Growing Up
A Quest for Knowledge and Answers with Plenty of Lessons Learned
The two works of literature to be examined here are the short story "The Stolen Party" by Liliana Heker and the poem "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde. These pieces detail the struggles, fears, successes and implacable worries of childhood. In them, one sees reflected one's own childhood, as the pieces are quite innocent and straightforward in their description. The most important theme, present through both stories, is the pervasiveness of those questions that are so reflective of growing and learning. This essay will examine some of these important childhood wonderments, and will discuss them below.
The events of childhood always seem of the utmost importance as they take place. Whether they are happy, sad, embarrassing or otherwise, these events, above all, teach. Sometimes it is true that they are important, but otherwise one might even forget them, though the lessons learned are never forgotten. These stories deal with the emotions of childhood that ultimately shape an individual, and detail the two children's thoughts as they undergo various events and emotions. The poem, for instance, is much more based on emotions than the story. The latter piece focuses on events and characters rather than detailing thought processes, though the latter take place as well in a minimal role.
Yet there is also a certain innocence, found especially in the last two lines of every stanza as the boy regretfully states "…and momma's in the bedroom/with the door closed." The outside-looking-in feeling throughout the poem is reversed because of these last two lines of every stanza, in which the boy reminds the reader that he is speaking and he is only a boy who is afraid of being alone. In this context, the rest of the poem falls together as the puzzle pieces of the boy's reflection are seen to be simply insecurities that ought to be assuaged by an absent mother. This, then, is a lesson that the boy may learn -- specifically, that a parent can be absent -- which would be a negative outcome. Alternatively, he may also learn…
female body -- the sum of its parts? In short story, novel, and poetic depictions of Gillman, Brooks, and Piercy despised flower, called a yellow weed by most observers. A trapped and voiceless bodily entity, like a ghost, perhaps behind a surface of peeling yellow wallpaper. A plastic doll with yellow hair with pneumatic dimensions and candied cherry lips. These three contrasting images all have been used to characterize
Edgar Allen Poe's 1843 short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is about a young man who becomes mortally obsessed with an old man's creepy eye and ultimately kills him. Thomas Hardy's 1902 poem "The Man He Killed" is about a soldier who has become used to killing people just because they are on the other side of the war. Both of these narratives lend insight into guilt related to death, told
Welcome Table" (Walker) short story "Country Lovers" (Gordimer) intoduction literature class. The directions state developing a thesis a comparative paper, a comparision works deeper insight topic paper. Racism has often been used as a principal theme in a series of writings, as writers intended to intensify this topic with the purpose of emphasizing the wrongness of this particular act. Alice Walker and Nadine Gordimer have both gotten actively engaged in
Robert lost his wife, he is blind, and he is forced to interact with a person that the narrator believes he feels attracted to. All of these problems seem to be unimportant for the man and this influences the narrator in acknowledging his personal misery. The narrator accepts that he is doomed to being miserable because he is unable to appreciate life and the privileges that nature provided him
Chinese Cultural Revolution in Literature There are a number of stark images found in the works of literature reviewed by Dao, Cheng, and Hua in this assignment. Specifically, this paper details the imagery evinced in Bei Dao's "Resume," Gu Cheng's "Curriculum Vitae," and Yu Hua's "On the Road at Eighteen." That imagery and those works in general are thinly veiled allusions to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which took places in the
Message, Different Genres Literature is a means by which people can raise questions about the society they live in and address issues of concern to them. One of the questioned often raised relates to the role of women in society. Female writers are able to use literature to express their opinions and explore what it means to be a woman in society. This was especially true in the times when
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