The Other Side Analysis When an individual reads a book, what factors do they use to truly comprehend the story? To understand a book, the reader must look for a few vital points. These factors include the tone, symbolism, and audience of the book or story. In the book The Other Side, by Jaqueline Woodson, a little girl, Clover, has a fence out behind her house. She repeatedly watches a little girl of another color be around the fence; though, her mother told her not to be near it. In this story, a reader must find certain elements to actually grasp the concept. In the book, The Other Side, the tone is enthusiastic. A reader can find that this is the tone because the girls, Clover and Annie, become friends and are kind-natured even though society …show more content…
Throughout her book, Woodson mentioned a fence on various occasions. This fence was placed precisely in between the houses of African Americans and Caucasians. This signifies the boundary and segregation between blacks and whites at the time. “That summer the fence that stretched through our town seemed bigger. We lived in a yellow house on one side of it. White people lived on the other. And Mama said, ‘Don’t climb over that fence when you play.’ She said it wasn’t safe.” Woodson used a fence as a boundary line between diverse races because this clearly symbolizes a resilient, or seeming resilient, borderline. The fence represents society’s thoughts on people of different races and what they are “supposed to” think and feel. Another instance in this book when symbolism was used is through the girls’ parents. Clover’s mother or “mama” as used in the text told Clover that the other side of the fence was dangerous. Her mother also stated that things had just always been that way. She did not even have a comprehension or thought of her own. Annie’s mother thought that Clover’s side of the fence was a danger to her daughter. “’My mama says I shouldn’t go on the other side,’ I said. ‘My mama says the same thing. But she never said nothing about sitting on it.’ ‘Neither did mine,” I said.” Their mothers represent society.
In the book, the readers see the wall between black and white people during the movement. An example is a reaction to Fern’s doll which is white, while Fern, however, is black. On pg.65, it reads, “‘Li’l Sis, are you a white girl or a black girl?’ Fern said, ‘I’m a colored girl.’ He didn’t like the sound of a colored girl,’ He said, ‘Black girl.’ Fern said, ‘Colored.’ ‘Black girl.”
They either showed the boundary existed or tried pushing it. The house on 93 Little Hobart Street exemplified the said boundary. It “was a dinky thing perched high up off the road on a hillside so steep that only the back of the house rested on the ground” (Walls 150). In color, the house was gray, and Jeannette decided she wanted to paint the house to try and spruce it up a bit. By doing that, she thought “people might be more accepting of us if we made an effort to improve the way 93 Little Hobart Street looked” (157). All through the memoir, the children try to grasp a sense of acceptance and fitting in. Jeannette’s attempt to improve the appearance of the house failed, making it two-toned. It stood out even more than it had before, and “instead of a freshly painted yellow house, or even a dingy gray one, we now had a weird-looking half-finished patch job” (Walls 158). The dwelling being two colors symbolized the boundary with the fresh paint displaying order and the dingy gray representing turbulence. Order was trying to paint over the turbulence, control the chaos, yet neither color was more dominant than the other and both were obviously
For example, when Hope, Dell, and Jackie go with their grandpa to The Candy Lady’s house, “...the sound of melting ice cream being slurped up fast, before it slides past our wrists, on down our arms and onto the hot, dry road” (Woodson 71). Furthermore, symbolism plays a big part in the poems. At one point in the story, once the family is in New York, the narrator describes a single tree in a small square of dirt, and it represents the part of the south that she still holds with her, the fact that Greenville, South Carolina will always be a part of her. I appreciated the symbolism and the fact that it provided more depth to the book; some instances of symbolism were genuinely
August Wilson’s play, Fences, follows the formal conventions of its genre, which helps convey the story to the audience because he uses stage directions, theme, symbolism, and figurative language. Theme and symbolism are an important factor in the play. These two things are the main focus of the play because it gives us a message that the author wants to give us to secretly while we read. A theme that was given in Fences is that oppression does not choose to hurt people of color, but gender as well.
The play, “Fences” by August Wilson describes the life of an African-American family that is por. Troy Maxson, the father of the family, was a baseball player in the Negro League but never made it to the Majors League. The play is about Troy’s struggle with his children and wife. He has a son named Lyons who doesn’t live with the family but still begs Troy for money. Troy’s main trouble is with his son Cory. Cory wants to become a football player but Troy disagrees. Cory gave up his job and school studies to focus on football but Troy doesn’t like this and he kicks him out of the house. During all of this, Troy is dealing with racial prejudice at his work. His boss will not allow blacks to drive the garbage trucks, but after Troy’s pleading, his boss allows him to drive the truck and he becomes the first black man to drive a truck in the entire city of Pittsburgh. Cory leaves the house and doesn’t return until 8 years later when his father dies. August Wilson wrote this play because he wanted to show the racial tensions as well as the family tensions he experienced while he was a kid.
In Fences, August Wilson strives to accurately depict the social and economic situations of the time period the play is set in. He uses the plots, characters, and the characters’ relationships with each other to show the day-to-day obstacles the average African American faces in the mid 1900s; and to show the various types of relationships between people during the time, from the black/white racial relationship to the relationship between man and woman. In particular, he uses Rose and Troy as examples of the typical relationship between a man and woman of the period – more specifically, he uses them to show the relationship and power structure between men and women. This relationship and power structure – the woman playing a subservient role to the strong, alpha male type – is definitely illustrated in Fences. Rose and Troy’s relationship depicts the conventional gender roles of the late 1950s-60s by displaying an unequal relationship between man and woman – one that was usual of the time period – with Rose often forced to concede her desires and wishes for Troy in her role as a dutiful housewife. Troy, a dominating man both in an out of his home life, plays a masculine, controlling, and often – though unintentional – selfish role in their relationship.
issues of civil rights he struggled with in his life. The ―fences‖ in the play are a representation of
The fences also represent the barrier between African Americans and the rest of the society. Alchura says that the way Wilson uses the setting dominates the fact of racism in this play (Alchura 1). Wilson uses the following quote as a way to show how racism affected African Americans.
...in character of “Fences,” fights to be a father with nothing to go on but the harsh example set by his own father, which resembles a symbolic fence separating the relationship between father and son. There is also Troy's son, Cory, a boy becoming a man, coming of age under Troy's sovereignty. The play shows that no matter how old you are, you're constantly measuring yourself against the example set by your parents. Even if the reader’s family is nothing like the Maxsons, one may possibly connect with this basic human struggle.
With the various characters introduced throughout the plot of the book, the characters voice their opinions and their thoughts. The wording and emotions
In Beth Brant (Mohawk) “This is History,” the main theme in the story is to show readers that women came first and love each other in society. She is trying to find a identity for herself and have connections with things around her. She is willing to appreciate nature and earth. She is taking the beauty of everything around her. Including pregnancy and women. “First woman touched her body, feeling the movements inside, she touched the back of mother and waited for the beings to change her world.”
The dynamics of a family are patterns of relating interactions among one another. Each family structure differentiates among the culture, beliefs and life style. The action of a family being torn apart and what holds it together is significant through the trials and tribulations that families encounter. In August Wilson’s Fences and Alice Walker’s Everyday Use, both pieces of literature have one factor that links the stories together is the leading character hurting those around them without realizing it. African American heritage is being portrayed and both Troy and Dee experience their own respective families suffer at the cost of one’s own ignorance.
August Wilson’s Fences highlights the struggles of the African American male living in the 1950’s through its main character Troy Maxson. Racially and emotionally, Troy is unstable in his environment. Because of his past, he tries to not see his mistake repeated through his son and lives through his marriage with another woman. Throughout the play, the audience can see the hardships that evolved through the lives of African American males and their families. Troy character was essentially restricted physically and morally due to being exposed to the barriers that made up his surroundings.
A double-sided word, which is hard to come by in a society that was and in many ways still is racist, sexist, and corrupt. Wilson didn’t want to paint people a picture of a nuclear family with no problems, but instead one of the truth. Wilson realized if he wrote an honest play people would come to understand just how dysfunctional the majority of communities he was raised in were. Where poverty was widespread, local governments were discriminatory against the African Americans community, its people had little education, and therefore hurt their chance of success. Along with problems families faced, Rose, Troy’s wife and Cory’s mom, starts off her marriage to Troy with an ultimatum in Fences she says:”I told him if he wasn't the marrying kind, then move out the way so the marrying kind could find me.”.While the majority of the children of these communities were doomed to work the same low paying jobs as their fathers. Wilson knew that his passion was the Arts so he did what he could to combat the harsh lifestyle black communities were facing. He accomplishes this reality with Fences, therefore his work is praised by people across the country and is seen that his ‘Craft’ was used to the best of his abilities and ends up merged with majority of Arts departments, making a more racially diverse
The fence represents discrimination in the The Adventures of Tom Sawyer excerpt by Mark Twain. When Jim is tried to be persuaded by Tom, he fails. Jim refuses to give in and paint the fence that was once black white. He knows that all colors have equal representation. He can only defend the outliers in his group, but their mentality disallows them to attack. Jim attacks Tom knowing that even his race can be smart. This is the attack that Mark Twain experienced, the Missouri Compromise. The way how a black defends to avoid humiliation is the way Jim stood up. Tom wanted to balance things out between the white and the black with Ben. He knows Ben and seeks him to paint the fence.. Tom is the one who realizes the miseries and reflects off of Mark Twain. Many other white boys start to paint the fence flawlessly severely overlapping. The people of the black can only try to defend and persist against discrimination. Even though, Jim made a breakthrough, the white still over populated the black. People have to do work fairly without slavery. Tom believed he did his fair...