Argumentative essay on “Stone Soup” by “Barbara Kingsolver”

[Date of submission]

Introduction

According to Kingsolver, the society has many cases of criticized divorces, remarriages, individual paternity, existence of gay and lesbian parents and merged families. Kingsolver has stated that substitute families have the right of same standing and status in our society as others have. Analyzing Barbara Kingsolver's essay “stone soup”, this essay shows that which aspects of her essay are supported by real evidences and which are not. Barbara Kingsolver's stone soup is in the support and sympathy of the criticized families in the society. It is about the specific types of marriages and about how it is acceptable for the families different from having typical outlines.

Discussion

In “stone soup”, the authors feelings about the negative vision of the society and its unfair criticism regarding the marital aspects of the society including the divorces, remarriages, single parenthood and gay/lesbian parents. In this essay, the author “Barbara Kingsolver” pacifies her anger on the society calling her family a broken and a failed family due to her divorce. The story of the essay starts with a child scoring a winning goal in a football game (Barbara, 1995). The child is appreciated and praised by his mother, friend and the crowd. Later in the essay, the child is other family members and object against the label attached with that child's family i.e. a broken family. This objection clearly points out the feelings she possess regarding the structure of the child's family. In addition, shows outrage on the criticism on the family by the society. Moreover, Kingsolver interprets that our society is quick and unfair on criticizing changing and reshaping families as failed and broken families. Being herself divorced, Kingsolver expresses the effects of her divorce on herself and her daughter. Kingsolver's essay is completely based on personal opinions. I agree with this fact that our society unjustly criticizes such couples that should not be happening.

Kingsolver does not spare the couples who after marriage fail to work out their problems together, and who should have not been married because they jumped into this relationship before knowing each other properly. Her disdain can be seen when she expresses the image of single parenthood and her feeling that divorces should be stopped for the sake of better development of children (Joseph, 2001). She focuses that in this modern society structure, there is no such thing as traditional family. She ...