The Importance of Gender in Boys and Girls
Since the beginning of time, gender roles have existed in society. Women were assigned the tasks of child-care and food preparation. Men performed most activities that required physical strength. As society progressed, the role of women did not. Although less emphasis is placed on gender roles today, gender roles still exist. In 1968, Alice Munro wrote, "Boys and Girls" to address the confusion that gender roles may cause in a modern society.
"Boys and Girls" is a coming-of-age story about a young girl who is enjoying her tomboy years and is defiant about becoming a woman. The theme in "Boys and Girls" is this transition from the childhood tomboy into the mature woman. The girl is unsure about whether she wants to be a woman or not, because she enjoys her father's work and wants to be a part of it. On page 113, the girl expresses her feeling of disgust, "she (the mother) was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it (because she knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my father." The girl does not want to participate in womanly chores in the house; she wants to work outside with her father. The whole story is centered around gender roles of women and the girl must face and accept that her role is not outside with the pelting operation. The girl, who is the main character, describes her father¹s pelting operation in much detail showing her interest and knowledge of it. On page 109 and the top of page 110, line eight, she describes what is meant by pelting operation by explaining, "that was what the killing, skinning, and preparation of the furs was called." She likes her father's work so much that she concerns herself with k...
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...Munro's story "Boys and Girls," gender is a key element. Although the theme is the girl changing to the woman she had to become, it ultimately shows the limitations placed on women. It seems that, really, not much has changed for women since hunting and gathering days and the Enlightenment. Women are still associated with certain ways they must act and tasks they must perform.
Works Cited and Consulted
Carscallen, James. The Other Country: Patterns in the Writing of Alice Munro. Toronto: ecw 1993
Heble, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro's Discourse of Absence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994
Munro, Alice. "Boys and Girls." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 1995.
Martin, W.R. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1987
messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entails. Man was matter, that was
Kurt Vonnegut’s background had an endless influence upon his writing. In his early years, Vonnegut was a private in the 106th infantry division in World War II. He and five scouts were caught behind enemy lines, and then captured. They were held POWs and were beaten on various occasions. In 1945, they witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. Kept during this time in a slaughterhouse, this is part of the inspiration for Slaughterhouse-five. After being released from the Slaughterhouse, Vonnegut called Dresden “utter destruction” and “carnage unfathomable”. This distressing time in his life led to one of the many themes of Slaughterhouse-five which is that nothing good can come from war and a massacre. This theme is expressed in the story when Billy Pilgrim says “Birds were talking. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim ’Poo-tee-weet?’” After the bombing, the POWs had to gather the bodies for a mass grave and then all the remains were set on fire. Vonnegut and the other prisoners were only there for a few more months, until they were rescued. The lasting effect this awful war caused Vonnegut had significant affect upon his writing; on return to the U.S., he was awarded a purple heart.
It has been said of Anton Chekhov, the renown Russian short-story writer, that in all of his “work, there is never exactly a point. Rather we see into someone’s hear – in just a few pages, the curtain concealing these lives has been drawn back, revealing them in all their helplessness and rage and rancor.” Alice Munro, too, falls into this category. Many of her short-stories, such as “Royal Beatings” focus more on character revelation rather than plot.
“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid is essentially a set of instructions given by an adult, who is assumed to be the mother of the girl, who is laying out the rules of womanhood, in Caribbean society, as expected by the daughter’s gender. These instructions set out by the mother are related to topics including household chores, manners, cooking, social conduct, and relationships. The reader may see these instructions as demanding, but these are a mother’s attempt, out of care for the daughter, to help the daughter to grow up properly. The daughter does not appear to have yet reached adolescence, however, her mother believes that her current behavior will lead her to a life of promiscuity. The mother postulates that her daughter can be saved from a life of promiscuity and ruin by having domestic knowledge that would, in turn also, empower her as a productive member in their community and the head of her future household. This is because the mother assumes that a woman’s reputation and respectability predisposes the quality of a woman’s life in the community.
Reed argues that the fantasy and science fiction of Slaughterhouse-Five are ways of dealing with reality (777). The aliens offer Billy a unique perspective on free will. They say that humans are the only species to believe in free will. They are subtly telling Billy that there is no such thing as free will and that individuals have no control over the events in their lives (Cox). These aliens explain to Billy that moments happen as they are meant to happen. When Billy asks the aliens why they chose to abduct him, the aliens tell him, “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why” (Vonnegut 77). This view of life helps Billy to have a new understanding of the death and destruction he sees during the war. Since people do not choose to kill but are destined to do so, Billy is able to reconcile the cruelty he has seen. Understanding this fact helps Billy to come to terms with the atrocities he
A normal novel has smooth transition. Vonnegut wrote this book without any smooth transition. This novel is very complicated. The topics that are mention are hard to understand. The book was a bit difficult to follow. Slaughter House-Five's character's needs more depth. More description is necessary. There was too much jumping around in time in Billy’s life. I thought that this book was going to be better than it actually was.
The monotony of life has waged war against the narrator in Alice Munro’s “Miles City, Montana.” The author depicts the narrator as a brittle woman in search of a personal identity among a community of conformity. This battle between domestic responsibility and personal satisfaction reeks havoc on the soldier of this mother and wife. Munro is a master of characterization, and through the protagonist she depicts the complexities of human nature.
...terary career, but it also gives analysis of his most famous works including Slaughterhouse-Five. Since Vonnegut is a narrator of the book and his experience heavily influenced the novel, I thought it was important to look at his life and how it affected the novel.
Harris, Charles B. "Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: A Reading of Slaughterhouse-Five." The Centennial Review 3rd ser. 20 (1976): 228-42. Web.
...and social class. Her habit of writing down everything she saw around her-street names, people, the way shadows fell-made her stories more realistic as well as “dreariness of spirit”--a common phenomenon in Alice Munro’s stories. Her characters struggle to do the right thing because neither succeeding nor not succeeding is satisfactory. However, the most important aspect of Munro’s writing is the way female characters are empowered, scorned, shamed, relieved through different sexual culture as time goes by. All of these factors combine to create a style unique to Munro and cherished by fans in every corner of the world. Perhaps it’s how relatable her stories are, or maybe it’s because she is able to enter her character’s--and in a way our own--minds and explore how it works and how we think. Regardless of why Alice Munro’s is so popular, she leaves a legacy.
The pathway through war by use of anecdotes and character perception traces the arduous efforts of Yossarian to avoid being victimized by circumstance, in this instance Catch-22, a formidable, unwritten loophole found in basically every written law. “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to” (Heller 46). The entirety of Catch-22 is hypocritical. Due to Catch-22, justice is never exacted, the innocents become the victims, and the squadron that Yossarian is a member of has no choice when it comes to flying over twice the amount of missions given by the Air Force Code. Run ragged due to Catch-22, Yossarian becomes the witness to the horrendous slaughter of his crew, as well as the destruction of those closest to him. Yossarian’s fear of death is highly intensified, and eventually gets to be so much that he
When the owner wasn’t around slaves could interact with each other. Families that came over on the boats were ripped apart at the auction blocks. They were thrown together not knowing each other and had to form some kind of structure to their personal lives. Younger men and women and children looked up the older men and women as parents. Slaves would be put in...
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Judith lorber describes how the roles of male and female differ and how societies hold each