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Need of self actualization theory
Need of self actualization theory
Character development introduction
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“The Inheritance of My Father: A Story for Listening” comments on the issues of family ties, identity and belonging in relation to hybridization. Roemer’s purpose involves the highlighting of the relationship between finding one’s identity and finding one’s voice. He achieves this by allowing the readers to embark on a journey of self-discovery with the child narrator Bonkoro, who changes from a docile, almost voiceless “child” before the summer vacation to a renewed, confident and articulate “adult” at the end of her vacation. This short story is a unified and coherent production since several aspects of Roemer’s craft testify to the intimate interrelation of finding one’s identity and one’s voice. Roemer emphasizes the theme of self-discovery
and identity through his craft and this contributes to the unity and coherence of the short story. Roemer’s use of child narration allows for a fresh perspective of events as seen through the innocent eyes of young girl. Her curiosity – “I began to think about everything, about who my parents were…” (Brown and Wickham349) – is understandable as well as her identity crisis – “I began to think… about what I am, about who we are together” (349). Roemer’s craft proves to be unified and coherent as he links the oral quality of the story to Bonkoro’s struggle to find a sense of identity and belonging and by extension, her voice. When she considers her parent’s identity, her identity and their identity in totality, she states “Often it makes me sick. It is as if I have to throw up but cannot” (349-350). Bonkoro’s inner conflict is her ignorance of her parent’s identity leading to confusion in establishing her own.
The chapter “A Fathers Influence” is constructed with several techniques including selection of detail, choice of language, characterization, structure and writers point of view to reveal Blackburn’s values of social acceptance, parenting, family love, and a father’s influence. Consequently revealing her attitude that a child’s upbringing and there parents influence alter the characterization of a child significantly.
In The Latehomecomer, by Kao Kalia Yang shares her story and the story of her family’s search for a home and identity. Her family’s story voices the story of the Hmong people and their plight. From every stage of their journey, from the mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia to the freezing winter of Minnesota, Yang and the Hmong were compelled to redefine their identity, willingly or unwillingly. While growing up, Yang’s parents would often ask her, “’What are you?’ and the right answer was always, ‘I am Hmong.’” (Yang, 1) For “Hmong” to be the right answer, then what does it mean to be “Hmong”? From the personal story shared by Yang, and the universal story of the Hmong people, the Hmong identity cannot be contained in
The idea of “family” is almost entirely socially constructed. From grandparents, to friends, to wives and fiancés, the means by which we decide who is related to us and who is not is decided by the person and their milieu. In Mignon R. Moore’s “Independent Women: Equality in African-American Lesbian Relationships”, Eviatar Zerubavel’s Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community, and Franz Kafka’s The Judgement, this idea is tested. Who do we consider close enough to us to share our most intimate details and how do we choose them? Each piece offers a different view, which is the “right” way for each of the people described, whether broad (as in Zerbavel’s reading) or specific (as in Moore’s reading), but there are also many similarities in the ways family is defined and actualized.
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
A parent may want to understand their child and connect to them, but they may not know how to do it. In Li-Young Lee’s poem “A Story”, the literary devices point of view, metaphors, and the structure of the poem are used to portray the complex relationship of the father and child and their inability to be able to connect with one another despite their wishes to do so.
In conclusion, events surrounding the internment of Japanese Americans affected members of families in different ways. While papa was financially stable, loving and an authoritative person before the internment, the relocation sees him transformed into a financially unstable, resentful, angry, and a less authoritative and commanding person. Understanding papa’s changes give insights as to how the internment affected the Japanese American families because fathers usually influence their family more than any other person and anything that affects them also affects the whole family as it has been seen in the Wakatsuki family’s case.
There are different types of parent and child relationships. There are relationships based on structure, rules, and family hierarchy. While others are based on understanding, communication, trust, and support. Both may be full of love and good intentions but, it is unmistakable to see the impact each distinct relationship plays in the transformation of a person. In Chang’s story, “The Unforgetting”, and Lagerkvist’s story, “Father and I”, two different father and son relationships are portrayed. “The Unforgetting” interprets Ming and Charles Hwangs’ exchange as very apathetic, detached, and a disinterested. In contrast, the relationship illustrated in the “Father and I” is one of trust, guidance, and security. In comparing and contrasting the two stories, there are distinct differences as well as similarities of their portrayal of a father and son relationship in addition to a tie that influences a child’s rebellion or path in life.
The family's personal encounters with the destructive nature of the traditional family have forced them to think in modern ways so they will not follow the same destructive path that they've seen so many before them get lost on. In this new age struggle for happiness within the Kao family a cultural barrier is constructed between the modern youth and the traditional adults with Chueh-hsin teeter tottering on the edge, lost between them both. While the traditional family seems to be cracking and falling apart much like an iceberg in warm ocean waters, the bond between Chueh-min, Chueh-hui, Chin and their friends becomes as strong as the ocean itself.
In her two short stories, “The Key Game” and “A Spring Morning,” Ida Fink explores the role of family and the importance of heritage to each of her characters. In both stories, the families are loving, and their members care for one another. This is, in some ways, a juxtaposition of the unkind and terrible circumstances that the families are living in. The focus of both stories is on the children, even though the parents play significant roles. The children are aware of their
Father’s have an extremely important and influential role on their children. In the novel, The Light In The Forest, author Conrad Richter focuses on three fathers and the roles they posses upon True Son, a white child who was captured by an indian tribe at the age of four and had lived with the Indians for eleven years. Cuyloga; True Son’s indian adopted father,Harry Butler; his white biological father, and the Sun; the father he has known for his entire life, teach True Son through the entire book. Throughout the tale, True son experiences a variety of different virtues taught by his three fathers.
I have found my connection to my ancestors. It is neither language, nor country, nor family title. For more than three centuries, my predecessors have been striving, yearning, and devoting their lives in the hope of achieving something better for themselves and for future generations. To this day, it has not been realized. I plan to rectify that.
There will come a time in most of our lives where we will have to take care of our parents. Whether it is telling them what they can or can’t eat, or whether or not they are able enough to drive. Indian writer Anita Desai captures this transition in her short story entitled, “A Devoted Son”. In which the son of an aging father, now a successful doctor, takes too much control in his father’s life, to the point where the father has to tell him to stop. Anita beautifully wrote this piece, but she also made a famous statement about her writing when she says, “I wanted to capture that duality of human nature, of human life. Nothing is so simple as it seems; everything is complex, mysterious.” (Anita Desai, page 1417.) In Anita Desai’s story, “A Devoted Son” her statement of “I wanted to capture that duality of human nature, of human life. Nothing is so simple as it seems; everything is complex, mysterious,” validates her story with the duality of human life, how simple life may see, and the complexity behind the simple life.
It was a traumatic and unexpected loss that shook my family. The loss of my husband stopped me in my tracks, and it felt like I was from another planet learning to survive in an entirely new world. Of course I am still affected and triggered by my grief, but the journey has been bittersweet and transformational, to say the least. However, the time of transition I am basing this paper on is how my new relationship has affected my family and the ways in which we are making the transition from loss to renewal and what they once viewed and knew me as, to the person I am today. To understand the impact of the loss one would have to know that my late husband and I had known one another since sixth grade, married out of high school and for ten years prior to his death. We “grew up together” for some of our relationship and he became part of our family of origin, as did his nuclear family. Our relationship and his families with ours changed my family’s identity, as we joined the characteristics of two different families (Bennet, Wolin & McAvity, 1988). My late husband’s death disrupted the continuity of our family identity, and roles shifted to maintain a balance in the period of
Menon, Vinay, and Star Toranto. "How to make small talk with other fathers." Toranto Star [Canada] 18 06 2011, L6. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
The researcher originated from an enormous family full with a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Her parents informed her that for the duration of her grandparents’ period, having several offspring was a symbol of affluence and it added a sense of pride and dignity to the father. The researcher was born to a West African mother and father from Sierra Leone. In her culture, having multiple children is seen as a mark of blessings and it is very seldom that one will encounter others from this same region that have just one child. Growing up in the late 1990s, she was the only child to her parents. Yet, she was well aware that someday her family of three would become a family of four and possibly five. Conceivably if it had reached six, this would be no epiphany...