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The effects of child abuse and neglect
The effects of child abuse and neglect
The effects of child abuse and neglect
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"I'm not feeling well today. Maybe you should just go alone." She kept a placid expression on her face, knowing full well she was lying, and it might show. "Well you don't exactly have a choice, dear. I have a lot to pick up today. It's too much for just me, and I don't want to take two trips." Miriam finished up on the blouse she was sewing and neatly folded it to add to the pile that had been accumulating. "But I--" "Enough Lydia! You need to get out of this house! Ever since..." she paused, "Ever since Elliot died you haven't left this place. You won't even step off that porch. You can't be like this when that baby comes. She or he is gonna need a mother who isn't afraid to live her life. You need to learn to live and be happy without …show more content…
Unlike the sun, who she went to when she sought comfort, the ceiling acted as a distraction. She recognized every crack and crevice of the wooden surface better than she knew her own body. Each flaw told a story of the house's past. The way the wood dipped in the center after having a terrible rainstorm warp its material. How there was a gaping hole with jagged edges in the corner, where they had to remove a patch of rotting wood, and cover the hole with a plate of corrugated metal; which had rusted over the years, becoming a copper color which trickled down the neighboring walls, permanently staining them. She knew which places would leak when it rained and which water spots had grown the most as time passed. She knew all of this because whenever she felt her mind growing heavy with thoughts that threatened to devour her sanity, she would lie in bed and stare at that ceiling for hours. Recalling imperfections she'd been there to witness, and cultivating endless stories about the ones she hadn't. It was a way of distracting herself from the impending darkness when the light wasn't there to accompany her; which it rarely ever …show more content…
Lydia was waiting with 3 large bags ringed around her torso. She knew her back would eventually ache from all the weight, but that was a problem she'd deal with later. Miriam grabbed the last 2 remaining bags before settling on the front of the bike and scooching forward to make room for Lydia. Once they were both settled, Miriam handed Lydia a pair of riding goggles. Without them, they wouldn't have been able to see through the thick dust clouds that sometimes formed in the area. The engine sputtered for a bit before coming to a steady purr. Miriam revved the engine once and then they were off. From what Lydia remembered, the trip to the city consisted of nothing but the remnants of structures that had been destroyed in the war and eroded to dust over the centuries. Most of the world was like this. Spaces that had once housed colossal structures; now left empty and
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
"The house is 10 feet by 10 feet, and it is built completely of corrugated paper. The roof is peaked, the walls are tacked to a wooden frame. The dirt floor is swept clean, and along the irrigation ditch or in the muddy river...." " ...and the family possesses three old quilts and soggy, lumpy mattress. With the first rain the carefully built house will slop down into a brown, pulpy mush." (27-28)
A major sign in “The Ceiling” is the lack of communication between the narrator and his wife, Melissa. An essential component in marriage is the ability to optimistically communicate between spouses; communication allows each spouse to effectively understand each other feelings toward various situations and circumstances. The lack of communication within “The Ceiling,” is noticeable as the narrator mentions “After we put Joshua to bed…across a divide” (Brockmeier, 96). When he tells her “You don’t look a day older than when we met, honey. You know that, don’t you?” and she answers with a “slight puff through her nose” that was a laugh, but he couldn’t tell what her expression was, as well as a slight “thank you” (Brockmeier, 95). Melissa exposes her lack of interest in this particular scene. This scene shows the evident miscommunication between both spouses as he mentions that h...
A Light in the Attic as a whole was not the problem, The trouble was lying in certain poems such as “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes” and “Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony”. In the poem “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes” the reader is instructed to drop a dish so that their parents will not want them to do the dishes again. Likewise, in “Litt...
Filban said the home had a yard that was overgrown. “The trees and bushes were overgrown, and the house was dark,” Filban said. “And the windows were covered.” She and her sister slept in the front bedroom of the house. She remembers the bedroom having a large, floor-to-ceiling window. She said you could look out and see the wra...
The house identifies the artist as the “stranger who returns to this place daily’’ (21). The house uses the same words like “desolate” (23) “ashamed” (24) and the phrase “Someone holding his breath underwater” (28) to describe the man. The house two is looking at all the flaws of the man. But since the house sees the same flaws in the man as the man does in the house, it shows that they are both reflections of each other and it is the artist who personifying the house to tell this story. Both the house and the artist are empty, awkward, and eerie.
It is customary to find the symbol of the house as representing a secure place for a woman's transformation and her release of self expression. However, in this story, the house is not her own and she does not want to be in it. She declares it is "haunted," and that "there is something queer about it." Although she acknowledges the beauty of the house and especially what surrounds it, she constantly goes back to her feeling that "there is something strange about the house." Her impression is like a premonition for the transformation that takes place in herself while she is there. In this way the house still is the cocoon for her transformation. It does not take the form of the traditional symbol of security for the domestic activities of a woman, but it does allow for and contain her metamorphosis. The house also facilitates her release, accommodating her, her writing and her thoughts. These two activities evolve because of the fact that she is kept in the house.
Her environment feels to her very much like a prison with her husband merely pushing aside her feelings of distaste, believing that giving in and listening to her desires will only worsen her condition. When the narrator wishes for the walls to be fixed, her husband refuses, stating “nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. After the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman 3). The narrator feels entrapped by the house’s bars and gates, but her husband in no way gives her feelings consideration and he refuses to change her environment, therefore keeping her imprisoned within the house, the gilded cage, and her mind. Although the house illustrates feminist views a great deal, the greatest setting to emphasize those views is the wallpaper in the bedroom; “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman 7). The pattern and the paper itself restrains her, although not physically like the bars on the windows or the gates on the doors, the wallpaper represents a psychological restraint, a mental prison. All of her thoughts are devoted entirely to the paper; she is obsessed with it, unable
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
Manuel spat. “I’ll set you up, Shelby. And I’ll make sure I put plenty of weight in the barrels too so there won’t be a tipping hazard. Earl, yeah, no problem. I’ll reapply everywhere.” He set the barrels back up. “Now, there are actually little ledges in the barrels so when I get you in, you can sit.”
For example, from the very beginning of the story, the reader can tell that there is something unusual and bizarre about the old house. As the narrator approaches the home of his long-time friend, Roderick Usher, he refers to the house as the "melancholy House of Usher". This description in the beginning of the story prepares the reader for the mysterious events that will follow. Upon looking at the building, he even feels some sense of intolerable darkness which pervades his heart. The windows appear to be "vacant” and "eye-like” as if watching at the narrator and wandering through his mind. With an insecure feeling he goes to observe the "rank sedges," and the "black and lurid tarn," in which he sees the reflection of the house. He later says, "when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew a strange fancy...". Although, the narrator tries to view everything he sees in a rational manner, upon seeing the house and its surroundings, he has an elevated sense of dread. He goes on to say that, "about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity". This statement indicates that perhaps the house does indeed have some thrilling and spiritual nature. The narrator observes the details of the house once more and finds that the house has mold growing all over it and the masonry of the building is decaying. He says, that " there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the utterly porous, and evidently decayed condition of the individual stones". This observation suggests that perhaps something eerie is holding the house whole, otherwise it would have fallen to the ground long ago. With this description, the house is also represented as a witness of many fates and a long period of history. It is as a mute observer of the time, knowing more, than anybody who lives in there.
Set up was on Thursday, and Morgana had conscripted Arthur to lug her models into the Exhibition Hall. Most were packed into boxes, but a few were too delicate and were transported on shallow trays. Arthur was carrying the turreted roof of her fantasy castle masterpiece
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped
“It’s Wednesday. Not Sunday.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I don’t want your sympathy or your friendship, I’m fine on my own, I always have been” said Myra avoiding eye contact.