Maddy Smith

From “Dairy” by Anne Frank  “Don’t condemn me; remember rather that sometimes I too can reach the bursting point” (285).  “But it often makes my head swim if I’m jumped upon too much, and then on top of that have to think about all those other miseries” (291).  After reading many excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary I have come to an understanding as to why they are so talked about and recognized. It was amazing to read the thought process of such a young teenager during such a traumatic event in history. She had such an imagination, writing to her imaginary friend kitty, and being able to express and acknowledge her feelings throughout her time hiding with her family. When reading, you can recognize that she went through similar internal struggles as other adolescence do in these teenage years. She experienced feeling like she had to compete with her sister, the struggle of a mother-daughter relationship, and always trying to get approval and love from her father. Her words ...

From “Times and Places” by Emily Hahn  “I can stop whenever I want to. You don’t know me well, but I assure you I can stop anytime” (354). “He’d put it off and put it off until it was forgotten” (355). Word Count: 271 The author in this excerpt described the life of a struggling addict who didn’t want to admit they were addicted. In the first quote I chose, I found that she often used the phrase “I’m not addicted” despite the number of times that she was smoking pipes every day. She described many of her symptoms throughout the story just thinking it was a common cold, but as the readers, we can conclude she had withdrawal symptoms from not getting her fix. I included the second quote to point out that Heh-ven was a bad influence on her. He would also always say that he was not addicted and could never be because of the busy lifestyle that he lived. It was upsetting to see how quickly he got her addicted knowing how bad it was and how much time he wasted when he smokes. I feel like...

From “Blackberry Winter” by Margret Mead  “For there is no way of knowing in advance what the people will be like or even what they will look like” (562).  “I had the more satisfactory task of learning that culture first and only afterward working on a special problem” (568).  Word Count: 379 Margret’s way of thinking drew from her eagerness to learn more and gain more intelligence. She expressed a lot of the knowledge that she learned throughout her time studying anthropology. It was inspiring to me that she was a woman during this time trying to spread awareness about the problems of adolescence by making comparisons between America and other cultures. She recognized the importance and the appeal of anthropology using her intelligence to benefit people. Thinking back to this time when women did not have the upper hand, she recognized her intelligence and decided to make a difference for women in this kind of field. She expressed a lot of her hard work in this excerpt as...

From “Journey into the whirlwind” by Eugenia Semyonova Ginzburg “When they had all heard that I was a member of the Communist Party of the USSR, they became greatly excited and asked question after question after question” (307).  Word count: 302 In these excerpts from the author's prison diaries, she describes her time with a lot of different women, telling her stories, and hearing theirs. During her time in prison, I feel like she learned a lot from these other women and taught them a lot of things about coming from prison before. They were all very curious about the reasons why others were there and what crimes everyone had been convicted of. Throughout her journey in prison, she reflected a lot because she had so much free time to think about different things. In my opinion, her being so reflective made her have a more positive outlook on the horrible things that she encountered during her time there. I sensed that the women sharing their stories created a bond between them and...

From “The War” by Marguerite Duras “I start to eat again too, and to sleep. I put on some weight. We’re going to live. Like him I haven’t been able to eat for seventeen days. Like him I haven’t slept for seventeen days...”  (244).  Word Count: 260 Marguerite seems to be a very devoted wife who has gone through a lot during this time of the war. She had already lost her baby and her younger brother, so I understand the stress and physical symptoms she was feeling because she had to worry about her husband dying as well. As the story develops you are unsure if Robert L. is going to survive because of all the horrible things that he was going through. They described his legs as looking like crutches and when the sun shines you can see through his hands. The disparity of seeing someone you love go through something like this would be unbearable. She even describes herself that she is experiencing all these things because she is afraid of his death, and she can’t bare to lose anoth...

 From “When Heaven and Earth Changed Places” by Le Ly Hayslip  “I dropped my bucket and peeled off the top two of the three shirts I always wore. The top shirt – the one I would wear all day if nothing happened – was brown” (361).  Word Count: 291 I chose this quote because I thought it was interesting and very intelligent to have a young girl have these different colored shirts to signal when the Republicans were coming. Not only would they not suspect her because she is such a young girl, but they probably wouldn’t recognize her if she were to change her shirt. It’s interesting how much responsibility they placed on such a young girl, and it also makes sense because of the state of their country. Everyone had to be very helpful to survive. Even such simplistic things as changing the color of her shirt saved her village and she ended up being the hero. I think this forced her to have to grow up very quickly and be a leader to a lot of the younger children. She was teachi...

From “Gifts of Passage” by Santha Rama Rau “But I put it happily away, because it had all happened to a girl called Cynthia, and I never was really particularly interested in her.” (676) Word count: 315 This quote stood out to me when I was reading this excerpt. Reading about times when other races were very oppressed and people treated them with very little respect makes me upset, but when they can stand up for themselves it is very inspiring. I thought it was interesting that the headmistress made the younger girls pick a new name that was easier for her to pronounce, instead of just trying to learn how to say their names. It was upsetting to read how they felt ashamed to tell the English children their names or eat what their mom packed them for lunch. Santha was very lucky to have her older sister there for her as a role model because when the teacher said the stereotype that Indians cheat and made them sit in the back of the class with a desk in between each of them, she immediate...

From “The Price of my Soul” by Bernadette Devlin  “We didn’t gossip about other girls in the school or make cynical remarks about the teachers, instead, we analyzed the situation in Northern Ireland and discussed why most of us were going to leave it.” (192) Word Count: 312 I think that this quote shows how advanced the author was at such a young age. Just by the things that she talked about with her friends compared to the other people her age. Also, she mentioned that she flew through the 3rd grade, then she had to take an exam to get into grammar school, and despite being absent a lot from being sick all the time, she still managed to pass the exam. She even knew from a very young age that she wanted to stay in Northern Ireland, but she knew that there was more opportunity than being a Catholic teacher or a nun. I think a lot of the women's influences in her life were very negative which inspired her to be so opinionated. I think that a lot of her ideals came from going to a sch...