Therefore, the theme in "The Piano Lesson" shows the complexity of African-American attitudes toward the past and black heritage compared to plans for the future. ... He tells of a sordid relationship with Lymon's mother and brings news about home, which is Mississippi. ... She don't know nothing about it. ... I just ain't ready to get married right now." (1366) At the end of the play, Boy Willie and Berniece finally came to terms with the ghosts of the past, which were compelling them to take their stands about the piano. Some family members, especially Boy Willie, challenge...

• Word Count: 1379
• Approx Pages: 6

When he masturbates, he is told it is ok, when she, at six, is caught under the bed with one of her boy friends, the column in the paper says it is just a stage. ... Alongside the starched, flattened, white-boy blues came the first inklings of racial integration. The same year Rebel without a Cause came out, Rosa Parks was dragged from the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and three black students were let into UC Chapel Hill, by the rulings of a federal court judge, by nineteen fifty six, the pop song "My Prayer" sung by the black band the Platters hits number one on the charts. ... Se...

• Word Count: 1332
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The white players refused to play on a team that consisted of blacks along with a black coach and vice versa. ... "Listen to me, Sophia-reading's not only no good for a black boy like Fred; it would do him harm, make him discontent, miserable, unhappy with his lot..." ... Equally, Ellie and Vi, in Douglas Ward's Happy Ending, cared first about their family's welfare. ... "I ain't selling that piano, Boy Willie. If that's why you come up here, you can just forget about it." ...

• Word Count: 1924
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

The first story I am going to talk about is Everyday Use. ... The other story I am going to talk about is Monkey Business by Joseph Geha. ... They are both two independent people, even though Jimmy is a little boy. ... She was happy having everything in just plain black and white. ... Just how Zizi would let people run his life with out trying to do something about it. ...

• Word Count: 1355
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Maya was an African American girl with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth. ... Maya was unsure about this trip because she didn't want to leave Momma behind. ... Maya get confused about Mr. ... Unfortunately, Maya soon learns that she is pregnant by the neighborhood boy. ... She gave birth to a baby boy which became the love of her life. ...

• Word Count: 1681
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

However, what I find to be most striking about Hughes" was reading about his determined nature. ... At night they would read him stories from such works from popular black authors such as W.E.B. ... They would also tell him stories of black history, and encourage him to try to make positive changes someday. ... In his autobiographical novel, Hughes said as a young boy, "For the first time loneliness strikes me, strikes me terribly settling down in a dull ache round about, in the dusk." ... Even as a young boy he was ready to take chances in life. ...

• Word Count: 1483
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

A young boy gets molested and killed in the parking lot of the local shopping mall. ... When they ask him about his affair he says, "I am sorry, about everything that's happened. ... She had drawn snakes around its arms, made its breast into red-and-black targets, given it a verdant bush of green pubic hair surrounding a brown phallic blob. The face was colored half black and half purple. ... She also demonstrates knowledge of sexual behavior, telling Marsha that a boy's "thing" looks like a thumb. ...

• Word Count: 1475
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Before his death, he was one of the Seven Days, the small group of men devoted to keeping the balance of blacks and whites equal, which is one of the causes of his desire for an escape from life. As he says in his note, he had become one of the Seven Days for love of black people, not for any hate of whites. ... Milkman, born Macon Dead, the third to bear that name, is born the day after Smith's flight off Mercy Hospital and is the one most affected by the image of flight presented in the book, even from his infancy. " When the little boy discovered, at four -that only birds and airplanes...

• Word Count: 1472
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

The poem talks about the narrator's life in the house where he and his family lived and kept "pre-war Europe alive" for nineteen years. ... In this poem the narrator speaks about his perspective of his father, and his lack of understanding of him and his polish culture. ... The responder can see there that the father is blind to the boys needs, he can only see that the boy continues to love him and believes that that is all that matters. ... They arrive from America believing that they are a superior race and above all blacks. ... The girls realise that they are going to have to accept th...

• Word Count: 1417
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The opening scenes of the film Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry, helped introduce me to one of the main themes of the movie; that the realization of one boy's dream will be barred by three different hurdles on the way to achieving his goals. ... The camera tracks him as he dances around the ring, and the screen cuts to black when he is knocked out with one punch. ... The director has helped me to understand what the film is going to be about by introducing Jacky's expectations of his son, hinting that Billy is going to disappoint him later on. ... In this world of miners w...

• Word Count: 1374
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Rosa Lee`s parents were black rural share croppers from the South who moved to Washington D.C. in order to escape racial oppression, economic exploitation and segregation and to find a better life and work there. ... That is an example for racism and colour consciousness within the black community. ... Another aspect I would like to write about, which is closely related to drug abuse and trafficking is prostitution. ... At the age of seven, Bobby got raped several times by a neighborhodd teenage boy who used to babysit him and his younger brothers and sisters. ... This brings me to the ne...

• Word Count: 2335
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

The grandmother, Bailey, his wife, June Star (the little girl), John Wesley (the little boy), and the baby make up five or six people, depending on how you view the baby. ... O"Connor's choice of the town name lets the reader know that the character's lives in the story are about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. ... Hoping for a car to come along, the family does not realize the peril they are about to face when one does come. ... At the very instant one learns of the car headed toward the family, "a big black battered hearse-like automobile" (478), one knows that the confro...

• Word Count: 2114
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Most of know about nature versus nurture, and how our families' love and affections (or lack thereof) help shape us into who we will become. ... He also witnessed his brother murder two black men in front of him. ... Derek takes the whole, "It's not my problem, what do you expect me to do about it?... Sweeny is also black. ... It just so happened that the boy was African American and had ties to others that Derek had angered in the past. ...

• Word Count: 1484
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

She was able to show her feeling about the lack of respect for family and elders through the grandmother. ... Without say from the children's parents, the grandmother takes it upon herself to keep the peace between them, by telling them a story of a black child mistakenly eating her watermelon with initials from a suitor carved in it reading E.A.T. ... "If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. ... When the trip continues the grandmother makes the mistake of telling the children about a house with secret panel that is nearby. ... ...

• Word Count: 1416
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

She was able to show her feeling about the lack of respect for family and elders through the grandmother. ... Without say from the children's parents, the grandmother takes it upon herself to keep the peace between them, by telling them a story of a black child mistakenly eating her watermelon with initials from a suitor carved in it reading E.A.T. ... "If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. ... When the trip continues the grandmother makes the mistake of telling the children about a house with secret panel that is nearby. ... ...

• Word Count: 1416
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

In this scene he shows how bad he felt about his son and says, "Homer I've been confuse about you, I've been mad at you, but boy that is the fist time I'm shame of you I in my life." ... This passage is shown when the mother mentions "Some times I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress failing off her in little black papery flakes" This also let Maggie in a state of inner insecurity scene the fire had caused scars physically and mentally as well. ... The story makes it clear that Dee was confused about the meaning of ...

• Word Count: 1757
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Marjane's mum interrupts the group before they can attack they boy with nails between their knuckles, and gently tells Marjane, "It is not for you and me to do justice. ... " When Marjane asks her mother about forgiveness, her mother replies, "Bad people are dangerous. ... In this short series of events, Marjane begins to learn how the complexity of viewing the world in black and white. ... In an attempt to rebel against the institution, Marjane refused to comply with her principal's repeated warning about wearing jewelry, and accidentally knocked over the principal wh...

• Word Count: 1625
• Approx Pages: 7

The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel about a nameless father and son who are traveling to the coast in the south. ... "The Road was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006 and, in 2007, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. ... The boy pleaded to his father to not take all he had but the father refused, "I don't think he should have anything" (McCarthy 149). ... The focus on the deprivation of food reveals a lot about the human kind. "For McCarthy, the satisfaction of hunger uncovers both ontic and ontological answers to fundamental questions about wh...

• Word Count: 1485
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

I had just never thought about my eyes before. I had never thought about what it might be like to be blind" (Potok 52). ... Needless to say, Reb was very emotional, especially about his faith. ... In this group of workers there happened to be a young man by the name of Hank Spruill who would change the way life was in the small town of Black Oak while he was there. ... Besides witnessing the murder of the Sisco boy, later Luke will see yet another take place. ...

• Word Count: 1855
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

" As Loretta looks at Johnny's plane on the tarmac through the airport window, an old gray haired woman dressed in black tells Loretta she put a curse on Johnny's plane. ... There is an amusing line of dialogue between Rose and Cosmo Castorini, right after Johnny answers Rose's question about men and womanizing. ... Ronny is less than happy to hear about the pending marriage between his brother Johnny and Loretta. ... The next morning Loretta is walking home obviously in love in the meantime Johnny has returned from Sicily, his mother did not give her blessing and Johnny...

• Word Count: 2080
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

My life was happy and carefree, until the day the planes began dropping bombs from the sky and the men with the shiny black boots came marching into our city. ... This became my place to sit and think about all the changes my life had gone through already , and the many more that would come when I began school as 'Elizabeth in the fall. ... Once seated at my desk the other kids began to take notice that I was different, they asked my many questions about Poland and I what I did there, I only knew a couple words of English and I did my best to answer them. ... Eventually a met a boy named...

• Word Count: 2372
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

She yelled at Wes, until Wes's father reminded her that although "he [needed] to learn what [was] acceptable and what [was] not, that cursing at a young boy wasn't the most effective way of making a point " (6). ... Wes knew what a real man looked like, and could model himself after his father, even if he remembered very little about him. ...

• Word Count: 2166
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School