Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Shiloh by shelby foote summary
American society 1950 s
American society 1950 s
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The analysis of Norma Jean in the short story Shiloh written by Bobbie Ann Mason. The short story is taken place in the mid to late 1900s. This story talks about a marriage falling apart. All the heartache and growing pains the couple must face. In the story, the women Norma Jean strength and courage is inspiring to me. The couple is switching gender roles in the process their marriage is falling into pieces. Norma Jean is a strong, independent, faithful women while her husband Leroy leans on her for strength and guidance; she continues to take night classes and hold a steady full-time job in an attempt to become a new woman.
All of Norma Jean's qualities in her personality are inspiring. Throughout the book, she is noticed lifting weights
…show more content…
or flexing her muscles. It is important because many women during the nineteen hundreds did not lift weights; they were supposed to be proper and girlie. Norma Jean holds a full-time job working at Rexall drugstore in the cosmetics section. Supporting herself and her husband Leroy, Leroy was in a car accident four months ago and has not looked for a new job. When she finally gets home, she has to prepare food and clean. Norma Jean is also taking night classes from bodybuilding to cooking exotic meals, to English composition, in an attempt to become a new woman. While juggling all the hard work she is dealing with many situations that are holding her down. Leroy and Norma Jean had a son named Randy their one and only child; he died when he was four months old due to SIDS.
When a woman goes through losing a child, it is one of the most unbearable pains. It took a lot of strength to build herself back up from losing her child. Mabel Beasley is her mother she blames Norma Jean and Leroy for Randy’s death. Mabel comes to her house quite often and checks to see how clean her house is. She is always on Norma Jean toes. Mabel says some ugly things to Norma Jean and Leroy, but Norma Jean is still the bigger person and turns her cheek. It shows the bigger side of Norma Jean that her tolerance is as big as her personality! While Leroy stays at home and does not help out around the house or even to look for a job, is the most frustrating thing. Norma Jean wakes up every day to go to work and watches her husband lay around the house all day every day! She does not complain once or ever in …show more content…
fact. Leroy leans on Norma Jean for strength, guidance, and support.
As everyone says, you can only push someone so hard until they give up on you. It is very inspiring to me that Norma Jean puts up with Leroy for as long as she does. Leroy wants to build a log cabin for them to live in and Norma Jean does not wish to. She is apparently getting annoyed and tired of him. She straight up lets him now all the laws and regulations against the log cabin. The log cabin is a metaphor of their relationship. He states that he would need her strength to build the cabin. Apparently, he will need her financial support because he has no income. It is indicating their relationship problems he is pushing Norma Jean to put all the work in while he does nothing! Leroy is not acknowledging the big issue in their
relationship! The final decision shows Norma Jean wears the pants in the relationship and is done with this marriage and is finally moving forward. The mother Mabel tells Leroy to take Norma Jean on a trip to Shiloh, the Civil War battlefield, where Mabel and her late husband went for their honeymoon. On the way to Shiloh, Norma Jean is driving which is unusual. Leroy should be driving, but this is also proof that Norma Jean is taking charge of this relationship. When they see the log cabin Mabel was talking about it opens their eyes. It has a bullet hole shot through the cabin. A metaphor about their relationship, they can continue to try and build on this marriage, but it will continue to have missing pieces. As they have a picnic, Leroy states that he feels like a young boy with an older woman. Proof that Norma Jean is growing and becoming a new woman. The final decision, Norma Jean tells Leroy she wants a divorce. As Norma Jean is telling him, she does start to cry. I believe this is showing that Norma Jean is finally getting away from her unhappiness. At the end of the story she is shown with her arms in the air, this proves she is a new Norma Jean and is finally moving forward without any dead weight holding her down. Norma Jean seeking her independence, and breaking through tradition is truly inspiring! Norma Jean is finally getting out of a marriage that was holding her back from her new life. Norma Jean will continue to build herself and make a better life for herself. Norma Jean’s strength, independence, and faithfulness is how she got herself out of a worthless marriage. Even though the divorce will be heartbreaking in the end, she will finally be the new Norma Jean!
Bobbie Ann Mason explores a relationship conflict in the short story “Shiloh.” Manson uses a metaphor of craft building as a way to tell the story of Leroy and Norma’s relationship. Craft show how easily an object is build and how a mistake can deform the outcome. In the story “Shiloh, craft building is used to display what takes place between Leroy and Norma. The craft building metaphor symbolizes Leroy wanting to restart his life and Leroy wanting to rebuild his life and Leroy wanting to rebuild his relationship with Norma. The craft building for Leroy to build a Log Cabin also foreshadows the outcome of the relationship.
However, he makes little effort to find another alternative to make a living. Realizing that he had missed so many things in life when he was still "on the road," he wanted to enjoy the freedom he had now, and to take more notice of the things happening around him. He no longer wanted to "fly past the scenery". His wife, Norma Jean, however, fails to acknowledge Leroy's attitude. Expecting Leroy to assume the responsibility of caring for the household, watching him idle around, taking up needlepoint and crafting, agitated Norma Jean.
Nisei Daughter, by Monica Sone. Even with all the mental anguish and struggle, an elemental instinct bound us to this soil. Here we were born; here we wanted to live. We tasted its freedom and learned of its brave hopes for democracy.
Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh” follows Leroy and Norma Jean Moffitt, a husband and wife, and their struggling marriage. In the beginning they had a typical marriage, and then as bother her and her husband evolve, Norma Jean questions her marriage and who her husband is. Norma Jean finds herself struggling to make sense of her marriage, and Leroy struggles to move beyond his accident. Through plot structure and third person dramatic point of view, Mason explores the issues of evolving and changing gender roles within a marriage.
This story reveals to the reader how distance and low communication can separate individuals from each other. Leroy, the narrator, is a person that has lived separated from his wife Norma Jean for a lot of time because of the job he has. This has created a gap between the two of them. After the accident when Leroy has to stay in the house to recuperate, they find out that they both really don't know each other. He is having a lot of time on his hands, so he decides to build a model of the house he promised Norma Jean when they got married. This only creates a problem since his wife doesn't want a log cabin. Leroy is finally noticing that everything has changed, that nothing is the same as before. He was to busy or hardly ever in town to realize all the changes that where happening around him. When he tries to get closer to Norma Jean, apparently it separates them more. During their trip to Shiloh, Norma realizes that everything is going back to the way it was before Leroy started his trucking job. This makes her feel eighteen again and she is not willing to do that again. This creates a confusing situation for Leroy because he does not understand why Norma is acting that way. Finally he realizes that all that time apart has created a relationship where Norma pre...
Summary and Response to Barbara Kingsolver’s “Called Home” In “Called Home”, the first chapter of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver presents her concerns about America's lack of food knowledge, sustainable practices, and food culture. Kingsolver introduces her argument for the benefits of adopting a local food culture by using statistics, witty anecdotal evidence, and logic to appeal to a wide casual reading audience. Her friendly tone and trenchant criticism of America's current food practices combine to deliver a convincing argument that a food culture would improve conditions concerning health and sustainability.
Jeanette’s parents were very free spirited and carefree about many things, least of all their children. Her mother’s ambitions were mainly to become a famous artist and her father’s mainly included drinking as much alcohol as he could get his hands on, and in the meantime becoming a successful entrepreneur. Her father was not exactly very concerned with feeding his family properly, and he often took all the money her mother would make teaching. “I’ve got a houseful of kids and a husband who soaks up booze like a sponge… making ends meet is harder than you think (Walls 197). They often went hungry and because of her parents being so neglectful she, along with her siblings, became their own parents. Her self-governance was astounding at such a young age and this was a key to her success later on in life. She had always been very aware of her surrounding and growing up her family was always on the move, always on the run. They eventually settled in Welch, West Virginia and this is where her independence ...
The setting in the short story “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason works well to accentuate the theme of the story. The theme portrayed by Mason is that most people change along with their environment, with the exception of the few who are unwilling to adapt making it difficult for things such as marriage to work out successfully. These difficulties are apparent in Norma Jean and Leroy’s marriage. As Norma Jean advances herself, their marriage ultimately collapses due to Leroy’s unwillingness to adapt with her and the changing environment.
Insecurities in relationships cause unwanted doubt and anxiety. It creates an unstable partnership that only becomes more destructive the worse it gets. For Leroy, his character relentlessly focuses on how Norma Jean feels about him. While he is confident of his love for her, he is unsure of what she still wants. Leroy is fixated on the idea of building her a log house—one he thought she always wanted. When he discovers that isn’t the case, he panics and tries to think of something else that could help their relationship before it is too
In the novel, Beauty by Robin Mc Kinley, the family of a wealthy merchant looses their wealth when the shipment boats get lost at sea. There are three daughters named Hope, Grace, and Honour, whom is nicknamed Beauty, and a father. The family is forced to move to the country and start a life more modest than accustomed. After the family adapts to country life, one of the older sisters gets married to an iron worker who used to work at the shipyard owned by the father. They have babies. Life goes on in the country.
The novel Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler is a beautifully thought out book that follows the complicated life of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe as he seeks forgiveness for his sins both from himself and from God. Ian blamed himself for causing his older brother, Danny’s suicide and his guilt slowly ate away at him until he was drawn into the Church of Second Chance. By this time, Ian was in college and both Danny’s daughter and step-children were orphaned and being taken care of by his elderly parents. So Reverend Emmett, the pastor of Ian’s newfound church, decided that the only way Ian could find forgiveness from God and from himself was to quit college and offer up all his time to raise Danny’s children. The plot spans the time frame of about 25 years, in which time Ian and the three children slowly mature and become very developed, intricate characters, and the story takes place in the city of Baltimore through the years 1965 to 1990. Anne Tyler spins a very believable tale, using a writing style that easily reminds the reader how quickly life goes by.
The main character of this book is Susan Caraway, but everyone knows her as Stargirl. Stargirl is about 16 years old. She is in 10th grade. Her hair is the color of sand and falls to her shoulders. A “sprinkle” of freckles crosses her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things. She didn’t wear makeup and her eyes were bigger than anyone else’s in the school. Also, she wore outrageous clothes. Normal for her was a long floor-brushing pioneer dress or skirt. Stargirl is definitely different. She’s a fun loving, free-spirited girl who no one had ever met before. She was the friendliest person in school. She loves all people, even people who don’t play for her school’s team. She doesn’t care what others think about her clothes or how she acts. The lesson that Stargirl learned was that you can’t change who you are. If you change for someone else, you will only make yourself miserable. She also learned that the people who really care about you will like you for who you are. The people who truly love you won’t ask you to change who you are.
The first conflict in this story is between Leroy and his distance from his wife for such a long time. Mrs. Moffitt has been trying to cope with her husbands’ absence by doing other activities such as: working out, going back to school, and visiting with her mother. Another conflict resides within Leroy himself. He has not been there for his wife and he is trying to make it up to her in any way he can. This couple has been through the loss of an infant child in addition to Leroy’s absence. This is another issue that is causing them to experience the conflicts they do. Mr. and Mrs. Moffitt do not speak of this lost child, which causes more conflict between their marriage together. Leroy, once being settled at home with nothing to do, began to work with his hands to construct or design objects. He wanted to build his wife a log cabin as he was making replicas out of toothpicks. I think him wanting to build this house is to prove to himself and his wife that he can still be productive and good for something. The relationship Leroy has with Norma Jean’s mother is quite different. Any time she comes around, he makes jokes instead of having real conversation with her. I think he makes the jokes to ease the tension and to not address real issues that are present. Leroy has also stated that all those years driving in the same neighborhood he did not take the time to notice how much it had changed.
... chapter in Norma Jean and Leroy's life now that they will be apart. There is nothing left in their marriage that can keep them together because according to Norma Jean it was over a long time ago.
The story that Jess Walter tells, much like any other novel, is one of joy and sorrow. Lives intersect and separate, people fall into and out of love, and dreams are made and broken. What Walter does with his plot though is quite different. He writes it in a way where the whole book itself relies on the reader’s ability to realize that though some people meet for only a brief amount of time, their dreams and hopes, can hinge on even the briefest moments. Sometimes the characters in the novel have their stories intersect, some in very interesting ways, and other times you see their story as it is and was, just them. Walter does a wonderful job of bringing together many different lives, many stories, and showing how just because you feel alone, does not mean you are, your life and story can at any moment intersect with another and create a whole different story. Perhaps, Alvis Bender puts the idea that Walter is trying to convey into the best words, “Stories are people. I’m a story, you’re a story . . . your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we’re lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we’re less alone.”