I Knew A Woman By Theodore Roethke

What makes a good parent? Some people may have difficulties answering that question. In my opinion, a good mother is considered to be loving, caring, and supportive. Parents should always be there for the child to prepare them to be responsible adults. But some parent does not understand that things that they do and say may affect a child mentally and physically, which reflex’s in a child’s behavior. In the short story, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “Reunion” by John Cheever clearly shows examples of how a parent can affect a child's behavior.

In the She’s The Man (2006), Viola Hastings (Amanda Bynes) cross dresses for the majority of the film, pretending to be her twin brother Sebastian. She does this in order to play for Illyria’s men’s soccer team as her school, Cornwall, cut the women’s soccer team and wouldn’t allow her to play for the men’s team. Her main motivation is to beat her former schools team and prove to them that even though she is a girl, she can play on the same field as the boys. While pretending to be Sebastian, Viola initially struggles to hide her femininity, such as when it is discovered that she has tampons in her bag. As the movie progresses her ability to hide this femininity and express masculinity becomes easier. Her cross dressing has an effect on everything and everyone around her and it pushes the line on the comfort people feel when stereotypical gender norms are challenged/ She becomes interested in her roommate, Duke (Channing Tatum) and throughout the movie the two become closer on an intimate level even though Viola is still masked as Sebastian. Duke is obviously uncomfortable with this as made evident by the end of the movie, when it is revealed that Viola was pretending to be Sebastian the entire time. His look of relief reinforces this idea of stereotypical, heterosexual gender roles, as now that Viola is revealed as a female, it is socially acceptable to be attracted to her. She’s The Man reinforces the stereotypical gender roles that society expects out of

Today's world of women would have only been a dream for women in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Magazines, newspapers and literature works played a key role in knowledge today about the lives of women throughout history. In Barbara Welters “The Cult of True Womanhood,” she discusses the role of women in the mid-nineteenth century. The four virtues of women, piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity were emphasized. Women were expected to get married at a young age, care for their husband, children, and home while remaining obedient to her spouse. Essentially women were property of their husband whom of which objectified them. Emily Dickinson's Poem “My Life had stood a Loaded Gun” can be analyzed in many ways, one of which

Whether in the past or present, this is a country driven by two things: entertainment and capital. Women seem to be most attracted to the entertainment aspect, as demonstrated in Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Woman Hollering Creek” through the telenovelas. Men on the other hand are attracted to the business world and the capital that comes from pure competition and winning, the more the better. This is on display in David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross. Every vice has a consequence however, as Cisneros and Mamet both prove, when people are motivated in the wrong way, they are doomed to fail. In Cisneros’s story, Cleofilas is drawn to telenovelas which provide images of how life should be. She sees what she believes to be successful women, but the more she tries to emulate them the worse her life seems to be. Likewise, in Mamet’s play, the salesmen are all driven to win at any cost. This leads to betrayal, rifts in relationships, and total failure in the end because the high level capitalist nature has become unattainable for most of the men.

“No Name Woman”, by Maxine Hong Kingston, is a story about a woman named Maxine that comes from a Chinese-American background. As Maxine is slowly transitioning from a girl to a young woman, her mother decides to tell her a story about her father’s sister who had been impregnated by a man from her village. Her child was born out of wedlock one night. Once the villagers heard about this, they all raided her house. They slaughtered their livestock and destroyed their belongings. Her aunt had brought shame on the entire family by violating the village’s moral standards. The aunt and the child were found in the family well the next day after committing suicide. Since Maxine was told to never ask about her aunt, she began imaging what had happened

The disjunction of the mother and her son provides the external conflict. The speaker talks about how the child is being forcefully taken away from his slave mother. For example, the speaker talks about how the “cruel hands” (21) take away the only thing that makes her “breaking heart” (24) complete. Most of the conflict can be visualized by the vivid imagery that the speaker provides. The reader is given the visual image of “the look of grief and dread” (3) in which the mother can be seen with. Also, the reader can see how the woman’s son “clings to her side” (14) because he is looking for safety beside his mother. The reader can hear the “bitter shrieks” (37) of the mother as she was dealing with the agony of the broken bond between her and her child. The sound demonstrates the suffering that slavery brings upon the mothers. There are figurative images that emphasis the idea that the descriptive imagery shows. One of the metaphors that is used is when the speaker states, “his love has been a joyous light”. This can let the reader conclude that the mother certainly needs her child in order to be content. However, with the pain of seeing her son go, the event is devastating to her. Personification is utilized in the poem by depicting that the “bitter shrieks” (37) of the mother are so full of sorrow that they “disturb the listening air”

As for the actual subject matter of the poem, this poem has a conventional subject - and a conventional form for describing that subject - but with an unconventional twist. The conventional subject and form for describing that subject are, respectively, a woman, and the blazon method of describing a woman. The twist, however, occurs after the first two quatrains, where the subject changes from the woman being adored, to the man adoring her. However, the literary technique used to describe the man and the woman are the same: tropes.

Life is full of ups and downs, happiness and sadness, heartaches and heartbreaks but in the end, we need to learn to overcome it. Sadness, disappointment, heartbreak, heartache, loss, and anger are all emotions that can kill you inside and really mess you up and different ways. The book The Worst Thing She Ever Did was written by Alice Kuipers which was published in 2007 and is a very inspirational book for high school students. It is about a 15/16-year-old girl Sophie and is written from parts in her diary. Sophie just recently lost her older sister in a bombing and is struggling to overcome her emotions. When you let emotions take over your body and control you, it does not end well. In the book, The worst thing she ever did Sophie proves that no matter how much heartbreak or problems occur in your life you need to learn to overcome it. Starting from Sophie being quiet, miserable, isolated, she went to being happy and outgoing.

Have you at any point been advised how to satisfy a commitment that you never seeked for? As much of the time expressed in Jamaica Kincaid's' short story "Young lady" "This is the ticket." "Young lady" is a composition ballad composed by Jamaica Kincaid that was distributed in The New Yorker in 1978. The main characters in "Young lady" are a mother and a little girl. "

In the story Country Husband written by John Cheever, the main problem that occurs in this story is that Francis gets into a conflict from the beginning of the story that caused him a change in his personality. This short story starts with the protagonist Francis Weed who got in a plane crash. The weather was described in the beginning as “the sky had been hazy blue with the clouds below the plane”. This shows how very thing was going nice because he is going back to his home and to his wife. Suddenly, there was a weather change, causing the plane crash. “the color of the clouds darkened to grey and the plane began to rock.” The plane crash is the conflict which caused a change in his personality because he almost died.

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

The Lady’s Not for Burning by Christopher Fry is a romantic comedy that takes place in the 15th century in which Thomas Mendip and Jennet Jourdemayne are both accused, in some fashion, of crimes involving murder. Thomas Mendip, an educated, stubborn ex-soldier, claims that he has killed two men and wishes to be hanged. However, his demands are refused, causing him to become angry towards those that will not take him seriously. He blames the societal values for this disregard and begins to question these values causing tension among the mayor, the mayor’s family, and the mayor’s workers as they are unsure of how to react to this new way of thinking. They try to refuse that society could be wrong, yet there is some truth to Thomas’ claims. Thomas displays his outrage towards society and its values in order to emphasize his reason for supposedly murdering two people, highlighting his desire to leave this world.

Flannery O’Connor is one of the most controversial and well known modern day Southern Gothic authors in America. When she came into prominence in 1955 with her first collection of short stories titled A Good Man is Hard to Find, it was met with criticism for being overtly violent and grotesque. One reviewer from Time magazine said the short stories were “witheringly sarcastic” and “written in a style as balefully direct as a death sentence” (Simpson 44). The reviewer went even further on to call O’Connor “Ferocious Flannery.” O’Connor, unbothered by the criticism, replied to critics by saying, “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic” (Mystery and Manners 40). Critics also noticed her use of Christianity in the short stories, which only amplified accusations of them being sarcastic to which O’Connor replied, “I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic...The stories are hard but they are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism...when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror” (The Habit of Being 90). Although it is confusing to O’Connor’s critics as to why she infused violence and Christianity into her stories, there was a method to her madness: she simply wanted to show readers that violence and

In the poem “I Knew A Woman”, Roethke portrays the nature surrounding him as an adoring lover that teaches him how to survive in the world. He uses personification to indicate he sees the nature as an important part of his life, “When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them” (2), “How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin / She taught me to Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;

Theodore Roethke’s poem, “I Knew a Woman,” tells the intimate story about a man’s lasting memories of a woman from his past using repetition, allusion, and rhyme. Roethke does not follow a constant rhyme scheme throughout the poem although rhyme does occur throughout every stanza of the poem. Upon first read the poem comes off as a simple tale of a man learning how to dance while a deeper read show that it is much more complex.