Part A: Summary Louise Erdrich’s The Round House focuses on the life changing events the protaganist, Joe Coutts, must face after his mother is raped and beaten. After being failed by the justice system, Joe finds himself taking matters into his own hands with the help of his friends. The complications of how everything unravels is truly mesmerizing. The start of it all takes place summer of 1988. Joe Coutts is only 13 years old when his mom Geraldine was raped and beaten near a sacred Ojibwe area known as the Round House. After she is taken to the hospital, Joe must find out for himself what really happened to his mother by eavesdropping on family members. Basil, his father, is quick to take action using his power in the justice system to
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
At the outset, Ruby Turpin is exposed as full of arrogance and prejudice. She holds herself above the colored people, the “white-trash”, and the home-owners—social status is an odd fixation of hers. In the waiting room of the doctor, she looks with scorn and contempt at the others. It is not out of empathy, but pity that she expresses sorrow (if it can be so called) for them. All the while Mrs. Turpin is convinced that she is a devoted and dutiful Christian.
Knopf, Alfred A. Anne Frank in the World. New York: Knopf, 2001. Print. 06 Feb. 2014
Through time it can be seen that the world’s history has a nature of repeating its self. Author Miller, was aware of this as he experienced a repitition of history of society’s flawed government. In the text The Crucible, the writer, Author Miller has identified and illustrated the problems society faced during the 1950’s setting by drawing parallels with the setting of the 1962 Salem witch hunt. This setting helps readers to understand the characters of John Proctor and Giles Corey.
Gilman manipulates the reader s perspective throughout her story as she immediately introduces us to her world. Language plays an important role as a normal woman assesses her husband s profession and her own supposed illness. The narrator comes across intelligent if not a little paranoid-less concerned with a slighthysterical tendency but rather a queer untenanted (Gilman 691) house. Her suspicion occurs early on; appearing at first as misdirection meant to foreshadow a possible ghost story. She goes on to describe the most beautiful place with a delicious garden (Gilman 692). Her depiction is that of a quaint home-leading thereader to imagine a stable woman in a new setting. Clearly the narrator s broad vocabulary is an indication of her right-mindedness as well as her ability to examine a condition she disagrees with.
The two common threads that connect Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the narrator in her story are depression/postpartum depression, and entrapment within their roles as of women. Specifically, Gilman and the narrator are trying to escape the function society has placed on them. First, after fulfilling their expected duties as wife and mother, both Gilman and the narrator become depressed after the birth of their child. It is this depression that leads them to the infamous rest cure...
In the book “The Host”, the “host” is the human body that an alien “parasite” is inserted into. Although the human host is very much resistant and reluctant to giving themselves up for this procedure. Once captured by these aliens, Melanie Stryder becomes a human host for the alien parasite Wanderer, the main character, and at first are mortal enemies. After insertion, Wanderer begins to realize that Melanie is a strong host that has fought back from Wanderer more than any host Wanderer has ever lived inside. When trying to seek information from Melanie’s memories, Melanie starts to overpower, rule, and overwhelm her with stressful emotions. Eventually, Wanderer falls in love with Melanie’s loved ones that she sees in her memories and goes out of her way to provide help and security for them and the other humans. In the end, Wanderer is defined by her human host body and is forever defined by her host body after being inserted out of Melanie’s body into her own host body.
Anthony Burgess’s experiences in life are a basis for the novel. Anthony claims the most traumatic scene in the novel, when F. Alexander’s wife was raped and died because of it, was supposedly inspired by the event that happened during the London 1944 wartime blackout. During the blackout his w...
A group of teenage girls were secretly dancing in the woods with a black slave, named Tituba. When they were discovered of what they were doing, the girls started accusing certain individuals in the village of dealing with witchcraft. Within a blink of an eye, the entire village is controlled by a devil that exists within the fear of each person. A drama of suspense and impact, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, explores through the individuals' vengeance, fear, reputation, and quest for power.
Cowen, Ruth Schwartz. "Two Washes in the Morning and a Bridge Party at Night: The American Housewife Between the Wars."
One of the main themes of the postmodern movement includes the idea that history is only what one makes of it. In other words, to the postmodern philosopher history is only a story humans frame and create about their past (Bruzina). Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace is an excellent exploration of this postmodern idea. Through use of postmodern writing styles and techniques, Atwood explores how the framing of a story influences its meaning. By mixing different writing mediums such as prose, poetry, period style letters, and historical documents such as newspaper articles, Atwood achieves a complex novel that explores a moment of history in a unique way. The different genres allow for the reader to experience different perspectives of the same story- the murder of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery. Atwood masterfully weaves researched historical “facts” with fictionalized accounts of the murders, primarily through Grace’s story telling, into a complex and realistic version of the mysterious event.
Arthur Miller tells the tragedy of Willy Loman, a salesman who spends his days driving on the roads and lives in the illusion of an American Dream that he couldn’t reach. In fact, he lost his job and has a lot of debts to payback. The one who perfectly fitted in the capitalist society, which values are based on competitiveness and success, founds him self disappointed, hopeless and overtaken by events. His wife, Linda is described as the common American housewife, very faithful and shows a full support to her husband. Thanks to her devotion to him, Willy unveils his weaknesses but she is also his scapegoat whenever he releases his accumulated anger and frustration. And contrarily to what we might think their relation is the same as a master and his slave, they are complementary but not equal. This play exposes consequently the inferior role that women have in the American culture. In this play, two women play a significant role. How are women portrayed? According to Willy, Linda can’t handle big responsibilities and thinks that her capabilities are limited to taking care of the house, their
One of the most critically discussed works in twentieth-century American literature, The Turn of the Screw has inspired a variety of critical interpretations since its publication in 1898. Until 1934, the book was considered a traditional ghost story. Edmund Wilson, however, soon challenged that view with his assertions that The Turn of the Screw is a psychological study of the unstable governess whose visions of ghosts are merely delusions. Wilson’s essay initiated a critical debate concerning the interpretation of the novel, which continues even today (Poupard 313). Speculation considering the truth of the events occurring in The Turn of the Screw depends greatly on the reader’s assessment of the reliability of the governess as a narrator. According to the “apparitionist” reader, the ghosts are real, the governess is reliable and of sound mind, and the children are corrupted by the ghosts. The “hallucinationist”, on the other hand, would claim the ghosts are illusions of the governess, who is an unreliable narrator, and possibly insane, and the children are not debased by the ghosts (Poupard 314). The purpose of this essay is to explore the “hallucinationist” view in order to support the assertion that the governess is an unreliable narrator. By examining the manner in which she guesses the unseen from the seen, traces the implication of things, and judges the whole piece by the pattern and so arrives at her conclusions, I will demonstrate that the governess is an unreliable narrator. From the beginning of The Turn of the Screw, the reader quickly becomes aware that the governess has an active imagination. Her very first night at Bly, for example, “[t]here had been a moment when [she] believed [she] recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when [she] found [herself] just consciously starting as at the passage, before [her] door, of a light footstep.” The governess herself acknowledges her active imagination in an early conversation with Mrs. Grose, when she discloses “how rather easily carried away” she is. Her need for visions and fantasies soon lead her to believe that apparitions are appearing to her. It is from this point on that she begins to guess the unseen from the seen, trace the implication of things, and judge the whole piece by the pattern. After the first appearance of Peter Quint, the governess begins to make infe...
Set in Depression-era St. Louis, the overbearing Southern ex-charmer, Amanda Wingfield is the de facto head of the household. A former Southern belle, Amanda is a single mother who behaves as though she still is the high school beauty queen. Williams' still-resonant study reveals her desperate struggle with the forces of fate against her dysfunctional relationship that looms and grows among her adult children. (Gist)
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” This basic proverb it the foundation that Nathaniel Hawthorne builds upon in The House of Seven Gables. Like all of hawthorns works he exploits the evils of the puritan heart in is 1851 Romantic Fantasy. Hawthorne tells the story of the Pyncheon family’s struggle to overcome the inherrated problem caused by the sins of their ancestors. The Pyncheon family, however, thinks the problems come from an inherrated curse that was placed on the family. The House of Seven Gables shows Hawthorne’s opinion of the puritan heart (Gioia and Kennedy p. 196). He believed that their hearts were full of sin, and that they were blinded by the sin and evil so much that they could not even see that the problem lies with themselves. Hawthorne believed that the inherrated evil of the heart could only be overcome by true love.