... She has deliberately created an extreme situation to prove a point. Nevertheless all the building blocks of the story exist in reality. All of the characters are affected to some degree, but Pecola succumbs to the difficulties she is facing. This was deliberate. Morrison wanted to show how the most unprotected ... regarding the feeling of inferiority and worthlessness is acquiring the symbol of beauty in her community. Blue eyes are regarded as beautiful by all the characters, including mothers and children who unanimously admire Shirley Temple. Pecola is in a desperate situation. She is...

• Word Count: 2371
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

... its own. "Everyday Use" is a story about three women, a family that lives in dingy three room house. It did not even have real windows, rather, it had holes in the walls resembling port holes on a ship. Maggie and Dee were the daughters of the narrator of the story. Maggie was burned in a fire that destroyed their first house. She is quiet and ... homecoming of a lost daughter. Through symbolism, Alice Walker teaches moral lessons about heritage and identity. This story asserts that family history should be a part of everyday life. Walker gave her characters realistic characteristics so...

• Word Count: 1121
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... are presented with two things, a happy little southern town and the ugly face of racism. We are shown this in many shapes and forms; through characters, setting and events throughout the story. Although the town, Maycomb, portrays both a happy community and a pretty little town on it's surface, underneath it ... outskirts of the town, deprived of an education and even made to attend a separate church. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird we see through the characters how entrenched the racism present actually is and how it is such a way of life that even the townsfolk themselves don't reali...

• Word Count: 1969
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... fight to live. Her religion is blindness; but she needs to be blind in order to survive, to fit into a society that would drive a seeing person mad. All of the characters that Bigger says are blind are living in darkness because the light is too painful. Bigger wants to break through that blindness, to discover something of worth in himself, thinking ... him no more than the billboard reading you can't win that he sees each day outside his apartment. He has grown up in an environment where enormous rats fester in holes and water is a maybe situation, where meals are precarious and money...

• Word Count: 1690
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School