Suzanne Britt’s essay about neat and sloppy people is really funny. She wrote this essay as an amusing and entertaining story to make people laugh. Her exaggerating examples given in the essay help to make it humorous. Throughout the essay she takes the neat and sloppy issue to the extreme. Britt even makes some accusations that are most of the time quite the opposite. For instance, Britt says that neat people are lazier than sloppy people. That would seem to be the other way around. I feel like Suzanne Britt is being very sarcastic in her essay too. Some of her beliefs are not necessarily true. An example of this would be that Britt believes that sloppy people can’t bear to part with anything. That is not necessarily true, wouldn’t
Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" is a story told through the examination of the relationships between the four main characters. All of the characters have distinct feelings about the others, from misunderstanding to contempt. Both Joy-Hulga, the protagonist, and Manley Pointer, the antagonist, are multi-faceted characters. While all of the characters have different levels of complexity, Joy-Hulga and Manley Pointer are the deepest and the ones with the most obvious facades.
In The Norton Mix, Suzanne Britt’s “Neat People vs. Sloppy People,” Bruce Catton’s “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts,” and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Cultural Baggage,” all compare and contrast people or things in the stories. It is important for the author to clearly distinguish what he or she is saying, because it allows the reader to understand the story better. Comparing and contrasting different things is also a way to organize the author’s thoughts. It is important for the reader to be able to see the difference between things or people so one can have a more suitable understanding, better insight, and a firm viewpoint of the subject.
Peggy was named, by the Baptist sewing women, as a good influence for Nelly because she was quiet and although quiet, Peggy actually was a good influence because she was discerning, she gave subtle warnings to Nelly on how she felt about the young men whom Nelly chose, like, Scott Spinney whom Peggy describes as “so set in dark” and “Taciturn and domineering.” Peggy later writes about her discerning intuition when she shakes Scott’s hand as he was walking out of the Post Office, “ He gave me a hard grip with one black hand” (Cather, p. 231).
"The Logic of Stupid Poor People" is the idea of purchasing high dollar items to make them feel like they are a part of the higher class. Tressie McMillan Cottom, the author of this blog post, feels that most of the lower class is stupid because they make bad financial decisions. In Cottom's essay, she discusses how she grew up with a family that was poor and it was difficult to "make ends meet"; moreover, helping others. Cottom's thesis says, "If you are poor, why do you spend money on useless luxuries rather than trying to survive". The argument that she is trying to get across is that the more responsible way to spend your money could be towards the next electric bill, groceries, or even into the bank in case of an emergency. Cottom mentions that her mother used to spend her money on clothing and accessories for herself as "investments", but it was for her mother's way to show others that she has extra cash to blow, even though she does not. Cottom has the evidence from her own personal experiences; ways that her family made money was taking advantage of welfare, collecting from insurance policies, and extra military payments. The author is making a point why the act of spending
When creating fiction, a realistic setting does not guarantee a realistic story. Stories set in a world parallel to our own have to obey the same laws that people obey in real life, as such the conventions of how a particular character would react to a situation would be limited to how a reader would expect a real person to. These conventions, customs and laws are out of the author’s control, so they must write their story around these rules. Whereas in a fantasy setting, the rules that govern that world are created by the author, who has the authority to sculpt their world around the plot, potentially molding the rules of the world to become plot conveniences.
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Victorian ideals still held sway in American society, at least among members of the middle and upper classes. Thus the cult of True Womanhood was still promoted which preached four cardinal virtues for women: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Women were considered far more religious than men and, therefore, they had to be pure in heart, mind, and, of course, body, not engaging in sex until marriage, and even then not finding any pleasure in it. They were also supposed to be passive responders to men's decisions, actions, and needs. The true woman's place was her home; "females were uniquely suited to raise children, care for the needs of their menfolk, and devote their lives to creating a nurturing home environment." (Norton, 108). However, the tensions between old and new, traditional and untraditional, were great during the last years of nineteenth century and there was a debate among male and female writers and social thinkers as to what the role of women should be. Among the female writers who devoted their work to defying their views about the woman's place in society were Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin.
Britt uses this quality, to make neat people inferior to sloppy people, is when she states, “Neat people are bums and clods at heart. They have cavalier attitudes toward possessions.” (234).
Characterization is the most prevalent component used for the development of themes in Flannery O?Connor?s satirical short story ?Good Country People.? O?Connor artistically cultivates character development throughout her story as a means of creating multi-level themes that culminate in allegory. Although the themes are independent of each other, the characters are not; the development of one character is dependent upon the development of another. Each character?s feelings and behavior are influenced by the behavior of the others.
Women are often stereotyped as put together, classy, and always acting with grace and edict, but Bridesmaids brings all of the opposite characteristics these women hold to the attention of the viewers. Stereotypes as defined by Judith Andre have multiple functions, “it may protect our self esteem; it may shield us from facing an unchangeable, unpleasant fact”(Andre 50). These unchangeable facts are what women hide because the gender is told for so long that those facts are undesirable, and when they hide them they are becoming part of the stereotype. A woman talking about farting is not “lady-like,” but it is apart of life; everyone does it. To protect women self-esteem they do not talk about it. Women try to hide these undesirable facts because they are ashamed of them due to the stereotype and the expectations the gender role has. The movie Bridesmaids shows how differe...
... of her boyfriends states to her when she was not in an upbeat mood, “Why the hell don’t you stay home and not go spoiling everybody’s evening?” (Parker 199) Parker is reiterating her the idea that women were not meant to be anything but positive and upbeat in this society. It even states that “even her slightest acquaintance seemed irritated if she were not conspicuously light hearted.” (Parker 199) Thus the idea that women were made to be positive and upbeat continues in her world.
The play “Wit” by Margaret Edson, deals with the painful struggle that Dr. Vivian Bearing has to endure during her final stage of ovarian cancer. “Wit” inspires the audience and/or reader to immerse themselves into a deeper perspective on life and what is most valuable in our lives. I feel that the play tries to strongly represent how much we take life for granted, all the moments of possibility that we have to accomplish, and the goals it is offering us. The professional mindset that Dr. Bearing had was the same as the doctors who were treating her, they were all so engrossed in their
The short story "The Metaphor" is based around this perception. Charlotte admires and looks up to her grade seven teacher, Miss Hancock. Miss Hancock is a very kind and caring person "I could tell that she was feeling concerned and kind, not nosy," (Pg. 69) but unfortunately she is often overlooked because of the way that she dresses "Her head was covered with a profusion of small busy curls, which were brightly, aggressively, golden." (Pg.66) However, as Charlotte and the rest of her classmates discover, she is actually quite a sophisticated person "Miss Hancock was equally at home in her two fields of creative writing and literature. It was the first tine I had been excited, genuinely moved, by poems, plays, stories." (Pg. 66) The more that the students developed, the happier Miss Hancock became "But we were delighted with ourselves. And she with us." (Pg. 67) She took great pride in her job and really enjoyed teaching her students. The more the children got to know Miss Hancock, the more they began to appreciate her as an individual, and the happier Miss Hancock became.
In the poem, "Ordinary Life," by Barbara Crooker, the speaker uses irony to signify how her life is anything but but ordinary. To the speaker, "this [is] a day when nothing [happens]," however, the readers can clealy see how busy the speaker's day is throughout the poem (1). The speaker's first duty of the day is to get her children ready to go to school. Then she spends her entire morning building "block stacks in the squares of light on the floor" (5-6). When "lunch [blends] into naptime" for the baby, the speaker "[cleans] out kitchen cupboards" (7-8). This indicates that the speaker is a hard working mother and does not relax until she finishes all her chores. Furthermore, in the afternoon, she "[peels] carrots and potatoes" for dinner
In Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, the story follows Ruth and Lucille as they pass through the care of their mother, grandmother, great-aunts, and finally their mother’s transient sister, Sylvie. While Ruth is generally passively accepting of the care or lack thereof that she receives from these women, no matter how unconventional, Lucille purposefully sets herself against Sylvie. After existing outside of the boundaries that society imposes for the majority of her adult life, Sylvie is unable to provide the structured normality to which Lucille so desperately cleaves. In their own methods of seeking happiness, Sylvie prefers a fluid way of housekeeping, while Lucille needs strict adherence to convention. The polar relationship that exists between Sylvie and Lucille serves to illuminate that while society as a whole is more comfortable when everything is separated into rigid order and divided by strict boundaries, categories detract from the happiness of all individuals regardless of whether they attempt to fit within or reject them.
Minna Pratt has trouble achieving something that all of her friends find easy, her vibrato. A skill on an instrument (in this case a cello) that involves rapidly shaking the string that the finger is stopping, the technique is used on notes of longer duration—notes of shorter duration usually are played without vibrato. She stays persistent to achieve her goals which is what I think is what the author is trying to express in this excellent novel.