...Jenny Smith November 28, 2011 Dr. Min Young Lee English 121 sec 28 The Coming of Age of the Male Characters in About a Boy About a boy is a contemporary novel written by the British author Nick Hornby. It incorporates constructs of post-modern writing by bringing into focus the artists, and styles, and prose of the vernacular. The setting of the novel takes place in London in the mid 1990s. About a boy gives a unique perspective of a coming of age story. It follows the coming of age of two boys of two very different ages; Will Freeman 36 years old and Marcus 12. This novel shows the contrast between consumerism and materialism with real interpersonal connections. Will Freeman made the decision to pursue materialism rather than personal friendships, and to live in self-imposed isolation. Will had the ability to buy “cool” clothes, and sunglasses and sneakers, and so was never at a loss for acquaintances. Marcus, on the other hand, felt isolation due to a lack of materialism. Marcus was an outsider in his school in London since he could not have the best “coolest” clothes, shoes, and haircuts and thus was always the target of bullying. However, as the plot progresses, Marcus and Will undergo transformational experiences together to become more connected to the people around them. The transformational experiences of Fiona’s suicide, falling in love, and Marcus’ arrest all culminate in the maturation of Will and Marcus’ and the genesis of interpersonal connections between...
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...Film Review of ”About a Boy” Cast: Hugh Grant, Rachel Weisz, Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult Director: Chris and Paul Weitz Novel written by: Nick Hornby Script writer: Peter Hedges, Chris and Paul Weitz Rating: PG-13 Genre: Romance, Comedy and Drama Running time: 105min. Review: The movie is mainly about 36 year old Will Freeman and 12 year old Marcus Brewer. Will is a so called island which means that he wants nothing to do with family related things; all he really wants is relationships without any form of commitment, he therefore goes to a club for single parents called S.P.A.T. There he meets a woman that he likes, but to be with her he makes up that he has a two-year old son named Ted. When he revels that it was a lie to get close to her, she immediately breaks up with him. Will's keeps on courting and the woman (Suzie) takes him to one of the group's picnics where he meets Marcus the son of Suzie's friend, Fiona. At the picnic, Marcus accidentally kills a duck with piece of bread while he is trying to feed it. When a park ranger asks him about it, Will defends Marcus by saying that the bird was already dead. Afterward, when Will and Suzie take Marcus home, they find Fiona, his mother, in the living room, on a pill-overdose trying to commit suicide. Marcus gets uncomfortable with being at home with his mother; therefore he tries to get Will to date her. After only one date this plan fails so Marcus starts following Will around and discovers that Will...
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...About a Boy Loneliness is a feeling we all know. We all feel it sometimes. It sneaks in on you and drags you somewhere dark. For some people this is a constant feeling. For some people it doesn’t just stop here. If you’re lonely for a long time, you will often start to feel a little weird and abnormal. You will eventually even get left out from the group. This is what happens to the boy named Marcus in the film “About a Boy”. We get a sight into Marcus’ turbulent life, where he struggles with loneliness because of bullies. The first time we are introduced to this boy named Marcus, is when Will, a single man, takes a friend of Marcus’ mom out on a date. She’s called Suzie and promised Marcus’ mother, Fiona, to take care of him. Will seems nice and protective over Marcus. Especially when Marcus almost is claimed for killing a duck with a loaf of bread. Will here takes place and tells the park keeper, that is was already dead. What none of them know of, is that Will isn’t exactly who they think he is. Will attends a group for single parents, but actually, he has no kids at all. However, he pretends to have a two-year-old son named Ned. When Will first meets Marcus, he has the feeling, that he is a little bit weird. That thought soon gets confirmed. When Will and his date Suzie stops by Marcus’ house to drop him off, they find his mother Fiona, passed out on the couch. Fiona has taken an overdose and attempted suicide. This is the environment Marcus lives in. Marcus is afraid...
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...“About a Boy” 1. Does “Mamau” have any symptoms of a psychiatric disorder, mood, personality, schizophrenia, etc.? “Mamau” has a factitious disorder which is a “mental disorder in which the symptoms of physical or mental illness are deliberately induced or simulated with no apparent incentive.” (p. 127) More specifically, she has Munchausen syndrome by proxy. This is normally when an adult caretaker produces or lies about illness in another person under his or her care. One example is when “Mamau” claims Robert kicked her and gave her bruises in a fit of rage. In a session with his therapist, Dr. Fee, Robert does not remember doing anything like that; however, his grandmother says it is because the drugs have blanked his memory. Another example is “Mamau” constantly tells Robert that he can be taken away because of his mental problem. “Mamau” has symptoms of histrionic personality disorder. It is characterized by “self-dramatization, exaggerated expression of emotions, and attention seeking behaviors.” (p. 173) She also has characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder. These people have “an exaggerated sense of self importance, an exploitative attitude, and a lack of empathy.” (p. 174) We can use the above example to support for these. There was also a part where “Mamau” calls up the hospital to see if the person treating her daughter had a doctorate. She didn’t trust the doctors and it showed that she was trying to over power her daughter. There is another scene...
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...About a boy essay Will is living a good life in London. He does not need to have a job because of royalties from a song his father had made. He is using all his spare time to watch television and hunt women. Will is meeting a girl called Angie who is a single mom but the relationship is only shortly and it ends surprisingly for Will because she is the one who’s breaking up. After that Will finds out that single moms is a lot better to hook up with and he is joining a single parents club where he lies about having a son and a former wife who had left him and his son alone. His plan about meeting women at the single club succeeds and he meets Suzie. Will and Suzie plans a picnic together but unfortunately for Will are Suzie taking her friends/Fiona’s 12 year old son Marcus with her. After the picnic Will and Suzie is driving Marcus home they find Marcus’s mom Fiona lying overdosed on pills in her living room because of a suicide attempt. Marcus wants to make her mother to be happy again after the suicide attempt so he tries to arrange a date between Will and his mother Fiona. But already after the first date his plans fail. Marcus doesn’t like to be home alone with his mother because she doesn’t understand his problem especially not the one in school. So he follows will and finds out that he does not have a child and that he has been lying to Suzie, Fiona and Marcus, so Marcus blackmails Will to let him hangout at his place after school almost every day so he doesn’t have...
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...but two – maybe more people. This can causes further conflict, as you may not agree on how to deal with conflicts and how to progress the development. In the movie and the book "About a boy" a lot of different developments are looked into, and brought up in all sorts of ways. This happens most often through the two main characters' life and everyday. The movie and the book use multiple viewpoints. The story is told by only one character at a time, but the viewpoint switches between the two main characters throughout the course of the movie and the book. In every chapter of the book it changes from Marcus viewpoint to Will’s, and in the movie it changes when we as viewer follows Marcus’s actions to Will’s. We know what Marcus and Will thinks, which gives us a perspective from several different angles and in this case keeps the story fresh and exciting. The author has done an incredibly good job, as he has managed not to lose the viewer/reader through the multiple viewpoints, and that is because the transitions are well done. The narrator is a 3rd person narrator and it is character-bounded to Marcus and Will. In the movie and the book, there are two main characters – Marcus and Will, who both are round characters because they develop much though the story. Marcus is a special 12-year old boy and seems very grown-up for his age. In the beginning of the story he is very influenced by his mother, Fiona, but as the story...
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...Bonny Frescura #832693 Psychology of Human Sexuality – PSY 5040 Kean University – Oct. 7, 2013 Article: ABOUT A BOY WHO ISN’T A while ago I prepared a presentation about transgender kids for a certain psychology class. This is a topic that has always been interesting to me because of the depth of the psychological dilemma these kids have to endure every day of their lives. The pain and the struggle are unimaginable and the gender identity disorder is a topic that deserves all the research and attention to help these kids to find their true identity. Aside from the usual obstacles that transgender kids have to go through, this particular kid who is a male to female transgender, experiences the stigma of having a gender identity disorder inside of a traditional Latino family. As a Latina, I could agree with the statement of “M” when he expressed that his family would rather see him as a boy than a lesbian. Latino families are very traditional and have a harder time than other families understanding homosexuality and gender identity disorders. The main problem for the understanding of these issues lies on misinformation. Often parents, educators and other administrative members at schools have not been trained to face the challenge of having to accommodate a student that wishes to cross-live. For a parent is even more difficult because they have to face and accept the “death” of their son or daughter and support their child to become the person they want to be. One thing that...
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...Marcus Brewer is a twelve year old boy who lives with his single mother, Fiona Brewer. His mother is very depressed and Marcus always tries to make her happy, and he will do whatever it takes to do it. Marcus does not have any friends and he gets bullied at school, sometimes he even starts to speak and sings to himself without realizing it. Through his mom’s friend, Suzie, Marcus meets a thirty-eight years old man, Will Freeman. He is a slacker and a bit of a punk. He gets the idea to start dating single moms. In the beginning Marcus was very sad and he did not want to know Will. However, when Will steps up and helps Marcus after he kills a duck, Marcus starts to like him. Marcus begins to visit Will at his house after school and Will slowly realizes that Marcus needs some guidance. Will starts to help him by doing different things. For example buying him new expensive shoes, because Will thinks it will get Marcus new friends, but instead the bullies actually choose to steal the shoes. Throughout the movie, Marcus grows a lot with the help of Will, and he starts to get some friends. But even Marcus starts to speak against his mother; but he stills get sad when his mom again gets depressed. He decides to sing at a school concert and dedicate the song to his mom, because he thought it would make her happy. Just before Marcus is about to go on the stage, Will tries to stop him, because he knows it’s going to be a social disaster. Marcus decides to go on the stage anyways, and...
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...Ms C r on H 3U w#s@ $a^let(on SS 2015-03-22 Essay Assignment: The Truth About Boys and Girls in School 2 Despite an equal education system, young males are trailing behind the separable and successful girls that are dominating the classroom. Boys lack of ability in school is causing them to struggle miserably, fail classes, influence negative behavioural decisions and even drop out. These setbacks are leading boys to disappointing futures that include them missing out on critical opportunities such as post secondary education and employment. This ongoing issue is turning heads and filling parents and educators with concerns. Well, why is that boys are not as good as girls? And is there anything that can be done? Boys are no less intelligent then girls in any way, just disadvantaged. The way they learn compared to girls and how are school system is structured leaves boys coughing up girls dust. There is an issue at hand and it must be addressed: Boys are second class citizens in today’s education system and it is not their fault! At the end of the day, its safe to say that generally speaking, girls are much better learners then boys in the classroom. The differences between what boys need and what girls need are often vast, by no means is any way wrong; however, the classroom only caters to one. Its not something we can be upset with or confused by, its just nature that boys and girls are different and one is benefiting from it. Kids generally look different...
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...The Danger of a Single Story - Transcript Courtesy of TED By Chimamanda Adichie Transcript: I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the single story." I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader. And what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. (Laughter) And they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. (Laughter) Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow. We ate mangoes. And we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because...
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...Handful of Dates” The Story “A Handful of Dates” by Tayeb Salih is about a boy whose feelings for his grandfather were changing little by little. First the boy loved his grandfather. He liked to spend a lot of time with him because he felt his grandfather was a perfect person with a pure heart. Also, he wanted to be like his grandfather in the future. The boy and the grandfather had a neighbor named Masood who his grandfather didn’t like. The boy felt curious about what happened with his neighbor, but when the boy asked his grandfather about Masood, the grandfather said bad things about him. After that, the boy realized that Masood was a person with happiness and he remembered his beautiful voice. That’s why he started to change his mind about his grandfather because he realized his grandfather was not what he thought. Throughout the story, the boy learned what he saw and believe was not always true and sometimes people are not how you imagine. At the beginning of the story, the boy loved his grandfather. He admired and looked up to his grandfather. He wanted to be just like him. The boy says, “The strange thing was that I never used to go out with my father, rather, it was my grandfather takes me with him wherever he went.” (P.2) This shows, the relationship between the boy and his grandfather,. The boy loved to go where grandfather takes him to because the boy liked him so much. For another example, the boy says, I loved him and would imagine myself, when I grew to be a man...
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...fair-haired boy lowers himself down some rocks toward a lagoon on a beach. At the lagoon, he encounters another boy, who is chubby, intellectual, and wears thick glasses. The fair-haired boy introduces himself as Ralph and the chubby one introduces himself as Piggy. Through their conversation, we learn that in the midst of a war, a transport plane carrying a group of English boys was shot down over the ocean. It crashed in thick jungle on a deserted island. Scattered by the wreck, the surviving boys lost each other and cannot find the pilot. Ralph and Piggy look around the beach, wondering what has become of the other boys from the plane. They discover a large pink and cream-colored conch shell, which Piggy realizes could be used as a kind of makeshift trumpet. He convinces Ralph to blow through the shell to find the other boys. Summoned by the blast of sound from the shell, boys start to straggle onto the beach. The oldest among them are around twelve; the youngest are around six. Among the group is a boys’ choir, dressed in black gowns and led by an older boy named Jack. They march to the beach in two parallel lines, and Jack snaps at them to stand at attention. The boys taunt Piggy and mock his appearance and nickname. The boys decide to elect a leader. The choirboys vote for Jack, but all the other boys vote for Ralph. Ralph wins the vote, although Jack clearly wants the position. To placate Jack, Ralph asks the choir to serve as the hunters for the band of boys and asks Jack...
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...Summary of Happy Birthday, 1951 The short story is written by Kurt Vonnegut, and it is about an woman who left her small child to the old man and never came back again. This boy and the old man are the two characters the whole story is mostly about. The man doesn’t know anything about the small boy, so he decides to celebrate his birthday and is then seen choosing a day. The old man wants to give the boy a home without as his birthday present. On the way to the safe place, they talk about different things as uniforms when they see a couple of soldiers. When they arrive, they eat supper and then take a nap. When the man wakes up, he sees that the boy has gone missing. The man starts thinking about all kinds of scenarios and then the little boy surprises him and says: ”Gotcha!”. Characterization of the boy and the man The old man: The old man is one of the main characters of the Short story, according to the story it doesn’t seem like he likes the war or the environment that he lives in. It can been seen in the text as every time the little boy starts talking about the war he gets upset and sad. (Side 9 af 10, spalte 80). Another thing is that the old man worries about the boy, and has feelings for him. He thinks a lot about what present to give to the boy as a birthday present, and he has great affection for the little boy (Side 8 af 10, spalte 35) The old man is also in addition to that he doesn’t like war, also a bit philosophical he doesn’t relate peace to war. The...
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...Laws Patronizing To Girls and Discriminatory To Boys Cover letter The purpose of the essay was to show that there is discrimination in the statutory laws where the boys are the ones who suffer. When there is sex between two teenagers below the age of 16, the girl I protected while the boy is charged. Charging the boy alone while they are both supposed to be protected by the same law is discriminatory. The essay seeks to show this using the case of a 14-year-old boy and three girls. From completing the topic, I learn more about statutory rape and the legal age of consent to sex. I learnt that statutory rape was initially meant for protecting girls from older male advances. However, with the advocacy of equal rights for both sexes, all children must be protected. During the research, I encountered several problems especially with finding relevant sources for information. Most scholarly articles addressed statutory laws without considering discrimination of boys. Therefore, finding the relation between statutory rape and discrimination of boys was challenging. Additionally it was hard to find materials relating to young boys since most statutory rape cases focused on older mature offenders with minors. I enjoyed learning about the statutory law and its consideration for boys in the current are. In addition, I enjoyed learning about the arguments posed by both sides, despite supporting the claim that it discriminated boys. The topic was interesting and enjoyable as well...
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...feel that there is something wrong with him or her. It is important to remember that a person’s sex is different than a person’s gender. “Gender is learned. Gender is what people think about being boys or girls growing into men and women. These attitudes and behaviors are learned from society and the culture that people live in. Gender is not what we “are” but what we “do” ”. Society as a whole, teachers , and parents collectively and respectively “teach” gender roles in many different ways. There are many problems if children learn that boys and girls can do only certain things. Those children may not get a chance to use their talents. It is not fair for some children to be able to do things when others cannot. Everyone can help children to use all their talents. Society, teachers and parents can help girls learn to do active things and also quite things. They can teach boys to be gentle and also compete. Children do not need to worry about whether activities are “boy things” or “girl things. “Children who don’t worry about gender roles seem to feel better about themselves. They learn who they are more quickly than other children. They learn to be good at being children, not just being boys or girls.” 1. IMPACT OF WORD USAGE ON GIRLS AND BOYS The impact of feminine words such as passive, sympathetic, cautious, and intuitive all on girls by saying things like “ Let me show you how girls...
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