Memoir

emotions of the characters. As a result, we can find out how the characters in books feel about situations and allow the reader to analyze the character's reactions and how they grow from them. In 1994, Melba Patillo Beals published Warriors Don’t Cry, a memoir of her life and the struggles she faced growing up with racism. This book takes place in 1957, right in the heart of the integration of southern public schools. Melba decides to enters herself in the integration process of Central High…

from 1991 to 2001 affected every citizen of Sierra Leone, including children. Ishmael Beah is a man who was caught in the war as a child, and forced to both witness and commit acts of violence as a child soldier, as expressed in his memoir. The role of violence in the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is to portray the theme of loss of innocence through the comparisons and contrasts of violent acts while Ishmael was running from the rebels, during his time as a child soldier, and after his…

Vera Brittain, in her memoir, Testament of Youth, analyzes and describes her experiences being a young lady during the First World War. Her memoir consists of clips of letters, from her brother (Edward) and her fiancé (Roland), and clips of her journal in order to better understand her thoughts and feelings concerning both the war and her personal life. Brittain’s purpose is to try to unravel all the feelings she has, while trying to understand them, because, at the time, it was difficult for…

torn apart. When arriving in the camps, family relationships were often disregarded with half of a family going straight to the crematories. Whatever sort of relation could be salvaged was clung to, even when letting go was the best option. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel, prolific author and Nobel Peace Prize winner, recounts his relationships with his god, which was the foundation of his early life, and his father, who became his motivation for carrying on. Just as often as his father was a…

experience of slaves and the hardship they faced, but also a critique of how history is written. Most people have heard of the saying ‘history is written by the victors’, and Moglen provides an epitomical example of this. By exploring the concise memoirs of Andrew and Magdalena – primary sources from the victims of the Moravian slave-trade – Enslaved in the City on a Hill recounts the progressive, for its time, city of Bethlehem. Moglen, however, contends that, despite the egalitarian – or…

There are certain events in our lives that cannot be told. No matter how hard we try to forget about them, they still haunt our memories. Not everything you encounter will stay in your memory, only the events that are very meaningful and have impacted your life in some way will find a way to glade through your memory. Sometimes, the memories we have built haunt us and the only way to get them out is to accept them, and one way to accept this is through writing. It is hard to find words to…

The ordeals a person go through could change his or her life in either a positive or a negative way. The life Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, changed as he encounter the horror of Holocaust and the terror it brought. His memoir, Night, shows how he represented the Jews both in physical and mental form throughout their stay in the concentration camp. Firstly, the change overtime in Elie’s attitude towards God represented more than half of the Jews during the Holocaust. They came in the…

Bechdel choose to start her memoir in this fashion because it thoroughly explains how she utilizes writing as an escape her reoccurring thoughts. Some may think that writing can only be used to educate or entertain people, Writing can also be used to solidify uncertain feeling or emotions by logging events from external life and internal life and evaluating one’s mental state by tracking “changes [and] trac[ing] moods developing” (Frame 3, 89). A student, Katelyn Gemmel concurs “that writing is…

Head strong, justice oriented, and shielded by childhood innocence, just to name a few, describe Marjane Satrapi character in Persepolis, a memoir describing the difficulties she faced adjusting to Islamic rule in Iran during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Satrapi’s use of comics and dialogue effectively retells the hardships endured by the Iranian people during a process of revolution. Ultimately, Persepolis describes the clash of ideologies, modernism and fundamentalism, the way in which it…

potential and qualities as an individual, especially in relation to social context. Such is a case with 13-year old pubescent choirboy John Milton, or “Spud” from Spud by John Van de Ruit, and the vengeful teenager Ishmael Beah from A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Likewise, both protagonists constantly try to overcome their challenges and alter their ways to achieve social dominance and power. In Spud by John Van de Ruit, the protagonist, John Milton, is often…