In a world filled with hunger and poverty, to many, having even the tiniest bit of a ‘normal life’ was like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. However, a youthful child from Malawi decided not to stop with only a small portion of good fortune but instead to build a windmill in his own backyard to create electricity for people in his town to utilize. In the memoir, William is a young boy with a great deal of potential stranded in a place with an absence of most facilities. Although William and his family face many problems during the story, he manages to overcome all these hardships and sacrifice all he can to give himself a proper education. Throughout the book, he develops a love for science and starts building a windmill to …show more content…
During the famine, the Kamkwamba family faced countless issues that they had to work together for and solve to be able to return to normal such as when they were facing an enormous problem like when the family ran out of food. Many individuals coming from other places in Malawi and Africa crowded William’s town because the people had no more food left in their hometowns. These people were quick to jump when they saw food and were very eager to get to the kernels before anyone else: “Those with energy still stayed close, lunging like dogs whenever a kernel fell to the ground” (138). In other words, this simile is comparing how the starving people were acting like dogs because they were deprived of food. It explains how people were affected by the famine differently and how the people behaved like dogs because dogs are always very eager to consume and acquire food, so it demonstrates how hopeless and desperate everyone was. It draws attention to the fact that everyone in Malawi gathered what they were able to obtain since they hardly had any materials to live off of. The simile also shows how by that point, a large number of people did not …show more content…
Throughout the story, the authors show how numerous people were not only affected but even killed by the famine, and it changed people completely; from their personality to their physical self. Since the mill was once full of maize scraps in William’s village, many people went to see if there was any food they could find there that they could eat. After a few weeks, the floors had become absolutely clean due to all the starving people who ate off them: “Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop” (113). In this metaphor, the floors’ tidiness is being compared to the cleanness one achieves when using a wet mop implying the fact that people had eaten everything off the floor because it was all they had. This example of figurative language illustrates how little food they had at that time, and how desperate everyone was, so if they could get their hands on food they would consume it immediately. Moreover, some people did have leftovers from the harvest, but they were forced to ration their food very carefully because they had to make sure they had enough food left. Before William left his home to go to ADMARC, his mother had given him a small cake to eat so he wouldn’t be so hungry when he arrived, but it just made him feel worse. “That morning, my mother had dipped into her inventory and given me a cake for the
The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez and A Band-Aid for 800 Children by Eli Saslow both depict the subject of taking risks. The authors of these two texts use some similar techniques to portray the subject, but they also use some different techniques.
Many people at one time or another will face some-sort of economic hardship; however it is safe to say that many people do not really know what extreme poverty is like. The Treviño family knows first hand what it is like to work in tedious, mind-numbing jobs for a very little paycheck. The life of a migrant worker is not anything to be desired. Simple things that most would take for granted like food variety, baths, clean clothes, and beds are things that Elva learned to live with. “We couldn’t have a bath every day, since it was such a big production. But [mom] made us wash our feet every night” (125). A simple task to any normal person is a large production for a migrant family that doesn’t have any indoor plumbing. People living in poverty do not often have a large wardrobe to speak of which means that the few clothes they own often remain dirty because washing clothes is a production too. “Ama scrubbed clothes on the washboard while the rest of us bathed. She took a bath last while the rest of us rinsed and hung up the clothes she had washed. This was the only oppor...
They were often forced to steal the clothes from the store because of not having money to buy new clothes. “I would create a ruckus to distract the clerk while Mom hid a dress under a raincoat she would be carrying on her arm “(Walls, 70). The authors’s life as a kid was different as compared to other kids. She just had three dresses and so had to wear them two or three times each week. She use to look pretty dirty because of the worn clothes. “They called me poor and ugly and dirty, and it was hard to argue the point “(Walls, 87) but like Erma said, “ Beggars can’t be choosers “(Walls, 82), she had no choice than to wear those dirty clothes. There were times, when they didn 't care about their health. "Mom, that ham 's full of maggots," I said. "Don 't be so picky," she told me. "Just slice off the maggoty parts. The inside 's fine “ (Walls, 106). Thus, this clearly shows how poverty left them no choice but to eat the ham full of
When given a chance to become a hero would you take it? Cowardice and courage are main themes in numerous of Tim O’Brien’s stories. “On the Rainy River”, a short story by O’Brien, the author uses a variety of figurative language, follows the conventional mythological structure with a twist, and the theme of cowardice.
In chapter 23 of the novel Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech the author uses figurative language to describe the Badlands of South Dakota. When comparing the author’s vivid imagery to actual images of the Badlands it is surprising how accurate her description is. “It was as if someone had ironed out all the rest of South Dakota and smooshed all the hills and valleys and rocks into this spot. Right smack in the middle of flat plains were jagged peaks and steep gorges.” Photos of the area do show flat grassy plains surrounding tall jagged mountain ranges. I can’t tell if you could actually “stand right on the edge of the gorges and see down.” However, it does seem possible.
“ The floor was half an inch deep with blood, in site of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling ot through holes; it must have made the floor slippery…” (Sinclair, 1906, l. 653). Sanitation was really lacking because you never know
A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night." The writer uses immense detail to help the reader visualise the scene. She also uses a simile to help the reader compare the circumstances in which the children are in. This shows that the poor children had to live on the streets and fend for themselves during the 18th century. Another example involves a brief description of the city in which the poor people lived in. This is "nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules" This gives a clear example of the state of the city. It is unclean and rancid and the writer includes this whilst keeping to her fictional storyline.
Life can sometime bring unwanted events that individuals might not be willing to face it. This was the conflict of O’Brien in the story, “On The Rainy River”. As the author and the character O’Brien describes his experiences about the draft to the Vietnam War. He face the conflict of whether he must or must not go to the war, in this moment O’Brien thinking that he is so good for war, and that he should not be lost in that way. He also show that he disagree with the consbet of the war, how killing people will benefit the country. In addition O’Brien was terrifying of the idea of leaving his family, friends, and everything that he has done in the past years.
This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland.
The author was able to see the a man crawl across the floor very weak and hungry trying to find food. “A man appeared how two pots of soup where left unguarded, and one man’s hunger could not withstand the temptation. (Wiesel 56-57). Wiesel is trying to tell his readers that people went without food and water for days. Wiesel uses simile throughout the book to compare and the contrast.
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is an attempt to bring attention to horrible the condition in which the poor or destitute people in Ireland are living in. His argument that children of these improvised people should be sold to “the persons of quality and fortune” (A Modest Proposal) for consumption, is Swift’s gruesome way of saying you might as well eat the babies, if no one is going to actually try to fix the problems of the poor in Ireland.
In Elizabethan times, living conditions of an everyday townsman was quite indecent. Elizabethan’s lived in houses that were extremely close to one another, which made it quite easy to disregard such a necessity to keep the streets and living surroundings clean. People threw all of the waste outside of their windows, which included, their feces, dead cats and dogs, and also kitchen waste. Eventually, when it would rain, the rain would wash all of the rancid waste into local waters.
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a shocking satire that discusses the dire poverty in Ireland. It says if one is born poor, they will stay that way unless society puts them to use. Children are food to be eaten. In an economic slump, children will be used to feed and clothe Ireland’s population. Swift’s purpose for writing A Modest Proposal was to call attention to the exploiting and oppressing by the English to the Irish.
...th his mother. His mother was really important to him and the same goes his mother. “She reminded me daily that I was her sole son, her reason for living, and that if she were to lose me, in either body or spirit, she wished that God would mercifully smite her, strike her down like a weak branch” (166). He and his mother were very important to one another that she would really die if he was gone from her life. They share something important and that is food. Now that she has passed away he looks back on his life and thinks back to all the times they had together. The food that he ate as a child gave him such wonderful memories. Now it is something that he was able to do himself and every time he would make it, he would think about his mother and it makes him smile.
The kitchen is described as being in disorder with unwashed pans under the sink, a dish towel left on the table, a loaf of bread outside the breadbox, and other disarray. This gives the impression of no attention having been paid to cleaning up either recently or usually.