The sister in Jean Howarth’s short story “The Novitiate”, is young, eager to please and naïve. She tries to win her brothers approval on the afternoon he is forced to take his sister along with him. Initially, she is naïve about how gopher tails are obtained and that they require the life of the gopher to be sacrificed. Her desire for a relationship with her brother clouds her ability to recognize the reality of the afternoon; however, when she witnesses the cruel and dramatic death of the gopher, she realizes what she is going to have to do to make her brother proud. Consequently, she must decide whether to sacrifice her morals in order to please her brother or to stand firm in her beliefs. Finally, she decides to snare the gopher in the hopes …show more content…
Witnessing the cold blooded killing of the gopher, disturbs her greatly: “And then he had swung it in a wide arc and it thudded on the ground, and still struggled and thudded again.” Although this gory act upsets the sister, it allows for her to recognize the true motive of her brother. However, she still doesn’t understand why the gopher had to die if they were just getting the tails: “‘Why did you have to kill it?’ she whispered.” All she knows is that “Stewie Grant doesn’t kill his” which means that she knows no other way to obtain the tails. Her connection to the gopher releases intense sorrow for the death of her beloved, sought after “pet”: “She did not look at the dead gopher, but her body felt it through the ground.” The connection that she has for living things will dictate how she interprets what is going to have to be done to please her …show more content…
Her eagerness to snare the gopher for her brother causes her to pull the string too quickly, therefore not truly catching him: “But he was gone, dodging back to safety. She had pulled too soon.” This hurried action signifies her ambition to bring happiness to her brother. Even if there was a minor setback in her goal, she has not lost hope, she remains patient in her quest: “She got up and draped the noose carefully once more about the hole. She went down and lay still.” This therefore displays her determination to finish what she started. Following the snaring of the gopher, she is left experiencing a variety of emotions: “She was lone and crying and hated; but she saw her brother and he lifted his arm to her and waved, in the urgent friendship of this one afternoon.” The sister is left feeling sorrowful at the loss of her beliefs, yet joyous as she has formed a new found friendship with her beloved brother.
Although the short story “The Novitiate” is purely fictional, men and women can relate to the underlying message of the story. Throughout our lives we, as a society, make choices that will betray our beliefs or strengthen them. These choices begin at a young age and they shape who we become as adults. As the authors’ title suggests, the sister may suffer as a result of her unknowing decision but hopefully she will eventually make a decision that’s more true to her
In this book the character, Claudette, is narrating the story of how the "wolf-children" learn to integrate and adapt into human society. By reading this short story, the question that if Claudette has successfully integrated into human society is clearly: yes. By Stage Claudette had already begun wearing two squared toed shoes instead of walking around barefoot and also learnt to keep hear moth shut when necessary. Claudette was one of the good girls, not bad but not good either, just in the middle because she didn't want to be hated for either being too good or being too bad. By the 3 stage, the nuns believed the girls should actually talk and socialize with human pure bread girls.
After Sam and Patrick leave for college, Charlie has a mental breakdown. During this mental breakdown we find out that his aunt who was his favorite person died in a car crash on his seventh birthday on the way to his celebration.1 He calls his sister and tells her that it’s his fault that she died.1 Alarmed by her brother’s state, his sister calls the police. Charlie starts to remember his past trauma and starts having flashbacks. He remembers his aunt saying, “Don’t wake up you sister” and “it’s our little secret.”1 Charlie is walking around the house non-stop until he has a flashback of his aunt crying and seeing her wrist cut. He sees a knife and steps closer to grab it. The police then enter the house and stop Charlie from hurting himself.
When Marilyn figures out that there is no way she can escape her death, she is still persistent about wanting to get in contact with her brother. She says, "I wish Gerry would get back before it's too late. Do you really think he will, and you didn't just say so to make me feel better?”(Godwin, 14). Even moments before her death, she is worried about her brother, which displays the love she has for him and how much she means to him. In fact, she didn’t call her mom or dad, she called her brother, and that really reveals how much of a loving sister she is to him in the
I am lost in the turmoil of my own mind, the faithful spirits that ‘tend on mortal thoughts’, deserted me long ago. I repudiated my fundamental social aspect of being a woman and a wife. I did the unthinkable and gave away my woman hood, my femininity, my tenderness. And what for? To stop
Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.
In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, there are multitudes of social occasions on which a character can be changed as a result. One of these social occasions is when An-Mei’s mother commits suicide and dies in front of the household. As a result of her mother’s death, An-Mei realizes that she needs not suppress her sorrows and remain reticent as her culture defines it, but should develop and assert her own convictions. This event reinforces the message that tradition is vital for people to connect with each other, it is just as necessary for individuals to develop free thought. Tradition is vital for the initial growth of objectives and beliefs, but having tradition as a sole perspective will only come to eliminate autonomy and limit the maturity of ideas.
She had got the canary a year ago. When her husband killed the canary it was like killing her last connection to her old world. She snapped and started planning his murder, she saw how the bird’s neck was broken and she broke his. Mrs. Peters says that “somebody-wrung- its-neck.”
While talking, the women find a fancy box belonging Mrs. Wright. Inside the box, is what they believe to be Mrs. Wright’s dead pet bird. They realize that “somebody – wrung – its – neck” (1172) Remembering a similar incident in her life, Mrs. Peters says, “When I was a girl – my kitten –there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes, ..If they hadn’t held me back I would have hurt him.” (1172) They place the dead bird back in the box, and then, surprisingly, they hide the box. You can almost see what’s going on in the mind of these two women as they must be imagining poor Mrs. Wright, horrified that her awful husband killed her bird, then she must have snapped and strangled him to end her own suffering.
The women empower themselves through silence, particularly in the kitchen communicating and reflecting upon things around them in the limited space they were given. The men dismiss the kitchen finding nothing that is relevant to the murder case. The men keep crisscrossing through the kitchen, ignoring and not realizing they could find the vital evidence through trivial details. Even though they were having difficulty in finding clues that lead to the murder. While the women were alone looking through Minnie’s kitchen they found the most valuable evidence the “missing piece to men’s puzzle” (Holstein 283). Mrs. Hale found the dead bird strangled in the sewing box telling “Mrs. Peters-look at it! Its neck! Look at its neck!” (782). Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters recognize the bird was strangled brutally “their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension, of horror” (Glaspell 782). Both of them realized the bird was killed the same way as Mr. Wright with the rope around their neck. The strangled bird represents Minnie Foster how her freedom and joy was strangled to death. When the men came in the kitchen, the county attorney noticed the bird cage, wondering if the bird flew away, but Mrs. Hale lied and said “we think the- cat got it” ( Glaspell 782). The county attorney seek only visible evidence for murder he was wasn’t thinking critically what it may mean. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters covered the evidence keeping it between themselves for their own knowledge. They
In the early 19th century, women were oppressed, and marriage was a social status, not a choice. Mrs. Mallard was a wife during 19th Century and her home was where she would spend most of her days. She also suffers from a heart condition. She learns of the tragic news on the first floor of her two story home. Her sister Josephine was the one to tell her “ in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.”(287) The news was revealed as delicate as possible, due to Mrs. Mallard's heart condition. Mrs. Mallard heard the news, she wept, a sense of grief comes upon her. Once she removed herself from her sister Josephine's arms, she went off to her room. It reads, “ When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. No one to follow her”(287). During this time, women were looked down upon if they were not married. Most women were given away by their
The main character, Charlie must navigate through it even while feeling motionless and scared. He tells his story to the reader from his perspective. The reader sees life from exactly the way he sees the events and understands those events through a teenage boy’s eyes. The crisis is introduced when the town outcast Jasper Jones asked Charlie, a bookish young nobody of a boy for help. The reader sees Charlie’s internal conflicts of wanting to go with Jasper, feeling terrified, excited yet so wanting to be accepted by him Charlie does in fact sneak out in the middle of the night with his new friend. Jasper takes Charlie to the scene of the crime where Jasper’s girlfriend is hanging from a tree. The manner that Silvey describes Charlie’s reaction to the hanged girls is true to human nature, “I’m screaming, but they are muffled screams. I can’t breathe in. I feel like I’m underwater. Deaf and drowning.” This description foreshadows the solution to hide the body and Jasper and Charlie throw Laura Wishart into the lake. Unknown to either is Laura Wishart’s sister, Eliza. She witnessed the suicide of her sister and wrote the word “sorry” on the stump of the tree before she leaves. Charlie and Jasper find this word, assume that the killer wrote it there, and immediately jump to the
Girls, young women, and mature mothers. Society has consistently given women strict guidelines, rules and principles on how to be an appropriate member of a man’s society. These rules are set at a young age and enforced thoroughly into adulthood. When not followed accordingly, women often times too many face reprimanding through means of verbal abuse, physical abuse, or social exile. In the midst of all these strict guidelines and social etiquette for girls, a social rebellion started among girls and women and gender roles were broken, however the social rebellion did not and does not affect all girls and women. For instance, in less socially developed places, young girls on the brink of womanhood are still strongly persuaded to be a man’s idea of a “woman”.
“It made me wonder, though, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy. Chances are, I’d still be floating up in Heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on Earth. Certainly, I would not be part of this family” (8). The novel, My Sister’s Keeper, is a story which follows a young girl through her life struggles as she tries to help her sister, enjoy her own life, and fight her mother for a right to her own body. Anna Fitzgerald, the main character of the novel, is being used as “body parts” to keep her sister Kate alive rather than being loved and appreciated for the person she truly is. Throughout the novel she sues her mother for the right to her own body, she develops as an individual away from her sister,
rushes into marriage hoping to fulfill that desire but she becomes trapped in marriage as her
A woman pushes as hard as she can for the last time. “It’s a baby girl!” the man announces, as the new mother hangs her head in sight of the hardships her baby, Elizabeth, will face. Miles away in a hospital, another woman gives birth to a healthy baby girl, Marley. As she sees her baby for the first time, she smiles knowing all the great adventures this baby will experience in her life. The polygamous mom takes the little girl home to her family, a family where she has more than one mother and many brothers and sisters. As she grows up she lives her life trying to be “proper” and “sweet” in the eyes of the prophet. Somewhere far away, Marley is outside playing with her mother and learning how to be a kid. At the age of fourteen, young girls like Marley are innocent and should be going on dates, having fun with friends, and living their life, but for a fourteen year old Elizabeth, she is married to a man twice her age to be his second wife. As she begins her life with her husband, she sees the jealousy of the first wife and the neglect she feels by her presence. Shortly after, the young girl is replaced by another new wife after having a child. Ever since the day she was born, she had no control over these stages happening. Her fate was determined from time of birth and is determined by men until the day she dies. Her fate will be ruled by the religion of Polygamy.