Preview

Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Dreams": Alice

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
601 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Dreams": Alice
Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Dreams": Alice

She is dead. She does not appear physically but haunts mentally. She is
Codi and Hallie's mother Alice, the late wife of Homero Noline. Throughout the novel Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, Alice impacted the characters, action, and theme(s). When Alice passed away she took part of Homer with her. What she left was a misfit of time and circumstance; an emotionally distraught and distant man who attempted to resemble a father but veered more towards the tin man. Homero existed beyond his wife as only a page out of an instruction manual, the one with the caution statement. Homero's delicate heart decided that the only way to endure Alice's death was to flush any remembrance or resemblance of her out of his fortified technical realm which throughout the novel becomes increasingly skewed. Kingsolver pushes home this idea by omitting Alice from any of Homer's frequent flashbacks which are usually mishaps from the past involving his daughters. These incidents are his only recollection of his daughters' estranged childhood in which he strained to create slippery and unmothered women. Homer's fear of becoming attached to anything which reminded him of
Alice resulted in an unorthodox childhood for Hallie and Codi. Homero was more of a child mechanic than a father. Retaining only his technical aptitude after
Alice died all he could do was provide his kids with orthopedic shoes and the correct medicine. When not fixing Codi or Hallie's present or future ailments
Homero took photographs of natural objects and slyly transformed them into man- made devices by doing what he seemed to be best at, distorting images. Codi, similar to her father mentally blocked out her past. Her childhood remained within her as only a series of stained and misplaced memories. Codi attempted to follow in her father's emulsion lined footprints, fixing every one of life's problems with an internal wrench. By approaching life
from

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Eighteen year old Madeline Whittier is no ordinary girl, she suffers from SCID, a Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. She is fundamentally allergic to everything and has to live in a decontaminated house. She haven't left her house in seventeen years. So you would imagine she doesn't get many visitors except her mom and her nurse, Carla.…

    • 73 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Lillian Smith’s provocative social commentary, Killers of the Dream explains the outbreak of racism and segregation following the Civil War, and the succeeding abolishment of slavery. After identifying and treating the many symptoms, Smith proceeds to diagnose the root causes of the South’s illness. Initially taking a seat on the bench and psychoanalyzing herself, she then juxtaposes her case study upon the wider population of rich-white elites in the South that represented her personal knowledge and experiences. The maelstrom that ensued permitted a highly racist, segregated, and class stratified society; sustained Jim Crow acts as a viable painkiller for…

    • 1480 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 19th century, the society was dominated by male. Edna Pontellier was the wife of Mr. Portlier who was a creole. In French upper class society, the purpose of life for female was taught to be fond of their husbands and children. Woman at that time never lived for themselves. Mrs. Pontellier's friend, Adele Ratignolle, was considered as the perfect woman in the society, because she was a great woman who treated her children better than herself.…

    • 264 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As Alice McKelan exited the abandoned train station on October 23rd at 10:30 pm her blonde hair blew in her face, covering it like a blanket. She made her way hurriedly down the platform stairs and onto the dimly lit street below, tugging at her coat in an attempt to shelter her body from the chill.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alice Cogswell overcame many difficult challenges in her lifetime. Most deaf children were treated poorly in the 1800’s. They were thought to not be able to read or write by most of the world. Some people even believed that being deaf was a curse for bad behavior. Alice was 2 years old when her life changed forever.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    (this time Flora stands before the dress and gets blue herself. They start fighting over the color. The camera turns to the fireplace, where blazes of color go through the chimney. We see the house from the outside, and Maleficent's pet raven, who sees the fireworks. Inside the house, the 'war' continues, until they both hit the dress at the same time, with the result that it looks like two cans of color were emptied on it.)…

    • 5034 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Dreamkeepers Summary

    • 1280 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Gloria Ladson-Billings is an American author, pedagogical theorist, and researcher who wrote the critically acclaimed book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (2009). Ladson-Billings currently serves as the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is known for researching and examining pedagogical practices of teachers who are successful with African American students. In 2005, she served as the president of the American Educational Research Association and was elected to the National Academy of Education. She has received numerous scholarly awards and distinctions in honor of her contribution to the field of Education including the H.I. Romnes faculty fellowship, the…

    • 1280 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Flowing from Virginia Woolf’s poem “Memoirs of Being” is a beautiful piece of her childhood. This picture that has been created, is one that is filled with imagery, anaphora, and is an allusion to a time when her cares were not burdened in the way that they would become later in the poem. We can see that the piece is a picture of a time of youth. One that is not yet marred with the understanding of consequences. And a joy can be seen from start to finish, but her understanding of that joy experienced growth during this piece. Although, she doesn’t agree with her truly enjoys her trip, she finds that the joy experienced therein is one that is a ‘momentary glimpse’ of her childhood, and not one that would be repeated.…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    St. Alice Of Schaerbeck

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Page

    At the age of seven she was sent to the Cistercian Convent of Camera Sanctae Mariae to receive an education. Alice was known for being humble and kind, so she fit in well because of that. Then she became stricken with leprosy, yet it was hard for her because she loved people more than anything. She loved to talk to them and help them. But Alice keep strong in her prayer which brought her closer to God. After a year of battling the disease she became blind, then later she became completely paralyzed.…

    • 145 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The novel The Color Purple, by Alice Walker is a story about the struggle and the transformation of the protagonist Celie from a shy little girl that never stood up for herself who later on in her life developed into a strong confident and independent woman. Her awakening is due in large parts to the many female figures she met throughout her life. These figures are her sister Nettie, Mr.____'s sister Kate, Harpo's wife Sofia, and the singer Shug Avery.…

    • 2720 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Texts studied in class focus on a few elements of Australian culture. The reality is, considering Australia is a multicultural society, that there are many different cultures within our society. “The rabbits” by Shaun Tan and John Marden provides a critical version of the colonisation of the British from the perspective of the numbats, the numbats symbolise the aboriginals. Whilst in the poem “My country” by Dorothea Mackellar they show the difference between the two countries, Britain and Australia. It also shows that to Dorothea Mackellar nothing can compare to her country, Australia.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This is the one and only commandment in the the text called Animal Farm. This is where animals are essentially slaves, and get little to no pay or food. The novel animal farm is about animals who take over their farm with brute force. They run the farm not so smoothly with the pigs, and napoleon who was supposed to represent stalin. The pigs running the whole farm with the other animals forced into labor. In the end the pigs basically turn into humans and the other animals become their slaves. The reason the pigs got that far is because they used their language as power. In Animal Farm, George Orwell presents the idea that leaders can manipulate anyone with the power of language, because they can convince their citizens that napoleon was a good even though he definitely was not.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    1) What is my opinion about the statement, “What you are missing you already have”?…

    • 2051 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Undeterred In Kindred

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When she returns to the past Alice is found dead hanging from a rope because Rufus told her she sold their children off when in reality he sent them to his aunt's house in Baltimore. Rufus attempts to rape her and Dana stabs him several times with a knife and kills him. She returns home but her arm was damaged where Rufus’s hand was.…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women’s rights were a big thing back in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker are two women with two views that somewhat agree about this situation, with the goal of finding a way to use the limited resources that they have for the good of others. They particularly use women of their time-frame as the major examples in their essays. But it all comes down to this. Walker in her essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” agrees with Woolf that women’s abilities and resources of materials was scarce, but Walker in a way challenges Woolf’s writing of “In Search of a Room of One’s Own” that women in her day where able to use them more efficiently than in Woolf’s day with her mother’s garden. Through this comparison and consideration, we’ll look at the views of both Woolf and Walker and whether Walker is agree with Woolf or challenging what Woolf is trying to say.…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays