“Boys” by Rick Moody shows that everyone must grow up with time while using chronological order of the main characters lives and the repetition of the word “boys.” Moody specifically starts the story with “boys enter the house, boys enter the house” (532), to show that the boys have to find themselves. The reader will most likely have to read the story more than once to understand, much like the story “Saving Sourdi” by May Lee Chai. The children in both stories are having to grow up more quickly than normal kids because of their experiences. Chai and Moody, try to reel the reader in using symbolism and characterization. “Saving Sourdi” was about two sisters slowly becoming less alike as the story progressed. They are best friends at the start and become complete strangers at the end. Nea is the youngest of the two sisters, she’s somewhat controlling and a quite demanding. She likes to keep …show more content…
everything under control and has an adult-like presence. She is the type of person that wants everything the same, change is harder for to grasp. Their mother arranges a marriage for Sourdi with a man by the name of Mr. Chhay. Sourdi may be upset about the marriage but she will never speak out of turn and is always polite. Nea on the other hand, does everything in her power to talk her mom out of the marriage. Throughout the entire story; Nea is concerned for Sourdi. She doesn’t believe that Mr. Chhay is the right pick for her older sister. He “stole” Sourdi from her. Nea goes on a journey to save her poor sister from this monster of a man only to find out that he wasn’t so awful after all. “She had made her choice, and she hasn’t chosen me” ( 194 Chai) Nea was too young to understand that Sourdi was moving on, she was an innocent girl trying to stay young. The story portrayed a little girl trying to live her childhood years to the fullest only to see that everyone had grown up; except her. “Boys” is also about the process of two twin boys finding their own likes and dislikes through the hardships of growing up.
Moody mentions every outcome a child could go through to show the boys growing up; a sister dying of cancer, a father dying, different clothing styles, the list could go on and on. The writer starts out the story with the boys rough housing showing that they are destructive, smelly, and still full of life. Through the tragic loss of their younger sister it’s portraying the twins as growing up. Each tragic event shows the boys getting more wise and less like little kids. When they grow old enough to leave the house, their presence is lost in the story. The reader is lead only to think of the flashbacks when thinking of the twins. At the end of the story, the boys are on vacation. One wearing dark colors and having shaved a part of his head, while the other wearing bright colors and his hair has grown long. The passing of their father shows that finally the two boys can come together and not have any sort of conflict and can sort things out like
men. The purpose of the characters in “Boys” is seeing the change from childhood to adulthood. “[E]ach of them is once the boy who enters the house alone, missing the other” (535). The boys don’t enjoy the same things as when they were younger. They don’t do the same things, don’t dress the same, and they don’t have the same personalities. As the story goes on, they grow distant and barely go to their childhood home anymore, let alone talk to each other. The boys started to drift away from each other, when one boy played sports and the other didn’t. They were much more different from each other than alike. The only thing that brought the two together was tragic events that changed them forever. Rick Moody used symbolism to project the way the boys were feeling during terrible times in their lives. The first time the boys really came together was when they were sat down to learn about their younger sisters diagnosis. “Boys hold either hand of their sister, laying aside differences, having trudged grimly into the house” (533). The boys felt responsible for making sure their sister was going to be alright. They had realized that not everything was fun and games. The sister dying symbolised the boys childhood thoughts and lives starting to drift into adulthood. This was the first real time, responsibility came into play. The second event that portrayed the twins as men was the extremely horrible car crash. One boy is driving while under the influence of alcohol, while the other is watching the scene pan out helplessly from the passenger seat. Moody describes the accident as “the car is on its side in the ditch, the car has the top of a tree broken over it’s bonnet, the car has struck another car, which has in turn struck a third” (534). Everything is happening so fast, representing the boys lives zooming past. They are no longer children, but adults with their own lives and worries. Their childhood seemed like a second of fun and games and then they quickly changed to mature adults. The last time the twins felt like children was when they were invited to go fishing with their father. The boys begin the day walking into the house arguing over childhood things such as what to use to catch the fish. “Happens so fast… Boys, no longer boys, exit” (535). The father falls to the ground during this pointless argument due to heart failure. The boys can do nothing about the situation except watch helplessly as the EMTs are rushed into the living room. They are no longer boys, nor teenagers, nor helpless, but are men that can fend for themselves. The short stories “Boys” by Rick Moody and “Saving Sourdi” by May- Lee Chai, both represent children learning to become mature and the distress of having to grow up. Lee and Moody both use literary techniques such as, symbolism and characterization to keep the reader interested and wanting more. The twin boys and Nea are only children learning the ropes of adulthood through tragic events and scary situations.
In the story, each character's mental and physical health changes, whether it is prominently obvious or not. Their health declines – whether it be a rapid decline, as in the father's case, or a graduating descent, like the the rest of the family – and they become older and less attached to the real world, more attached to each other. They retain their habits from the camp and it affects the way that they live amongst other people, in the outside world. The permanence of the changes is evident in each character and will strongly affect the way they live the rest of their life from that point.
The two stories "Brothers are the Same" by Beryl Markham and "Through the Tunnel" by Doris Lessing are both about growing up and entering adulthood. "Brothers are the Same" about a boy named Temas trying to prove he was tough and could be called an adult. In a similar situation in "Through the Tunnel" a young boy named Jerry is determined to go through an underwater tunnel that he saw some older French boys go through. He wants to accomplish this goal to prove to himself that he could do it . The two stories share a similar theme, but the authors perspective on the topic differ.
When she first appears in the short story, Nea instantly displays aggressive behavior in order to protect her sister from a man. She seemingly protects her older sister from a threatening man by stabbing the man with a knife. Nea tries to justify her rash behavior by say that, “he was hurting Sourdi!” (Chai 282). Throughout the short, Nea continues to defy rules and act impulsively due to her protective nature of Sourdi and sees her sister’s relationship with men threatening her own as the story progresses.
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys' own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active ...
Moody begins with her childhood and the way her mother struggled to keep the family from going hungry. She recollects the poor living conditions and the insufficiency of money and food her family suffered in. She was the oldest child in her family and later recognized that the only alternative to assist out her family was to work for worthless pay. Throughout her childhood, Moody lacked the intellectual knowledge of prejudice but she knew she was treated unlike the rest of the children. Her first encounter dealing with the issue of race was when she made friends with neighboring white children. She does not know what made her white friends different from her and why they have better toys than her. She initiates to play doctor to revea...
Torres uses the words like “mud” and “horseshit” to reveal how low and unwanted the eldest son feels. When we think of “mud” or “horseshit”, our first reaction would be to step over it or avoid the area that contains it at all costs. In this case, the people avoiding the “horseshit” are their parents. Not only that, but Torres includes the statement “we’re on our own” to further depict how neglectful the parents have been to their sons. Being the oldest, Manny is considered to be the responsible on because it states that., “Paps assumed it was all Manny’s idea because Manny was the oldest and because it was, actually, all Manny’s idea. He didn’t wait to get home but beat Manny right there in the field” (Torres83). Readers can infer that no matter what happens, Manny will always be the father’s “punching bag” whenever the boys would do something bad, which makes him feel unworthy as well. Then there’s Joel, the middle child. In most families, the middle child is never really glorified. It is as if they are a filler or some sort because the eldest child will always be praised for being head of the sibling clan, the youngest can be deemed the “favorite”, while the middle child is just there. Torres shows this by not giving readers the full Joel. Readers don’t know how Joel feels because, he wasn’t taught how to express his emotions, which parents should teach their child. Finally, there is Mijo; the youngest. Mijo,
Wes (the author) has a family who wants to see him succeed. Although Wes didn’t know his father for long, the two memories he had of him and the endless stories his mother would share with him, helped guide him through the right path. His mother, made one of the biggest effects in Wes’s life when she decided to send him to military story, after seeing he was going down the wrong path. Perhaps, the other Wes’s mother tried her best to make sure he grew up to be a good person, but unfortunately Wes never listen. His brother, Tony was a drug dealer who wish he could go back in time and make the right decisions and he wanted Wes to be different than him. He didn’t want his brother to end up like him and even after he tried everything to keep Wes away from drugs, nothing worked and he gave up. As you can see, both families are very different, Wes (the author) has a family who wants him to have a bright future. Most importantly, a family who responds fast because right after his mother saw him falling down the wrong hill she didn’t hesitate to do something about it. The other Wes isn’t as lucky, as I believe since his mother already had so much pressure over keeping her job and her son Tony being involved in drugs. Same thing with Tony, he was so caught up in his own business that no one payed so much attention to
To sum up, the boys at Devon have endured a lot as teenagers. They are faced with pressures and values that cause them to develop into adults, at an early age.
Every time the boys enter the house, they’re older. The purpose of this phrase in the short story is to move time forward. Moody is also emphasizing the maturation of the boys. When the phrase is repeated the boys are experiencing changes in power in both positive and negative ways. When the boys entered the house they either walked in powerless and feeling bad about themselves; or they walked in feeling confident and empowered. An instance in which they felt sad and powerless is, “The boys are ugly, they are failures, they will ever be loved, they enter the house”(242). This is how the boys feel about themselves not how the narrator feels about them. Moody repeating the term “boys” to refer to the two main characters as opposed to young men comes to show how Moody believes they lack maturity until the end of the story. Aware that they were their father’s only hope the “Boys enter the house carrying their father, slumped” (245). The boys immediately rushed over to assist their father once they realized something was wrong. The repetition has finally advanced to where the boys are finally men. This power increase made it significantly easier to cope with their father’s death. Without the repetition, it would have been significantly more difficult to follow the timing of the story. Additionally, Moody used repetition to progress from the beginning of the story where the boys were inexperienced to the end where he idolized the boys for trying to help their
The film chronicles the histories of three fathers, and manages to relates and link their events and situations. First is Mitchell Stephens and his relationship with his drug-addict daughter. Second is Sam, and the secret affair he is having with his young daughter Nicole. He is somewhat of a narcissistic character because of his preoccupation with himself and pleasing himself, and his lack of empathy throughout the film for the others in the town. Third is Billy, who loves his two children so much that he follows behind the school bus every day waving at them. Billy is also having an affair with a married woman who owns the town’s only motel. On the exterior the town is an average place with good people just living their lives. But, beneath all the small town simplicity is a web of lies and secrets, some which must be dealt with in the face of this tragedy.
Neruda was deeply infatuated with Josie, but never intended to stay with Josie for the rest of his life. Josie was truly in love with Neruda, but as a result of Neruda's lack of interest in her as a person, she was possessive of Neruda. She was temperamental, she didn't trust Neruda to stay loyal, and she threatened Neruda's life. It was a relationship not meant to last. As a wise man once said, "A relationship is a partnership", and in a partnership, it takes two to tango; when it's only one person putting in the effort, is it really a
Her mother has taught her to follow their Chinese tradition in which the mothers are always right no matter what. Sourdi had no say when the guys were teasing her and when Nea injured one of the guy, her mother asked Sourdi to take care of the wound. Sourdi’s mother “made Sourdi get the first-aid kit from the bathroom” (pg.122). Unlike any other girl, Sourdi didn’t ask her mother why she has to show concern when it’s not her fault. Without saying anything to her mother, she silently followed her mother’s order knowing that she is not doing right by forgiving the
“Where is it Written” by Adam Schwartz, is a story about a 12 years old boy named Sam who has conflicts with his unstable mother, Sandra. Sam first tries to convince his father to sue Sandra for his custody. Then, after many conflicts between them, she appears at his bar mitzvah where she starts a fight. Finally, everything resumes in court. The father wins the case of the custody and Sam is sent to live with him. Coming of age is an important theme in which the character experiences a realization of an idea that before was unknown or ignored. It is evolution and maturation. Sam came of age very slowly and unevenly. Changing his perspective towards his mother. From repudiating her to sympathising with her.
She feels that men aim to snatch her sister away from her. I am certain that expectations are the mother of all disappointments and this story proves it. Nea expects her sister will love her forever and that both of them will be inseparable but as we read the story we see how Sourdi gets married to an elder man, with who she moves out to a new home. Sourdi and her husband have a kid together and Nea is left all alone because her beloved sister is busy with her own life and family. Nea says, “She had made her choice, and she hadn’t chosen me.” (Nea, pg-134). I believe this implies how both of them have a different outlook towards life and how their identities are defined by their choices in
...themselves all in surroundings that they are not only unused to, but unsafe in. Because of the nature of their predicament, this made the lost boys even more dangerous to themselves. Once all the boys had adapted to their new surroundings, they had been severely mentally and physically hardened. They had all been forced to grow up, and fast.