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I Never Promised You A Rose Garden Analysis
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenberg, is a description of a sixteen-year-old girl's battle with schizophrenia, which lasts for three years. It is a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s experiences in a mental hospital during her own bout with the illness. This novel is written to help fight the stigmatisms and prejudices held against mental illness.
Joanne Greenberg was born in Brooklyn in 1932, and is a very respected and award-winning author. Because of her experiences as a Jewish-American and having fought her own battle with schizophrenia, Greenberg wrote I Never Promised You a Rose Garden to help people understand what it is like have to face so much hardship. After her illness was treated, she went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and English. Throughout her life, she has fought for the respect and empathy that individuals suffering from both physical and mental handicaps have been denied. Joanne Greenberg presents her experiences by relating them to Deborah Blau.
Deborah Blau, who is very bright and artistically talented, creates an imaginary world she calls the Kingdom of Yr, to use as a defense against the confusing and frightening truths of the real world. When Deborah is five, she has an operation to remove a tumor that causes her to be incontinent. This is a very traumatic experience because a great deal of physical pain and shame comes along with the problems c...
Grace finally appreciates her grandma for caring for her, coming to terms that she might belong here. In The Secret Hum of a Daisy by Tracy Holczer, Grace the main character, must find where she belongs and learn to love others. The setting takes place in April at a funeral. There was a “gardenia on the smooth brown wood” (Holczer 1).
The essays, “On Being a Cripple”, by Nancy Mairs, and “Living Under Circe’s Spell”, by Matthew Soyster are both about how each author deals with multiple sclerosis in their life and their opinions on it. Mairs’ piece is a careful examination of her experience with MS and her perspective towards her future. In contrast, Soyster writes humorously of a particular incident he had with MS and artfully weaves his ideas about the disease in with his story. In both instances, the authors share the purpose of narrating their encounter with MS to the world to raise awareness. Both employ the rhetorical strategies of appeals to pathos and varying sentence structures to achieve this goal, some more effectively than others.
The Art of Forgiveness Most runaway youth are homeless because of neglect, abuse and violence, not because of choice. Lily Owens is the protagonist in the novel, Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk. Kidd, is no different. Lily is a fourteen year old girl still grieving over her mother's death. T. Ray, a man who has never been able to live up to the title of a father, due to years of abuse, has not made it any easier.
These two essays are about two dissimilar disabilities. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris act as examples of how an author’s writing can change the tone and meaning of a narrative. Mairs message was educational and encouraging as she explained her life with MS and how society sees her. Sedaris use of experience and memories portrays his life with obsessive-compulsive disorder; what he calls “tics”. These two writers take similar topics and pitch them in ways so the reader can see the illustration behind them.
Dealing with mental illness is difficult, but even worse when caring for a family member with a mental illness, creating the feeling of a lifetime of servitude. Bebe Moore Campbell uses flashback of slavery throughout the novel, 72 Hour Hold to explain how taking care of a family member with a mental illness can make one feel enslaved. Flashbacks throughout the novel are used to describe a mother’s, Keri, struggle of taking care of her bipolar daughter, Trina, while also insinuating that she feels her daughter’s illness has enslaved her. With the usage of slavery flashbacks author Bebe Moore Campbell creates a new reality, in which mental illness does not only affect the person suffering but also the people around them. The purpose of these flashbacks are not to just describe a minority, but to highlight the impact mental illness brings to the individual as well as the now indebted caretakers.
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
Most of the time there is a moment in life where one realizes they have lost all innocence and gained some compassion. “Marigolds” shows how one young girl transferred from a child to young adult through her life experiences. Throughout this story another young, but at the same time old in her prime, lady’s experiences are revealed: the author’s. In this short story, “Marigolds,” Eugenia Collier’s subconscious is unmasked through symbolism, diction, and Lizabeth’s actions.
All human beings cope with different challenges in life. These challenges can be emotional, mental, financial, social, or spiritual. The challenges in life learned in this course will be examined in different literary works such as novels, plays, and short stories. Isolation and conflicts are the challenges involved in Ender’s Game. Then, The Miracle Worker deals with reaching out someone and to an individual with a disability. Finally, conflict involving technology is evident in The Veldt. The challenges revealed in different works of literature are essential because they enable people to develop human qualities that give them opportunities to succeed and move forward.
On a Saturday afternoon in December, Barbara was sitting outside in her private sanctuary with her daughter Layla, since she had nothing to get ready for. Her private sanctuary was filled with exotic flowers, and trees with orchids of bright color hang...
In the face of played down labels and censored judgment, Nancy Mairs calls herself a cripple. By doing so Mairs exudes power, resilience, and truth. A protruding message is conveyed through Mairs’s writing, it is that society crams many into a delicate cage to mask the imperfect reality.
Deborah’s original fears sprouted from her largest secret, the secret of her personal safe haven. To Deborah, opening up about the Kingdom of Yr, sparked her fear that the haven in which she finds safety, has potential to be destroyed in the hands of another individual. During the earlier stages of the novel, Deborah’s fear for the destruction of Yr ran deep, as without the Kingdom she would no longer have an outlet to run towards during her period of hurt. The fears in which Deborah experiences, also linger towards the emotional pot brewing inside of her, as she is terrified that the anger building up will spill out like an erupting volcano, causing a great deal of damage to an individual, “The clamor of from the Collect built higher until it was an overwhelming roar and the gray vision went red” (Greenberg, Chapter 19, page 26). Once the anger which accumulated over her life finally erupts, it becomes clear that the fear of not being able to control her anger, instigated Deborah to cling onto the rage for so long, eventually forcing her to maintain control of her fear. The protagonist’s final fear is sparked by her belief that the world is a place of betrayal, and love and kindness are foreign objects in the physical world. Due to the taunts she received from bully’s as a child and the lies she was prone to from
Although imagery and symbolism does little to help prepare an expected ending in “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, setting is the singular element that clearly reasons out an ending that correlates with the predominant theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing a grim realism from the cruel world. Despite the joyous atmosphere of an apparently beautiful world of abundant corn and cotton, death and hatred lies on in the woods just beyond the sharecropper cabin. Myop’s flowers are laid down as she blooms into maturity in the face of her fallen kinsman, and the life of summer dies along with her innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to the innocent children.
My Pa Pa always told me, “Give me my flowers while I’m here not when I’m dead.” A trip to my grandparent’s house in Olustee, Florida was always a trip I looked forward to. Their house always felt like another home to be, but that was until my grandfather passed away from having Alzheimer’s December 9th, 2012. When he passed, everything felt different. After December 9th, nothing really felt the same to me anymore. Due to my grandfather’s passing, my thoughts on life changed.
The Gail Godwin short story, “A Sorrowful Woman” demonstrates the trials and sorrows of how mental illness can affect not only the mentally ill, but also those who live with them.
Jackson, Shirley. "Flower Garden." Introduction to Literature: Reading, Analyzing, and Writing. 2nd ed. Ed. Dorothy U.Seyler and Richard A. Wilan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1990.