Free Essays on Pop Culture Vs. Religion

The conflict between pop culture and religious values is an extremely popular and often overlooked bicultural bind. In many women’s lives not recognizing this bind could be emotionally damaging and lead to living double lives. Many girls that are raised in Christian homes are not exposed to true pop culture until they reach high school. They are often sheltered from the world by their blood family and their church family. Once they are exposed to pop culture and they can start making their own decisions the line between right and wrong becomes gray to them and they fall into a trap of living one life to please their parents and then another life to fit in with their friends. When this happens they tend to lose sight of who they really are and what really makes them happy. I discovered this bicultural bind in my own life when I was a freshman in high school. For me I began modeling at the age of fourteen and I was exposed to all sorts of things that were accepted as normal in that environment, but looked upon as a sin in my home. I began to become confused and I remained confused about whom I really was and what I believed was right and wrong until only about a year ago. When I finally decided to gain control of my life and determine my own set of beliefs I began to wonder if other women have gone through the same thing. Through research I found that many women have gone through this and some are still involved in this bind. In Paula Gunn Allen’s article, â€Å"Where I Come from is Like This† she describes how Native American women are looked upon differently by American society than they are by their Native American tribe.(Allen, Course Packet) This is her bicultural bind. The bicultural bind I have researched is similar in that women are looked upon in the Christian church as being very submissive to her husband. She is there to serve him and her family and must be a classy lady, yet also conservative. This idea... Free Essays on Pop Culture Vs. Religion Free Essays on Pop Culture Vs. Religion The conflict between pop culture and religious values is an extremely popular and often overlooked bicultural bind. In many women’s lives not recognizing this bind could be emotionally damaging and lead to living double lives. Many girls that are raised in Christian homes are not exposed to true pop culture until they reach high school. They are often sheltered from the world by their blood family and their church family. Once they are exposed to pop culture and they can start making their own decisions the line between right and wrong becomes gray to them and they fall into a trap of living one life to please their parents and then another life to fit in with their friends. When this happens they tend to lose sight of who they really are and what really makes them happy. I discovered this bicultural bind in my own life when I was a freshman in high school. For me I began modeling at the age of fourteen and I was exposed to all sorts of things that were accepted as normal in that environment, but looked upon as a sin in my home. I began to become confused and I remained confused about whom I really was and what I believed was right and wrong until only about a year ago. When I finally decided to gain control of my life and determine my own set of beliefs I began to wonder if other women have gone through the same thing. Through research I found that many women have gone through this and some are still involved in this bind. In Paula Gunn Allen’s article, â€Å"Where I Come from is Like This† she describes how Native American women are looked upon differently by American society than they are by their Native American tribe.(Allen, Course Packet) This is her bicultural bind. The bicultural bind I have researched is similar in that women are looked upon in the Christian church as being very submissive to her husband. She is there to serve him and her family and must be a classy lady, yet also conservative. This idea...

Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Writing (Part 1)

Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Writing (Part 1) Consider these two sentences from Leonard Gardners novel Fat City: The stooped forms inched in an uneven line, like a wave, across the onion field.Occasionally there was a gust of wind, and he was engulfed by sudden rustling and flickering shadows as a high spiral of onion skins fluttered about him like a swarm of butterflies. Each of these sentences contains a simile: that is, a comparison (usually introduced by like or as) between two things that are generally not alikesuch as a line of migrant workers and a wave, or onion skins and a swarm of butterflies. Writers use similes to explain things, to express emotion, and to make their writing more vivid and entertaining. Discovering fresh similes to use in your own writing also means discovering new ways to look at your subjects. Metaphors also offer figurative comparisons, but these are implied rather than introduced by like or as. See if you can identify the implied comparisons in these two sentences: The farm was crouched on a bleak hillside, where its fields, fanged in flints, dropped steeply to the village of Howling a mile away.(Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm)Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.(Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo) The first sentence uses the metaphor of a beast crouched and fanged in flints to describe the farm and the fields. In the second sentence, time is compared to a doctor attending a doomed patient. Similes and metaphors are often used in descriptive writing to create vivid sight and sound images, as in these two sentences: Over my head the clouds thicken, then crack and split like a roar of cannonballs tumbling down a marble staircase; their bellies opentoo late to run now!and suddenly the rain comes down.(Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire)The seabirds glide down to the waterstub-winged cargo planesland awkwardly, taxi with fluttering wings and stamping paddle feet, then dive.(Franklin Russell, A Madness of Nature) The first sentence above contains both a simile (a roar like that of cannonballs) and a metaphor (their bellies open) in its dramatization of a thunderstorm. The second sentence uses the metaphor of stub-winged cargo planes to describe the movements of the seabirds. In both cases, the figurative comparisons offer the reader a fresh and interesting way of looking at the thing being described. As essayist Joseph Addison observed three centuries ago, A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round it, and darts a luster through a whole sentence   (The Spectator, July 8, 1712).   NEXT: Using Similes and Metaphors to Enrich Our Writing (Part 2).