Indholdsfortegnelse
Summary
Analytical essay
Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter
Uddrag
“One Friday Morning” is a short story surrounding Nancy Lee, a talented African American girl who has moved to the North of the United States with her parents in order to pursue better opportunities.
She attends the George Washington High School where she has great friends and a good relationship with the teachers at the school.
Since she is an art student, she paints a meaningful picture with the help of her teacher, Miss Dietrich, which permits her to enter an art contest.
Nancy initially wins the Artist Club scholarship for her art piece, but to her and her teachers’ disappointment, the award committee denies her the scholarship solely because she is colored.
The goal of the short story is to bring awareness to racial discrimination, as well as inequality, injustice, and the American dream as significant themes. The author of the story is Langston Hughes and it was published in 1941.
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The good weather, green grass, and tulips act as a reminder that it is simply an ordinary summer day, referring to the story's themes by showing that a discriminating incident like Nancy's could occur on any given day at any given time.
The weather in the story gets described as rainy and grey only once which is when Nancy gets called to the office for the first time, and told that she won the art contest.
In addition to the bad weather, it is described how nervous Nancy is before she goes to the office, which could be foreshadowing of the bad news she receives the second time she goes to the office.
The social setting depicts American society in the 1940s, which is important for the story because racism was common at this time.
Nancy's parents represent social heritage, given the fact that they worked hard for their own educations and later migrated from the south to provide Nancy with better opportunities, and make things easier for her than what they had.
Her parents do not want her to go through racial discrimination, which they likely did themselves while living in the south.
Symbolism and references are very significant in this short story, because they have such a broad and deep meaning.
Nancy makes numerous references to the American flag throughout the novel, such as in her painting of a colored woman looking at the flag, which clearly conveys Nancy's message: “(...) for in her mind the flag, the spring, and the woman formed a kind of triangle holding a dream Nancy Lee wanted to express.” (Page 18, line 6-8 One Friday Morning).
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