Can you imagine living in harsh dust, losing your mother and brother, and barely recognizing the man, sitting in front of you, is your father? In the novel, Out of the Dust, the author, Karen Hesse, reveals the theme of the novel is loss and grief. Karen Hesse unfolds the theme by using messages throughout the book to emphasize the hardship and power of the Dust Bowl. Throughout the novel, loss is one of the main underlying messages. Billie Jo and her father experience countless losses from the beginning to the end. On loss was Billie Jo’s best friend Livie. Livie’s family ends up moving to California at the beginning of the book. Hesse writes, “Livie Killian moved away. I didn’t want her to go. We’d been friends since first grade”(8). …show more content…
In the chapter, “Losing Livie,” Billie Jo frequently talks how Livie was her friend. She felt the first loss in her heart when her friend was on the road to California. Later in the novel, Billie Jo’s mother dies from being badly burned. Billie Jo misses her mother desperately. She needs the comfort and nurture from her mother. In the chapter, “Scrubbing Up Dust,” Billie Jo says, “I thought about Ma, who would’ve washed clothes...always watching over her shoulder”(109). Billie Jo cleans the mud and dust out of the house because her mother would have cleaned if she were alive. Lastly, Billie Jo loses her brother, Franklin. As revealed in the text, “I told the reverend my brother’s name was Franklin. Like our President”(71). Billie Jo loses the only brother she could have had. After Billie Jo’s father hesitated to name him, for remembrance, she names him Franklin, after the President. After all Billie Jo’s losses, she loses her self-respect and blames herself for everything. Amid the novel, Billie Jo griefs for nearly all of the family she lost.
Billie Jo's hands are badly burned as a result of the accident. Her hands ache too much for her to stretch her fingers to play the piano. Billie Jo experiences the loss of her ability to play the piano. The author writes, “On chord and my hands scream with pain for days”(135). This brings grief and anger to Billie Jo because people no longer see her as the talented pianist she is, but instead, they feel sorry for her and see her as a "poor motherless thing. Billie Jo also grieves for her father because he has distanced himself from her. She barely recognizes him. Billie Jo concludes, “I don’t know my father anymore. He sits across from me, he looks like my father....but he is a stranger”(76). Billie Jo grieves because she knows she cannot forgive him for the pail of kerosene or going to the bar while Ma was slowly dying, begging for water. Billie Jo is grieving because she can no longer depend on her piano playing as her ticket out of the dust. As revealed during a performance, “But my hands are no good anymore, my playing’s no good”(136). Billie Jo wants to get out of the dust but she cannot anymore because she plays like a ‘cripple.’ Billie Jo has so many experiences that cause her to grief and fire up with
anger. Overall, Billie Jo works through her grief, she begins to accept what happened. She begins to acknowledge that her father did what he could. Billie Jo learns that her father was grieving just as much as she was. He didn't want to lose Ma. Billie Jo begins to realize the reason he left his wife to go to a bar while she was sick was because he couldn't bear the pain of losing her. Other than her devastating losses and her grieving, Billie Jo is able to forgive herself and her father in the end.
In the non-fictional book, The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama and the fictional poem, “ The Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani has character(s) that lose something valuable. From both book and poem I can related to the loss that I have endured during my life. However, the loss of both are different for The Samurai’s Garden, Matsu loss her sister from leprosy and Sachi loss her best friend. In “The Suicide Note” the Asian-American student’s family loss their daughter because they think she was never good enough.
Popular perception of both the Sioux and Zulu peoples often imagines them as timeless and unchanging (at least before their ultimate demise at the hands of whites). To what extent does Gump's book challenge the similarities and differences between the Sioux and Zulu people?
Billy Jo finds some of her hope when she can by playing her mother’s piano. The piano is a big part because it was a way Billy Jo and her mother connected. The piano was a wedding gift from Billy Jo’s father. She learns to play at a young age with her mother she describes it as “heaven” (page 22). But there is a time where that seems to line up in a time where Billy Jo was sad when she could not play the piano because of her hurt hands. This old dust filled piano has segmental value to Billy
Everyone has good days and bad days, good months and bad months, but what people need when they are down is someone to talk to. In the short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” by James Baldwin, Sonny is in a rough patch in life, and he has no one to share his feelings with. Sonny turns to music to let out his emotions, but like many artists, he struggles to do so. He turns to drugs to make his troubles go away, but this leads to even more problems. Sonny has troubles in his life, but music keeps him sane as he tries to communicate his troubles through the piano, and his art invokes emotion to those who hear it.
In the beginning of the novel, we meet the Bergson family. As one reads the beginning chapters of the novel, one learns that the Bergson family has dealt with an awful toll on the family. They lost two children in between the births of Lou and Oscar. Not only did they lose two children, who they surely loved dearly, they lost a herd of cattle to a blizzard. They lost a very important plowing horse to a broken leg. They lost their hogs due to cholera. They also lost an important breeding stallion. All of these hardships occurred within a relatively short time of eleven years. Then at the end of chapter two, the Bergson's lost the head of their family in John. With the loss of the father, the famil...
The book “Milkweed” by Jerry Spinelli tells a story about a boy who survived the horrible days of World War 2. He struggles every single day to find his identity and what is happening in the world. The book “Milkweed” itself shows many signs of survival. Both literally, and figuratively. This novel describes what the Jews did to survive and how they survived. The theme of survival is represented by different objects. The author, Spinelli, uses many literary elements to describe and support the theme of survival. The main three are: setting (where and what time), symbols such as the plant Milkweed that represents a new hope, and conflicts (what is the fight/fighting in the story).
Loss can be a heartbreaking experience or just an inconvenience. It is significant in both books because of what the characters loss or what the characters loose. Whether it is a family member or an object, all the losses have some significance to the war or symbolism. In the novel, the book thief Liesel loses her mother. “ There was a chaos of goodbye”(Zusak 25). “The sudden realization that this would all be for nothing - that her mother would never write back and she would never see her again.” (Zusak 99). These two quotes explain Liesel's loss of her mother. When Liesel joined her new family and she never got a letter back, she realized that her old life is behind her and she can never go back to her mother. Her mother is thought to have
This is a quote from Ann Petry's, "The Street" that shows this theme. "The wind lifted Lutie Johnson's hair away from the back of her neck so that she felt suddenly naked and bald, for her hair had been resting softly and warmly against her skin. She shivered as the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck, and explored the sides of her head," (Petry 3). This quote from Petry's passage shows the theme of perseverance through Lutie not giving up even though the harsh enviroment of the street is pounding against her. Secondly, the events in the story show these two themes as well. "Each time she thought she had the sign in focus, the wind pushed it away from her so that she wasn't certain whether it said three rooms or two room." (Petry 3). This quote can help the audience understand poverty through other ways of thinking. Here, the affects of poverty can be shown as the wind being an opposing force, and persevearnce through Luttie pushing threw it. Furthermore, the another example of poverty and persaverance can be shown through our story's lively and expressive setting. "Fingering its way along the curb, the wind setes the bits of paper to dancing high in the air, so that the barrahe of paper swirled into the faces of thepeople on the
Steinbeck’s book garnered acclaim both from critics and from the American public. The story struck a chord with the American people because Steinbeck truly captured the angst and heartbreak of those directly impacted by the Dust Bowl disaster. To truly comprehend the havoc the Dust Bowl wreaked, one must first understand how and why the Dust Bowl took place and who it affected the most. The Dust Bowl was the result of a conglomeration of weather, falling crop prices, and government policies. The Dust Bowl, a tragic era lasting from 1930 to 1939, was characterized by blinding dust storms.
Don't you think that Billie Jo and her family had a rough time? Because i think they did they lost so much and it was just terrible for all of them her friend left, the plants died, and her mother died with her little brother, so now that you know what they've been through you surely should feel sorry for them all just listen to how bad this paragraph about the whole life of Billie Jo and i bet you”ll think that it sad for all the people that had to go through with all this.
The main theme of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is taking a
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
The story “Sonny’s Blues” By James Baldwin is about a jazz musician and his brother in 1950’s Harlem. The story centers on Sonny who uses jazz music as an escape from his depression. James Baldwin captures the art of jazz during this time period. The themes in this short story are perhaps varied, but all of them revolve around some form of suffering. One theme shows how music can promote change and understanding within relationships. A second theme reveals suffering caused by guilt. Yet another theme references the results of suffering brought about by searching for ones’ identity and how that leads to misunderstanding. There are also subthemes concerning racism and poverty.
Do you have an interest in adventurous books? Do you have an interest in the apocalypse and/or the Walking Dead? If so, this 2011 book by the name of Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry is ideal for your love for the apocalypse. The story revolves about an ambitious fifteen year old character by the name of Benny Imura. Benny as well as his friends leave there one and only safe haven to embark on a journey that they cannot handle alone. This blood thirsty book will deplete your thirst for gore and action with the various twists and turns. The emotions as well as the shivers sent down the spine will definitely make the reader relish this book.
In the spring of 1996, the Outside magazine sent Jon Krakauer, an experienced mountain climber who was also a journalist for the magazine, to summit Mount Everest as part of an expedition organized by Rob Hall’s company, Adventure Consultants. Despite Rob Hall’s stellar reputation as a guide for ascents of Mount Everest, tragedy struck his group on the day of their summit, leaving nineteen individuals stranded on the top of the world’s highest peak, eight of which died on that day or shortly after as a cause of the storm. Upon returning to the United States, the Outside asked Krakauer to write an article about the incident using seventeen thousand words or less. His article was then published in the September issue of the Outside magazine.