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The woman who walked into doors by roddy doyle analysis
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‘The Woman Who Walked into Doors’ is written by Roddy Doyle over a thirty nine year timescale. Doyle has created a convincing female Narrator Paula. She is married with three children, and an Irish Catholic. In 1960s most people were believed in Roman Catholic. Paula named her son as John Paul, who was the new pope in 1979 and Paula says ‘I can’t ask the priest, the one that calls around every couple a months, drinking tea and eating cake with the deserted wives of the parish’. This shows how religious they were in 1970s. She got three sisters and three brothers. She was in social class family. As the result of using first person narrator Doyle structured the story in non chronological order. Paula’s faded memory taking the story sideways and in every chapter changing the subject. Her feelings have changed as well as her situations. She shuffles her good moments and the bad moments making the reader guess what the end is going to be. Doyle engages the reader by connecting her feelings and the events. For example in chapter one she talks with the guard and stops it, then continues in chapter five. This makes the reader to keep guessing what is going to happen. Roddy Doyle writes the story from a first person point of view and gives the narrator an informal manner of speech as Paula is not trying to be a professional story teller at any point of the story. She uses words independently and tells what comes into her mind. Doyle uses different words to describe different situations. This gave the narrator different sorts of emotions each situation. In chapter one she says ‘‘we had this screeching bell like an alarm that shook the walls when anyone rang it. It lifted me off the floor, the kids started bawling; it was fuckin dreadf... ... middle of paper ... ... religion. When he trying to hurt Nicola. She banged Charlo with a frying pan and kicked him out of the house. The reader never thought Paula was going to kick him out of the house. In chapter twenty-nine Paula says ‘it was a great feelings for a while. I’d done something good’, again in the end of chapter thirty one she said ‘it was great feelings I’d done something good. Doyle is trying to emphasize the point, she did something good. Doyle made a happy ending, even though she struggles for identity through out her life. In the whole book Doyle clearly shows her struggle for identity by Paula’s informal way of story telling and her diminished memory. Doyle gives multiple characters and gives various emotions according to the situation. His informal way of non chronological structure and precise use of language emphasize her struggle for identity to the reader.
Throughout the novel the reader gets a clear sense of Edna Pontellier's peculiar mind and her manic depressive state. She is continually plagued by the moment. Her mood shifts from highs to lows show the reader that a sadness is perpetually within her:
The book order is chronologically in reverse; this is significant because as the reader one learns about his first experience with death in the last chapter of the book, "The Lives of the Dead". In this chapter, O’Brien illustrates the genuine love he felt for a girl named Linda. After his first official date with her, O’Brien clarifies to the reader that Linda was sick and eventually the reader learns that she has died from complications from a brain tumor. O’Brien portrays the feelings that he has as a fourth grader and the thoughts of death that he experiences. O’Brien expresses the feeling of disbelief, "It didn’t seem real. A mistake, I thought. The girl lying in the white casket wasn’t Linda. For a second I wondered if someone had made a terrible blunder" (241). O’Brien’s coping mechanism was to dream; he uses his memories to create dreams of real life situations that he and Linda could have easily been involved in. O’Brien uses situations like ice skating to make up elaborate stories to keep her memory alive (244). O’Brien as a child seems remote and solitary, so his mother asks “‘Timmy what wrong?’” and he replies, “‘Nothing I just need to sleep, that’s all’” (244). He understands she is dead but these intricate stories stuck with him, even through the war.
Center stage in Kaye Gibbons’ inspiring bildungsroman, Ellen Foster, is the spunky heroine Ellen Foster. At the start of the novel, Ellen is a fiery nine-year old girl. Her whole life, especially the three years depicted in Ellen Foster, Ellen is exposed to death, neglect, hunger and emotional and physical abuse. Despite the atrocities surrounding her, Ellen asks for nothing more than to find a “new mama” to love her. She avoids facing the harsh reality of strangers and her own family’s cruelty towards her by using different forms of escapism. Thrice Ellen is exposed to death (Gibbons 27). Each time, Ellen has a conversation with a magician to cope with the trauma (Gibbons 22-145). Many times Ellen’s actions and words cause it to be difficult to tell that she is still a child. However, in order to distract herself, Ellen will play meaningful games (Gibbons 26). These games become a fulcrum for Ellen’s inner child to express itself. Frequently, Ellen will lapse into a daydream (Gibbons 67). Usually, these daydreams are meant to protect herself from the harsh reality around her. Ellen Foster’s unique use of escapism resounds as the theme of Kaye Gibbon’s Ellen Foster.
influence all her life and struggles to accept her true identity. Through the story you can
The main argument of this novel has been diluted though a too widened scope of Edna’s life. Throughout the novel Edna mentions countless flat characters that do not bring much to the Awakening that she is encountering. The wide variety of characters makes the novel very frustrating level of work. The audience can become confused with the different characters and the meaning Chopin holds behind each character. The Audience will them spend infinite time trying to incorporate meaning of the characters that they lose the overall journey that Edna is challenged with. While repeatedly reading this novel it became apparent to me that many of the characters could have been excluded from the novel to make the journey more objectified. The audience could still understand the object of this novel without Alcée Arobin, Madame Lebrun, Victor Lebrun, Mariequita, Dr. Mandelet, Mrs. James Highcamp and many others. All of these characters have little to no meaning that enhances the novel. For example, Alcée Arobin played a minor role as the second affair Edna was engaged in during her awakening. Without mentioning the affair between the two, there would still be circumstantial evidence that Edna is breaking free from society. She was already moved out of her husband’s home, abandoned all duties as a
perceive the novel in the rational of an eleven-year-old girl. One short, simple sentence is followed by another , relating each in an easy flow of thoughts. Gibbons allows this stream of thoughts to again emphasize the childish perception of life’s greatest tragedies. For example, Gibbons uses the simple diction and stream of consciousness as Ellen searches herself for the true person she is. Gibbons uses this to show the reader how Ellen is an average girl who enjoys all of the things normal children relish and to contrast the naive lucidity of the sentences to the depth of the conceptions which Ellen has such a simplistic way of explaining.
The struggle the other characters face in telling Mrs. Mallard of the news of her husband's death is an important demonstration of their initial perception of her strength. Through careful use of diction, Mrs. Mallard is portrayed as dependent. In mentioning her "heart trouble" (12) Chopin suggests that Mrs. Mallard is fragile. Consequently, Josephine's character supports this misconception as she speaks of the accident in broken sentences, and Richards provides little in the way of benefiting the situation. In using excess caution in approaching the elderly woman, Mrs. Mallard is given little opportunity to exhibit her strength. Clearly the caution taken towards Mrs. Mallard is significant in that it shows the reader the perception others have of her. The initial description the author provides readers with creates a picture that Mrs. Mallard is on the brink of death.
When her husband was still with her, she had no identity, she was branded exclusively as Mrs. Mallard, Brently Mallard’s wife. Now, Louise distinguishes that she can finally be her own person and be identified by who she is, not only as someone else’s wife. As Louise departs from her room, she develops into a new person and as Mark Cunningham (2004) writes in his Literary Criticism, The Autonomous Female and the Death of Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, “With Brently’s return, with the reconstitution of her marriage and previous social position, Louise once again vanishes among her husband and her relatives” (para. 3). This explicates that when Louise’s husband was with her, and when he returns, she fades into the background. In the short time Louise is deprived of her husband, she grows into her own identity and this gives way to her feminist ideas. As Louise realizes that she now does not have to live for anyone else in the years to come, Chopin (1894) writes that “There would be no powerful will bending hers” (para. 14). This demonstrates that Louise frequently felt that her husband’s opinion conflicted on hers and she rarely received the attention she deserved. Now, Louise has no one to rule above her, no one to be associated with as lesser than
Miss Lottie, the woman that she had once believed was different from those she thought of as normal, was really a person aged from difficult times. Lizabeth’s actions, although at the time had brought her small joy and an antidote to her boredom, had effected Miss Lottie by taking away the last bit of hope and care put into the flowers. Her father was no longer the center and the support of her family, but just a person who could no longer work and earn like he had once done. Lizabeth had not noticed the change and the depression in her father, as a result of childhood blinding her to the troubles of the rest of the world. Lizabeth’s confusing emotions spurred her to continue the destruction of the marigolds, as her brother, who did not understand her actions, sat confused and upset. He was not experiencing the rite of passage that his sister was faced with. As Lizabeth is sitting in the middle of the mess she made in Miss Lottie's garden, “...that was the moment when childhood faded and adulthood began.” Lizabeth's actions as child had opened her eyes as an adult and “... gazed on a reality that is hidden from childhood.”
In Dubliners, James Joyce tells short stories of individuals struggling with life, in the city of Dublin. “It is a long road that has no turning” (Irish Proverb). Many individuals fight the battle and continue on the road. However, some give up and get left behind. Those who continue to fight the battle, often deal with constant struggle and suffering. A reoccurring theme, in which Joyce places strong emphasis on, is the constant struggle of fulfilling responsibilities. These responsibilities include; work, family and social expectations. Joyce writes about these themes because characters often feel trapped and yearn to escape from these responsibilities. In “The Little Cloud”, “Counterparts”, and “The Dead” characters are often trapped in unhappy living situations, often leading to a desire of escape from reality and daily responsibilities.
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her
The narrator thinks the many identities he possesses does not reflect himself, but he fails to recognize that identity is simply a mirror that reflects the surrounding and the person who looks into it. It is only in this reflection of the immediate surrounding can the viewers relate the narrator's identity to. The viewers see only the part of the narrator that is apparently connected to the viewer's own world. The part obscured is unknown and therefore insignificant. Lucius Brockway, an old operator of the paint factory, saw the narrator only as an existence threatening his job, despite that the narrator is sent there to merely assist him. Brockway repeatedly question the narrator of his purpose there and his mechanical credentials but never even bother to inquire his name. Because to the old fellow, who the narrator is as a person is uninterested. What he is as an object, and what that object's relationship is to Lucius Brockway's engine room is important. The narrator's identity is derived from this relationship, and this relationship suggests to Brockway that his identity is a "threat". However the viewer decides to see someone is the identity they assign to that person. The Closing of The American Mind, by Allan Bloom, explains this identity phenomenon by comparing two "ships of states" (Bloom 113). If one ship "is to be forever at sea, [and] ¡K another is to reach port and the passengers go their separate ways, they think about one another and their relationships on the ship very differently in the two cases" (Bloom 113).
In Fenstad’s Mother, by Charles Baxter, character is a very essential element to the story. The main character, Harry Fenstad, is a complicated person, but it is his mother, Mrs. Clara Fenstad, who I feel is a more important and complex person. In this brief paper, I will explain why it is my opinion that both of these characters play a crucial role in the story by complementing and developing each other’s character.
This entire novel is about an identity crisis. At the start of the novel, Edna Pontellier is a wife who barely accepts the constraints
Joyce almost shouts at the reader of how difficult it was or is rather for men to return home from war and reintegrate back into normal life. In this case Gabriel wants to be alone and not waste his time with unimportant chatter. He has wants he is unable to express due to his awkwardness. When his wife admits there was another man she loved before him his world comes spinning to a stop and he looks at her as if they never knew each other. He distances himself completely due to the lack of understanding of the people around him. This comments on the social changes brought after World War I, new lines were drawn on the map and an empire was brought down.