In What Night Brings, the author creates the character of Marci as this young girl with a very curious mind, which as a reader one could see that her intuition about life and the way people respond to her make her question honesty and the way adults try to hide things from children. This leads her to discovering the reality and the reasoning behind why adults act the way they do. Carla Trujillo writes this novel using a first person view, using the voice of Marci, who is an 11 year old pre lesbian, catholic. The author takes the reader on a journey of Marci’s development in discovering her sexuailty, to what her beliefs are, and the despise she has towards her father. Not only does the author express these feelings, she also indicates how …show more content…
She has a hard time understanding how so many people can be invested into asking God for help even when they don’t receive answers right away, and why their faith is so strong, “I mean why keep asking for something if you never get it? If i’m supposed to have faith, like Sister ‘Lizabeth says, then how do I keep having it? How does everyone else?” (Trujillo 123). While Marci is quite young, she has a brilliant open mind, and as a child she is quickly to question things she does not understand. As she constantly hears her father call her uncle a “jotito,” while knowing he is a church man, who goes to church for other reasons. Readers gather on the fact that the uncle is gay and has sexual relations with the priest, also gathering that the word “jotito” is an insultive way to say that one is gay. Here one can tell that Marcia’s heterosexual parents do not accept or even respect the gay community. Without Marci knowing the meaning behind the word “jotito” or even why she found her uncle and the priest in the same confessional, she knew something was strange about that situation. Marci as young as she is, does not know the explicit meaning behind her sexuality or the sexuality of others. What she does know, is that all her life, she has seen a man and a woman together, and this is the only way …show more content…
It’s like she knew that everything everyone said regarding that world was a lie. And in a way she had a clear understanding of it, she just needed someone else to confirm it. Due to her father’s abuse, Marci doubts that no matter the amount of times she asks for help, he will continue to come back and ruin their lives. How is one supposed to have faith if none of things one asks is being accomplished? Everyone around Marci was always looking at the upside of things when it came to topics about God, her parents influenced her to continue catechism but would rarely go to church themselves, they allowed abuse and cursing but didn’t allow their daughters to act out as well. The way Trujillo writes the viewpoint of the parents comes to play with how America’s system works. Most people in America are forward into believing that adults belief is right, whatever the mother and the father say is whats to be done, not realizing their actions reflect on those around them, most importantly their children. So if one, in this case Marci is observing the abuse, the lies, the negativity around her, and then told to “act right”, of course the child is not going to know what that even means. Marci still understood what sinning was, as she was taught in church, and she knew her strong feelings towards her dad was a sin. She did not act out on her hatred unless
The book Night written by Ellie Wiesel is an autobiography about his experiences during the holocaust in 1944. He is a survivor and was only 12 at the time. Ellie had three sisters named Hilda, Bea and Tzipora. His parents ran a store in Transylvania where Ellie spent most of his childhood in. Ellie 's mentor who everyone referred to as Moishe the Beadle is poor men who taught and helped Ellie study the cabbala. Early in the war, Moishe was expelled from Sighet as well as all the other foreign Jews. A few months after, everything was back to normal for Ellie and everyone else. His teacher, Moishe the Beadle then returns from his near death experience and warns everyone that the Nazi will soon come after them. No one really listened to him and did not believe that stories he told or didn’t want to believe them. Soon after this, the anti-Semitic Measures had the entire Sighet Jews move into ghettos that were supervised. With everyone living in fear, the Wiesel family remained calm and did not complain once.
Not only that but her questioning of gender role was a concern for her. After her parents were separated, her father’s expectations of her were no longer there and did not speak to one another. After a while, blaming one-self after a separation of the parents is always expected from young children and so Roberta’s feeling that the separation of her mother and father was due to her misbehavior at home allowed her to be not happy. The separation of her parents did not only cause Roberta to feel not happy but also her thinking was shaped in ways that blamed all men to be the exact same way and that on one could be the same. This can be related to what each child feels and thinks if that were to happen to their own family, and unfortunately in our current society there are people that still the same way as Roberta’s father and
She explains how she pursues a gender-sexuality outline in order to be introduced into womanhood and secure her future. However, Erauso changes herself in order to receive the free will and privileges of a man. She illustrates how she advanced the system regardless of breaking all of the regulations. Erauso explains how her community relies on a fixed set of rules whereat they send their daughters away with only two options of becoming a nun or a housewife. However, Erauso notices the lives her brothers live and how they are privileged with free money and freedom to decide which direction they want to take their life in.
I went Into Elie Wiesel 's Night having read the book in various stages in my life. It seems to follow me through my schooling years. In junior high I read it in standard English class, just like any other book I would have read that year. In high school I read it for a project I was creating on World War II, looking at it from a more historical approach. Being a firsthand account of concentration camps made it a reliable source of historical information. But during previous times when I was reading, I never thought to take a look at it from a theological point of view. Doing so this time really opened my eyes to things and themes I hadn 't noticed during previous readings.
“No… we have a daughter, and I don’t want to break a holy vow” (Linmark 94). This is a perfect example of how religion has oppressed these people over time. Furthermore, this may contribute to the extreme discourse between the parents and the children throughout the novel. The children can see how religion has affected their parents as they are virtually brainwashed by their spiritual beliefs and the children wish to avoid the oppressions of this institution. They do so by using their language to rewrite traditional Catholic litany and hymns invoking other “cultural” saints to paint a picture of their lives and the lack of God’s presence that they feel.
Another challenge that arises with the process of puberty is the loss of innocence. In the vignette, “The Family of Little Feet”, readers can see how Esperanza and her friends learn the disturbing price of beauty as they experience their first encounter with provocative remarks. During this encounter, a bum says“ Your little lemon shoes are so beautiful. But come closer, I can’t see very well. Come closer. Please… Rachel, you are prettier than a yellow taxicab. You know that?” (Cisneros 41). After this incident, readers can observe how the girls’ childhood game of dress up turned into a promiscuous encounter with the reality of becoming women. When girls make the transition from childhood to adulthood, their bodies will start to change, and with that comes sexual innuendos they have not heard until now. Usually, a child’s innocence is lost over the course of a few years, but unfortunately in Esperanza’s situation, she was cruelly taken advantage of. The vignette, “ Red Clowns”, is about how Esperanza is sexually abused against her will at a carnival. When Esperanza recounts the horrid experience she says, “The one who grabbed my by the arm, he wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine” (Cisneros 100). After this traumatic assault, it can be inferred that Esperanza’s innocence
With an abruptly vacant mom and a change of schools, francesca is caught in a situation where she no longer has a place to fit. "But God doesn't talk to me. He only talks to people like Mia. People he thinks are worth it. Because they have passion. They have something. I have nothing. I'm a waste of space." (Marchetta, 51) For the duration of the book, Francesca is constantly looking for a place to fit, and she finds temporary hapiness amongst few people yet a hole remains where her mother belongs. A relationaship she once found irritating, becomes a relationship she needs to feel wanted. It isn't until her mother begins to reinhabit the family's life, that francesca finally feels content in
Rodriguez argues that knowing English is an asset and his reluctance to learn lengthens his set of problems. He starts the narrative with illustrating his confinement and predisposition to failure in grade school. Rodriguez is forced learn English because of painful alienation in his home and school. In the beginning, Richard has a distaste for English while paradoxically if he would have accepted learning it sooner it would have been less painful. The underlying exalted virtue is flexibility to learn regardless of the discomfort. His persuasiveness is effective as he creates sympathy in the audience by depicting highly relatable emotions such as loneliness, unwillingness, and confusion.
Everyday she struggles with people calling her the bad person, people not believing her, and people not forgiving her, like her own father. One day when Valerie’s mom texts her telling her she has to work late and to ride the bus home, she decides to walk a few miles to her dads firm. She was kind of skeptical of asking her dad for a ride but she figured it’d be a better alternative to riding the bus. When she arrives at the firm she sees something that made her mouth drop. She saw he dad gently place a hand on his secretary’s shoulder. He called her ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Baby’, something he hadn’t done to her mom for years. I predicted that he had been having an affair on Valerie’s mom. A few chapters later I found out that my prediction was right. Valeri also found out the ominous truth of her fathers affair. Valerie’s dad told her mom everything and she wanted him out of the house. He told Valerie how much he loved Briley, his twenty-four year old secretary, and then said, “I was set to move in with her over the summer. We’d hoped to have been married been now. But the shooting…” (Brown 294). What made Valerie upset the most was the fact that he hid his anger towards her mom by covering it up with the shooting. He blamed Valerie for his distantness from the family but really he was out having an affair with his
It truly is surprising how a person can change so drastically over a series of events. People can be made into monsters over the murder or death over a loved one for example. Or can be turned to a person of great faith when they were an atheist. This is what happened to Elie and was one of the main conflicts of the story, “Night”. As you can see in the book he loved going to his mosque and his love of God, however, as the story went on his faith slowly deteriorated and crumbled away even though he fought hard to keep it. This can happen to the best of people and there is no way to control it unless you are strong with your beliefs.
Having blossomed from a child into a well-developed young lady, Rachel begins her new teenage ways of “paying too much attention to boy” (150). In the eyes of her grandmother, the worse aspects of her new behavior is labeled as being like her mother, but Rachel exploring her sexuality with males is a result of her loneliness and the lack of sense of self. Through grandmother's hate towards Nella; half of herself had been unconsciously rejected, and it in the novel Rachel says in regards to her sexual touching from John Bailey that he had made all of what is really me feel really good.” (150) These are cries of help from a young lady desperately trying to find someone who loves her as her in the all wrong ways, and this gets further displayed
The father, Paul, is the Congolese community’s go-to pastor. His family has been in the U.S. since the 1980s and have become leaders in the Congolese community of the area. Paul, his wife, their four adult children and their 7 grandchildren live in 4 houses, all next door to each other and always eat dinner together, much to the chagrin of the youngest daughter, Mali. Mali, a 22 year-old still lives with her parents and fears becoming like her siblings and never moving away. She craves her independence yet is deeply attached to her family, forcing her to live in a constant dilemma. As the pastor of the community, Paul often has to deal with accusations of Kindoki (or witchcraft) as the cause of his congregation’s problems rather their own actions. He provides counseling and acts as the wise, elder of the community. This position is very important because it helps keep this small community together. The wisdom he imparts on the community, is a very traditional role in many African societies. Adults and youth in the community look towards him for advice. However, his own adult children, especially Mali, struggle with wanting to live independent lives while taking care of and remaining close to their aging
Almost anyone in society can clarify that they have experienced depression or some type of isolation at one period in their life. It is true that experiencing such darkness causes a person to feel lonely and disconnected from the world. This can be portrayed in "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost. In this poem Frost is walking in the city, at night, and in the rain all while discussing how he is acquainted with the night. The interpretation of this poem can be literal in that Frost is used to walking during the night, but it also proposes a deeper understanding.
Every morning he watches Mangan’s sister and continues to envision beginning a romance with the young lady (Joyce 610). The thought of Mangan’s sister tantalizes the boy to dream of much more than his life permits. It is not the concept of the sister herself, but the idea she embodies. The child is caught in a redundant trap of tedium, however, the prospect of the girl provides emancipation. “Her name sprang to my [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself [the boy] did not understand,” epitomizing that the idea of the girl breaks through the boy’s normalcy.
In this regard, it should be, first and foremost, clarified how morality and spirituality normally developed. Thus, in most cases, one adopts the moral principles either from the family or from the educational institution (thus, for instance, those children that visit boarding schools are supposed to learn about morality there). In Crystal’s case, she is in an initially disadvantaged position because her family exemplifies immorality in its pure form, while the educational institutions which she visits neglect this aspect completely. As a result, the girl has nothing to do but to adopt that perception of morality that is established in her family. One of the most distinctive examples of the fact that Crystal shares similar morality as her mother notwithstanding all the harm that the latter has done to her is the scene that describes the women’s marriage plans.