In North Korea most people don’t know what “freedom” means, in China most people don’t know what “opinion” means, in the Middle East most people don’t know what “solution” means, and in America most people don’t know what “the rest of the world” means. From shaping personalities to affecting perceptions, culture is the invisible bond that ties individuals together in a society. At a young age, people absorb cultural values and beliefs which are manifested through one’s lifestyle. Culture strongly influences the ways of thinking and living. The differences in these factors is what causes diversity among cultures in several parts of the world.…
Joni was motivated to learn because of her friend Frankie McKitrick who had introduced her to Mozart and Schubert. Later on in her teenage years she had self-taught herself how to play the baritone, ukulele and guitar from a Peele Seeger instruction book. Being a child at such a young age Joni was engaged in music and art. In high school she was known the “school artist.” However as a child she has experienced many obstacles that prevented her from being able to play music up to her fullest capability.…
In return of the pain that she felt because of her mother, Jing-mei wishes to be nothing like her. As a result of this, she refuses to accept her family’s history. Jing-mei begins to accept herself and her background near the end of the novel. “I looked at my reflection, blinking so I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful.…
Beauty is important to all of the daughters and their mothers. Superstition factors into their everyday lives controlling their behaviors and thoughts. Stepping in her mother’s footprints, Jing-Mei is following high standards with the lack of experience she displays. Jing-Mei is still viewed as a child although she is in her mid thirties.…
In the novel Moo, Jane Smiley uses Dean Nils Harstad, Marly Hellmich, Dr. Gift, and Chairman X to emphasize how, when there is a conflict between personal belief systems and workplace practices, individuals will sacrifice their morals to reduce the amount of time or effort required to achieve their professional or personal goals. The belief systems discussed can be either religiously, politically, or economically centered. Using religious symbolism, Smiley utilizes the sacrificed beliefs of the above characters to symbolize how when administrators and educators take shortcuts to line their pockets, the American education system suffers. Dean Nils Harstad is the prime example of a character who takes harmful shortcuts, as his interactions…
In August Wilson’s, The Piano Lesson, there are multiple characters that struggles with things that happened in the past. The character Bernice Charles is often shown fighting with her brother. Another thing Bernice fight is her family’s history and this is shown through her daughter’s lack of knowledge of her family’s history. In The Piano Lesson, Bernice, struggles with her family’s history which reveals that one cannot run or hide from their roots and their history.…
In the short story "Scar" by Amy Tan, the title is thoroughly complemented to the story. The author creates an organized plot that exhibits the numerous uses of literary devices such as symbolism, figurative language, and progression in order to make it obvious to the reader that the title brings out the entire premise of the story. Amy Tan uses a great deal of symbolism in her novella which stands out in her work and makes her writing more compellingand appealing to the reader. Her symbolism points out precisely how important the scar really is in relation to the title and the story. For example, it is stated that "With her pretty, pale face, my mother appeared to float in the room, like a ghost" (Tan 16-17).…
True Love Why is it that we as human beings complain so much? Many of us see less fortunate people and think we should be more thankful, but it never seems to last because we go back to complaining about something in our life going wrong. We never seem to know what we truly have until it’s gone. The poem “Why I Hate Raisins” by Natalie Diaz talks just about that, when you read the title you probably think It’s just a poem of someone saying they hate raisins because their nasty.…
Bambara does not explain what kind of neighborhood this is but the reader is able to get an image of it through the language. " And the starch in my pinafore scratching the shit outta me and I'm really hating this nappy-headed bitch and her goddamn college degree" (Bambara 136). This sentence gives the image that this is a poor, low class neighborhood. The reader is able to identify that this is not a high-class place, but one possibly in the slums.…
Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats illustrates the complex dynamic of failed relationship with images of swans and ducks, which also appear throughout Desmond Hogan’s Children of Lir. Hogan’s collection of short stories including “The Children of Lir” and “Southern Birds” feature Irishmen who embody English loyalty and use their masculine power to initially control native Irish civilians. Both Carr and Hogan illustrate feminine protagonists who are shunned from their society, but who also take a liking to swans. Irish playwrights and writers utilize symbolic images of swans and ducks to illustrate ownership between masculine ideas of English pride and ostracized, feminine Irish protagonists.…
Symbolism in “Trifles” Susan Glaspell ’s play “Trifles” is set in the early 1900’s. Throughout the course of the story, the main setting is in the kitchen. This would not sound so bad if we were not informed of other characteristics of the house. The kitchen and the house is described as gloomy and the overall sense of the house is just depressing.…
Attention Grabber: In our society, we all long for a feeling of acceptance by our peers and we detest the feeling of being left on the outside. Introduce literature used: On a Rainy River by Tim O’Brien Thesis: Acceptance of plays a role in the responsibilities that we put upon ourselves, this is demonstrated through the character of Tim O'Brien, metaphor and tone of the story. Body Body Paragraph 1…
[America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is where people from all over the world come for a fresh start and a better opportunity than they had in their country.] Jing-mei’s mother decides to come to America from China to get away from all the things she had lost including her mother, father, home, husband and twin baby girls. When she came to San Francisco in 1949, she knew that things were going to get better. She decided that her daughter, Jing-mei, is going to be a prodigy.…
Jing Mei states, “This communist China” (Tan 257) from drinks and food she locates in her room, to the Americanized hamburgers and French fries her family eats. After a conversation with her father, Canning Woo, Jing Mei is told the story of her mother, who traveled with two baby daughters trying to escape the Japanese. Jing Mei mother, Suyuan was drained and strictened with dysentery which initiated for her to leave her baby girls on the side of the road. She attached a letter, what money and valuables remaining to the girls and hoped that someone would pick them up and the twins one-day return to the family. Jing Mei felt as though her sisters would blame her for their mother’s death.…
There exists a stereotype about the children of immigrants: their parents press them hard to be successful, to be more than the ordinary, to avoid the struggles they themselves once faced. Those parents, perhaps, see the success of the future generation as the fruits of their own labor. People often hold the idea that immigrant parents are living vicariously through their children. In many ways, as they sometimes are, this stereotype is not far from the truth. Such behaviors are observable in the stories and memoirs of immigrants’ children; for instance, Jing-mei of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds”.…