I feel the story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara has many similar qualities to the movie “O” by Tim Blake Nelson. The book and the movie are about two different people who have grown up in similar neighborhoods, are of the same race, and both of the characters had very disrespectful attitudes towards their elders who they should have been taught to respect. Throughout this story and movie, both of the main characters end up learning a very substantial lesson. Sylvia, who is the main character in “The Lesson”, learns about being thankful for what she has, and not taking anything for granted. Oden, who is the main character in the movie “O”, learns that he should not take advice from someone that he cannot trust. Although both the movie and the story teach lessons, the lesson that Sylvia and Oden learn are very different lessons and have different impacts on Sylvia and Oden’s lives.
Sylvia and Oden both grew up in the city. Oden often refers to where he grew up as the “hood”. Both of these characters have different problems in their lives that have made them the way that they are. The biggest similarity I can see in these characters is the fact that they are defiant towards their elders, and they both have attitude problems. Although they are both rude and defiant, they each have their own way of doing it.
When Sylvia is being rude and defiant to others, she is loud about it and she doesn’t hide what she is thinking. One example of this is when she was at F.A.O Schwartz with Miss.Moore, who is her neighbor, and she loudly asks what she is doing there. Sylvia is showing that she doesn’t have respect for her elders and she does not care if she is acting rude. Instead of being calm and trying to see what Miss.Moore is trying to...
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...s sucked into peer pressure and he ends up taking his life over a girl, and something that was not actually happening. [Word Count: 1091]
Reason behind My Paper
I decided to compare and contract Oden and Desi because I feel like they have many qualities that are similar, but they also have many differences. I like the fact that they both learn valuable lessons during both the story and the movie. I decided to use these two characters because of the fact that they come from similar backgrounds, and by comparing the two the reader can tell that Miss.Moore had an everlasting impact of the life of Sylvia, while Oden was not lucky enough to have anyone like that in him life until it was too late. Sylvia also learned to appreciate what she had in her life, while Oden ended up taking his own life before he had the chance to learn this valuable lesson from anyone.
In both books they share some traits, even though they may not look anything alike they are. both of these novels are dystopian novels and many characters share similarity’s.
In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato describes the cave as very dark with chained people inside and a wall where they can only see shadow illusions, which they believe is reality. Outside the cave, there is “light” and “truth.” One chained person is released into the “light,” which is uncomfortable at first, because of how bright the “light” or “truth” is however, once he adjusts, he realizes the outer world is the “truth” or reality and the cave is a shadow of reality. He pities the ones in the cave, still lost in the darkness yet, when he tries to make them see reality, their ignorance overpowers them and they kill the enlightened one out of fear and confusion. This is the kind of society, full of puppet-handlers, the narrator Sylvia in “The Lesson” dwells in and the author, Toni Cade Bambara, depicts Sylvia as being freed from the chains of ignorant society. Bambara’s released prisoner, Miss Moore, is the one to free Sylvia and the other chained prisoners and exposes them to the “light,” which is the unequal distribution of wealth and the “truth,” which is educating youth on economic inequality so the freed prisoners can learn to change their society’s shadow of reality.
similarity, they share in their message is positive attitude. Mairs always was positive in her
The physical abuse is the root of his problems, affecting his self-esteem and self-image. He may be a genius, but he has thought of himself not to be worthy of anything including the praise of being an intellect. He runs away from the professor unwilling to be acknowledged for his intellect. He suffers from an inferior complex which he tries to counter by being the only one among his friends with a high intelligence to give him a superior status among them. His relationship is affected too when he tries to form one with Skylar. The young man also displays an impulsive nature which has gotten him in trouble in the past with the law which is why the judge was ready to be hard on him in the recent anger display. The same character flaw has been causing trouble for him in his relationship with Skylar which has been unstable. The moment she tells him she is leaving, the emotional mood swings and the explosive anger kick in and he pushes her away, and he even takes up a job to avoid confronting his fear of being abandoned. His fear of authority has made him humble and left him with no growth goal in his personal and work life. He wishes to remain hidden and unnoticeable. When this did not work he out rightly rebels against the authority figure like he did with the therapist he initially wanted to treat
asked Sylvia she states "I'm mad, but I won't give her that satisfaction". The story takes
For example Kate and Kat were similar as their both independent and intelligent individuals who go by their own morals and don't care what anyone else thinks of them. Bianca in both texts is seen as the object of desire' as of her submissive manner and good looks. I used similarities like these ones all throughout 10 things' with only making minor changes.
Conflicts are the backbone of any novel, without conflict stories would not be nearly as interesting! Conflicts can be caused by many things, in this novel the main problem is racism. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines is a novel based off of many internal conflicts between the characters, causing the characters to make different decisions and actions; this is important because the story is circled around racism causing many conflicts.
Our first introduction to these competing sets of values begins when we meet Sylvia. She is a young girl from a crowded manufacturing town who has recently come to stay with her grandmother on a farm. We see Sylvia's move from the industrial world to a rural one as a beneficial change for the girl, especially from the passage, "Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at the all before she came to live at the farm"(133). The new values that are central to Sylvia's feelings of life are her opportunities to plays games with the cow. Most visibly, Sylvia becomes so alive in the rural world that she begins to think compassionately about her neighbor's geraniums (133). We begin to see that Sylvia values are strikingly different from the industrial and materialistic notions of controlling nature. Additionally, Sylvia is alive in nature because she learns to respect the natural forces of this l...
Sylvia’s being poor influences the way in which she sees other people and feels about them. Sylvia lives in the slums of New York; it is the only life she knows and can realistically relate to. She does not see herself as poor or underprivileged. Rather, she is content with her life, and therefore resistant to change. Sylvia always considered herself and her cousin as "the only ones just right" in the neighborhood, and when an educated woman, Miss Moore, moves into the neighborhood, Sylvia feels threatened. Ms. Moore is threatening to her because she wants Sylvia to look at her low social status as being a bad thing, and Sylvia "doesn’t feature that." This resistance to change leads Sylvia to be very defensive and in turn judgmental. Sylvia is quick to find fl...
father's death. He is forced to act insane in order to find out the truth
...re many similarities when it comes to technique, characterization, themes, and ideologies based on the author's own beliefs and life experiences. However, we also see that it appears the author herself often struggles with the issue of being herself and expressing her own individuality, or obeying the rules, regulations and mores of a society into which she was born an innocent child, one who by nature of her sex was deemed inferior to men who controlled the definition of the norms. We see this kind of environment as repressive and responsible for abnormal psyches in the plots of many of her works.
Bart Palosz’s parents were on their way home one evening to the joy of their son, but instead, what they found was a tragic scene. Entering his sophomore year, on the first day of school, Bart was immediately targeted for a seemingly harmless joke organized by the other students; but little do they know it would be the last time they would see Bart Palosz. Bart has been a victim of bullying for over two years due to his body releasing hormones faster than the average teen at the age of 15 making him 6 feet and 3 inches tall. That evening, right after school, his heart and mind were so clouded by the pain of humiliation, Bart decided to end his life. Bart was aware of the shotgun in his parent’s room and he knew how to acquire it. With his parent’s
STUDENT - A tragic hero finds his psychological mistakes himself. He goes discovering his mistakes – what is the problem with him
One of Sylvia's students is Joe Ferone. Joe is a rebel and a hoodlum. Joe barely ever comes to class. Sylvia really wants to help Joe. Sylvia tries to schedule after school sessions with Joe, but he never shows up. Towards the end of the story I get the feeling Sylvia was starting to fall in love with him.
realizes that the controlled society he lives is one that tries to eliminate all individuality. This causes him to act out in violence against authority as a means o...