3 different examples of culture in Los Angeles that Janet Fitch depicts in White Oleander Based in sunny, dry Los Angeles, and told through the life of a foster child, Astrid, White Oleander takes us on a journey through a side of LA most never experience. Yes, Los Angeles is swimming pools and movie stars, but it’s also the world of White Oleander. A gritty world. Janet Fitch took us on a tour of Los Angeles’ subterranean side. This is Astrid’s LA. A third generation resident of Los Angeles, Janet has a feeling for the different flavors of LA. About Hollywood, Janet said, “This neighborhood is dense with dreams. Then there is this transitional area where the dreamers live…
It’s amazing this place doesn’t levitate.” (2) The novel by Janet Fitch White Oleander is a great piece of writing. This novel very well shows different types of relationships within a society, within a family. The story is about a girl, she is a daughter of a single mother, Astrid. Her mother murdered her boyfriend, and was put in jail for full life imprisonment. Astrid was left to move from one foster home into the other. The definition of culture is very wide, there is no one single definition to define this term. Some sources say that culture is some kind of a particular society that is located in one time and one place, that has particular social interests and interactions.
The main culture that is described in the novel by Janet Fitch White Oleander is the diverse culture of Los Angeles, with all of its plusses and minuses, and with the large diversity of people living together in one city, but without any interactions between them whatsoever. The first foster home that Astrid was put into was a trailer: We stopped in the dirt yard of a house, part trailer, so many parts added on, you had to call it a house. A plastic garden pinwheel stood motionless in a patch of geraniums. Spider plants hung from pots on the wide trailer porch. (1) This family was a complete difference to the way of life that Astrid used to live. This family was poor, religious, but in their own, that was more convenient for them. Astrids life in this community was very difficult, because she couldnt quite fit in, in addition she couldnt fight the loneliness that she felt for missing her mother. This family had its own routines, they drank heavily while pretended to be very God believing. They played Bingo on Friday nights.
The Essay on White Oleander Film Review
White Oleander Film Review A brief narrative of the plot: Based on the best-seller book White Oleander by Janet Fitch, the motion picture tells the story of Astrid, a girl that grew and lived in the city of Los Angeles. The picture follows a yung wmans jurney thrugh hardship and lss of many foster homes in Los Angeles (with their own laws, rules, and lessons) to maturity, jy and true independence. ...
This lady Starr, was striving hard to keep her boyfriend, and was doing everything to keep him. The culture that is described in this passage is called the trailer culture of Los Angeles. This is a fairly large group of people, who basically have the same life styles. They all drink, all of them are very religious, and all of them live in trailers. All these people do not have any significant goals or achievements in life, they just go with the stream, and that is all they need. This is one of the low cultures of Americans, who consider themselves being privileged only by being Americans, but who were left of the side of the road of the American dream.
She was removed from this family, because the mother believed that she was flirting with her boyfriend, and of course she couldnt afford this, thus she kicked her out. The next family that Astrid landed in was a very rich family. It was a family of a movie star. Astrid really began enjoying her life during this period of her life. The family consisted of a husband and a wife. The husband was a movie star, who was away most of the time, and this made his wife really lonely.
Both Astrid and the lady needed each other for support and comfort. Through their communication they began to fell needed and wanted. Although this life was much better of, but there were other serious problems facing the life of this people, it was the loneliness and the alienation. The lady committed suicide, not without Ingrids, Astrids mother, help. Astrids mother was feeling that she was losing her daughter so she emphasized the only possibility for Astrids new mother. The possibility was committing suicide.
The Term Paper on The Effects of Culture on Family Ties
Jane Mansbridge defines oppositional consciousness as “an empowering mental state that prepares the member of an oppressed group to act, to undermine, reform, or overthrow a system of human domination (4-5). The notion of oppositional consciousness relies on a group’s adherence to a particular form of world view which allows the differentiation of the dominant perspective from the emergent ...
Astrid left this family because, the mother died. The cultural group that this family had belonged to was on of the dominant cultures presented in the society of Los Angeles. This is the cultural group of movie stars. All of these people consider themselves the boheme. They conduct a very up-class way of life. These are mostly people that carry the cultural achievement (movies, books, music) into the masses. In this way there of course is an interaction between the two cultures described above, but this interaction occurs only through one way communication, meaning the trailer culture buys and watches or reads the products of the dominant culture, and thus they interact.
The next family that Astrid was placed into was a family of a Ukrainian woman, who was selling old clothes other things. There were couple more girls in the house.The house was also very dark and cramped, but at least Astrid had some more freedom and privacy in this house. This family taught Astrid a lot about life, and about how hard it is to make money. During this period of her life she began to dress like punk, and was doing a lot of things that made her mother shocked, when Astrid came to visit her in prison. This family was example of the immigrant culture, that with years only increases in Los Angeles. The immigrants, are people who came to the United States to be a part of the American dream, but than the realization hit them, that nobody was waiting for them. These people are left to do anything, in order to live.
They sell clothes, they make things, but they strive towards something. They have a goal, an aim to live better, to achieve something in life, to break out of the routine that they got themselves into. This group of people usually doesnt interact with anybody, they are alienated, because they are foreigners. This can be very well seen in the book ,where we see how much work the poor woman had to do to live out her dream. Overall this story shows the different sides of life in Los Angeles. There is great poverty, abundance of everything one might imagine and the dirty business to get to make some money.
The Term Paper on Extended Essay: How Does Culture Influence Social Conformity to Groups?
Introduction I still remember my first day of American Government class freshman year. The teacher asked us, “What are the three branches of government?” I wanted to raise my hand and say “Judicial, congressional, and executive.” But no one else raised their hands. I thought to myself, “No one else knows it, maybe I don’t know it. I don’t want to stand out on my first day. Better just keep my hand ...
All of these society do not blend, they do not intermix or intertwine, they are like two parallel lines that always go together, with only some distance in between them, but they are never bound to meet. They just continue their own paths. This book really well showed all of the differences that these societies have, all the differences in the ways of lives and in comprehending the outside world and reality. This novel once again showed that different groups of people with different incomes are bound to never intertwine, and they will never live together. The dominant culture will always be the leader, there will always be cultures that do not strive towards anything, and there always will be the foreigners that came to have a better life. All this cultures are separated from the very beginning and primarily by the aims and abilities of the representatives of these cultures. Bibliography Fitch, Janet. White Oleander: A Novel. Boston: Little, Brown, 1999.
Winfrey, Oprah Discussion of White Oleander, http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/tows_1999/tows _past_19990615.jhtml;jsessionid=XMHCEWERORKUXLARAZ 3B3KQ.
