Preview

The Body: Fall From Innocence

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
631 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Body: Fall From Innocence
“The Body” has strong recurring themes throughout the story. One of the strongest relates to the subtitle of the novella, “Fall from Innocence”. The boys journey shows their fall from innocence as they encounter new experiences over the two days. Each boy shows their own emotions and ideas during the duration of their journey to discover Ray’s dead body. Over time, chris, Teddy, and Gordie lose their innocence by having hostile home environments, escaping death by a train, and having to point a gun at people they grew up with.
Chris Chambers was the leader of the group. He helped the boys get through the journey. He was described as “smart, really smart, but he played truant a lot (King 304)”. He had a rough home life since his father was abusive. His harsh home life is a major factor with his fall from innocence because he is forced to grow up and put up with challenging people at such an early age. The journey to Ray's body adds to this because he is forced to do certain tasks that kids are not meant to do, such as push Teddy out from in front of the train, or point a gun at people that he grew up around. After he pushed Teddy out from in front of the oncoming train you could tell he was frustrated. They all began to see that their relationship and …show more content…
He had a tough home life because his father struggled with the after effects of war. His dad abused him, much like the other boys fathers. He was forced to grow up at such a rapid pace because he did not have a stable household. Anytime someone mentions his father being crazy, he immediately becomes defensive and defends himself and his dad, showing that he is older mentally. It was evident that his father's PTSD played a major role on him. Before he jumped in front a train to dodge it he said “Just like the beach at Normandy!” (King 381). This showed that he was slowly losing his child mentality and growing up at such a young
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Venus Wilson Halloween Bash Analysis
    • 94 Words
    • 1 Page

    Venus Wilson Halloween Bash Analysis

    The beginning of the end had started for these four students when they failed to inform anyone about the body in the pool. Despite desperate attempts at returning to normalcy, every night in the loneliest hours they found themselves asking the same questions a mourning town did...…

    • 94 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Acceleration by Graham Mcnamee Essay
    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Acceleration by Graham Mcnamee Essay

    * Duncan, Vinny, and Wayne are all friends working - or wasting time - the summer before senior year in high school. Duncan is the soul, Vinny the brains, and Wayne the muscle. At the end of the previous summer, Duncan tried to save a drowning girl and failed. Not being a hero has really affected his life, particularly his relationship with his girlfriend Kim. Also, he is now terrified of swimming, especially when the nightmares come back. Duncan's summer job is with the public transit lost and found. While trying to make the hours go faster, Duncan looks through the items, especially the books and golf clubs. One day he discovers an unmarked journal with no name, which depicts sadistic animal torture experiments, boasts of arson fires, and the planning for the serial killings of three women. Duncan decides to make amends for his failure last summer by tracking down the owner of the journal by using clues left hidden in the diary. After talking with his friend Vinny, Duncan decides to turn the journal over to the police, but they do not take him seriously, so he decides to get help from Vinny, do some research at the local library, and find out where the killer works and lives so they can prove to the police the diary is for real. But in the process when Duncan finds the house of the serial killer, he decides to take a look in it but unfortunately at that very time the serial killer appears and chases Duncan to the subway station. They get into fight there and they both fell on the subway tracks in the station where they get hit by the train. Duncan luckily survives but the serial killer dies.…

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    On The Sidewalk Bleeding Summarizer
    • 1625 Words
    • 4 Pages

    On The Sidewalk Bleeding Summarizer

    The story takes place on a rainy March day at 11:30 P.M . Andy, a 16 year old, cigarette smoker, and a member of the gang “The Royals” was stabbed ten minutes ago just below his ribs by a member of the rival gang, The Guardians. He is slowly bleeding to death on the sidewalk in a quiet alleyway somewhere in New York. As he is slowly dying, he just can not stop thinking about his girlfriend, Laura, whom he will never see again. The setting of the story is very gloomy. Also, it is raining, which, coupled with the alley, makes the story very spooky. In this story, the setting makes a huge difference to the power of the book. The author tries to create a setting as horrific as possible. The rain is the key to the story. One can imagine Andy lying on his side with blood spilling out and it being washed away by the rain, thus creating a murky red puddle. For example, if Andy was lying in a field with the sun shining brightly, the reader might not feel as frightened while reading the story. The gloominess of the setting in the story is connected to the terrible thoughts of dying Andy which had gone through his head as he lay there (pathos and pathetic fallacy) .…

    • 1625 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Book Thief Death Analysis
    • 395 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Book Thief Death Analysis

    The presence of death reveals itself to the book thief within both celebration and mourning as her life of words cycles on. In a state of partial sleep, Liesel “could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead… [for] his blue eyes stared at the floor seeing nothing” as Death tenderly “knelt down and extracted his soul” (20-21). The book thief’s primary encounter with Death would always stay with her as she watches her sickly but beloved brother depart from this world in a train carriage. Liesel senses Death’s presence as she gazes at the dying pilot and the two “recognized each other at that exact moment” from the scene of “a train and a coughing boy [as Death] slowly extracted the pilot’s soul from his ruffled uniform and rescued him from the broken plane” (400-401). An intimate sharing of identity occurs as Liesel faces the sight of death’s mark on humanity alongside Rudy and recognizes a sense of solemn passing in this occurrence. This passionate adolescent witnesses death at its climax as she sees “the bodies of Mama and Papa both lying tangled in the gravel bedsheet of Himmel…

    • 395 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Chris Mccandless Journey
    • 1123 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Chris Mccandless Journey

    Chris made people feel so comfortable around him that whenever he was traveling and needed a place to stay it was almost guaranteed that someone would offer him a place to stay. He had a very magnetic personality, from what the book describes. People were pulled by his charming personality ever since he was young “as an eight-year-old, he grew vegetables behind the house in Annadale and then sold them door-to-door around the neighborhood…. ‘by the time he came home, the wagon would be empty, and he’d have a bunch of money in his hand.’” (116)* On his journeys Chris met countless people and all of those people were touched by Chris in one way or another. Each person he met became apart of his surrogate family. Jan Burres and her husband spoke so fondly of McCandless and were very keen on hearing from him. Another person that McCandless touched was Ronald Franz, an elderly man who lost his family in an accident. He fell so in love with McCandless that he even offered to “adopt him, if [Chris] would be [his] grandson.” (55)* Anyone that came into contact with Chris could see his blatant…

    • 1123 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Johnny Tremain Analysis
    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Johnny Tremain Analysis

    By the end of the story he matured socially. He understands that humans are not very open. For example, he knows that the British can be harsh and inhumane. His impression of family changes. He comes to understand that is not only blood, but, it can be people steered by the same purpose. After the opening battles of the American Revolution, when he sees the patriots around him ,he understands that “This is his land and these his people.”…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Ll Cool J
    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ll Cool J

    His parents divorced when he was four because his father shot his grandparents and put them in critical condition. He was also abused from his mom’s next boyfriend physically and verbally (Fennessey).…

    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Long Way Gone Conflict
    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Long Way Gone Conflict

    They think that all kids walking around villages are evil. It became hard for him to form relationships or to act as a normal teenage boy because he was unable to get past the judgments people had gave him. Being judged is harmful for a boy who has already lost so much. First the separation, then the constant running, and now being shunned. It stopped him from having a childhood that every kid should have. For example as stated in the book, “you children have become little devils, but you came to the wrong “ (page66…

    • 596 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Teddy Duchamp
    • 531 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Teddy Duchamp

    Teddy and his friends have a very close relationship. They joke and fool around like most kids their age, but when things become serious, they grow up fast. The relationship between Teddy and Chris Chamber I think is extra close. There are two scenes in the movie I base this off of. The first example is when Teddy decides he wants to play chicken with an oncoming train. Pretending to be in Normandy like his father, Teddy stands in front of the train on the tracks pretending to shoot the train with his sleeping bag, imagining it is a rifle. Chris yells and shouts for him to get off, but Teddy does not move. When the train becomes closer, Chris runs to Teddy and wrestles him off the tracks just in time for the train to pass. This enraged Teddy and became very angry that Chris ruined his fun. But Chris, being the good friend he is, apologizes to Teddy but explains to him he did not want to see him killed, and they make the sacred hand shake and all is well. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to your friends to do what is right, even if they do not agree with you.…

    • 531 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Argumentative Essay On Chris Mccandless
    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Argumentative Essay On Chris Mccandless

    Then he set himself off on a journey to the Alaskan Wilderness I don’t know why he would do that maybe because he was so ignorant and he didn’t wanna study a good career. He probably wanted to just take a journey to the Alaskan Wilderness instead of getting a good career. He could of done something better with his life instead of going on a journey. His parents don’t know he is going on a journey he had told his parents that he was going to spend the summer traveling in his little yellow car.…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Jasper Jones Essay
    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Jasper Jones Essay

    Throughout the novel Charlie the protagonist, has lost most the innocence out of all the characters and has to learn to truth about a lot of things. Over the “hottest summer in Corrigan” Charlie is confronted about many truths including the truth behind the myth of Mad Jack Lionel and the truth behind his mother’s hurtful behaviour. However the truth that has the biggest impact on Charlie has to be the dark secret that jasper exposes Charlie to. Charlies visions of the world, his way of life are about to change forever. Charlie’s exposure to Laura’s suicide and the events leading up to it force him to confront the darkness in the world and as a result he loses his last shred of innocence. The truths Charlie comes to realise and the actions he takes are shown near the end of the novel when he says I “finally have the right words in me.”…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Men We Carry In Our Minds Summary
    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Men We Carry In Our Minds Summary

    Even though he pushed himself to better his life, and get away from the unappreciated work, his body still remembered the hard work he went through. After the years of all the difficult work, his body “began to give out on him in his fifties, and it quit on him entirely before he turned sixty-five” (170). For most boys, they just followed in their father’s footsteps, taking those hard, body aching jobs. “They were bound to work as their fathers had worked, killing themselves or preparing to kill other”…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The Life and Words of James Baldwin
    • 3872 Words
    • 16 Pages

    The Life and Words of James Baldwin

    and never knowing his birth father, he grew up in poverty the oldest of nine children. At age 3, his mother married a factory worker who also was a storefront preacher. Feeling trapped by his troubled relationship with his strict religious stepfather; at a young age…

    • 3872 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Angela's Ashes Dialectic Journal
    • 2532 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Angela's Ashes Dialectic Journal

    | His poor mother had to do so much for her family. She not only had to look over five children, but also had to housekeep. On top of that, because she did not marry a reliable husband, she had to find food from any place to keep her children from not starving. Then, she had all of these children that wanted attention and she just needed a break.…

    • 2532 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break
    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break

    For example, In the porch I met my father crying” (Heaney, 4) This is the first sign in which the author knows something horrible has occurred. “The patriarchal image of the father-figure in the 1950s is torn down here.” (TheEnglishTutor). Heaney goes on to state even more descriptive circumstances taken place that day, “At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived- With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.” (Heaney, 14-15). The author describes that as the exact moment he and his family saw the young boys body for the first time after the accident. The author goes further on with the accidents visuals, “Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, -He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot- No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.” (Heaney, 20-21) Heaney describes his little brothers body being so perfectly intact without scarring, due to the fact of the car bumper immediately killing him with one hit. These images are crucial to understanding just how much emotion is taking part in this story, seeing your baby brothers body as if he were not dead but simply sleeping, must be the hardest part of the authors task in accepting his grief. “The young boy sees his brother for the last time and faces death for the first.” (TheEnglishTutor). Nonetheless he must also come to terms with having to keep family and friends from falling apart, the brothers’ corpse is real now, not only a tragic…

    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics