In the book, Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, the main character, Perry, changes a lot. His views on life and war change quite drastically and he begins to question the war and if there is any straightforward morality in the fighting. In the beginning of the book, Perry isn’t too worried about the war and thinks that he won’t engage in the conflict there due to a knee injury, but by the end of the book, he is considering going AWOL just to get away from the fighting.…
“It’s not easy the life you’ve got to live. I know you’d like to look outside. You’d like to go outside.” (18)…
In the book, The First Part Last, Angela Johnson describes mostly in the book “Coming of age.” She uses many symbols that represent coming of age, and how Bobby went from being a child to a semi-man. He has matured majorly, but he is just not fully there yet with becoming a full man. Bobby overcomes constant obstacles while trying to conquer coming of age. He gives up playing basketball all the time, spending all day at the arcade with his friends, and being able to have fun, and live his life the way he wants to live it. Becoming a man Bobby is forced with constant obstacles, but he knows and is ready to face the reality with them.…
The Hero’s Journey is a common template of how a tale/story about a hero will go. It usually involves a hero that goes on a journey/adventure and defeats/solves something and comes home changed/transformed. It was the American scholar Joseph Campbell that introduced this concept. Spiderman is one of many heroes that follow this outline.…
The duality of human nature between the characters; Tom Walker, Young Goodman Brown, and Connie are revealed vastly contrarily and similarly throughout the each short stories. Tom Walker, a greedy, lazy, materialistic man throughout the short story “Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving as he makes his way through the muddy unpleasant swamp. Young Goodman Brown, an innocent, guilty, follower who is a victim of the Devil, in the story “Young Goodman Brown” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He has a harsh time when he is tempted by the Devil in the woods. Lastly, Connie, a neglected, verballed abused, attention seeking young girl from “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates has been constantly compared and internally diminished by her mother from jealous for years. Each character while having similar experience all seem to also have similar personality traits as well.…
He pictures his victim’s whole life, and imagines he was a young student that had just entered the university in Saigon in 1964, avoided politics, didn’t like to fight, and just hoped the Americans would go away. Though out the whole story, O’Brien both, consolidates and tortures himself, by picturing the life of this young dead soldier. He imagines it in such a way, that the Vietnamese soldier ends up being very similar to himself, and by relating to his victim this way, O’Brien grapples with and tries to understand the unpredictability of his own mortality, and is better aware of the horrible nature of the killing. He contemplates the fact of life and death. How the death of this poor soldier will not change one thing and life will go on, leaving him in the past, making his death look irrelevant and…
In the “The Devil and Tom Walker,” Irving illustrate human corruption through the use of the woods as setting and symbolism. Tom, Tom’s wife, and the Old Scratch also shown human abilities throughout the story. Each character was different in its own way, but shared one trait to express human abilities.…
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil” (Steinbeck 11) and East of Eden is one of the stories, surrounded by good and evil. East of Eden is filled with religious references, and deeply tied to old testament stories, specifically the garden of Eden, and Cain and Abel. These stories shape the characters in the novel, adding depth to their actions and characteristics, and furthering the plot of the novel, by the multiple generations and continuance of each biblical story. The theme of good and evil in East of Eden is in every aspect of the novel, but primarily in characterization. Many of these characters also carry a religious significance, specifically to Old Testament stories, and…
In Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden Widow Glendower is an old woman who is feared yet respected by many. People fear her because they don’t know her, and they don’t know her because they haven’t made the effort to. She’s a woman of incredible talent. As Amy proves when she gives up hope in doctors and even in God, Widow Glendower is someone people turn to when they are desperate for healing. An old medicine woman whose necessity was phased out by modern medicine.…
In the novel “The Poisonwood Bible” written by Barbara Kingsolver the character that mainly catches the readers attention is Nathan Price. He is major character but he is not given a voice of his own, but seen through the eyes of his wife and daughters. Yet his role was the main reason why his family and him ended up in the Congo leading to conflicts in the novel. His role was leading his family, he was the one who gave the orders and had the final say in every decision. The determination he had to change the Congolese with his religious beliefs is going to destroy his family,relationship with the Congolese people,and ultimately himself.…
‘The Darkness Out There’ and ‘The Withered Arm’ are both short stories. The characterization techniques they use are contrasting and similar. Each story is from a different time; ‘The Withered Arm’ being 19th century and ‘The Darkness Out There’ being 20th century. Thomas Hardy writes ‘The Withered Arm’ as a 3rd person narrative whereas Penelope Lively uses a mixture between 3rd and 1st person.…
The story White Angel is one of a defining moment. Bobby Morrow, the focal character, remembers in great detail his life as a nine year old in the late 1960’s, and how his brother’s death changed his life completely. Bobby and his sixteen-year-old brother Carlton do everything together, and Bobby looks to Carlton as something of a guardian angel or god. In reality though, Carlton leads Bobby to a life of drugs and risk. Eventually, Carlton’s risky behavior catches up with him, and leads him to his death. In “White Angel”, author Michael Cunningham uses both irony and the repetition of symbols to show the theme of escape. Throughout the story, there are various references to music, doors, windows, planes, winged creatures, drugs, and, ultimately, Carlton’s death – all of which are forms of leaving, or escaping, the world.…
Before I saw The Diviners at SEMO I had no previous knowledge of the story, other than reading at callbacks a few months before. I talked to a few of my friends who were involved in the show and they told me that it was intense and that it would make me depressed. They were right. The Diviners was a great production because of the acting by Zach Coop and Cynthia Thomas and also because of the added character that the director Kaylin White created for the show, Buddy’s dead mother, played by Alex Jarvis.…
What kind of character would you be in Pilgrims Progress and how would you help or hinder Christian on his journey to the Celestial City. I believe my character in Pilgrims Progress would be Reason. Reason would help Christian by convincing Christian to not wander off the path of the Celestial City and would hinder him by questioning whether it exist.…
In the story of “Angel Levine,” Bernard Malamud creates a world for the complex and perplexed character, Manischevitz, who is unable to grasp his identity; however, his drawbacks and discomforts forces him to re- examine who he is and the meaning of being Jewish. As Manischevitz discovers and explores his true self, he stumbles upon several minor characters throughout the story who help him, through their actions or words, to gain a better understanding of what entails to be Jewish.…