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Tillie olsen’s "i stand here ironing" criticism essay
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What does it say? In the story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, the mother feels that in order to have that strong relationship between the mother and the children you have to spend a great amount of time with them. As her being a mother she explains that trying to give all five of her children the same amount of love for each other is very hard because of the amount of work that is having to be put in. Being able to care for a family is a strong thing because if she isn’t able to show the care and support them as well needed as a family does then there isn’t going to be that love for the whole family and then that will just break down the relationship between everyone.
Showing love for all five children at once isn’t easy and as she explains it’s just about impossible for that to be happening. There are times when she feels that it’s just time to give up but she knows that her children are everything to her and if she doesn’t build that relationship then
Sometimes the family isn’t going to have the best things handed in front of them because of the great depression based right after this story was written. Just by saying that anybody is going to be able to understand that the situations are not going to be the best for the families. For trying to build the relationship between the mother and the daughter this isn’t the greatest topic to be talking about. The daughter is most likely not to see it but the mother is working her hardest for everything to get done so they are being the best supported possible. It hard for everything to work out in the family at this time during the great depression because of the amount of work that is having to be put in for little outcome. The mother has to look at everything that she has done and she is most likely going to be able to say that she has done everything possible for the
The excerpt I chose to read for this assignment was Chapter 1 from Jeanette Walls’ “The Glass Castle: A Memoir” titled “A Woman on the Street” This chapter of the novel depicts the main character and her mother’s relationship. The mother has decided to live her life in poverty for reasons yet to be explained to the reader. It is said that this is how she wishes to live. Her daughter, the main character, is ashamed by her mother and the way she is living and intends to try to help better her life, however her mom insists that she isn't the one who needs help. This readings goal is to establish the core relationship of the novel, and set up the beginning of how the story may begin to change.
Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...
The story takes place in 1937 during the Roosevelt recession. A 15-year-old girl named Mary Alice is sent to live a year with her grandmother while her mother and father live in Chicago. Her parents couldn’t afford to keep and feed her or her brother. Her new life in the country is much different than her old life in the big city. She learns many things about how the people there got by with the little they had. During her time there she learns how make the best of with what she had.
...e on her part. Throughout the story, the Mother is portrayed as the dominant figure, which resembled the amount of say that the father and children had on matters. Together, the Father, James, and David strived to maintain equality by helping with the chickens and taking care of Scott; however, despite the effort that they had put in, the Mother refused to be persuaded that Scott was of any value and therefore she felt that selling him would be most beneficial. The Mother’s persona is unsympathetic as she lacks respect and a heart towards her family members. Since the Mother never showed equality, her character had unraveled into the creation of a negative atmosphere in which her family is now cemented in. For the Father, David and James, it is only now the memories of Scott that will hold their bond together.
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
... emotional resource for the split family. The last passage reveals Mazie's mixture of compassion and strength necessary for survival in the dusty, cold world: "Her hand on the arm around him was open and tender, but the other lay fisted and terrible like her father's that night in the kitchen. Till the dayŠ" (152) Olsen has faith in the family; they have waded through hardship after hardship, encountered abandonment and death, and still they will wake the next day. Survival here is not accomplished by reliance upon others, but on one's own reserve of will. This is a stark departure from Steinbeck's and others' views on the Depression; nonetheless, both schools of thought hold tremendous sympathy for the lives full of misery about which they wrote.
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” describes the lives of a mother, Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter, Joy and the irony of their relationship. This passage from the short story expounds on their character development through details of their lives. The selected paragraph uses a matter-of-fact tone to give more information about Mrs. Hopewell and Joy. Flannery O’Connor has given an objective recount of the story, which makes the third person narrator a reliable source. Mrs. Hopewell’s feelings are given on her daughter to examine their relationship. It is reader who takes these facts to create an understanding of these women and their lives. This part of the story illustrates the aspects of their lives that they had little control over. Therefore, it indirectly shows how each woman acclimated to their circumstance. Although genetically related and living with one another, Mrs. Hopewell and Joy were exceedingly different people.
After the father's death, the family was forced to be put on welfare. This was very hard for the kids and especially the mother to accept because they were use to the father being the provider, and it went against everything that they were taught by their father. They had welfare personnel coming by to check up on them very often. The mother felt so helpless and was unable to provide and care for the kids like she used to. It was even harder to try to discipline the kids without the father there to enforce the punishments.
In "I Stand Here Ironing", Tillie Olsen uses a very untraditional plot to achieve a lasting impression with her readers. Her technique reaches out and grabs you as you read. She accomplishes this by speaking in first person, second person, and third person and by using flashbacks in non-chronological order. These techniques draw you into the plot and make you pay closer attention to what is going on.
...fe, but the ending it what ties the rest together. The father and daughter have a ruff relationship. The daughter hasn’t seen where the father lived and they don’t seem as if they are very comfortable in the presence of each other. They don’t have a relationship people strive for. However, we saw the father take responsibility for his family. They we young and he stayed with them. He knew it was his job and he didn’t leave them alone. In the end you could tell it didn’t last. The last line shows that the cold or problems got in. The mom wasn’t in present day story. Telling you something went wrong. It wasn’t truly a happy ending. People use moment to live and we strive to do our best, but problems occur. How can you make your life worth the troubles? Be prepared and make compromises. Life isn’t perfect and you have to prepare or your life will be filled with no one.
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
Again, Sandy lived in a small urban community in Warren, MI were all the neighbors knew each other and had a sense of pride about their homes. It was a middle class neighborhood where all the fathers/husbands went and worked and the woman stayed home and raised the children and took care of the household. They were middle class because everyone worked for everything they had. Her father Jerry, would woke up at 4am to start his first job delivering milk and from then on he went to his job working at General Motors, where he worked his up to a supervisor position. Many times during the summer months Sandy’s father would have herself and her siblings go on the milk deliveries with him, she credits her father for influencing her strong work ethic.
When the March family seemed to be at one of the lowest times they stuck together the most. It was the middle of the war and Mr. March wasn't home, money was very scares and everyone had to make sacrifices. Each girl seemed to want more than they could have, when Marmee, which is what the girls called Mrs. March, only wanted her children to be happy and her husband to come home safely. Yet once again through this time, family was important. During one of the nights while the girls sat and sewed at their mother's feet the story of the family is told. At a time of poverty at it's worst, Aunt March suggested...
Being a single mother of two kids is much more difficult than it seems, being a mother with two kids and a abusive ex husband who won’t pay for child support is unimaginably difficult, now being a single mother with two kids, an abusive ex husband who isn't paying for child support, and working over 15 hours a day to support her two kids seems impossible for most, but my mother? She was in that exact position and only got through the troubles because of her strong will to live and love for me and my older sister which encouraged her to work hard to make enough money to ensure me and my sister have a future. In the book “Krik? Krak!” by Edwidge Danticat, the theme of how the love of family encourages people to survive through times of hardships,