Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Emotional intelligence 2.0 sparknotes
Emotional intelligence 2.0 sparknotes
Emotional intelligence 2.0 sparknotes
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Vita’s Human Spirit In “Helen on Eighty-sixth Street,” by Wendi Kaufman, a young girl named Vita is facing a lot of struggles. With her dad gone, her mom dating a new guy who she strongly dislikes, and not getting the role of Helen of Troy in her school play, Vita is having a tough time. Through these conflicts, Vita shows that she can be dramatic, insecure, but, in the end, hopeful. Right off the bat, the reader is shown that Vita is quite the drama queen. She starts off the short story by saying, “I hate Helen. That’s all I can say. I hate her.” All because Helen McGuire got the school play’s leading role, Helen of Troy, instead of her. Plus even Mr. Dodd, the man in charge of the school production, called Vita a “regular Sarah Heartburn,” …show more content…
a French actress especially known for having an emotional style, when she auditions one last time in an attempt to try and get the part for another Trojan woman in the play. Mr. Dodd calls her this because she displays her acting skills by wailing and crying at the thought of her husband, Hector, being dragged around the walls of Troy. Furthermore, Vita over exaggerates how bad the new man her mom’s dating is. She calls Mr. Farfel old, and says he smells like the dark cough drops that make your eyes tear up and your head feel like its expanding. She even gets nitpicky over his laugh and says that the laughs are too small and never really seem to make it out whole. Clearly, Vita is extremely dramatic. In occurrence to being such a Sarah Heartburn, Vita is very insecure as well.
She’s upset about Helen McGuire getting the play’s star role, Helen of Troy, when she knows much more about Greek mythology than Helen does. Vita thinks Helen got the part because she is prettier than her. So when she ends up playing the part of a soldier in the Trojan horse, not even one of the Trojan women, she feels even worse. Moreover, throughout the course of the story, she brings up Helen of Troy a lot, and often asks her mom about what makes a person beautiful. For example, when Vita’s mom was trying to make her feel better by talking about Helen’s flaws. She mentions how Helen’s father was a swan and how her mother was too young to have children. Vita then asked “And what about beauty?” Her mom replied, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty--- that is all ye need to know,” which means, true beauty is not what is on the outside, it’s what is on the inside. Sadly, Vita didn’t understand this and found her mother unhelpful. Even when Vita obtains the role of Helen of Troy when Helen McGuire falls ill with the chickenpox, she still does not feel pretty enough. She asks her mom if her father would think she looked beautiful in her costume, feeling unsure of herself. As show, Vita’s insecurity is a struggle she deals with all the
time. Lastly, through it all, Vita is hopeful. Every night she writes a letter to her father. Even though he left her and her mother for three years now, she still writes to him every single night, storing each letter in a cardboard box which resides in her bedroom closet. Moreover, she never gives up on the role of Helen of Troy. She stands in her living room every day with a towel tied around her body while acting out the entire play, saying every line for her mother. Lastly, Vita even performs her own makeshift burnt offering. She burns years’ worth of the letters she’s written to her father in a dog bowl while she makes three wishes. To get the role of Helen of Troy, for Mr. Farfel to leave, and for her father to come back to her and her mother. Even though any of these things happening would be very slim, Vita never gives up and keeps on believing. Over all, Vita has many aspects of herself revealed through “Helen on Eighty-sixth Street” by Wendi Kaufman. Most importantly the readers learn that she is dramatic, insecure, and hopeful. Vita illustrates the human spirit in so many ways. She faces conflict after conflict, with losing her dad, having her mom date a new man whom she finds repulsive, and not getting the role of Helen in her school play. In this way, Vita learns from her downfalls and appreciates her triumphs more. In the end, Vita did end up playing Helen of Troy and as she closed out the production, she finally let go of her father. Doing, this made her stronger, and taking tough times and using them to learn and grow from displays the human spirit in its purest form.
As a teen, Rayona is in a confusing period of life. The gradual breakdown of her family life places an addition burden on her conscience. Without others for support, Rayona must find a way to handle her hardships. At first, she attempts to avoid these obstacles in her life, by lying, and by not voicing her opinions. Though when confronting them, she learns to feel better about herself and to understand others.
Mara, the main character, is a perfectionist. She has straight-As, is in National Honors Society, and is a future Yale student. She is competing with her only ex-boyfriend for the Valedictorian. Her life changes completely when her niece V, who is only a year younger than her, comes to live with Mara. V is a slutty, druggie that has an attitude. This story takes the reader on an adventure of two complete opposite girls who have to learn to love each other. Mara eventually learns that she cannot control everything and has to take life as it comes.
Displaying one's emotions in public is often not planned nor wanted especially when it comes to crying due to humiliation and shame. In the short story “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, literary terms such as simile, diction, and repetition are utilized in characterizing emotional “eleven” year old Rachel. The figurative language used, support the images that were intended for the reader to perceive. Diction and repetition help guide the audience with a certain point of view towards the characters. Not only does Cisneros exploit these literary terms to explain and characterize Rachel's feelings but to exhibit how one may not always have the courage, personal strength, or maturity to handle certain situations.
The short story Eleven by Sandra Cisneros, focuses around the main character Rachel as an insecure developing girl who lacks the experience to handle everyday encounters. Rachel, an eleven year old girl truly encapsulates the thoughts that are present within an adolescent. The lack of confidence in herself, excessive fear of being judged, and ideas of growing up are ideals that are relevant within each and every one of us. The reader is able to relate to Rachel because her feelings and experiences that are described by the author are similar to what most people have been through and are currently experiencing. The characterization of Rachel is expressed through the author’s usage of point of view, imagery, and repetition.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
Her father works out of town and does not seem to be involved in his daughters lives as much. Her older sister, who works at the school, is nothing but plain Jane. Connie’s mother, who did nothing nag at her, to Connie, her mother’s words were nothing but jealousy from the beauty she had once had. The only thing Connie seems to enjoy is going out with her best friend to the mall, at times even sneaking into a drive-in restaurant across the road. Connie has two sides to herself, a version her family sees and a version everyone else sees.
This, on the surface, makes her appear to be one of the characters who receive the least sympathy. However during the play the audience is shown the factors that have caused her actions, it is these factors that prompt sympathies. A... ... middle of paper ... ... rsons 'name', which would remain forever soiled if blackened once.
This malady, her scar, makes her physically grotesque, much like Joy/Hulga in O’Connor’s “Good Country People.” She has never been beautiful, and that is one of the deepest desires of her heart. While on the bus ride, she picks apart other people’s features as though she’s shopping; she wants that person’s hair or those eyes and that nose, all features to make her more beautiful after her scar gets healed. This desire to be a beauty is also a kind of grotesque quality, as is her loneliness and need to be loved; she wants it so badly it nearly overwhelms her personality and is all that she can thing about. Like Joy/Hulga, she is lonely in the lifestyle she lives, and is looking for someone to love her. Just like Hulga befriended Manly Pointer, so Violet befriends Monty, but with more favorable events than Joy/Hulga’s newfound friendship. Monty truly seems to love Violet; in the end of the story when she comes back from Tulsa
She‘s trapped by a man and is tired of being told what is right and wrong, as well as what she should and should not do. The women realizes that she is strong as everyone
Like Esther, Joan Gilling grew up in the same small town; she also won the writing competition and was sent to New York to work for the same magazine. Joan was also very conscious about how the world identified her as an individual. She didn’t want to conform to what society sa...
After Jane’s initiation stage of dealing with death and abuse she went on to deal with it and coped with her differences. After years of Helen’s death Jane went on to teaching and became a teacher for two years at Lowood. Once she got tired of teaching she went on to become a governess and highered her social class and met an older wiser man, Rochester. Rochester fell in love with jane almost immediately and always tried to win her over. He always tried to buy Jane expensive gifts but she would always refuse showing that she was independent and did not have to rely on others. Jane dealt with her suffering by overcoming her obstacles from before and proved to those who doubted her that she was the bigger person and was capable of more than everyone thought. Instead of Jane moving backward and trying to return back to innocence, she kept moving forward to learn from her initiation
"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." [P.1], says eleven-year-old Ellen. Thus the young narrator begins her life-story, in the process painting an extraordinary self-portrait. “Ellen Foster” is a powerful story of a young girl growing up in a burdensome world. As one reads this work presented by Kaye Gibbons, a chill runs down their back. Ellen, the main character is faced with a hard life dealing with endless losses, with the deaths of both her parents and her grandmother being included. Why would one get a chill you wonder? This individual has thoughts and feelings that many have never experienced and cannot express. Ellen is merely a child no older then the age of ten but if not knowing this fact, readers would think she was an aged woman who has lived their life sufficiently.
At the age of ten, most children are dependent on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of attention and care. However, Ellen, the main character and protagonist of the novel Ellen Foster, exemplifies a substantial amount of independence and mature, rational thought as a ten-year-old girl. The recent death of her mother sends her on a quest for the ideal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown apathy to both she and her fragile mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’ use of simple diction, unmarked dialogue, and a unique story structure in her first novel, Ellen Foster, allows the reader to explore the emotions and thoughts of this heroic, ten-year-old girl modeled after Gibbons’ own experiences as a young girl.
Jane had a testing childhood at the hands of her aunt Mrs Reed and her cousins. She lived with the Reed family until ten years of age and during these ten years she was bullied and unloved. Jane was then sent away to Lowood School she appeared excited to leave Gateshead, yet once at Lowood she experienced more ridicule and a hard school life. Nevertheless she did find friendship in Helen Burns, although this friendship was short lived as Helen died during a breakout of typhus, through their short friendship Helen had shown Jane that life at Lowood could be bearable; she was also the first friend Jane ever really had.
While at Lowood, a state - run orphanage and educational facility, Jane’s first friend, Helen Burns, teaches her the importance of friendship along with other skills that will help Jane grow and emotionally mature in the future. She serves as a role model for Jane. Helen’s intelligence, commitment to her studies, and social graces all lead Jane to discover desirable attributes in Helen. Helen is treated quite poorly, however, “her ability to remain graceful and calm even in the face of (what Jane believes to be) unwarranted punishment makes the greatest impression on the younger girl” (Dunnington). Brontë uses this character as a way to exemplify the type of love that Jane deserves. This relationship allows Jane to understand the importance of having a true friend. Given Jane’s history at Gateshead, finding someone like Helen is monumental in her development as a person. Helen gives through honest friendship, a love that is