In this passage from “The Pupil”, the author characterizes and describes three main characters, Pemberton, Mrs. Moreen, and her son. There is Pemberton a shy intellectual tutor concerned with money, Mrs. Moreen, a tired old woman offering to pay Pemberton, and her child, a rude, informal, and weak pupil for Pemberton.
The first character introduced is Pemberton. He is young, timid, and intellectual, but he is unsure of his own intellect, as the sight of an old dying man intimidates him. The tutor has a hard time expressing himself in social situations and cannot bring himself to ask the price Mrs. Moreen will pay him. The conversation with Mrs. Moreen demonstrates, he is generally afraid to assert himself with other people. His concern
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about money also reflects on his class status. Pemberton is likely from a working class or poorer background than the family he is serving, and he is very concerned about making money. This puts him at a social disadvantage in this situation and makes it hard for him to voice his opinion to the family, which is of a higher socio-economic status. These factors make it hard for him to deal with the family and interact with them. This shyness also informs his views on the child. Pemberton views the child’s outgoing attitude towards his mother as a sign of disrespect that he needs to correct. Furthermore, he views discipline as important and has the belief that people should keep to themselves and only act formally around others. The character that is the greatest foil to Pemberton and his exact opposite is Mrs.
Morren’s child. The child is outgoing, lazy, rude, and not interested in politeness. Mrs. Moreen's child is rude when he addresses his mother and later mocks Pemberton in a foreign accent. He is the opposite of Pemberton and that is why his mother has to have a tutor to change or at least moderate his behavior. This shows he is generally out of control and a problem to those around him. The child is unconcerned with how his mother or tutor sees him and is only interested in himself. This shows he is narcissistic and self-centered, as he only cares about the enjoyment of himself. While Pemberton cares about practical details like money, the child is interested only in fun and inner enjoyment. He is childish in this way and those around him want to change that. His emotions and heart are not properly “robust” proving he is not ready for adulthood. This also serves to make him look improperly masculine and not “manly” enough for the world around him. The description of him as not very strong and speaks with a feminine sounding “Oh, la la” at the end of the passage. That means that he does not fully comply with the gender norms expected for boys of that time, and he in many ways represents a Victorian stereotype of a frivolous and feminine character. These two ideas were closely associated at the time and display the gendered nature of life that the characters live …show more content…
in. The final character of importance is Mrs.
Moreen, the women who hired Pemberton to come and tutor her child. She is an aristocrat and very well off. However, she is aging and her husband is “sickly”. She is towards the end of her life, making her increasingly concerned about the future well-being of her son and wants to see him grow into a “robust” and masculine person. This shows that she is an involved mother and is very focused on her child’s growth. Still, she wants to outsource any concern about taking care of the child. Her aristocratic status also causes her to treat others concerns about money as less important. She isn’t concerned with providing Pemberton an exact amount. She simply says he will be taken care of. This reflects a degree of privilege that she is not worried about others desire and need for money or the issue of poverty because those ideas are foreign to
her. In conclusion, the scholarly and introverted Pemberton is directly contrasted with the outgoing and free-spirited son of Mrs. Moreen. While Mrs. Moreen represents a caring mother figure and also a concerned parent about her son’s success and well-being. This along with her wealth causes her to invest in a tutor of Pemberton for the child in the story. The story also illuminates many of the social structures and conventions of the time. The interactions of the poorer Pemberton and the upper-class Mrs. Moreen, where she is able to dominate the conversation show this. Also, through Pemberton and Mrs. Moreen’s view about the child in the story, as his more feminine and child-like characteristics are seen as things that need correcting and discipline for him to succeed in life.
Madame Ratignolle simply does not understand Edna; to her, sacrificing one’s life is the utmost that a mother can do for her children. It is as if Edna was not even “talking the same language.” In fact, the two women might well be speaking different languages. Unlike Madame Ratignolle who seems to have a baby every couple of years, Edna’s head is not filled exclusively with thoughts about her children. Whereas Madame Ratignolle is motherly at all times, Edna often seems irritated by her role as mother, and her attentions to her children often occur as an afterthought. Madame Ratignolle’s entire being is bound to her children; Edna’s being is of her own design. For her there is more to life than marriage and babies and social obligations. Edna might well, at least in this passage, be asserting an early version of what Betty Friedan discusses in The Feminine Mystique.
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
In the first chapter of the book we are introduced to one of the main
Adolph Myers, a kind and gentle man "[ is] meant by nature to be a teacher of youth"(215), however, the towns' people can not understand that the male school teacher - a not so common phenomenon at the time--spoke soothingly with his hands and voice only to "carry a dream into the young minds" (215) of his students. The young school teacher was wrongfully accused of doing "unspeakable things" to his students, and as a result was beaten and run out of town without being given a chance to explain the his love for the children was pure, and that he had done nothing wrong. Therefore, as young Adolph Myers, whose only crime is of being a good and caring person runs out of Pennsylvania, old Wing Biddlebaum, the lonely and confused victim of a close-minded society walks into Winesburg Ohio.
Adèle Ratignolle uses art to beautify her home. Madame Ratignolle represents the ideal mother-woman (Bloom 119). Her chief concerns and interests are for her husband and children. She was society’s model of a woman’s role. Madame Ratignolle’s purpose for playing the pia...
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
It is easily inferred that the narrator sees her mother as extremely beautiful. She even sits and thinks about it in class. She describes her mother s head as if it should be on a sixpence, (Kincaid 807). She stares at her mother s long neck and hair and glorifies virtually every feature. The narrator even makes reference to the fact that many women had loved her father, but he chose her regal mother. This heightens her mother s stature in the narrator s eyes. Through her thorough description of her mother s beauty, the narrator conveys her obsession with every detail of her mother. Although the narrator s adoration for her mother s physical appearance is vast, the longing to be like her and be with her is even greater.
When women are kept in their classical role of mother and caretaker, all is well and their lives are simple. Children relate positively to their mothers in this typical setting; while Dantés was in prison, during a time of distress, he remembered something his mother had done for him. For example, Dumas writes, “He remembered the prayers his mother had taught him and found meanings in them which he had formerly been unaware.” (41). Mothers teach their children to the best of their ability, evidenced in Dantés, as well as when Caderousse says Mercédès is instructing her son, Albert. It is in these moments that a mother’s love, compassion, and necessity are revealed. Lives are calm and enriched as long as women are in their niche. This includes non-maternal nurturing roles, for example, Mercédès attentiveness to Dantés father and Valentine’s special ability to care for Nortier. This loyalty is valued and shown as essential for the stability of life. Though The Count of Monte Cristo depicted women as best suited to the home, they intermittently stepped further out of that r...
Many of Stephen King’s writings explore the theme of evil, and Apt Pupil is no exception. He has incorporated his ideas of malevolence into the characters of Todd Bowden and Kurt Dussander. The beginning of the novella delves into the dark thoughts of a young boy whose encounter with Dussander encourages the growth of his dark side. From stories of Patin to killing animals, the potential for evil can be seen in the eyes of the two and leads them to the ultimate evil: murder.
As a child progresses through the various stages of life, he or she may crawl across the knots of knitted carpet, gallop around the plastic structures of a schoolyard and weave amongst a mass of people, each one traveling a different route to arrive at destinations poles apart, but unless a sense of worth, instilled by a parent’s assurance, overflows from the mouth of this developing being, the journey to find oneself amid the throng of individuals will prove an arduous and extensive one—possibly spanning one’s lifetime. Kate Chopin, in The Awakening, and Henrik Ibsen, in A Doll’s House, understood the significance of a parental figure in the development of a young person’s self-esteem, even in the Victorian Era, highlighting this fact with a void in the parental seat of the lives’ of their protagonists, Edna Pontellier and Nora Helmer, respectively. The vacant maternal role and feeble paternal relationship influences each of the protagonists’ sense of self-worth, which projects through relationships with their husbands, children, society as a whole and, their ultimate choice of abandonment.
The first character to be introduced is the old man. Just like every other character, the old man does not receive a name. He has a blue eye that appears to have a film over it. According to the story he has quite a bit of gold in his house. The old man was also nice to the narrator, as he has never done anything to him that would provoke the murder:
The scene is set in New England, 1950s. It is the beginning of a new school year at the prestigious male preparatory school Wellton. There is a welcoming ceremony with teachers, students and parents. The Headmaster Mr. Nolan gives a speech and reminds everyone the academy’s four pillars: Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence.
"The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as every child should be instilled with the wish to learn."
Writing a reflection and a summary of dozens of experiences is very challenging and demanding. I cannot count how many ups I had, yet I cannot deny the fact that I had some downs where I could transform them to ups. The year was full of challenges, excitement, fear and lessons. Each Wednesday I had mixed emotions. Every time I came to school I had the same fear and heartbreaks. In my reflection I am willing to compare between Adan at the beginning of the year and new Adan I became.
At the end of the day or beginning of the school day, I communicated what I did with Ms. P to plan out better activities or lesson plans to meet each individual’s needs.