The short story “The Chase,” an excerpt from An American Childhood by Annie Dillard, and the novel Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse share a similar theme of how strangers impact a person's life. The theme that they share is how strangers can have a positive, long-lasting impact on people’s lives. Dillard and Hesse use evidence throughout the text to support the theme. At the beginning of the text, Annie uses flashback as a method to explain how the boys taught her to play football and baseball. She writes, “Some boys taught me to play football. This was fine sport” (Para 1). “Boys welcomed me at baseball, too, for I had, through enthusiastic practice, what was weirdly known as a boy’s arm” (Para 2). Dillard is suggesting that the boys taught her and let her play with them. The boys invited her to throw snowballs and she has “seldom been happier since” (Para 2).
As the excerpt progresses, Dillard uses the man running out of the car to show that this was “the only time in all of life... a man got out of it, running” (Para 9). Annie describes how the man was the only person in all life that got out of the car and chased them. Annie thought that the man would have given up if he was an ordinary adult. “At the corner,
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“The neighbor women came/They wrapped my baby brother in a blanket /and placed him in Ma's bandaged arms/We buried them together/on the rise Ma loved,” Also, the neighbors cleaned the death from the house, then they blamed Billie Jo. “The women talked as they/scrubbed death from our house/I/stayed in my room/silent on the iron bed/listening to their voices./"Billie Jo threw the pail,"/they said./ "An accident/"they said./Under their words a finger pointed./They didn't talk/about my father leaving kerosene by the stove./They didn't say a word about my father/drinking himself/into a stupor/while Ma writhed, begging for
The book “Forged by Fire” by Sharon M. Draper is a book with many themes and lessons we all can learn. One of the themes that this essay will talk about will be about loyalty. For one thing, loyalty is a strong feeling because it’s something that comes from inside of a person to have faith in someone. Also the fact that we’re all loyal to someone, someone who’s special in our lives and plays a major role in our lives that drags us to support them no matter what. In this book, Gerald gets abused by his drunk, ferocious father whom he absolutely abominates.
The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toomsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady” (O’Connor 45). In Toomsboro, the grandmother initiates the chain of events that will soon lead to the family’s demise. Here, she makes the false realization that the plantation she visited was in Georgia, when really, it was in Tennessee. “Just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her.
The fact that he was able to keep up with them during the pursuit was very intriguing to her. She explains that this was the first time that anyone has actually stopped their car to reprimand them. 3. Dillard was insinuating that girls back then were expected to act like girls. (play with dolls, not get dirty ect...)
The lead singer talks about how he tries to satisfy and be their for his significant other, but that doesn 't stop them from being disrespectful and rude. The beat of this song helps to show readers the frustration Pattyn had toward her father. The harsh tempo helps demonstrate how rebellious Pattyn is feeling and how fed up she is with being ignored and abused. When Pattyn is at her place of residence, she feels very alone unless she talks to her sister Jackie.
Through hardships and suffering, through celebration and joy, family will always be there to support and comfort you, as you will to them. Dicey’s Song, by Cynthia Voigt, is a realistic fiction novel that takes place along the Chesapeake Bay. Dicey Tillerman and her three younger siblings are learning to adjust and fit in at their new home with their grandmother, after their emotionally-ill mother abandoned them. They all grew closer, and learned to love, help, and protect each other when Dicey and her brothers and sister started having issues at school, and money began dwindling. Dicey’s grandmother ended up adopting the children , and by the time the news of the kids’ mother’s death reached them, they were a true, close and united, family.
Conflict fuels most relationships through tough times. In the story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, the characters of Mama and Dee have a stressful conflict placed upon their relationship. Mama was raised upon the philosophy that strong work can achieve anything, while Dee was raised in a more educated environment than Mama. This causes a conflict, which causes trouble in their relationship, showing that conflict has a negative impact on relationships. One conflict that takes place happens when Dee arrives home from college.
I was in an unfamiliar country and yet I’d never felt more at home. For that single week I spent in my country, I met cousins I didn’t know I had, I learned how to cook, and I learned to value the fact that the city always has electricity. I was also able to see where my parents had inherited the strength and resilience they so carefully taught me to have. They exhibited these qualities as I was growing up, when they struggled to pay bills and learn the American way of life. We didn’t know where our next meal was coming from, but, similar to my grandparents, their laughter never ceased and the sounds of merengue never died down.
Those who knew about the Clutter family’s death were miserable: “Mostly, we just drove around in his old Ford. Up and down the highway … The radio was always playing; we didn't have anything to say ourselves” (Capote 94). Susan Kidwell and Bobby Rupp were together and they were described in a depressed way, which set the tone. The kids didn’t live their regular lifestyle after the death, which gave tone to the reading.
Characters Help Establish a Theme Characters are used to help develop a theme and create a more relatable story. In the book, “Out of the Dust” by Karen Hesse, Billie Jo and her father stay strong through the dust bowl and the death of their family members. Billie Jo and daddy, from “Out of the Dust”, helped to develop the theme that when you’re at the end of the rope, tie a knot and hold on because of how they persevere through their hardships. Daddy shows persistence in how he never lets his sadness overcome him. First, even though his wife was gone, he never stopped digging the pond.
The narrator described the very stereotypical gang members in Harlem being “filled with rage” and “popping off needles every time they went to the head” (Baldwin 123). Lastly, the change in the author's tone was very evident. The readers could notice when the narrator was talking about life in Harlem or Sonny’s drug abuse because it had a very bitter and cold tone. However, when Sonny was talking about his music the tone was hopeful and positive. Baldwin wanted to show that music was the one thing helping with Sonny’s pain.
The story opens with Mrs. Wright imprisoned for strangling her husband. A group, the mostly composed of men, travel to the Wright house in the hopes that they find incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright. Instead, the two women of the group discover evidence of Mr. Wright’s abuse of his wife. Through the women’s unique perspective, the reader glimpses the reality of the situation and realizes that, though it seemed unreasonable at the time, Mrs. Wright had carefully calculated her actions. When asked about the Wrights, one of the women, Mrs. Hale, replies “I don’t think a place would be a cheerful for John Wright’s being in it” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 7).
In conclusion, the author of this story has shown that the theme of this novel is to know people before you trust them, for not everyone can be
On this journey, on the road of life, those will meet many different kinds of people. People will find many great individuals out in this big world actually have some kind of a dark side to them. It does not matter how nice they are to your face. At any point, they can turn right around and stab you straight in the back like you never even mattered to them. As one critic says,” Here, relying on her Southern cultural and religious heritage to set the scene, she writes of the innocence and corruption that can coexist within people”.
“My dad picked this shabby place because he got it for a discount. It’s my mother damn funeral!” “Did you tell him that?” The woman gripped the sides of her satin back dress, yanking it over her hips. “Hi, Hanele and Karr,” the hoarse voiced man said from the porch steps of the funeral
When Richard’s heard the news of her husband’s death, he assumed Mrs. Mallard would be devastated. While everyone knew Mrs. Mallard was “afflicted with heart trouble” (57), him and her sister, Josephine, wanted to give her the news with “great care” (57). Josephine broke the news to Mrs. Mallard in “broken sentences”