Socrates said “All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.” In the story of Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell this is exactly what happened. Two years after the death of their litter sister Timothy and Waldo Swallow still search for some evidence of her. Olivia’s death hit her family hard and broke them apart. Her parents began traveling constantly to escape their pain and the failing of their marriage. While her brothers were left with their pitiless granana to fend for themselves and search for her body. The turning point of their search starts when they coincidentally find a pair of “Diabolical” pink googles. (Russell 26) Ordinarily finding a pair of pink googles in an abandoned boat wouldn’t seem out of place, but these googles were special; they were able to see the dead of the sea. Creatures throughout time that had passed in the ocean were now visible with these googles. With the loss of their sister weighing heavily on their minds the discovery of these googles could only be divine intervention by their extraordinary sister …show more content…
(Russell 35) playing house on the beach by sweeping up jellyfish, or walking around school wearing flippers. (Russell 35) Olivia’s bizarre behavior although seeming to be strange in life turned divine in death. Before she died Olivia was known for drawing places that were other worldly, places that couldn’t have existed at least to the knowledge of her family. When timothy saw the message written in ghostly shrimp he remembered her drawings and questioned their validity. He wondered whether it was possible that these drawings of Olivia’s were real and if she had managed to seek safety in the Glowworm Grotto. Their sister had given them more hope with this revelation and with it they came closer to the closure they both
In the monograph, A Midwife’s Tale, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote about the life of Martha Ballard based on the diary she left behind during the eighteenth century. In the dairy, Martha Ballard talks about her daily life as a midwife. Martha Ballard was one of the midwives during her era that helped with many medical related problems around the community. A Midwife’s Tale provides insight into eighteenth century medicine by showing the importance of a midwife through a firsthand account of Martha Ballard and by indicating the shift of medicine from being underdeveloped into becoming a more developed field.
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”, by Karen Russell is the story of a pack of human girls who were born of werewolves. They are taken from their families in the wilderness and brought to a St. Lucy’s. It was here that they were to be civilized. The process of civilization involved stripping them of their personal and cultural identities and retraining them in a manner that was acceptable to the human world. This is a close analogy to the Residential Schools of Cultural Assimilation for native Americans from 1887 to the early 1950’s.
The library, situated in no-man's-land', is the darkest and most foreboding area of the house where Fish Lamb converses with ghosts of the evil' previous owner and an Aboriginal girl who died of self-administered poisoning. Early in the novel, the reader is taken "back in time" and introduced to the library with imagery such as
The essay How to Know if You’re Dead was written by Mary Roach, who described her
"The Loss of the Creature" starts off with the definition of beautiful, which is a key point throughout his essay. Next, he moves in to his example of a family of tourists, and their experience (through his eyes) at the Grand Canyon. He describes his theory of the sightseer, and the discoverer; "Does a single sightseer, receive the value of P, or only a millionth part of value P" (pg 1) Value P, being the experience, and the beauty in which that person collected. Following the sightseers was a couple who stumbled upon an undisturbed Mexican Village. The couple thoroughly enjoyed their first experience, but could not wait to return with their friend the ethnologist. When they did return with him, they were so caught up in what his reaction would be; there was a total loss of sovereignty. Due to their differences of interest in the village, the couples return trip was a waste. The second part of the essay includes a Falkland Islander who comes across a dead dogfish lying on the beach. Furthermore, he explains how a student with a Shakespeare sonnet, has no chance of being absorbed by a student due to the surrounding's or package of the class room. The two students are receiving the wrong messages, on one hand we have the biology student with his "magic wand" of a scalpel, and on the other hand the English student with his sonnet in its "many-tissued package". Both students are unaware of the real experience they could undergo, and the teacher might as well give the dogfish to the English student and the sonnet to the biology student because they will be able to explore and learn more within the different setting, and without the surroundings and expectations (pg 6).
While staying at Mel’s home, the adolescent female narrator personifies the butterfly paperweight. The life cycle begins with the narrator “hearing” the butterfly sounds, and believing the butterfly is alive. The butterfly mirrors the narrator’s feelings of alienation and immobility amongst her ‘new family’ in America. She is convinced the butterfly is alive, although trapped inside thick glass (le 25). The thick glass mirrors the image of clear, still water. To the adolescent girl, the thick glass doesn’t stop the sounds of the butterfly from coming through; however, her father counteracts this with the idea of death, “…can’t do much for a dead butterfly” (le 31). In order to free the butterfly, the narrator throws the disk at a cabinet of glass animals, shattering the paperweight, as well as the glass animals. The shattering of the glass connects to the shattering of her being, and her experience in fragility. The idea of bringing the butterfly back to life was useless, as the motionless butterfly laid there “like someone expert at holding his breath or playing dead” (le 34). This sense of rebirth becomes ironic as the butterfly did not come back to life as either being reborn or as the manifestation of a ghostly spirit; instead its cyclic existence permeates through the narrator creating a transformative
Susie Orbach, a British psycho-therapist wrote an article called “Losing Bodies”, in which she focused on body shapes and how it had changed over the years. Simple terms such as hourglass, pear, straight and apple can be used as descriptive words, but it can also be the name of the four body shapes categories. These body shapes were generally used to differentiate the different shapes and sizes, however, nowadays women take it a lot more seriously. Women are losing confidence in themselves due to the heavily influence by the mass media and the widespread of Western cultures.
Under the sea, in an idyllic and beautiful garden, stands a statue of a young man cut out of cold stone – for the Little Mermaid who knows nothing but the sea, the statue stands as an emblem of the mysterious over-world, a stimulus for imagination and sexual desire, an incentive for expansion of experience, and most predominately, an indication that something great and all-encompassing is missing from her existence. Traces of curiosity and a vague indication of the complexities of adult desires mark the child mermaid; in such a stage of development, the statue will suffice. However, as the Little Mermaid reaches puberty, the statue must allegorically come alive in order to parallel the manifestation of her new-found adult desires – the statue must become a prince in his world of adulthood above the sea. Thus, powered by an insistent and ambiguous longing for self-completion, the Little Mermaid embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and, to her ultimate misfortune, prematurely abandons her child-like self as sexual lust and the lust for an adult life takes hold of her.
There has been many ghost stories told over the years, but the same question remains… are ghosts real or not? The book Ruined, by Paula Morris, is inspired by the history and culture of New Orleans. Fifteen year old Rebecca, is suddenly shipped off to New Orleans, a year after hurricane Katrina. She is forced to go there when her dad leaves for a business trip in China for six months.
The subject of death is one that many have trouble talking about, but Virginia Woolf provides her ideas in her narration The Death of the Moth. The moth is used as a metaphor to depict the constant battle between life and death, as well as Woolf’s struggle with chronic depression. Her use of pathos and personification of the moth helps readers develop an emotional connection and twists them to feel a certain way. Her intentional use of often awkward punctuation forces readers to take a step back and think about what they just read. Overall, Woolf uses these techniques to give her opinion on existence in general, and reminds readers that death is a part of life.
As she spends more and more time isolated in her bedroom, with nothing else to occupy her mind, she gradually become fixated on the dreadful patterns of the paper and instantly foresee something else: the narrator eventually see a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous design”(77). The narrator’s bedroom being a prison becomes more literal as from figurative when the loneliness and social negation intensifies her need for an escape from the pre-set nature of conduct created specifically for her (a mentally depressed and unwell women) by the people in her life especially by John. Throughout the story, the narrator’s psychological breakdown goes from a typical depressed mind and lacked awareness of identity, to a complete madness and reversed sense of self-esteem. She gradually changes the place she has in the physical world and fights back the social rejection she is facing by turning away from reality in exchange for a world where she has total control and can act according to her own will. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for representing the phases of the narrator’s gradual deteriorating
Through metaphors, the speaker proclaims of her longing to be one with the sea. As she notices The mermaids in the basement,(3) and frigates- in the upper floor,(5) it seems as though she is associating these particular daydreams with her house. She becomes entranced with these spectacles and starts to contemplate suicide.
Carrie Baker explains that, with the help of Catharine Mackinnon, the law on sexual harassment was created in the United states. Mackinnon helped push the idea of sexual harassment is the same as sexual discrimination and was going against the Title VII of the Civil Rights of Acts of 1994.
Not long after, Susie’s parents; Abigail and Jack Salmon get a call from Len Fenerman, the detective in charge of Susie’s case. He explains to them that they had found one of Susie’s elbow bones. The next morning Jack tells Susie’s younger 13 year old sister, Lindsey, what was found. Lindsey’s reaction was to just throw up. Later that day, even though the crime scene had practically been ruined, the police and detectives go out and start digging up the cornfield. Susie’s school books, class notes, and other personal belongings were found. Including a love letter from the first, and only boy she ever loved, Ray Signh. Ray had slipped the note into her books the day before she died, but Susie never got the chance to read it. The rumors at school, of course, were flying around like crazy. Continuing watching from heaven, Susie becomes more and more frustrated as her murderer, Mr. Harvey, goes on with his life like nothing had ever happened. Several days later, Len Fenerman tells that Salmon family that Susie is more tha...
Karr-Morse, R., & Wiley, M. S. (1997). Ghost from the Nursery. New York : The Atlantic Monthly Press.