Arthur C. Clarke

Hundreds of children talking all at once, that’s what morning at Illini Elementary School sounded like. And there I sat having no one to talk to. Until one day a new girl came through the school doors. She was as tall as a giant and had short black box braids. This girl sat down by all the other children in my grade. So many thoughts were going through my head at once I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous to talk to her that I almost threw up! I didn’t want her to reject me like the other…

In the film The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman, two women, Martha and Karen, run an all girls boarding school. One of the girls, Mary Tilford, becomes upset when she is punished for disobeying the rules and decides that she does not want to return to school. She recalls one of her classmates, Rosalie, telling her that Martha’s Aunt, Lily Mortar, had said that Martha’s actions towards Karen were “unnatural”. To avoid returning to school, Mary uses this information and forms a lie that she…

Bleak House is a story about Esther Summerson who lives with her aunt and is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon. She spends the early years of her life at Ms. Barbary, her aunt’s house. After Ms. Barbary’s death she goes to live at Greenleaf at Ms. Donny’s with the help of her guardian Mr. Jarndyce. She spends six years at Greenleaf. After six years she goes to live at her guardian’s house accompanied with two other wards Miss Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. She…

The gothic novel, Jane Eyre, focuses on the life of a young, orphaned girl, who learns to balance her precarious station in 19th century England- a society whose culture is dictated by rigid social castes and protocols. She grows up in household of her Aunt, Mrs Reed, after the death of her parents, where she experiences neglect and estrangement until she moves to a charity school at the age of ten. The novel briefly narrates the story of her cousins, Georgiana and Eliza Reed, through brief…

In the book “This Boy’s Life: A Memoir”, by Tobias Wolf, the author often illustrates Jack’s coping mechanism to escape the unpleasant parts of his life. Using his coping mechanism of imagination made his life more endurable without the restraints that are placed upon him. In particular, his coping mechanism would involve him using his imagination to imagine where he wants to be in life and how much of a different boy he would be if he grew into a high class family that did not have any problems…

The Film ‘A Little Princess’ directed by Alfonso Cuaron in 1995 and tells a story of a young girl from India, who is sent to stay at a boarding school while her father goes to fight in war, as her mother is dead. On the other hand, the novel ‘The secret Garden’ was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1911 and tells a story of a spoilt ten year old girl who has to move from India to her uncle's house in England after her parents had died from a disease. Both film and novel displays the theme…

The Flower Girl’s Great Transformation “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” In George Bernard Shaw’s fictional play, Pygmalion, Liza Doolittle also known as The Flower Girl, is the protagonist and is under an experiment for six months. Liza lives with two old gentlemen, Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering. She later discovers her new identity, a better lifestyle where there is education, etiquettes, social class, and fashion…

“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart,” -Anne Frank. That’s tough to swallow, especially considering Anne was a Jew during the Holocaust. Anne and her family didn’t go to a camp like most Jews. They went into hiding and had to live with another family for two years. Two families and one stranger in an attic above a business; things will definitely not always go well. There will obviously be differences between some of them. Especially Anne Frank, and her…

Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson,” illustrates the unequal distribution of wealth in America which causes the protagonist, Sylvia, to lose her innocence and reevaluate the social class spectrum she lives in. Miss Moore, who is the only person with a college degree in the area, wants to teach Sylvia and the other children a life-changing lesson in an outing to a toy store. From the group of children, Sylvia shows she is a naïve and stubborn child who does not value anyone’s opinion.…

When Jane Eyre was first published by Charlotte Brontë in Victorian England, it was viewed as revolutionary. In the modern era, despite rapid changes in the role of women in both the home and workplace, the novel is still regarded as one of the greatest works of feminist literature worldwide. Brontë expertly presents power struggles between her narrator, Jane, and men, alongside conflicts with society as a whole in order to produce an overall theme of female empowerment. Within this passage…