Parvana – Text Response Essay
Even though Parvana is not allowed to attend school, she has many great “teachers” who help her learn about life and the world. Discuss.
Deborah Ellis’ novel Parvana gives the audience an awareness of how being literate is a struggle in Afghanistan but how experiences, society and the people that surround Parvana can educate one’s mind logically. The story exemplifies the experiences of daily life growing up as a female in a country embroiled with civil war. Parvana may be put in a position where she is unable to obtain a formal education however; this didn’t deter her from being educated about life lessons, maturity and morals. The author intends on sharing with the audience that even though there are many obstacles for Parvana she still
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received a form of education. The society Parvana is put in increases her knowledge of moral rights and wrongs as someone who was brought up through the ways of peaceful Afghan culture. It had been observed by Parvana what the Taliban did and they caused a lot of pain and suffering especially towards females, “She had seen what they did, especially to women, the way they would whip and beat someone they thought should be punished.” (p. 10) Parvana notices how females aren’t treated equally and what wrong. Over the course of the novel Parvana realised Afghanistan can and should be a better place when her father influences her thoughts of the Taliban when they are talking giving her an idea of good and bad, “Parvana’s father told her that religion was about teaching people how to be better human beings, how to be kinder. ‘The Taliban are not making Afghanistan a kinder place to live.’” (p. 16) As Parvana had grown to despise the Taliban after her father is arrested and experienced how abusive they could be she is put into a position where she questions whether there is a good side to them or inhumane as she thought. The society created by the Taliban clashes with the Afghan culture, teaching Parvana the moral rights and wrong. Throughout the course of the novel Parvana learns directly from people that pass and remain throughout the timeline of her life, they teach educational values and share experiences.
Parvana’s father is a great teacher who is not only educated but teaches her how to read and write and the history of her country, “Parvana had grown up with his stories, which made her a very good student in history class.” (p.29) They discuss life before the Taliban, providing Parvana with hope for a better life. The geographical experiences people have, gives Parvana a small knowledge of places outside of war and Afghanistan. These people teach her as she works, “Sometimes they told her of the beautiful mountains or the field of opium poppies blooming into flower, or the orchards heavy with fruit.” (p. 134) Shauzia, Parvana’s friend through the novel, teaches her about geography and shows Parvana new places when they chat together, “’In Pakistan, I head down to the Arabian Sea, get on a boat, and go to France!’” Parvana has exceptional teachers around her who may not have a degree or the occupation of a teacher but, go on to teach her things about life and the geographical landscape that she has never
experienced. After the arrest of her father Parvana is forced to grow up fast and learns the responsibilities and sacrifices when caring for her family. Parvana realises how much the family relies on her despite being stubborn she still does her jobs after being put in a position where she has no choice. She eventually goes on to do her chores, “Parvana knew she had to fetch the water because there was nobody else in the family who could do it.” (p.22-23) Throughout the story Parvana becomes far more mature especially when she has to do things for her family and she will do what she can to look after them, especially after her father is arrested, “’The call for ordinary people to do unusual things, just to get by.’” (p.118) Going to graveyards and digging up bones is a frightening thing and is thought to be horrendous, “They’re digging up bones.” (p.108) “We’re here to make money, right?” (p.108) Parvana becomes brave and learns of the sacrifices she has to make in order to support her family knowing it’s for her family to have a better life. Parvana is forced into a position where she has to learn to become mature and finds out how much of a sacrifice it is to care for her family. It teaches her life lessons needed during adulthood. Over the course of Ellis’ novel it is expressed that not having a proper education at school can have an impact one’s life but also the circumstance can teach in an informal way. Parvana does indeed have fantastic teachers that teacher skills needed in life from the people she is close with to the strangers that pass through the timeline of the story. The setting she lives and grows in provides a moral understanding of being a good person and what is right or wrong. Due to circumstance Parvana is forced to grow in maturity as she has to be the one to provide food and money for her family to survive. Deborah Ellis conveys how life all around Parvana can teach anything and everything.
In the article titled “Pashtana’s Lesson” by Beth Murphy, she records the story of a 15 year-old Afghani girl who has a fiery passion for acquiring knowledge and pursuing education, but old traditions oppress her devotion to study. Pashtana is in the 7th grade at an all girls school which has been rejected by the elders in their community, asked to be torn down, or turned into an all boys school. Her mother strongly enforces studies on her children because she never went to school herself and she doesn’t want her children to end up blind to things in the world like her. In order to support her mother and three younger siblings financially, Pashtana is being forced by her uncle and father to marry her first cousin which is not uncommon, the
Being a culture under pressure from both sides of the contact zone, there needs to be passion and emotion or else the culture might disappear into history. Anzaldua’s text makes great use of passion and emotion while merging the ideas of multiple cultures together through the tough experiences in her life. Autoethnographic texts give perspective to outsiders on how a culture functions from the inside point of view. Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” excellently portrays her culture’s plight and creates a fiery passionate entrance for her culture in their uprising through the contact zone.
Hulga has been to college for many years, earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Coming from such a rural background, she feels that her education raises her status in the intellectual world, and therefore life in general, above anyone not as educated as she is. "You poor baby…it’s just as well you don’t understand"(404). The young woman fails to see that there is much more to life than what you can learn in a book. Due to a heart condition, however, Hulga is forced to remain home on the farm, instead of being in an academic setting where her education would be recognized and encouraged. This attitude that she is above most other people isolates Hulga from everyone around her. Even her mother c...
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Literacy gives courage and provides a positive influence in times of crisis.
Gioia identifies all that is at stake in a world where reading is obsolete in his essay On the Importance of Reading. He paints imagery to show the comparisons of readers and non readers as well as the affects literacy and illiteracy have on the world. Gioia asserts his opinions on why reading is losing the battle of popularity. According to Gioia a person who reads is civic-minded, active, empathic, and imaginative. Gioia expresses the opposite benefits are true of illiterate or semi literate people they lead passive lives, are less likely to volunteer, and less imaginative. Among all of these benefits of reading Gioia identifies, he writes in depth about empathy gained through reading. I also feel one of the greatest benefits of reading
The Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico got worldwide attention on January 1, 1994, when they marched to Mexico City against the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The free trade agreement was intended to facilitate trading between Canada, United States, and Mexico. The Zapatista claimed that this agreement would affect the indigenous people of Chiapas by further widening the gap between the poor and the rich. In this paper I will examine the NAFTA agreement and the Zapatista’s ideology and claims against the NAFTA agreement to see whether or not any real effects have risen within the indigenous people of Chiapas Mexico and in Mexico as a whole.
Teachers help us expand and open our mind by giving us skills throughout students’ early life to help students when they are older. By learning information from teachers, students become better people, in a couple of ways. Besides inquiring knowledge from their teachers, students learn to work with one another, open their mind to other peoples’ thoughts and ideas, respect one another, and learn different techniques for life’s issues.
He is able to capture the realness of the time and setting through his words, and write for a purpose. As a result, it can be said that he uses this work of historical fiction less as a theatrical stage and more as a platform to introduce the audience to the inhumaneness of Afghanistan. He not only incorporates the Taliban’s grueling “beard lookout men,” who patrol the roads in their fancy Toyota trucks in hopes of finding “a smooth-shaven face to bloody,” but he also displays the horrific and bloodcurdling abuse of women that exists at the hands’ of men and the feelings of great despair and pain that these women face as a result. Living in a state of unbearable fear of the next beating, the next detonating bomb, and the next brutal attempt of the Taliban, the lives of these characters feel almost too real to not be true. Resultantly, the reader is left to wonder whether or not this added literary dimension of realness is actually an introspective study of individuals that Hosseini has long
Our perception about the world change as we grow up and experience the reality of life. This is the necessary and universal experience that we all must undergo to face the world successfully. The protagonists in James Joyce’s “Araby” and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls experience a common initiation of how different the world is, compared to how they would like to see. The reader is given a glance into the lives of two adolescents. The protagonists in both stories are of the growing age and their perceptions about the world change. These changes contradict with their past perceptions and leads life in a different direction. Both Joyce and Munro unfold series of bizarre life thrilling experience from the daily life of the protagonists to create the universal lesson of how different the world is, compare to how they would like to see. But the way, this necessary and universal lesson learn differs with each protagonist. The boy’s initiation in “Araby” comes, when the girl (Mangan’s sister) come in his life. After his encounter with her his life completely change forever and he wants to be his own man. The initiation of the Young girl in “Boys and Girls” comes, after watching the shooting of horse “Mack” and letting “Flora” the other horse, out of the gate. Letting Flora free is indeed the protagonist’s way of watching world. After watching shooting of “Mack” she does not want “Flora” to face the same miserable death like “Mack”. She thinks letting Flora free save Flora from shooting.
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
In this discussion between Bold Talent and Spring Moon we see the consequences females might undergo from being educated. Spring Moon was afraid of what her family might say, what boys would laugh at her, and of the teacher would resign because he wouldn’t teach a girl. All these problems just from teaching a human to read and write. However most females were not afraid of the consequences they might suffer.
...templates for strong and weak western narratives of other places but lacks literary rigor. Even so, both are equally important for the education of young people in a larger, global setting with diverse experiences and cultures trying to understand one another. She draws attention to voice appropriation, authorial national ideological agendas, and the Americanized slant in representations of the non-west by westerners. The presence of Americanized interpretation and editing can cause a crooked depiction of the other, ultimately telling us more about ourselves than about them.
In the Third and Final Continent, Jhumpa Lahiri uses her own experiences of being from an immigrant family to illustrate to her readers how heritage, cultural influences and adaptation play a major role in finding your true identity. The Third and Final Continent is the ninth narration in a collection of stories called the Interpreter of Maladies. In this story, it discusses themes such as marriage, family, society, language and identity. In this story, we focus on an East Asian man of Bengali descent who wants to have a better future for himself so he leaves India and travels to London, England to pursue a higher education. His pursuit for higher education takes place on three different continents. In India, he feels safe in his home country and welcomed, but when he travels abroad he starts to have fear and anxiety. Through his narrations, we learn how he adapts to the European and American and through these experiences he learns to assimilate and to adapt to the new culture he travels to.
Teachers serve as the guiding force in a student’s life. They are responsible for molding a student’s personality and shaping his/her mental orientation. Teachers deeply impact our lives and direct the course of our future. One cannot deny the influence of teachers in one’s life. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that, till a certain age, out life revolves around our teachers. They are our constant companions, until we grow old enough to come out of their shadow and move ahead on our own.