Zevin Elsewhere Themes

Discuss how the authors, Craig Silvey and Tim Winton, reveal the central character’s process and understanding of trauma and grief.

In “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us”, by Anna Quindlen, she brings forth the discussion grief's grip on the lives of the living. Wounds of death can heal with the passing of time, but in this instance, the hurt lives on. Published in New York, New York on June 5, 1994, this is one of many Quindlen published in the New York Times, centered on death's aftermath. This article, written in response to the death of Quindlen’s sister-in-law, and is focused on an audience who has, currently is, or will experience death. Quindlen-a columnist for the New York Times and Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize winner and author-has written six bestselling novels (Every Last One, Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue) and has

Out of the Past is definitely an interesting movie with a lot of things to talk about. I will touch briefly upon two main things I have noticed during the screen: the film noire genre and the image of the femme fatale.

Gwen Harwood’s poetry endures to engage readers through its poetic treatment of loss and consolation. Gwen Harwood’s seemingly ironic simultaneous examination of the personal and the universal is regarded as holding sufficient textual integrity that it has come to resonate with a broad audience and a number of critical perspectives. This is clearly evident within her poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘A Valediction’, these specific texts have a main focus on motif that once innocence is lost it cannot be reclaimed, and it is only through appreciating the value of what we have lost that we can experience comfort and achieve growth.

Imagine, the person you love the most, talk to the most and spent time with the most is gone, and the only person you have ignores yous and blames you for your mother's death, and on top of that, you are only fourteen. Well in the novel “Out of the Dust” by Karen Hesse, Billie Jo Kelby experiences this. Billie Jo Kelby is just your average girl that lives in Oklahoma but when her mother and baby brother die due to a fire, her life flips upside down. ANd to make it worse, it takes place during the dust bowl. In the book “Out of the Dust” it shows Billie Jo is unwanted, reminiscent, and caring.

Many people define their lives by the relationships within their family. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, or someone’s mother or father. The loss of a family member, especially due to death, creates a radical readjustment to people’s day to day lives and how they see and feel about themselves. Sometimes the process of grief can last over several years and how it is mentally processed and dealt with is different for everyone. “Mud” by Geoffrey Forsyth, shows an insightful view of a grieving man who had already lost his father and grandmother and is now just coming to terms with the loss of his wife two years prior. The entire story is written in first person point of view which allows for the reader to fully engage themselves in the grief and strife of the narrator’s life. Geoffrey’s story “Mud” begins in the home of the narrator where he encounters these dead family members and has to decide if he is ready to move on from his grief and say goodbye or stay behind and be consumed by it.

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

The grief comes from lost love must be recovered by love. In crow lake, the author Mary Lawson portrays a young successful scholar, 26-year-old Kate Morrison, always is bothered by her anguished past. The innermost struggle not only leads she can’t directly face the problem existing between her and her older brother Matt for years but also becomes an obstacle of the further relationship with Daniel, the men she loves. But all the problems are concealed elaborately before the invitation letter received. While the peaceful life is broken by the invitation coming from Matt’s son, her nephew Simon, Kate suddenly has to face all the problems she doesn’t want to face

The contemporary classic novel Speak, profounds a girl, Melinda Sordino, entering freshman year at Merryweather High School in Syracuse, New York, with a heavy secret weighing on her. Unlike regular students, Melinda isolates herself from the society after a devastating event that she had experienced. Through her perspective, we enter her world of depression as she struggles her way through the school year. From her eyes we see the way she sees life, hear the ways others described her and enter her mind on how she thinks of the world. On a journey of gaining back herself, bad things turn worse, as that one person enters her life again. ‘It’, who made her fall into misery, ‘It’ who destroyed her once happy life. Melinda fights not only with herself, but It, the school, the world. The only thing that she feels comfortable in doing is art, where she drew trees to Anderson will definitely make you laugh throughout her book, however along holds undeniable sadness as we watch Melinda heals her way through her trauma that doesn’t seem to leave her.

Following the loss of a loved person, a person usually begins a period where they grieve over the loss of that person. While grieving, a person usually has a hard time accepting that a beloved person is truly gone. A personal activity is usually apparent during this time, and while this activity is usually connected to the person that they have lose, it helps a person deal with the tragedy that has fallen upon them. This idea is apparent in the stories Kitchen and “Moonlight Shadow”, both of which written by Banana Yoshimoto. Throughout both Kitchen and “Moonlight Shadow”, it is clear that grief is the stage when an individual is in denial over a beloved persons, and while there are a number of different ways in order to cope with the grief, the only way to overcome grief for good is by accepting the fact that the individual who passed away is gone.

In times of struggle, people can be in quite different situations but still come to similar conclusions. Authors Ian McEwan and Paul Elwork, push their protagonists to extremes in their stories but come to a similar conclusion: that to move on in their lives they need to find forgiveness. Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s novel ‘Atonement’ leads her family through a long period of denial due to a life-ruining lie she created. Years after the event Briony is still trying to fix her mistakes as she finds she cannot live in a world without reparation. Similarly, Emily Stewart in Paul Elwork’s novel ‘The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead’ lies to people who, after the recent war, are grieving for

Death in any person’s life is tragic, whether sudden or unexpected. Everyone experiences it at least once throughout a lifetime. In the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, the reader meets several characters that lose people very close to them. Each person has a certain way of dealing with the death, but overall his or her grief is out of love. These two emotions are triggered by one another. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close displays few characters that show any sign of moving on with their lives. Grief takes over and seems to stay forever. Characters such as Oskar, Grandfather, Mr. Black on the floor above, and Ms. Black in the Empire State Building experience grief

Even when people are in their greatest moments of despair people have the ability to find hope. Much like in the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer”, the main character, having lost his kinsmen and lord in war, battles with his own loneliness but attempts to remain hopeful for the day that he will find a new home and purpose in life. Through the use of elegiac tone and symbolism the unknown author shows that if a person wants to overcome their depression they must remain hopeful.

The poem that I have selected for this essay is “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov. I chose this poem because it talks about grief. It also talks about the place that grief should have in a person’s life. The poem describes grief, and compares it to a “homeless dog.” It also describes how a dog deserves its own place in the house, instead of living under a porch or being homeless. This poem talks about how a person can be aware that grief is present, but that it is not always acknowledged and accepted. We all experience grief in different ways, and for different reasons. Everyone deals with grief in their own personal way. This poem describes a point in a person’s life when they are ready to accept grief as a part of their life

Margaret Atwood creates a haunting and beautiful piece describing the experience a sad child goes through. She structures her poem by using five stanzas; two stanzas consisting of five lines, then one stanza with ten lines, and ending with two stanzas consisting of five lines. She uses simple yet powerful diction, tone, metaphors, similes, symbolism, and imagery to show the unknown speaker giving advice to a sad child. Her message/theme is sadness is a part of life and there are different ways to deal with it, but when death comes the thing that one is being sad about doesn’t matter.