Preview

An Analysis Of Jill Goldberg's 'Taxi'

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
418 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
An Analysis Of Jill Goldberg's 'Taxi'
The “Taxi” by Jill Goldberg, is the story of a young girl named Christmas who gets adopted by Lucas, her father, in a hospital where she was born on Christmas night. Throughout the story, she and her father have hope in finding Christmas’s mother. Goldberg implies that sometimes reality hurts. Using characterisation and imagery, we could develop the story’s underlying moral.
To begin, contrast demonstrates how the father loses hope in finding Christmas’s mother. He gets out of the fantasy world and sees reality of life. At first, he was cheerful and always had hope in finding Christmas’s mother. “… Indeed, he felt absolutely sure that he’d find my mother himself too. He really believed that he’d rescue her, and we’d all be reunited romantically, happily ever after. He knew it was just a matter of time.” (Goldberg 3) As wee se here, her father has hope of finding his
…show more content…
After many years where he has been searching for her, the last hope he had was to post information and wait to receive a call from someone saying that there child was born on December 25, 1973. When he finally receives a call, he meets with the anonymous caller, and sees that the caller wasn’t Christmas’s mother, but a desperate 70 years old woman. This is where he loses all hope and escapes the fantasy world and he faces with the reality of life. All the hope he ever had to have a bigger family was over. Here is an example which shows this and how the reality causes him to become lifeless: “…my father feels the full weight of so many years of hope collapsing inside him. He so badly wanted to give me my mother for my birthday. But more than that, he simply hadn’t equipped himself for the possibility or certain reality that his dream of reunion would be disappointed….Although it’s a Tuesday, my father spends the afternoon watching his elephant and lion videos. This time he’s not laughing, he mumbling to himself in Russian, holding his

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    I would overshare to whichever unfortunate employee had to ring me through at the store, and could never shake the sense of disparity I felt deep in my chest. I grew older faster than I could keep track of, and soon Frank had moved out to Colorado to pursue his education. He wasn’t interested in staying connected with me, no matter how hard I tried, and his visits home for the week of Christmas were quiet and uneventful. As the years went on and he started into his career path, his week at home grew shorter and shorter, until all I could count on was a phone call Christmas morning, which lasted all of about two minutes. Henry was unaffected by the lack of his son’s presence, and this caused me to feel even lonelier as I was bewildered by his lack of interest in both his son and his wife’s lives. And now here I am, seventy eight years old, a widow, silently trapped in my own mind, unable to escape and living off the machine that breathed for me. The hospital room is empty, except for a small hanging calendar and a chair pushed into the corner, the sounds of the machines echo rhythmically, although the room was small it sounded like a…

    • 1094 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    You are sitting in your warm house on christmas morning with the excitement of seeing all the presents under your beautifully lit tree, what your not thinking about is that somewhere in the world at the same time there is a little girl sitting in her small, cramped two room house that she shares with her big family of six. While you are opening your all your extravagant gifts, your mom is preparing the feast for christmas dinner, the little girl your not thinking about is cold, and hungry, her parents only make enough money to afford the bare minimum, only the necessities. You are dreaming of the gifts you have received on this overly commercialized holiday while the girl is thinking about how she wishes her parents had enough money so she…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Would you have the courage to help someone that you barely know, if that meant that your own life could change dramatically? When reading Until They Bring The Streetcars Back by Stanley Gordon West you might think about this more than a few times. In the book, the main character Calvin Gant goes to extreme measures to help out his new friend Gretchen Luttermann.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Sharon Olds in "On the Subway" writes the poem to contrast the lives of a Caucasian woman and an African American boy. It displays how the narrator realizes the bonds they share because of their fear for each other.…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many different journeys being undertaken by Michael McGirr in his story of his travels along the Hume Highway, Bypass: The Story of a Road. In his book, McGirr embarks on a quest to discover his identity and belonging hand in hand with revealing many of the Hume Highway's hidden stories. McGirr's search for his spiritual beliefs is also an integral aspect of Bypass, as his recent departure from the Jesuit priesthood not long before he completed the cycling feat from Sydney to Melbourne along the Hume Highway meant that his identity was no longer associated with the Jesuit priesthood. McGirr was effectively a 'nobody'. Although working as a Catholic priest for 20 years of his life provided him with a sense of direction and security in life, McGirr decided that being a Catholic priest was not for him anymore; this is later reaffirmed when he states that he does not miss saying Mass.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    There is a lot that we can learn from people who have experienced history. Bella Spewack, specifically, is a great example of the struggle immigrants endured while trying to survive in America after immigration. Today, it is beneficial to learn about the personal views of people who lived in the past so we can gain a better understanding of how communities today were developed. Reading “Streets”, you can understand what the post immigration life was like in New York in the early years of Bella’s life. Bella included a lot of details in her memoir that allows the reader to understand how difficult life was for an immigrant. Even though “Streets” was written from the perspective of Bella, we can still rely on her opinions to give us an understanding of the difficulty immigrants faced while starting a new life.…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. Four intellectual disabilities exhibited by Beth in the book Riding the Bus With My Sister, by Rachel Simon, are attention, abstract thinking, language and social communication. According to the informational power-points provided on Intellectual Disability, attention is defined as: short attention span, stimulus over-selectivity, orienting to a task, selective attention and sustaining attention to a task. Social communication is defined as: inferring motives and easily being manipulated. Abstract thinking is defined as: predicting future, tracking likely outcomes of actions, long-range planning and goal setting, and monitoring of progress. Language is defined as: reading and understanding environmental print and common tasks. Throughout the book, Beth has revealed her selective attention span towards the bus system. She knows nearly all of the bus runs and drivers. She knows which drivers are nice and which ones to avoid. She even knows all of the places around the city that will let her use their restrooms during the day. However, Beth’s impairment with attention causes her to struggle talking about anything other than the busses and their operators. When anyone tries to talk about another topic, Beth ignores them or talks over them. This dilemma leads to her social communication obstacle. Having trouble to have normal conversations not concerned with the bus transportation system causes many people to avoid her. Beth also tends to overwhelm the new people that enter her life. She will meet a new person and immediately become very fond of them. These people are flattered at first but quickly become annoyed and want her out of their life. This sometimes results in the people acting harshly towards Beth. Beth’s difficulty in abstract thinking takes root in her daily hygienic routine. She doesn’t regularly brush her teeth, which obviously leads to unhealthy oral hygiene. However, she does not concern herself with the consequences. Beth also wears disturbing…

    • 1369 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Martin Scorsese is known to be a famous filmmaker and almost as famous for being a New Yorker. Many of his films are based in New York which are most of the time films that are gritty and about the darker side of urban life where he focuses his vision to the city’s neighborhoods, especially Lower Manhattan and Little Italy. Scorsese has a talent of showing precise and sometimes personal representation of the people and the streets of these neighborhoods. Most of his films have this bond to the city presenting accurate maps of specific parts of the city.…

    • 2003 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The book of John quotes Jesus as saying, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.” The notion he put forth is that no one is without sin, and therefore no one should have the right to judge others. Director Martin Scorsese goes one step further with his gritty film Taxi Driver, as he explores the mind of a delusional Vietnam veteran who feels he has the right to harshly judge others. The film is about antihero Travis Bickle, and his urge to clean up New York City by way of vigilante justice. Throughout the film, Travis strives to be a savior and figures the best way to save New York is by taking it upon himself to get rid of the city’s filth. Scorsese uses Taxi Driver to criticize vigilantism by ironically characterizing…

    • 1307 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    With one month left of high school, Maricel dozes off in class and dreams of a chilling presence watching her from behind a tree in the middle of the jungle. After the nightmare ancient jewelry and notes from an anonymous source start surfacing. She believes the objects are talismans. Inspired by the charms, she forsakes her small Kansas, town for the bright lights of New York, City to become an actress.…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Taxi Driver is about Travis Bickle, a "sick" taxi driver who is both a prophet and/or a mad man. We are never allowed to know what the movie itself thinks of him, we are never told to love him or hate him and the movie never states whether he is ethically right or wrong. This movie is not about the answers to the problems of the society. It is just about the questions and unknowns. It is just an interesting journey in the modern society that could make people discuss about Travis hours and hours. Talking with other people, I was amazed how people can think of him in different ways. Some say he is "sick", some say he is their "prophet". The fast cuts in the editing (when he practices with the guns) make us enter in his state of mind. But also, some long takes force us to analyze and understand what happened (Very high-angle takes that Scorsese calls "Priest shots" after the massacre.). The movie switches dynamically between these styles, which leaves the audience an infinite ways of thinking about the Travis.…

    • 1575 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    no one's a mystery

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Furthermore, they have different vision of their future. Jack forebodes that their relationship is going to an end: “ ‘In a year you’ll write, ‘I wonder what . . . . why I spent so many days . . .’ ” (49). He believes that she will even forget “what [his] name was” (49). His birthday present to the girl foreshadows his prediction about break-up of their relationship. In contrast, the narrator is still expecting her future with Jack by imagining “the yellow candles left over from the wedding” (49) and dreaming their future children whom she names as “Little Jack”…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Big Yellow Taxi Essay

    • 555 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This musical composition is about taking things for granted and then missing them when they're gone. In the first verse she utilizes Waikiki, Hawaii as an example. It used to be paradise but now it's a fakery tourist destination. When you fly over the islands all of the other islands are nice and green, but when you go over O'ahu you visually perceive Waikiki and Honolulu buildings.…

    • 555 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “This life he could take so easily and break across his knee like a stick.” This excerpt describes the overall perception of the speaker throughout “On the Subway”, written by Sharon Olds. Using descriptive language, the poem determines the speaker’s perception. The speaker’s fears of the stranger sitting across from her become the reader’s also by her comments and use of descriptive language.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the movie Taxi Driver, there are many different views on the main character, Travis Bickle. There are different opinions on whether he is a maniac or a hero. It is hard to have a satisfying answer to this question, but it is safe to say that what he did, at least in his mind, was the right thing to do. Besides when he attempted to assassinate senator Palantine, But that was done for the movie to show a political message. That message is that sometimes political leaders are just as bad as the pimp’s and the robbers that lie, cheat, and steal. Through the movie he is always seen as an outsider, someone who doesn’t quite belong where he is. They keep referring to him as the cowboy, and how he isn’t quite normal.…

    • 1397 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays