Before taking this course, I always looked at films and read books just as the average person does; interesting plot and how long will it hold my interest, but this course gave me an entire different perspective when watching films and reading books. Now that I have taken this course and have watched the required films, the most important thing when watching other movies and reading books, is the meaning behind each scene and how they relate and affect our world. For this paper, I will discuss a book that I read a long time ago, which is She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and how this book relates to this course.
She’s Come Undone is a story about a girl named Dolores Price. In this book, the author takes you through Dolores’ life, starting from age four until the age of forty. In this book, Dolores had a very rough life overall, from dealing with issues of her father leaving, being raped by her neighbor, having a mother who is mentally ill, and even her sexual orientation. As I read the book, I believed that she was doomed from the beginning and would never be able to overcome all of those tragedies completely. As a coping mechanism, Dolores sat in front of the television and ate her life away, and as she neared adulthood she was 250 pounds. Since Dolores stayed home and ate food for all of those years, it was easy for me to realize that she would have a hard time interacting and relating with other people as she entered college in Pennsylvania, which was indeed a major issue she faced along with her mother dying before she did so. With all the weight she carried, she attempted suicide. After this failed attempt, she was admitted to a mental hospital where she began to sort through all of the issues she faced during her life with t...
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...eed advice or someone to tell them what they should do, but instead, they need someone to just give them attention and allow them to speak about the things that bother them openly. Both this film and book relates to my person life because as I have mentioned throughout the course discussions, I lost a friend a few months ago to suicide and it is indeed a serious matter. I sometimes think that if I would have paid more attention to some of the hints he gave or just listened to him while he vented without speaking, and maybe he would be here today. She’s Come Undone and Harold and Maude have taught me that life isn’t easy, but you have to keep your head up and press forward in life. They have also taught me that I should be more like Dr. Shaw and Maude and be there for my friends, without always trying to give advice because sometimes they just need a listening ear.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
Severance In the story “Severance” by Lamb, Penny Ann is a “bad” person. This story is about two sets of twins who become separated. One set separated by death, the other set by guilt. First, The teachers were less patient with the poor kids than the rest of us. “But Penny Ann wasn’t just poor, she was bad.”
[2] Missing is a rather confusing film to follow at first. Admittedly, I had to view it a few times to understand what was happening. Perhaps the initial feeling after seeing this film is confusion. However, after having watched it a second, fourth, eighth time, what I really felt was anger. Each time I watched the film, the anger and disgust would grow, so much so that it pained me to watch it again. However, in identifying the cause of my anger, I began to realize many things.
Throughout She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb emphasizes the importance of self-discovery to one's life. Dolores has several epiphanies throughout the course of the novel, including her realization that all of her failed relationships are not solely her fault. She learns she is worth loving and is capable of surviving on her own. With each discovery about herself, Dolores learns to love herself a little more and blame herself a little less.
There are many more examples throughout this movie that can be connected or assessed to the many different concepts that was learned. There are many real-life events and these concepts are important because they allow people to see how different types of people and families deal with stress and problems and it is important not to judge or jump to conclusions and maybe take a step back and take time to consider what others may be going
Winifred "Winnie" Foster from Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt is a sheltered but curious pre-teen who wants to explore the world outside the gates of her home, but is never allowed to because of her helicopter parents. At the beginning, all she wants to do is run away and make a difference in the world and have an adventure of sorts. But what Winnie doesn't know is that particular summer will be one she will never forget. That summer will change her from a sheltered, shy, and obedient little girl in to a selfless, witty, and fearless hero. She will also have to make one of the hardest decisions of her life; whether or not she will join the Tuck's everlasting lives by drinking from the spring. Specifically, her crucial decisions throughout the novel are what make her character so gallant. Although it appears that Winnie Foster is a shy introvert who only wants to be left alone, she is actually an adventurous character who's personality transforms in to a heroic protagonist at the end of the narrative.
In our contemporary civilization, literature plays an important and impacting role in our daily lives. Adapting to the different likes and tastes of modern day society, books and novels have different types and genres, all having in common the objective to please the reader and to convey morals and themes to the audience. In the 20th century were written 2 novels, The Chrysalids and Animal Farm, which will be compared and contrasted in the following essay, demonstrating the fact that they both target the general audience and not one particular group of readers. The comparison between both novels will be done via the contrast of specific literary elements such as the plot and the moods of the novels, the point of view of the narration and the style of the author, and also via the themes the authors try to convey to their audience through their literary work.
Straying away from life as a whole only to be alone, some may say is the strong way to heal themselves when dealing with extreme grief or a major crisis . In the book Wild, twenty-two year old Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost it all. Dealing with the loss of her mother, her family torn to pieces, and her very own marriage was being destroyed right before her very eyes. Living life with nothing more to lose, lifeless, she made the most life changing decision of her life. Strayed never seems remorseful on her decisions to up and leave everything behind while deciding to flee from it all. This being her way of dealing with life, it shows her as being strong; a woman of great strength and character. She shows personal strength, which is more than just a physical word. It is a word of very high value and can only be defined by searching deep within your very own soul.
This is How You Lose Her is a book written by Junot Diaz consisting of short stories, told by the protagonist, Yunior. Yunior’s character is described as the Dominican guy who struggles with infidelity and unable to love others full-heartedly. Diaz also shows how in Dominican culture; men carry the reputation of being womanizers and usually is pass from one generation to the next. Throughout the book, he tells us stories pertaining to the relationships he had with the women he had in his life, and his family. From the stories one can assume that Yunior, caught up in a vicious cycle was destined to follow into patriarchy; a father who cheated on his mother, and an oldest brother who followed
Life is not a series of isolated ponds and puddles; life is a river. Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past - connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.
Relations between sympathy-empathy expressiveness and fiction have become a significant issue in the debate on the emotional responses to the film fiction. Due to their complexity many scholars found it useful to diagram them. With his essay, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction”, Alex Neill tries to develop new theory for analyzing the fiction and, especially, the emotional responses from the audience on it. The project of this essay is represented with an aim to show the audience the significant value of the emotional responses to the film fiction. From my point of view in the thesis of his project he asks a simple question: “Why does the (film) fiction evoke any emotions in the audience?”, further building the project in a very plain and clever way. Tracing the origins of this issue, he distinguishes between two types of emotional responses, sympathy and empathy, as separate concepts in order to understand the influence of both types of emotional responses to fiction. However, relying mostly on this unsupported discrepancy between two concepts and the influence of the “identification” concept, Neill finds himself unable to trace sympathy as a valuable response to fiction. This difficulty makes Neill argue throughout the better part of the text that empathy is the key emotional factor in the reaction to (film) fiction and that it is a more valuable type of emotional response for the audience.
(It is important that a working understanding of these films is established to give some context for the paper, so I will provide a brief synopsis of each one before continuing on with a deeper discussion of it.) When Harry Met Sally... foll...
This poem is an expression of the author’s troubles in her life. The “tears” from her neglect and the memories of her long-dead grandmother are mentioned. The author is descriptive throughout the poem and produces a picture for the reader to see “the black cow grazing with her newborn calf long-legged, unsteady.” Creating this visual through this analogy was effective. Words and phrases like “soft dampness of my tears” and “squirrels slipping in and out of the mango trees” were also a useful way to plant imagery for the poem.
(I know I've missed out a bit here, but I think 4 pages is enough and