Themes and Characters of Coffee for the Road by Alex la Guma, The Green Leaves by Grace Ogot and See me in me Benz and T'ing by Hazel D. Campbell
After reading a selection of numerous short stories of different
cultures and traditions, various themes and language choices are
common, it is clear that these themes and language choices all play a
major role which will essentially be the central focus in this essay.
This essay will centre around three stories, "Coffee for the Road" by
Alex la Guma, "The Green Leaves" by Grace Ogot and "See me in me Benz
and T'ing" by Hazel D. Campbell. I will also make sure to focus and
explore characterisation and setting and furthermore whilst analysing
a fiction piece, to take into account the background of the writer.
After comparing the short stories it has become clear that they all
share numerous similarities and few differences. The most occurring
and most dominant similarity is the theme of racism and the fact that
it has on the characters and setting associated in the stories. In
"See me in me Benz and T'ing", the racism is focused on the fellow
country people of the protagonist, the lady, although the people are
of the same ethnic origin/background, the lady still refers to the
people as "wild animals", this is because she believes that the people
are just "loafing" around just ready to attack her at any time they
feel like.
The theme if racism is furthermore used in "The Green Leaves", racism
is presented here when the policeman from "Europe" speaks to the
community,
"How many times have I told you, that you must abandon this savage
custom of butchering one another? Your-people are deaf"...
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...pendence. She tolerates abuse so she does not loose everything she
has. People carry weapons in Jamaica, it has become cultural for
violence to occur and for weapons to be carried, violence is an
integral part of their culture. It has also become traditional for the
lady to take "beating" leashed out by her husband,
"By their swoops for weapons that they were angry"
In conclusion, this essay has proved that each story revolves around
culture, tradition and racism, without doubt reflecting the author's
background and upbringing. The writers, through setting and character
lets the reader explore the unique, indifferent insight of others,
whereby which we learnt that each author is mere product of society
that through racism, violence and tradition, have altered intolerance
in which the stories has been influenced by.
In the two texts “Sonny Blues” by James Baldwin and “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, the authors focus on relationships between family members. The stories are narrated by the brother in “Sonny Blues” and mother “I Stand Here Ironing”, therefore the story are only told through the point of view of the family member. Olsen conveys to readers that the mother does not have control over how her daughter, Emily, is raised and the internal conflict that comes along with mother. However, Baldwin shows a lack of family ties between Sonny’s and his brother. As a result, conflicts arise between the brothers in “Sonny’s Blues”. The conflicts in Baldwin and Olsen stories determine the stagnation relationships between families.
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Imagine for a moment it is your big sister's 17th birthday. She is out with her friends celebrating, and your parents are at the mall with your little brother doing some last minute birthday shopping, leaving you home alone. You then hear a knock on the front door. When you getthere, nobody is there, just an anonymous note taped to the door that says Happy Birthday, along with a hundred dollar bill. You've been dying to get that new video game, and your sister will never know. You are faced with a tough decision, but not a very uncommon one. In both Fences, by August Wilson, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansbury, tough decisions have to be made about getting money from someone else's misfortune. But money's that important right?
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After her diagnosis of chronic kidney failure in 2004, psychiatrist Sally Satel lingered in the uncertainty of transplant lists for an entire year, until she finally fell into luck, and received her long-awaited kidney. “Death’s Waiting List”, published on the 5th of May 2006, was the aftermath of Satel’s dreadful experience. The article presents a crucial argument against the current transplant list systems and offers alternative solutions that may or may not be of practicality and reason. Satel’s text handles such a topic at a time where organ availability has never been more demanded, due to the continuous deterioration of the public health. With novel epidemics surfacing everyday, endless carcinogens closing in on our everyday lives, leaving no organ uninflected, and to that, many are suffering, and many more are in desperate request for a new organ, for a renewed chance. Overall, “Death’s Waiting List” follows a slightly bias line of reasoning, with several underlying presumptions that are not necessarily well substantiated.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.
“The Love of My Life,” by T.C. Boyle, tells a love story about a teen couple who has to go on separate ways to attend college. Earlier, they go on a camping trip and have unprotected sex. China finds out she is pregnant and tells Jeremy about it. Jeremy tells China to terminate her pregnancy, but China refuses to see a doctor and lets her pregnancy advance. She ends having her baby in a motel room without any medical assistance; just with Jeremy’s help she delivers her baby. The couple decides to dump the baby in a dumpster, and later they get arrested for their crime.
In the story, Two Kinds by Amy Tan, the most predominant object would be the piano. The mother has it set in her head that her daughter, Jing-Mei can and will become a child prodigy. The mother hires a teacher that lives in their apartment building. Jing-Mei constantly feels like she is a disappointment to her mother. Her mother had very distinct goals for Jing-Mei and this is way she always felt that she was disappointing her.
In the short stories "The Story of an Hour," by Chopin and "A Rose for
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
Allegra Goodman was born in Brooklyn New York in 1967, but she grew up in Honolulu, where her parents moved and taught at the University of Hawaii in 1969. She received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Stanford University. Ms. Goodman began writing short stories in high school, and the summer after she graduated in 1985. Now, she has published two short story collections and six novels. The Other Side of the Island, which was published in 2008, describes how the world was controlled by Earth Mother after eight years of the Flood, and what the Greenspoons, especially Honor, did while they were living in the Colonies on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. On one hand, Earth Mother and the Corporation were protecting and providing citizens with the new weather, the Enclosure; on the other hand, they were trying to control everybody from Unpredictable and defeat the Forecaster and his partisans. Ms. Goodman wrote the book while she suffered from the heat wave in Boston. She realized that everywhere around her things are attached air conditioners: her house, her car, and shops. People didn’t live in the real world anymore; she even wished there were air conditioned streets as well. Therefore, she started with that concept: “All this happened many years ago, before the streets were air conditioned. Children played outside, and in many places, the sky was still naturally blue.”
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In the 1580’s the English settlers feared the Native Americans because the land was new and unknown to them. They did not understand the ways of the Native Americans and feared them. From the settler’s perspective they needed to claim and posses land in order to feel safe. Many English settlers had read articles about the Native Americans prior to there journey to the Americas. The French and Spanish had portrayed the Native Americans as “Indians”. Christopher Columbus wrote that the Native Arawak Indians he encountered as “loving people without covetousness”. Others early explorers also wrote...
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