This paper will explore depictions of marriage in Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water and how rejections of hierarchal male-female relationships, specifically by female characters, parallel and aide rejections of cultural oppression of First Nations, establishing a new basis for equality. King’s female characters remove themselves from positions of subservience, maintaining the autonomy and equality also hoped for but oft denied in First Nation’s relations with colonizing forces. Particularly, Alberta and Latisha each experience relationships easily interpreted as representations of colonialist domination and reject traditional gendered expectations to meet their individual goals, drawing parallels to King’s revision of the accepted narrative of colonial oppression. The behaviour of King’s female characters when faced with such roles demonstrate the intimate relationship between deconstructions of sexism and colonialism, and the desire for a future in which colonialist cultural supremacy has been replaced with community and respect for identity.…
The cover for ‘Poor little Dead Girls’ by Lizzie Friend does not accurately show the major theme that sometimes you need to let people help you to be able to do things better. The theme isn't represented on the original cover because the words are the design of the most important parts book than what it's about. In the novel we see the theme communicated on page 216 “We happen to know a little about what's it like to not have complete control over your life, but we know a lot more how to handle it.” This shows my theme of sometimes you need to let people help to be able to do things better because since her friend has experienced this situation before it will be better planned than if she had done it herself. The idea of this theme isn't communicated well on the cover because the only thing that could possibly show is the design of the girls school uniform that shows friendship, you wouldn't understand until after reading the book.…
“Girl Unprotected” by Laura Robinson was published on May 11, 2008. In this essay the author informs the reader about the dark side of hockey culture in Canada. Serious, formal, and objective tones are used throughout this essay in order to create a negative connotation without using negative forms of diction. This technique is used so that the persona created in the writing shows no bias, however has the ability to sway the readers opinion. In doing this, the author keeps an objective, unwavering stand on the issue, however plays with the readers sense of pathos and ethos.…
The story “Girl” revolves entirely on the mother berating her daughter and teaching her what she’s expected to become and the role she has as an Antiguan women. The reader can infer that the author could possibly be talking about her own life when she was a small child. It’s obvious that as a woman in that time period, one had to live up to certain expectations. For example, the mother tells her daughter that she has to sweep the whole house, set the table for dinner, sew and iron clothes, along with many household chores. Perhaps the author was told this by her own mother out of fear for her child.…
It is clear that although black women do not have to deal with the harsh tribulations of slavery, they still must deal with a society that was built on it and holds on to many of its archaic beliefs. One of the most prominent recurring aspects of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is…
Jamaica Kincaid, the author of the short story “Girl,” was raised on the island of Antigua. During the time in which she was raised, Antigua was influenced by the British government. Because of the British control, Kincaid was raised in a culture immersed in the ideals of oppression and slavery. Being an African American woman in Antigua during the rule of the British government influenced how she wrote later in life. She eventually moved to America and landed a job as a writer for The New Yorker.…
“Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen is based on a true story about the author, who spent time at a mental institution called McLean Hospital in the late 1960’s. Throughout the book the author writes about her experiences at the hospital and the people she encountered while she was there. While Susanna Kaysen encountered many people at McLean, none played a major role in the conflict that arises in the book, which is Susanna being sent to the institution and having to face her mental illness. Although it can be argued that the doctor who sent Susanna to McLean is the antagonist, it is clear that Susanna is both the antagonist and protagonist, since her biggest problem is dealing with being sent to a mental institution, her mental illness,…
In History “In History”, by Jamaica Kincaid, weaves together the stories of Christopher Columbus, George Clifford, and Carl Linnaeus so that the reader may understand why the author is questioning her own history and those who are like her. Kincaid questions us, “What is History? Is it a Theory? Is it an Ideal” She answers these questions through the stories of these three men as they come across and label foreign people, lands, or plants. Kincaid implies that the act of identifying and labeling unfamiliar with familiar terms are taken from these men 's subjective lives.…
The cultural ties to empire are not so easy to efface as the political ones. In the past half century, this is perhaps one of the most important lessons the world has learned from the movement towards the independence of the part of European colonies. Some countries become England colonies including Asia, India, Africa, and some parts of North America. Although these countries are no longer dependent on the British colonies, the residual effect of colonial domination is still remain nowadays. Growing up in the small island in Antigua, which was once the colony of the British Empire, Kincaid has written many short stories and autobiographical essays to express her anger and hatred toward England.…
Gathering evidence from diaries, memoirs, letters, and other contemporary material, Mary Beth Norton examines the impact of the Revolution War had on the women residing in the thirteen colonies from 1750 to 1800. Liberty 's Daughters provides historical evidence of women 's daily lives, domestic activities, marriages, pains of pregnancies, and the difficulties women of this era had in defining a sense of feminine independence before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. Norton takes an in-depth look at "The Constant Pattern of Women 's Lives" within the first part of the book, expanding on the livelihoods of women in the immediate years before the Revolution. This section addresses how women were treated, measured, and what their acceptable…
In Australian society, women are treated as equals to men, and are presented with almost all the same rights and opportunities as they are. However, this is not the case in every country around the world. Views on women differ from country to country, and this effects how they are treated by society, and places certain expectations upon them. I am a Girl by Rebecca Barry, released on the 28th of August 2013, focuses on the lives of young women around the world; Manu, Kimsey, Aziza, Habiba, Breani and Katie. Their cultures differ, but they all share the difficulty of growing up as a woman in their respective cultures.…
How Style, Tone, and Characterization in Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” Show the Universal Pressures on Woman in a Patriarchal Society "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid reveals the overwhelming pressure on young women to look and act in certain ways in order to please men and society. Through the use of the literary elements style, tone, and characterization, Jamaica Kincaid is able to place the reader into the shoes of a young Caribbean girl as her mother describes to her what she must do in order to protect her reputation and grow into a respectable woman. Gender and gender-roles are a main theme in this work as scholar Carol Bailey writes in her article, Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” and Oonya Kempadoo’s Buxton Spice,…
In the article by scholar Carol Bailey, his focus is on the idea “preserving the self” Bailey states that readers of “Girl” only observe only the fictional representation of how to educate a child. Bailey points out how the speaker of “girl” provides many guidelines of living and lectures to the girl, but the girl has no room for discussion to defend herself. The idea that there is no room for discussion comes from the repetitions of “This is how” in Kincaid’s work “Girl” (Bailey 108). The constant nagging to a child of “This is how” gives the child no sense of just simply learning from her mistakes, instead she has to always strive to be correct. In order for women to be successful they need to appropriately perform their gender based on their culture, constantly being judge whether they do or…
To a certain degree, the short story is presented to the readers as a compilation of life instructions from mother to daughter on how to conduct herself in a way such that she does not jeopardize her future social status. Almost vehemently, the mother wants to be sure that her daughter has all the possible information that she can pass on to her. The mother wants to minimize the risk of her daughter failing in life by not knowing all the details that are involved in becoming a proper lady in the post-colonial, Antiguan society in the late 1970s. In this fashion, the mother pushes her commanding instructions onto the girl to the point of overstepping boundaries. Next, the mother starts degrading her daughter when she practically accuses her of being improper by saying, “. . .…
Visual Communication Term Paper Introduction The photo The Struggling Girl by Kevin Carter, was a war photograph that brought the attention of millions to the struggle of Sudan. In this paper the photo will be broken down and analyzed into six unique perspectives that the class of COMM 300 learned about all semester. These perspectives are as follow: the personal perspective, which is what my thoughts of the image were after first seeing it. The second is the historical perspective, giving the reader some insight on the background this photo.…