Sometimes it is a single event or experience, which propels a child from innocence into adulthood. Discuss with reference to............
Wider Reading Essay
Sometimes it is a single event or experience, which propels a child from innocence into adulthood. Discuss with reference to............
To show how single events or experiences propel a child form innocence into adulthood, I shall use the following texts, "Jane Eyre" a novel by Charlotte Brontë, "The Flowers" a short story by Alice Walker, "The Stolen Party" a short story by Liliana Heker, "The Lesson" a poem by Edward Lucie-Smith and finally "Diana, Her True Story-In Her own words" an autobiography by Andrew Morton.
Childhood is a muddled time where children are oblivious to what goes on in the surrounding environment, they think that everything is good and safe and are just unaware of the reality. Children generally learn the truth from their actions, parents, and sometimes it is a single event, which will be remembered from that moment on, to open their eyes to the real world. I am going to show how this change in a person occurs in the texts above.
"Jane Eyre" a novel by Charlotte Brontë, the novel is written in third person narrative, given form Jane's point of view, giving the story a very honest, personal view on her life. "Jane Eyre" is about a young girl of 10 years old called Jane; she grows up as an orphan due to the death of her parents when she was a year old. She was sent to live with her aunt in Gateshead. She is not accepted into the aunts' family and she is open to daily cruelty and neglect throughout her childhood.
Near the beginning of the book Jane is sent to the "Red Room" this is to punish her bad behaviour. The experience of being unfairly treated, is the first time she realises how unfair people and life can be towards her, because she is being punished for something her cousin started, by picking on her. Miss Abbot and Bessie already have a bad opinion of Jane, and with this bad action she is open to the worst punishment in her eyes possible, the Red room, and to make Jane more afraid Miss Abbott says "say your prayers, Miss Eyre, where you are by yourself, for if you don't repent something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away", by saying this actually being in the room has been made worse something more to be afraid of.
Charlotte Brontë's description of the red room is sombre, full of darkness and mystery, but to Jane a frightening room, but this is most due to the talk about it previous to being in it. The room is described with "red" being the main surrounding feature of the room, Jane firstly describes the room with "massive pillars of mahogany", "curtains of deep red damask", "the carpet was red", "the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth" everything was dark colours and all furniture "darkly-polished old mahogany", the main colour red signifies death as it is ...
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Charlotte Brontë's description of the red room is sombre, full of darkness and mystery, but to Jane a frightening room, but this is most due to the talk about it previous to being in it. The room is described with "red" being the main surrounding feature of the room, Jane firstly describes the room with "massive pillars of mahogany", "curtains of deep red damask", "the carpet was red", "the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth" everything was dark colours and all furniture "darkly-polished old mahogany", the main colour red signifies death as it is the room in which her uncle died, but also it reflects her anger, the way Jane feels. After the colour of the room is described then Brontë goes on to the way it feels and sounds, "This room was chill", "it was silent", "solemn", all words tell of the fear and insecurity she feels and when she says "The housemaid alone came here", alone being the main word revelling how it is not right to be alone in this room, by the ways Jane describes the room obliviously has a big effect on her.
Because of her uncles death in the red room Jane believes there to be a curse on the room, and this is revealed when she says, "the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur". The atmosphere in the room starts to play tricks on her mind, her imagination working against her, making her feel uneasy. Left on her own she asks a lot of rhetorical questions "Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone's favour?", "Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?" by asking these questions answers her own questions of belonging and opens her eyes to the wrong in the family and generally.
Charlotte Brontë uses pathetic fallacy when describing the weather "the wind was howling in the grove behind the hall", Jane thinks of her uncle and what it could have been if he was here, but as he is not she calls her self "uncongenial alien" to the family. At this part of the book where she thinks of her uncle a lot she is split and she does not know what she is seeing in the room and the room starts to mess with her head and Jane looses control.
As shown now the experience of being in the red room has affected Jane and this is an experience, which changes her, as there are references later in the book. So this single experience she has found that she is unfairly treated and does not belong where she is.
"The Flowers" the short story by Alice Walker, its name is significant as flowers are a symbol of innocence because of its beauty and as it is easily broken, delicate, but also it is a symbol of death. "The Flowers" is about a young girl called Myop who is aged 10 years old, Alice Walker uses flowers to show the loss of Myop's innocence, when she sees something that will change the way she thinks about life. Walker describes about Myop's daily life and home using sights, smells, tastes, sounds and the general feelings of the atmosphere, "The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch." and "a golden surprise that caused excited tremors to run up her jaws". Everything up till the fifth paragraph is innocent and these images are projected in the goodness and upbeat sense of the story, "she felt light and good in the warm sun", "and nothing excited for her but her song" this sentence says it all nothing but her song matters and she is a child with no responsibilities, "where the family got their drinking water, silver ferns and wild flowers grew" and "along the shallow banks pigs rooted".
Flowers are mentioned throughout the poem "silver ferns", "pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweetsuds bush full of brown, fragrant buds" "roses root" "wild pink rose", even in the second half of the story where the mood changes and saddens the theme of flowers is carried on.......
Then she comes across the remains of a body that had obliviously been hung; the description of the body is given in great detailed.
The discovery of the body by Myop in a way distinguishes her flame of her childhood, at the beginning of the story Myop is a happy child shielded from the bad in the world, there are words like "skipped lightly", "excited", "beat of a song" compared with the second half of the story with words like "strangeness", "not as pleasant", "haunts", "gloomy" the mood has changed Myop has burst out of her shielding bubble and now sees the reality of life.
The language can be difficult if you read it once but you can get a rough idea of what's going on. The story is split into short paragraphs, four describing an innocent child's life and the last four an adults life, the change is fairly obvious.
"The Stolen Party" the short story by Liliana Heker, it is about a young girl called Rosaura who's mother is a servant, so when the mistress Senora Ines invites the Rosaura to her daughters party her mother is not best pleased as she knows how she will be treated like a "servant's child" but as a young girl she was intrigued by the thought of being invited to a party, something rare to her lifestyle and although her mother knows and explains to her the difference between the rich and poor, this seems not to sink in to Rosaura as she believes that that has nothing to do with anything. She goes to the party and helps Senora Ines a lot with the party, she felt proud of herself by the end of the party, as she was very popular and was complimented throughout the party. The part of the story I am going to talk about is the end, where all the children were given a present a yo-yo or bracelet and as she waits impatiently for a gift she talks of what she may get, to her disappointment she is handed a money and she is so upset by this discrimination just as she is the servants child.
This story shows how children think in a different manner to an adult, the mother knew there was a firm line between the rich and themselves, but Rosaura did not think like her thinking and believed that she would not be treated like a servant just because her mother was one and she naturally thought when she was helping that it did not mean anything.
This single action of not receiving a gift, but money although a trivial matter has opened her eyes to the adult life where things are not as perfect as she would like to think.
The language of the story is fairly simple to understand written with excitement like a child yet always her adult thoughts passing through. There is a lot of speech in the story and detailed description of actions and happenings during the party also the actions of her when offered the money.
"The Lesson" a poem by Edward Lucie-Smith, is about a young boy being told that his father has died by his headmaster and he explains as he goes through different emotions.
This single event of his father's death has a great effect on the life of a child, this boy does not know how he should feel, he tells of his emotions in a mixed up order, he first cries for knowledge of his father's death then for shame and then relief. Shame because he thought of using this newly found grief to get attention and to "bind the bully's fist for a week or two". The boy describes in the second verse "the noise was stilled in the school assembly when my grief came in", people noticed his grief for the first time not him but the tragedy that happened to him. Through these new feeling of pride and attention through a hard time can change the behaviour of a child dramatically.
The language is simple, the boy expresses the changes of his feelings openly and there are two verse, the first the chain of emotions and the second the experience of walking into the hall, like the up side of his fathers death.
"Diana, Her True Story-In Her own words" an autobiography by Andrew Morton, is a book about her life from start to end, I am going to concentrate on the part of the book when her mother left and she grew up with her father although her mother was around to see her occasionally, but she was always stuck in situations where she had to choose between mother and father, one of these situations is when she was given two dresses one from her father and one from her mother to wear for her holy communion and had to decide which one to wear.
When a child is put through such pressure by parents which she equally wanted to please then it makes you either fall apart or become stronger, as I have seen she ahs grown to learn from the mistakes made by her parents and learnt not to make her children suffer when it came to divorcing herself, she knew what was best.
The language is intense feelings being strung into the words and you can feel what she did, her stability. The book is full of small happenings during her childhood that changed her perception on her own life as she grew up.