For this summer reading, I chose to read Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flag. The book is set in Alabama; it is mostly set in the early 1900s to the late 1980s. While in the early 1920s, this was the time of the Great Depression, a time where poverty and racism were well known. The story is told in both present, from the 1920’s - 1940’s, when the events were occurring, and past tense, when Ninny Threadgoode retold the events to Evelyn Couch, in the 1980’s. Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe begins with “The Weems Weekly” introducing the opening of the cafe ran by Ruth Jamison and Idgie Threadgoode. Then, Ninny Threadgoode and Evelyn Couch meet in the visitors lounge in a nursing home. Mrs. Threadgoode …show more content…
Frank Bennett tried to steal the baby from her house, one of the colored employees, Sipsey, kills him with a frying pan. Sipsey’s son, Big George, disposes of the body in that week’s barbecue. He fed that to the detectives who performed the murder investigation. Years after the crime, Idgie is arrested, she refuses to blame Big George or Sispy. Idgie risks going to jail by lying to give them alibis. When Ruth died of cancer in 1947, Idgie’s story comes to a close but at the end it is hinted that she is still alive. Meanwhile, Ninny Threadgoode retells the adventures to Evelyn. Evelyn is an overweight, depressed woman, who visits her weekly. Throughout Mrs. Threadgoode’s stories, Evelyn goes through a huge transformation, a deep friendship begins between the two women. A part of Evelyn’s transformation is she goes from a suicidal overeater to a successful businesswoman selling Mary Kay. At the end of the novel, Evelyn signed up in a summer-long fitness camp for women. There, she is happily losing weight and making friends when she hears that Mrs. Threadgoode has died. Evelyn visits Mrs. Threadgoode’s grave and the rest of her family. She tells Mrs. Threadgoode everything that has been happening is good and she's finally happy …show more content…
But like always there will be those who are immune to your poison”. The meaning behind it, is it is about bullying. Instead of just saying bullying, I made it into a metaphor by calling it a plague. The bully always looking for a victim but there are always some that ignore them, and in this case, being immune to them. My second quote is, “Trapped in my own personal hell, screaming for help, trapped in my body. No one ever noticed, never gave a second glance. As you watched, I sobbed in the night. ‘fighter’, they say. ‘Poor little girl’, all words never action”. The meaning behind this has 2 meanings, the first is a medical condition called Locked in Syndrome. This is a condition resulting from a stroke that damages part of the brainstem. With that, the body and most facial muscles are paralyzed but consciousness remains and the ability to perform some eye movements. It practically is a personal hell with awareness of what is happening in your environment. The second meaning ties with the first, that on the outside someone pretends that they’re ok. When in reality they are not, no one notices that it’s a charade that they put up. I mixed both of them to create a mood of loneliness and wanting someone to notice they are not
Sally Thomas family is given an opportunity to make a name for herself by being given social and business opportunities. While the southernmost states have a different outtake on slavery, Sally and her family are treated with much more respect. Sally is able to own her own business as a laundress and comes to be popular in the town for her kindness and fairness.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is based in a small town named Endora in 1993. This film presents the lives of the members in the Grape’s family as they develop and cope with daily tasks. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mental development of each member in Grape’s family along with the people who they interact with in Endora. Developmental theories are then used to connect with the developmental themes in the film to obtain an integrated understanding of Grapes’ lives.
He does not let the society take over his internal self. This is much like the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henly. The title itself means unconquerable. Henly has been faced with a lot of challenges but he has an unconquerable soul. He is staying positive and is not letting these unfortunate event affect him.
Mama’s harsh upbringing frames her perspective on the world. During Mama’s childhood, she faces a harsh world chock full of microaggressions and racial prejudice alike. Despite all of the factors working negatively in Mama’s favor, she successfully clambered out of her original pit of societal oppression, and instead took residence in a society a tier above that of her upbringing. The cornerstone of Mama’s dream is the concept of a home with a garden, wherein family can grow up and prosper: “Well, I always wanted me a garden like I used to see sometimes at the back of the houses down home. This plant is close as I ever got to having one” (Hansberry, 53). Although this dream might seem meager through a contemporary looking-glass, black people were systematically denied homes prior to and including the mid-nineteenth century, therefore Mama’s dream demonstrates her direct wish to live a life
In Lasse Hallström’s film, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, the struggles of living with a mental illness is displayed through Arnie Grape, the protagonist’s younger brother. Grape’s disability is never discussed in the movie, as the movie focuses on Gilbert Grape, the principal character, and his struggles with life and family responsibilities. With the use of various resources, such as a psychology textbook (Lilienfeld 2014), credible health associations’ websites, and The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DMS-5), one is capable of analyzing the nature of Arnie’s disorder and make a valid assumption that he is dealing with a mental illness: autism. Autism is a spectrum disorder characterized by “various degrees in difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors” ("Learning About Autism," n.d.). It becomes clear, through Arnie Grape’s social and cognitive impairment, that he has Autism, despite the fact that the film does not clearly state that he has a mental illness.
Kathleen Grissom’s The Kitchen House is an intense, gripping novel set at the turn of the nineteenth century, entertaining and educating about life in the Old South. The first person narration switches between Lavinia McCarten, a young, white indentured servant, and Belle, the caretaker of Lavinia who is also the mixed, illegitimate daughter of Master Pyke. Both of the speakers live in the kitchen house of a tobacco plantation called Tall Oaks, Virginia. When the story begins in 1791, Belle is a young woman, and she teaches six-year-old Lavinia how to cook, clean, and serve. As Lavinia matures, she realizes that her fair skin makes her different from the slaves, her true family, and she learns to accept her responsibilities. Through the eyes of the two, readers learn about what life was like during the times of American slavery. Important themes prevalent in The Kitchen House include racism, drug and alcohol abuse, and innocence.
Society’s ideological constructs and attitudes towards minority groups are created and reinforced through media imagery. Although negative associations that maintain inequities with regard to race, gender and homophobia (Conner & Bejoian, 2006) have been somewhat relieved, disability is still immersed in harmful connotations that restrict and inhibit the life of people with disabilities in our society.
The 1920s were a time of social injustices, primarily revolving around racial discrimination. With the revival of the Ku Klux Klan only a few short years before, African Americans lived in fear of lynching and other forms of racism during this period. This form of social injustice was widespread and known by all in the United States, but there was another issue during this time that was not as well known. The West Virginia mine wars had begun in 1920 due to the injustices that the miners had faced for decades. Miniscule wages and dangerous work conditions were only a few of the hardships that the miners had to face. The author of the book Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher, was able to capture these hardships perfectly in her poetry to help shine light on the terrible treatment and the resulting consequences that the miners and their families received during this time. Many of her poems, such as, “Dear Diary,” “Pearlie Tells What Happened at School,” and “Walter and His Mama Talk about Angels,” show the negative impact that growing up during this period of violence and injustice had had on the miners’ children.
In regard to the dispirited sense of the novel, Fannie Flagg circles around a story of a depressed middle aged women, and stories of her own hometown in Whistle Stop Alabama. Throughout, Flagg often references to her childhood losses and how she overcame these tough times. This relates to how Fannie Flagg lost both of her parents at a young age.
“‘Don’t you ever wish you could change things?”’ (10). In Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960’s, woman ahead of her time, Miss Skeeter, proposes an idea to write a book about the lives of colored maids in Jackson. Aibileen and Minny, two maids, are among the first ones to agree to help Skeeter, despite the potential danger to themselves. In The Help, Kathryn Stockett creates an engaging and immersive world that explores racism and social injustice by using well-developed writing, the ideal amount of imagery, and strong characters.
The film The Breakfast Club was directed and written by John Hughes and was released in the year 1985 (IMDB, 2016). The film’s running time is 95 minutes and can be categorized under the genre of comedy and drama. It follows five teenagers, who all vary in personality and stereotype, get stuck in detention on a Saturday morning. They are all different types of people in nature but when stripped down and seen through without a stereotypical lens, they all have something to share and have something in common amongst themselves despite being so different from each other. In the movie, they are stereotyped as, a basket case, a brain, an athlete, a princess, and a criminal (IMDB, 2016). The setting takes place in a library and whilst they are in detention, they go through varying phases. They start off with solitude, then proceed to share a few words, and later into the film they start to disclose information about themselves that normally would be very difficult to disclose. While they are in the library they start off as complete strangers and barely talk to each other. As the movie progresses, they start doing a lot of things that a normal group of friends would do such as dancing, playing music, sneaking out together, and even smoking a joint together.
The movie, The Breakfast Club, is a movie about five students who get Saturday school and become friends as a result of it. The characters were: Allison, the quiet girl who would sit in the back and refuse to talk; John, the troublemaker who always talked back to the teachers; Claire, the popular girl who always got what she wanted; Brian, the nerdy student who only cared about having good grades; Andrew, the wrestler who was only focused impressing his father. While watching the movie, I mainly related to Brian. He is pressured to have good grades by his parents and is labeled as the nerd because of it. I am also pressured to have good grades; however, I am labeled as the smart kid in many different classes, but I’m not classified as a nerd.
In chapter two of The Cultures of American Film, the main focus is the establishment of studios. As demand for films rose in the early 1900’s, production companies needed to expand; this lead to the creation of large scale studios.
The Breakfast Club movie is about five high school students from Shemer High School with different backgrounds. It’s the story of “a brain (Brian), an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire) and a criminal (Bender).” The purpose of the movie is to captive the feelings and perspectives on what other people have experienced and learned from each other. The analysis about The Breakfast Club is about the common insecurities and challenges of the teenager during high school. The Breakfast club is a movie to convey emotions, fears, and companionship that everyone can relate to. However, with new knowledge comes new perspective and emotions. This movie opens up a world of abstract thoughts because none of the five students know each other and it helps to create an interpersonal communication, they revealed to each other how their lives actually are. This movie is about Social Judgment Theory, Interpersonal conflict, self-disclosure, Social Comparison Theory and an unresolved life conflicts of a teenager life by finding their identities.
The film Little Miss Sunshine, Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris, explores the lives of a regular American family and how they change their lives in front of us in the ‘Combie’ van on the road to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. The film examines the issues of winning and losing, and what it means to be a winner, throughout many sequences in the film as well as exploring the value of family. The directors and the cinematic team use an extreme range of camera techniques, costuming, and sound techniques to reshape our understanding of winning and losing in the world we live in today.