Allison's Character In 'The Unspoken'

Tim O’Brien used his thoughts when he is talking about Linda after she passed away. “And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her…” (O’Brien 232). Tim loved Linda, so he would do anything to get her back, even if it meant making up a fake scenario in his head. The author would use his thoughts to make the dead seem alive, even if it was just for a moment by “...still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way” (O’Brien 232). The author imagines a life that includes Linda to make it seem like she never really left. Throughout the chapter the author uses his imagination and thoughts when telling stories about the people that had the greatest impact on him to make it seem like they are still alive and with

Through the mother, we see that dreaming may lead to a painful disappointment. The mother has an unrealistic image of her and her future husband as an idyllic, respectable and happy couple, which is not true in reality. “… avoiding the riotous amusements being beneath the dignity of so dignified couple”. She is trying to make an image of herself as an intelligent, domestic and interesting woman, which shows

A main theme of this book, is the importance of living in the present, instead of dwelling on the past. Many of the characters in this novel carried a nostalgic perspective on life, and it influenced their attitude towards the present. It was very common for the characters to tell stories from their past. Jim often relates incidents in the present, to things that happened to him in the past. Jim is not the only one focusing on the past, however. For example, Peter, one of the Russian immigrants, has a very romanticized idea of the past, which causes him to have a depressed attitude towards the present. Jim observed this on one particular meeting, “Once, while [Peter] was looking at Ántonia, he sighed and told us that if he had stayed at home in Russia perhaps by this time he would have had a pretty daughter of his own to cook and keep house for him.” Peter allowed the idea of ‘what if I had...’ to interfere with his future. Because of the adults "what if" attitude, the teens of this novel have a sense of urgency in their lives. They witness how nostalgic the adults, and they themselves, are becoming, and come to a realization. The good days are the first to pass, and the most fleeting. Jim takes this as an excuse to be nostalgic on the past, a past he was not even there to witness. He looked at the wilderness of his new home, and fantasized about how wonderful it’s past was, “Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was, faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; but grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there. […] The old figure stirred me as it had never done before.” Jim looks at the past with wonderment - it is a place that was much more ideal than his present. Unlike him,

Allie appears to be a lonely person, although married and with three children of her own. She has no one that she can share her secret of

In Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, the protagonist, a freshman named Melinda must learn the key to recovery after enduring extreme trauma. She struggled to find someone to speak to, due to the school shunning her for calling the police at the party. Throughout Speak, Melinda seeks to recover from the trauma she experienced, especially the cruel actions from her ex-friends. Through symbolism, Laurie Halse Anderson displays the theme in Melinda's perspective.

In the story “A Secret Sorrow”, a woman by the name of Faye is battling a traumatic accident. The reference of the car accident sets the reader up for the tone of the story. In the beginning of chapter 11, Faye is very fragile woman. Something is making her feel distraught. When reading the first sentence “feel the blood drain from her face” (Van Der Zee 28) and “thought she was going to faint” (28), its not clear what permanent internal injury Faye has, as stated in the preface. In the following few paragraphs the author wrote, “clutched at him for support, fighting for control” and “legs were shaking so badly”. These descriptive statements of

In the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the author does something out of place or that the character wouldn’t do and it brings the book to a whole other level. The main character is Melinda and she has a hard time in highschool. She doesn’t have any friends and most of her teachers don’t like her. Also her and her parents don’t really talk to each other. They don’t have a connection with her like some parents have with their kids. So just from this you can kind of tell that Melinda of has no hope inside of her.

Allison actually was born a “bastard” (Amazon 78), and her life was further complicated through dealing with her

The movie “My sisters keeper” is about 13 year-old Anna, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister Kate, who has leukemia. This essay will focus on three events in Anna’s life, and discuss how each event in the characters life had an affect on her physical, psychosocial and cognitive development. The events that will be discussed are: how being brought into the world to save Kate affected Anna’s psychosocial development, how having to undergo many surgeries at a very young age affected Anna’s physical development, and also how Anna’s cognitive development was affected by her sisters sickness and death.

In those dreams with Linda, he is able to say & do the things he never got a chance to before she passed. By doing this, the author “practices the magic of stories (231)” by bringing the dead to life in his dreams about Linda, and also in his war

A certain image, scent or sound can bring back moments that may have been forgotten. The speaker is astonished by the dreams she has of her mother. Her mother died very ill, the person who she was when she died was merely a shell of who she truly was. She describes her as “so much better than I remembered.” (Monro, 151). At the end of her mother’s life she could not hear her voice. She remembers her “mother’s liveliness of face and voice before her throat muscles stiffened [as] a woeful, impersonal mask fastened itself over her features.” (Monro, 151) In her dreams she was able to hear her mother’s voice again, opposed to the reality before her death. A mother’s voice is beautiful, and there is no other sound that compare to something as unique. Elliot writes “The unconscious sifts through memory, and then offers up details either strangely distorted or implausibly combined. As in art, as in story, dreams too, render experience metonymically.” (Elliot, 79). With time memories inevitably fade, but the dreams bring a sense of comfort and replenish the image of her mother. “How could I have forgotten this?” (Monro, 151). Heller writes that this scene “serves as a springboard from which the narrator launches into a story being told by her mother.” (Heller, 1). This scene leads us to the central conflict in the story of her mother’s life, and assists in understanding the conflict

Though Adah is Leah's identical twin sister, at least as a child she was very much night to Leah's day. Where her sister was a tireless tomboy, Adah was crippled, the whole left side of her body paralyzed from birth. Where Leah was idealistic, Adah was a cynic preferring to view things backward rather than forward; and where Leah threw herself into life, Adah held back, preferring to pretend she was merely a wry observer rather than a participant. She even refused to speak except in emergencies. As Adah ages, however, she loses these characteristics to a certain extent. While struggling to save herself from death one night in the Congo, she realizes that she cares about her life, and so is not a detached observer. A neurologist friend helps

Allison Willis was known by the name of Ali to her friends and she too was a high school dropout. Allison had many outbursts and often times acted crazy but her parents seldom said or did anything because they felt it related back to when she was raped at the age of fourteen. Lisa introduced Bobby and Allison in a selfish attempt to better the relationship that she (Lisa) had with Marty.

It is in her Prologue that she begins to use biblical allusions. She mentions King Solomon and Abraham, justifying her five marriages by saying that many of the religious greats had several wives. By comparing herself to these religious figures, Allison wants to make it clear that she has enough authority to dictate the validity of marriage. This authority was given to her by God just as it was given to the fathers of Christianity, and in addition to being blessed with authority she was given sexuality. There is a spiritual connection between

talked of "seeing" in her dreams much as she saw when she was awake (let it be