Several changes have occurred since the 1920s in traditional family values and the family life. Research revealed several different findings among family values, the way things were done and are now done, and the different kinds of old and new world struggles.
In Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Sara and her father have different opinions of what the daughters’ role should be. Sara believed that she should be able to choose what her life will be, because it is her life. She was assimilated to the new world in this sense. She felt that since she lived in America she should have the right to be free to chose her lifestyle and make it what she wanted. She believed that she should be able to keep some of her hard earned money for herself and that the father should get off his behind and work instead of reading the Torah all day long over and over. Her father believed that he should be able to chose what his daughters and wife did. He wanted them to work and give the money to the family. In the meantime he practiced the Torah. He felt that he should have all the good portions of the meal even though he did not work to provide the meal. This is an example of the new world VS. the old world. There is a definite generational tension over assimilation, into America and expectations are different for the father from that of the women in the family.
Sara’s father also feels that he should get to pick the man that his daughters will marry. This is so old world, and Sara is not going to have it. She has watched her sisters who are so unhappy with the husbands that the father picked for them. Her father believes, “No girl can live without a father or a husband to look out for her,” “It says in th…
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… point of view the story of her life and her experiences. She does a wonderful job of depecting the struggles that she had with her father and the desire to become independent. This book shows us an in depth description of the life of an immigrant and their struggles to fit in and be like all the others. She works through the hard times and makes her life what she wants and fulfills her goal. Sara inspires us by showing us that if we work hard enough we can overcome anything and meet the goals of our life.
Works Cited
Cowan, Neil M. and Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, Our Parents’ Lives. New York: New York Press, 1989.
Kristeva, Julia, Strangers To Ourselves. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Yerkes, Robert M., Book Review Digest: Reviews Of 1925 Books. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1926.
Yezierska, Anzia, Bread Givers. New York: Persea Books, Inc., 1999.
The Charater of Remedios in One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Charater of Remedios in One Hundred Years of Solitude
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the saga of the Buendia family is used as a thorough and contemplative representation of the nature of human detachment. The Buendias are plagued with a seemingly incurable solitude; a solitude that they turn to and rely on when they find themselves in times of trouble. When they are secluded, the Buendias lead meaningless and inescapable lives of habit and routine. One of the family members, Remedios the Beauty, is seemingly unlike any other Buendia. Her life consists of little other than sleeping, eating, and bathing. The simple and uncomplicated life she leads is deceiving for Remedios the Beauty is the most complex character in the entire novel. Furthermore, Remedios epitomizes everything the Buendias represent in terms of solitude and the nature of human existence, and is, essentially, the center of the novel.
First of all, although she may seem simple-minded, Remedios is not by any means a one-dimensional idiot. Colonel Aureliano Buendia continuously asserts that Remedios is “in no way mentally retarded” and is “the most lucid being” that he has ever known. Such words do not come unjustified. Remedios has embedded in her mind the way of thinking that it takes some artists years to develop, if ever; the most important example of this being abandonment of all conformity. “She was becalmed in a magnificent adolescence, more and more impenetrable to formality, more and more indifferent to malice and suspicion, happy in her own world of simple realities.” If Remedios did not possess the mental capacities to think for herself, she would be more susceptible to the senseless traps of soc…
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…emedios’ have no place on this planet.
Remedios is used not only to represent the Buendias, she is an earthly symbol of the baffling complicity of life. She is simultaneously heroic and disdainful for only living through her own ideals and represents the everyday struggles that everyone faces. Garcia Marquez ultimately comes to the conclusion that, although believing in one’s ideal is important, removing one’s self from all of humanity itself is a crime that is unamendable. Even though the Buendias brought destruction upon others, they never once even attempted to seek out those essential qualities of human existence and life. They could have found love had they wanted it from the beginning; but by the time they figured it all out, it was too late.
Works Cited:
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Harper
Perennial, 1991.