [she] thought [she] could escape by running away. And now [she] realized that the shadow of the burden was always following [her], and [there she] stood face to face with it again (Chapter 21)." Though the many years apart had changed her, made her better, her father was still the same man. He still had the same thoughts and ways and that was not going to change even on his death bed; she had let herself back into contact with the tyrant that had ruled over her as a child, her life had made a complete
In the novel Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline, we witness a relationship develop between Molly, a seventeen year old in the foster care system, and Vivian, a ninety-one year old widow that is looking to clean out her attic. As the book progresses, we see them grow closer through telling stories and bonding over their joint hardships. Kline goes out of her way to illustrate this strengthening friendship through many little hints in the novel.
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
The war time childhood events Penny and Primrose encounter result in psychological traumas such as parental abandonment. These two girls in particular endure psychological trauma of isolation, neglect, and displacement that begins when the two girls begin walking with the other children to climb aboard the train. The two young friends set off at the ...
Ms. King masterfully downplays the importance of the little convent girl by not giving her a name, even the steamboat captain and crew members refer to her as "the little convent girl". As a result, the reader is led to believe that the story is not really about the little convent girl. She is merely the instrument chosen by the author through which the reader will experience a steamboat adventure. King further misleads the reader by offering paragraphs of information about the complexities of navigating the river, the habits of the crew members, and the skill of the steamboat pilots. On those occasions that the reader is provided bits of information about the little convent girl, King immediately misdirects the reader back to the overt theme of a steamboat adventure.
The book begins as a mystery novel with a goal of finding the killer of the neighbor's dog, Wellington. The mystery of the dog is solved mid-way through the book, and the story shifts towards the Boone family. We learn through a series of events that Christopher has been lied to the past two years of his life. Christopher's father told him that his mother had died in the hospital. In reality she moved to London to start a new life because she was unable to handle her demanding child. With this discovery, Christopher's world of absolutes is turned upside-down and his faith in his father is destroyed. Christopher, a child that has never traveled alone going any further than his school, leaves his home in order to travel across the country to find his mother who is living in London.
The narrator, Twyla, begins by recalling the time she spent with her friend, Roberta, at the St. Bonaventure orphanage. From the beginning of the story, the only fact that is confirmed by the author is that Twyla and Roberta are of a different race, saying, “they looked like salt and pepper” (Morrison, 2254). They were eight-years old. In the beginning of the story, Twyla says, “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” This line sets the tone of the story from the start. This quote begins to separate the two girls i...
This novel has the feel of a memoir; I feel like we are reading Elly’s autobiography. I did have a hard time keeping up with the novel’s plot, as many things are happening all at once – sexual abuse, domestic violence, terrorism, kidnapping, death of loved ones. Tragedies after tragedies were heaped on the characters. The novel was also peppered with many actual historical events, including 9/11. However, it is the character Jenny Penny, Elly’s best friend, that struck me the most. Reading about Jenny Penny, I felt sad. Jenny Penny comes from a broken home, her parents are separated. She does not have a father figure to look up to, except for her mother’s numerous boyfriends. To me, her mother is still a child herself. As Elly said, Jenny Penny and her mother “lived in a temporary world of temporary men; a world that could be broken up and reassembled as easily and as quickly as Lego”. This is also highlighted by the quote “Jenny Penny had never known her father. Sh...
In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the role of the narrator and the interpretations of “A Rose for Emily”, it can be seen that this story is impossible to tell without a narrator.
In Margaret Atwood’s poem, A Bus Along ST.Clair: December, written in Susanna Moodie’s perspective, presents an idea of nature against civilization; in addition, Susanna Moodie’s pioneering settlement. The title suggests that aboard a bus, a transportation for modern society which carries nemorous people to a new destination, along ST. Clair. In addition, bus on the ST.Clair street runs from east to west which associates with Susanna Moodie’s immigrant experience that she move to Canada from Scotland through a ship. Now, she is carried by bus on ST. Clair street from east to west. This poem is the last poem in The Journal of Susanna Moodie written by Margaret Atwood; it serves a backward looking on her past and interpretation to civilization of city. ATwood utilizes some common motifs which also appeared in other poems in this journal to show Susanna Moodie’s different feeling and changing of the inside of her mind. Furthermore, this poem uses figurative language such as imagery and simile to paint the picture of character’s mind to reader.
The writing of a memoir through the eyes of a child can produce a highly entertaining work, as proved by Wole Soyinka. Through the use of third person and the masterful use of the innocence and language of childhood, Soyinka has written a memoir that can make us remember what is was like to see the world through the eyes of a child.
Charlie and Lydie were orphans living in an orphanage. How they got there nobodys knows. Every night they would dream of having a home, where people would love and care for them. Their lives were miserable at the orphanage with little food and clothing
“It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a child with autism to raise the consciousness of the village,” (Elaine Hall) describes what occurs in Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time where Christopher Boone, the main character who is affected by a mild form of autism, goes on an adventure to discover who murdered Mrs. Shear’s [his neighbor's] dog, Wellington. This event serves as the catalyst that allows Christopher to embark on an adventure where he discovers many truths and gains more independence than he had before. Since the novel is written in Chris’ perspective, it soon becomes more based on character development rather than the plot due to the fact, he discovers more about himself rather than the death of Wellington. Nonetheless, the plot develops in an unexpected way when the focal point shifts from the death of Wellington to the discovery the fact is mother is not dead, unlike what his father told him. The author, Mark Haddon, develops the plot through Christopher’s discoveries which is seen through the letters he finds written by his mother, whom he had thought was dead and when he runs away to London to escape his father’s grasps occurs in the novel.
Christina Baker Kline is a very innovative author. She addresses many things in her books and most of them have a deeper meaning to them than what we might see at first. It takes a little more than just a once over for us to understand what is truly hidden in the story behind her words. In “Orphan Train”, this is exactly case. In this book, Kline goes through a detailed account of two different stories; one of a teenage girl in 2011 and the other of a young girl from Ireland in the 1900’s. Both of these stories are of hardship and tragedy, and Kline didn’t skip over a single detail.