The main character in That Was Then, This Is Now is Bryon, A sixteen- year-old greaser. The writer starts off describing him with dark hair and eyes that girls love. “I'm a big guy, dark hair and eyes--the kind who looks like a Saint Bernard puppy, which I don't mind as most chicks cannot resist a Saint Bernard puppy” (pg 13). His casual attitude about hustling and fighting shows how immature Bryon is especially when he is around his best friend Mark.. “Mark and me went down to the bar/pool hall about two or three blocks from where we live with the sole intention of making some money” (pg 9). As the story continues the writer shows how Bryon begins to question everything about the way he lives when his role model Charlie dies. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind, Charlie’s warning us about hustling, can’t you see? This ain’t some story, some TV show, bang! you're dead, big deal. This is real thing. Charlie is dead!” (pg 86). As the writer introduces new characters in the story each one is an important factor in his development. He falls in love with a girl name Cathy, the writer show us that Bryon begins to care about other people more than himself. The writer begins the story with Bryon and Mark (both 16 years old) being the best of friends like brothers that are involved in gang fights, hustling people and not having to follow any rules. As the story continues, the writer shows us how both boys begins to take a different path from each other. When Bryon gets beat up for covering for what Mark done to Angela., Bryon doesn’t want Mark to get even with the people that hurt him. “I don’t want to keep this up, this getting-even jazz. It’s stupid and I’m sick of it and it keeps going in circles” (pg 129). The writer also show us th... ... middle of paper ... ... view in That was then, This is now. The order of the text in the book That was Then, this is now is it starts in the present when Bryon and Mark are 16 years old. Both still living in the moment and don’t care about being mature. They were best friends like brother. The author uses flashbacks to show how close Bryon and Mark had before they start drifting apart. “I had read cowboy books to him when we were little--we were both going to be cowboys--books like Lone Cowboy by Will James” (pg: 66). After the flashback it would turn back to the present. As time goes on Bryon is hanging out with Cathy (Girlfriend) instead of Mark. Bryon and Mark starts going their separate ways in life. One day Bryon found a stash of drugs under Mark’s bed he didn’t know what to do so he called the cops. Mark gets taken to jail and the friendship between them was destroyed forever.
Sam and Josh have a friendly relationship. "Sam doesn't order me to do anything. He's my friend. I live on his farm. I do what he says" Josh says. (page 36). “That’s why I don’t put up with anyone’s hard luck story,’ Josh said. ‘I’ve been there. I’ve beaten it. I’ve started putting my life together again. If I can, anyone can.” (Page 307). This was the perfect representation of how Josh connected to Brett about exactly how he has learnt to forget and move on from his past and improve himself, displaying that if Josh could push through a hard time in his life, then so can Brett. That's when Brett realised that he was lucky to have normal parents who were respectable
In the high criminal neighborhood where the other Wes lived, people who live there need a positive role model or a mentor to lead them to a better future. Usually the older family members are the person they can look up to. The other Wes’s mother was not there when the other Wes felt perplexed about his future and needed her to support and give him advises. Even though the other Wes’s mother moved around and tried to keep the other Wes from bad influences in the neighborhood, still, the other Wes dropped out of school and ended up in the prison. While the author Wes went to the private school every day with his friend Justin; the other Wes tried to skip school with his friend Woody. Moore says, “Wes had no intention of going to school. He was supposed to meet Woody later – they were going to skip school with some friends, stay at Wes’s house, and have a cookout” (59). This example shows that at the time the other Wes was not interested in school. Because Mary was busy at work, trying to support her son’s education, she had no time and energy to look after the other Wes. For this reason, she did not know how the other Wes was doing at school and had no idea that he was escaping school. She missed the opportunities to intervene in her son’s life and put him on the right track. Moreover, when the author was in the military school, the other Wes was dealing drugs to people in the streets and was already the father of a child. The incident that made the other Wes drop out of school was when he had a conflict with a guy. The other Wes was dating with the girl without knowing that she had a boyfriend. One night, her boyfriend found out her relationship with the other Wes and had a fight with him. During the fight, the other Wes chased the guy and shot him. The guy was injured and the other Wes was arrested
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development does not get beyond the setting. …” The poem starts: “Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound” (Hollander 1). The reader learns the time of the poem’s story is dawn. The last line of the first stanza provides place: “That was when I was living by the sound” (3). It establishes time and place in the first stanza, but like the circular motion of a villanelle, each stanza never moves beyond morning time at the sound but only conveys a little more about “dawn.” The first stanza comments on the sound of dawn with “…gulls shrieked violently…” (2). The second stanza explains the ref...
The two characters come to the realization that they do share a brotherly bond, and that the narrator cares deeply for his brother even after all the time apart. The narrator says, “I don’t give a damn wh...
Two people with two completely different characteristics have something alike. Both Dally and Johnny are mentally tough because of their parents. Johnny and Dally’s parents both do not care for them and could care less about them. For example, during Dally’s childhood he went to jail, been in a gang, and has been in many fights and his dad still would not care for him even if he won the lottery. Dally also talks about his dad's disgrace towards him in the car with Johnny and Ponyboy, “‘ Shoot, my dad don’t give a hang whether I’m in jail or dead in a car wreck or drunk in a gutter...’”(88). Dally could easily live without his dad and he does for the most part. Dally just hangs around with his friends and stays at their place. Similarly, Johnny's parents use him like a rag doll to blow off steam, “his father always beating him up”(14). The gang knows what happenes in Johnny’s house. Once Ponyboy was witnessing, “Johnny take a whipping with a two-by-four from his old man”(33). Ponyboy talks about how loud and mean Johnny's mom is and,“you can...
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
In "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin, the essay uses fragments throughout the essay to symbolize all the topics and people that are involved. The fragments in the essay tie together insides and outsides, human nature, everything affected by past, secrets, cause and effect, and development with the content. These subjects and the fragments are also similar with her life stories and her interviewees that all go together. The author also uses her own memories mixed in with what she heard from the interviewees. Her recollection of her memory is not fully told, but with missing parts and added feelings. Her interviewee's words are told to her and brought to the paper with added information. She tells throughout the book about these recollections.
In the essay “Everything Now” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, author Steve McKevitt blames our unhappiness on having everything we need and want, given to us now. While his writing is compelling, he changes his main point as his conclusion doesn’t match his introduction. He uses “want versus need” (145) as a main point, but doesn’t agree what needs or wants are, and uses a psychological theory that is criticized for being simplistic and incomplete. McKevitt’s use of humor later in the essay doesn’t fit with the subject of the article and comes across almost satirical. Ultimately, this essay is ineffective because the author’s main point is inconsistent and poorly conveyed.
The adults and the children share the fact that they both play games, but a difference also exists between them. The children enact their entertainment, knowing that the games could get violent, but in the end, when the games are over, all the players are able to return home. On the other hand, the adults play their adult games, hurting anyone who does not play by the given rules, and not everyone is fortunate enough to return home. The children pretend to be violent at times, but the adults actually are violent. As the children move through the novel, they use these games to develop from their innocence to a level of experience by actualizing the realities of their games through the lives of the adults.
It is known that our family is the most important influence on our socialization. As Butterfield explains throughout the first half of his book, the Boskets always dealt with non-promising circumstance and events. These events and circumstances led them to develop and pass down traditions of violence and a lack of trust. One example of this is found on page 143, "Worse it reinforced Willie's belief that the way to settle things was by getting physical." Another example of this is found in how "Laura never knew her father and thus when Butch, was in prison she felt that he had neglected her, similar to the way her father did" (135). Also, Willie's mother taught him to swear at a really young age; Butterfield notes that "he was swearing and committing deviant acts before he even entered school" (138). Through this action one not only sees the distrust passed down but the onset of Labeling theory and how it will haunt Willie his whole life.
In “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” by Becky Hagenston the author successfully created complex characters that help motivated the tension in the story. Haegenston capability of switching between the past in the present to further understand the character’s actions encourages the pace of the story. By doing this reader learn more information about a character such as Lacey. One may learn that she a pathological liar that is suffering from identity crisis and may have never experience a positive relationship with any man in her life. She uses men for her benefit and we learn that when she tells us stories from her past. Readers learn that Jeremy has difficulties in social environments and building healthy relationships as well through hearing stories
During the opening six minutes of Nicholas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now, the viewer experiences a dynamic mixture of film techniques that form the first part of the narrative. Using metaphor and imagery, Roeg constructs a vivid and unique portrayal of his parallel storyline. The opening six minutes help set up a distinct stylistic premise. In contrast to a novel or play, the sequence in Don’t Look Now is only accessible through cinema because it allows the viewer to interact with the medium and follow along with the different camera angles. The cinematography and music also guide the viewer along, and help project the characters’ emotions onto the audience because they change frequently. The film techniques and choppy editing style used in Don’t Look Now convey a sense of control of the director over the audience and put us entirely at his mercy, because we have to experience time and space as he wants us to as opposed to in an entirely serial manner.
The boys live a new life without adults and social norms. Roles in their makeshift society have been carried out but Jack’s self-imposed responsibility only aims to fulfill his personal agenda. Jack’s fervent character is aggressiveness masquerading as passion. This destructive behavior sends Jack to a faster decline to savagery in relation to his peers.
Cathy and Bryan go to tell Mr. and Mrs. Carlson about what happened to M&M. Mrs. Carlson is distraught but Mr Carlson deems in as a phase. Cathy gets fired up and yells that it isn’t phase and that it is serious. Abruptly, the whole family walks in and everyone is sobbing uncontrollably. Bryon feels uncomfortable so he leaves. He and Mark are talking about the incident. Mark says that they have nothing to worry about and that he is just sleeping around at different houses. Byron exclaims that it's more then that. The next day, M&M hasn’t come home. Over the next few weeks Bryon and Cathy run up and down the Ribbon trying to find him. Bryon has gotten a job at a grocery store and is trying to change his attitude. He is serious about getting
What should our goals be in life? Bill Strickland makes the point that no matter who you are you can do anything you put your mind too. In his book “Making the impossible possible” he explains his own struggle and how he made it through life to be able to help others. He explains his young childhood. He talks about how he had to live through riots and the racism. He talks about how he wanted to help people make their lives better. He explains his struggles with trying to maintain these buildings and how he made great connections. He tells about his love for pottery and his want to help others. His book was truly an inspiration and turned out to be more than I took his book for in the first few pages. His book made me think about my life and how I can relate to him.