...Laura Munger PSY/230 4/22/2012 Instructor Koenig Personal Narrative Personal Narrative 1 I think the younger you are, the more dramatically different you are from each year to the next. Infancy through young adulthood holds so many milestones and life-changing events. Those are the years when you can really tell how a person has changed since the year before. I think the difference between age 1 and 2, 12 and 13, 19 and 20, etc, is so much greater than 34 and 35, 46 and 47, 80 and 81, etc. For me, the past 5 years have been from ages 37 to 42. If you had asked me what the meaning of life was at a younger age, I probably could not have told you. I still can not probably tell you the answer to that question. Can anyone truly answer that question? Everyone has a different meaning to life that is their very own. As a teenage, like most teenagers, I thought I knew it all and had control of my life and it's direction, and found out I was wrong. I had made some mistakes on my life journey but I had learned from them. I became a mother at the young age of 18 which put my life in a whole new direction. Did I lose my youth? Yes. Would I have changed it? No. I ended up having three children by the time I was 23. That was the time when I thought my life had true meaning. I had three little human beings that depended on me for everything. Did I make mistakes along the way? Yes, what young mother doesn't? As they...
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...up by her academic background. Despite the online essays, her first official published book was in 2009. “I Killed Britney Spears” is a (non-fiction) personal essay, with a first person narrator which makes the essay identifiable. Edelstein clearly wrote this essay to highlight a few consequences and flaws in the relationship between fan and idol. Most of these flaws are shown in the age 13-18. These years are filled with the confusion that follows the transition from child to adult. Edelstein might have thought about this particular transition and thereby, intending the text to be read by these confused adolescents. The text “I Killed Britney Spears” was written in 2008, a year of great turmoil for the star Britney Spears. She was fighting over the custody of her children, she had been in rehab and just cut off her hair. All these events generated a lot of public attention. Mostly negative attention. Many of the “Spears” fans (including Edelstein herself) who identified themselves with her, were emotionally hit by Britney’s instability. The intention of Edelstein is spread across a few points. First, Edelstein intends to raise awareness towards the ignorance of “feeding the show business machine”. Towards the end of the essay, Edelstein concludes that she contributed to pushing Britney to the metaphoric death. The death of her spirit. “Bleeding her dry”, Fed the Britney machine”. “Britney machine” is the embodiment of Britney Spears as a celebrity and...
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...text “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” is a short story written by Robin Black in 2010. It deals with the theme “death” a specifically engages in how death affects our relations. The short story contains mental and social issues connected to losses and the generational recurrence of these. “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” shows how a woman’s life was changed because of her brother’s death and how she is still affected as an adult. The main theme in the short story is depression caused of a death. The following essay focuses on the structure and symbols in the short story. “Divorced, Beheaded, Survived” is about a 40-year-old mother - Sarah, from whose the point of view is told – therefore a first person narrator. The woman looks back upon an essential episode in her childhood when her older brother became sick and died. The setting is also important in these realizations. The story takes place in Manhattan in the present, but the setting of Sarah’s childhood home is described positively with a sense of calming familiarity. “Day after day, dusk really, in the time between school and dinner, in the small, untended yard behind my childhood home…” When we see at the setting the exiting aspect is to see at the lack of details in the description. The result of this is that the focus of the story becomes the emotional way Sarah experiences and creates a deeper understanding of death and all it’s terrible consequences. The emotional aspect of the history is boosted through the structure of...
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...148-American History to 1865 Professor Palenscar February 4, 2013 Rowlandson’s Captivity Imagine yourself in a point of time where Puritans whose village would be attacked by Native American Indians. A book called Classic American Autobiographies tells about a short narrative story called A true history of the captivity and restoration of mrs. Mary rowlanson. Around the 1600’s, a puritan women named Mary Rowlandson would be captured by Indians and held captive for eleven weeks until she could finally escape. She was only able to endure her captivity only through the faith in God. Instead of Mary facing hardships daily from the Indians, she continually traced the goodness of God in keeping her safe from even further harm. That’s why in the following one will understand about what we learned from the Native American Tribe, the view that Mary wants the readers to see, and if any change upon Mary of her thoughts and behavior as time goes by. One will learn about the Native American Tribe that was holding Mary Rowlandson in captivity. Firstly, the Indians are to be described as beasts, barbarous creatures, murderous and wolves. These descriptions are taken from the Mary personal statement describing her personal feelings and actual experiences while watching horrific scenes taking place before her eyes. On page 28, Mary states “There was one who was chopped into the head with a hatchet, and stripp’d naked, and yet was crawling up and down. It was a solemn sight to see so many...
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...__verbatim ___ summaries of conversations ___provided by a parent • Q & A are listed by universal aspects of culture (i.e. categories) • Nearly all questions were asked/ responses are provided for all questions • Responses provide sufficient data for the other parts of the ethnography • A rich narrative is provided within the answers; thoughtfulness is clearly exhibited • Personal Interview/ Parent Interview/ Grandparent Interview Completed |Rating |Exceeds Standards |Meets Standards |Approaches |Insufficient Evidence; D or | | |A+, A |A-, B+, B |B-, C+, C, C- |below | |Content |1. Asked and answered |1. Asked and answered |1. Asked and answered |1. Asked and answered | | |questions reveal tremendous |questions reveal family |questions reveal family |questions are lacking in many | | |depth and provide a rich |narrative |details |respects...
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...Divorced, Beheaded, Survived - Robin Black The text "... Divorced, Beheaded, Survived" is a short story written by Robin Black in 2010. It deals with the theme death and specifically engages in how death affects close relatives. It contains mental and social issues connected to losses and the generational repetition of these. The story presents how a women's life was changed because of her brother's death and how she is still influenced as an adult. The main themes are depression and passiveness caused by bereavement. The following essay focuses on the narrator's mind and the themes through an analysis of the symbols, the language and the narrative technique. The story is about a 40-year-old-women, from whose point of view the story is told. She looks back upon an essential episode of her childhood when she lost her older brother. The story is significantly structured as it contains two stories from the same person's life. The narrator has lost her brother at the age of 10 and her son loses a friend at the age of 16. The likeness of the misfortunes and their undesirable consequences is apparent through the deliberate composition of the story. The main character, who is also the narrator, alternates between adult life and childhood in her narration. For instance she abruptly swaps to her own childhood when talking about her son: "His face was still sleepy, unwashed, his brown hair a little messy." "I don't know. Maybe Jeff Mandelbaum's mother saw a [...]". These two quotes...
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...20th century. His occurrences throughout his life inspired his poetry, most of which were inspired by his own life story. For that reason many of Frost’s poems have the same or similar topics to what Frost was dealing with in his life. Robert Frost’s main influences for his poetry came from his experiences in life. He used his relationships, nature, and the religion that surrounded him to create the poems that have made him the recognized poet that he is today. Robert Frost had many important relationships throughout his life that affected many of his choices as well as his poetry. In several of his relationships he suffered devastating losses including the death of his father, his mother, his sister, two of his children, and his wife. The loss of each of these important relationships influenced his career and affected poetry in a different way. Robert Frost’s relationship with his father, William Frost Jr., impacted Frost’s life which in result affected his poetry. Frost’s father was a journalist and a teacher that moved his family out to San Francisco to earn his fortune as a journalist (Poirier and Richardson). His dreams of becoming wealthy didn’t come true and he began gambling and drinking excessively. During this time Robert endured the sadness and abuse of an alcoholic father. Frost’s father died from tuberculosis when he was eleven, leaving his family a huge financial burden (Poirier and Richardson). The death of Frost’s...
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...living Malcolm’s life with him. Malcolm’s story is so engaging because of the author’s use of figurative language and imagery. Malcolm provides detailed descriptions of the things he saw, the places he went, the people he met, even the clothes he wore. The literary choices of imagery and figurative language contribute to the the power and beauty of the text and further develop Malcolm X’s purpose for writing. In the first eleven chapters of the autobiography, Malcolm goes through many challenges and changes as a person. Malcolm hopes to show how events in his life had an influence on...
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...Light at the End of the Tunnel “I have found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average slaveholders in Maryland.” (118) How would it feel to live in the chains of slavery for so many years and to finally succeed in escaping the cruel life as a slave? In the autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, Frederick recalls his personal story about his life as a slave. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, and was ripped away from his mother soon after birth. As he grows up, he is given to several masters, most cruel and inhumane. Frederick faces many cases of abuses, such as being whipped, worked to death, and feeling dehumanized. Despite a slave, he also teaches himself how to read and write, and soon, sets a goal to escape to the North. During his time as a slave, Frederick experiences friendship, love, betrayal, and...
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...[Indiana University Libraries] Date: 24 February 2016, At: 16:43 Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol. 46, No. 1, February 2010, 65–75 “He does not understand our customs”: Narrating orality and empire in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Jarica Linn Watts* University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA Downloaded by [Indiana University Libraries] at 16:43 24 February 2016 jarica.watts@utah.edu Jarica 0 100000February 46 2010 &Article OriginalofFrancis 1744-9855 (print)/1744-9863 JournalandPostcolonial 10.1080/17449850903478189(online) RJPW_A_448194.sgm TaylorLinnWatts 2010 Writing Francis This article delineates different strains of Achebe’s narrative technique in Things Fall Apart, arguing that earlier critics have failed to account fully for two fundamental principles in Achebe’s narrative: the myriad phrases that are repeated throughout the first part of the work; and the formative shift, the poetic volta, that takes place between parts one and two of the novel. Drawing on Achebe’s assertion that “anyone seeking an...
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...battles, and the psychological impact each stage of the war took on the soldiers. Transforming boys into men, the war forever changed the lives of the soldiers that fought for this country. Harrison’s book made it difficult for the war to be forgotten. Through the first-person narrative, Harrison exposes the reader to fear, allowing the reader to understand through the close views of the narrator, what a soldier actually experiences. Harrison builds opposition between the lives of boys, and their transformation into the nightmare of becoming a solider. The novel tests the reader and places his/her mind in the battlefields of war through metaphors, simile and imagery. This is such an important part in getting the point across and a huge reminder of how frightening war can be because Harrison gives attention to the five senses so the readers can understand the experience the narrator is going through. Harrison forces the reader to focus on the military aspects of what a solider really is, portraying how unavoidable the fear of dying and killing is, and just how easy it was for the innocence of a life to be taken. For example, the narrator is placed in an ammunition battle: “suddenly the stars revolve. I land on my shoulder. I have been tossed into the air. I begin to pray ‘God-God-please. I remember that I do not believe In God. Insane thoughts run through my head. I need something to grasp”(Harrison 26). Another example of when the curiosity of the other soldiers towards Brown’s...
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...Experience: Design Approach to Human-centered Jodi L. Forlizzi Submitted to the Department of Design, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design in Interaction Design Abstract My thesis attempts to understand experience as it is relevant to interaction design. Based on the work of John Dewey, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and Richard Carlson, I identify two types of experience in user–product interactions: satisfying experiences and rich experiences. A satisfying experience is a process–driven act that is performed in a successful manner. A rich experience has a sense of immersive continuity and interaction, which may be made up of a series of satisfying experiences. Based on this definition, I identify a set of design principles with which to create products that evoke rich experiences. These principles are intended to encourage designers to think about how to create user–product interactions that suggest values and communicate meanings that enrich the quality of life. Narrative plays a key role in these design principles. Our series of life experiences form a narrative; the values that designers impart in an object form a narrative which is elaborated...
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...know where to turn in ethical dilemmas, the one person we can look towards is Jesus. We need to look at where Jesus turned when he looked for answers. His answers came from the Bible. “Jesus lived what he understood the scriptures to teach; he immersed himself in them and knew them well” (Stassen & Gushee, 2003, p. 84). Christians must remember it is important that we must look toward the Scriptures as the authority on our ethical decisions. The Bible can give us guidance on what Jesus would do when facing ethical decisions. The Bible also gives us laws to live by, and these laws are the Ten Commandments. The Scripture communicates to us what God commands us to believe and do. As Christians, we must use the scriptures as a guide of how to live ethically and morally. Stassen and Gushee look at the classic and contemporary...
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...Indian Camp The Horror of Life from Birth to Death During the Modernist Movement, existentialist writers wrote about the meaninglessness of life. Existentialists believe that life is a struggle against the nothingness of the world. They believe there is no higher meaning to the existence of man, and they deny the existence of God. Ernest Hemingway portrays three different ways of coping with the meaninglessness of life in his short story “Indian Camp.” The three characters that portray the three different outlooks are Nick’s father, Uncle George, and the Indian father. Ernest Hemingway uses the environment in his short story “Indian Camp” to develop the thematic vision that there are different ways people can cope with the horror of life from the moment of birth and until death. In the short story, Hemmingway portrays a microcosm of life by including a baby’s birth and a man’s suicide in the short period of the story. The pregnant Indian woman struggles in labor for two days without any medical attention until Nick’s father’s arrival. Nick’s father describes to Uncle George after the procedure, “Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders” (18). The description of Ernest Hemingway INDIAN CAMP I guess the beginning of the story is quite usual and perhaps even banal. The son wants to watch his father brings new life into the world. He is a young boy who helps his father. But on the other hand, despite the fact that there is only...
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...Mothertongue Transforming Spaces Occupied by Women in South Africa through Theatre This paper sets out to explore how processes of theatre making employed by The Mothertongue project, provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Mothertongue works from the premise that the development and subsequent performance of stories in theatrical processes affords women the opportunity to re-write and remap their personal narratives and in so doing insert their voices into the landscape of South African Theatre. In an attempt to redress the gender imbalances and androcentricism prevalent in post-apartheid theatre, this paper speaks to the relationship between theatre, liminality and communitas. I am interested in unpacking how collaborative processes of theatre-making provide spaces for women to remap their personal narratives. Remapping in this instance refers to processes of transforming lived experience through story. I address how, through engaging in ritual activities that are central to the stories performed, actors, audiences and the owners of the source stories are invited to physically participate in remapping and transforming lived experience. Linked to this is the choice of form(s) and how this affects or impacts on the performed stories as well as on the construction of performed rituals and ultimately on the processes of remapping personal narratives. I focus specifically on Mothertongue’s 2004 production, Uhambo: pieces of a dream. The production was an...
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