Christmas is a season for all ages young or old, but for this eleven year old east coast boy, from Cape Breton, it is a source of conflict and a coming of age. In the short story “To Every Thing There is a Season”, Alistair MacLeod makes three arguments that captures the main themes and conflicts within the story, ignorance to knowledge, innocence to reality, and idealization to realism. MacLeod short story is a metaphor for growing up and a rite of passage. The narrator is in a tug of war with his beliefs past and present about Christmas. The character grows from ignorance to knowledge, when he says “For Christmas is a time of both past and present and often the two are imperfectly blended” (MacLeod 300). This shows the imperfect blend …show more content…
An example to support this argument is when the narrator overhears his mother speaking to a neighbor about Mary's belief in Santa Claus, “...I thought she would believe forever...I practically had to tell her” (MacLeod 301). After overhearing this conversation his hypothesis was right, Santa Claus is not real. The main character's childhood is cut short as he now know the truth. In the following paragraph the narrator shows that the childhood for his younger siblings is well and alive by the statement “Kenneth however, believes with an unadulterated fervour, and so do Bruce and Barry...” ( MacLeod, 301). In this paragraph he also shows where the innocence of youth in his older sisters Anne and Mary is quickly vanishing by the statement “...Anne who is thirteen and Mary who is fifteen, both of whom seem to be leaving childhood at an alarming rate...”( MacLeod, 301). Not only the main character is going through a transformation of innocence to reality it is also his siblings who are trying to grow up by letting go of Santa …show more content…
For instance the text states “Every man moves on...but there is no need to grieve. He leaves good things behind.” (MacLeod 305). This statement shows that although he stops believing in Santa Claus and moves on from his childhood years, his memories will always remain with him throughout his adulthood even though he knows that Santa Claus is fable. An example that supports this argument is when the narrator is describing his father's health, “He has “not been well” for over two years...he is most sympathetic of all concerning my extended hopes.” (MacLeod 302) .The main character realizes how ill his father is, he will have to soon replace his role as man of the house which requires him the move on from Santa Claus and become an adult. The last example supporting this argument is “The ones for my younger brothers say from Santa Claus but mine are not among them any more...It is as if I have suddenly moved into another room and heard the door click lastingly behind me.” (Alistair MacLeod 305) This shows that he is now an adult, the gift giving experience with Neil that Christmas. It shows his coming of age through his brother's gesture of letting his stay up at night to see the grownups in the family putting presents under the tree other that a jolly old man in a red
Dr. Seuss's original fable is a simple story told with a great moral that criticizes the commercialization of Christmas. The original story features an “Ebenezer Scrooge” type creature that lives up the mountains outside "Whoville." The Grinch indulges himself in the annual ritual of spoiling everyone's festivities with a series of nasty pranks. This particular year however he plans to sabotage the holiday season by dressing as Santa Claus, clim...
The search for and importance of family and identity of the Calum Ruadh clan in Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief is significant to the concept of blood being thicker than water. The importance of family, as indicated in No Great Mischief, is very apparent in regards to the main point of prominence in this deeply emotional Gaelic- Canadian tale.
On Christmas Eve , Scrooge is gone by a progression of ghosts,starting with his old business accomplice, Jacob Marley. The three spirits follow,the Ghosts of Past , Christmas present and Christmas future ,show how his ,mean conduct has influenced everyone around him. Toward the finish of the story ,he is soothed to find that there is still time for him to change and we see him changed into a liberal and kind hearted person.
A Christmas Carol. Classics of Children's Literature. Ed. John W. Griffith and Charles H. Frey. 3rd ed.
(Dickens 11) During the visit of Christmas Past, Mr. Scrooge traveled through the past from another’s perspective, instead of his own. (Video 1984) To Mr. Scrooge, Christmas is no longer a bah-humbug. No matter what medium you watch A Christmas Carol, there will be one moral: greediness and selfishness will result in a depressing life with loneliness surrounding you. This was the message the three Christmas spirits delivered in conclusion, welcome family and friends into your life, and you will enjoy a jubilant life.
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens is a tale of the morality changes of a man. The uncharitable, cold heart of the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, melts with ardent love as he receives visitations from three Christmas spirits who enlighten his soul with wise lessons and bring a warm change to his heart. In the beginning of the novel, Scrooge expresses his vices of greed and cold heartedness by his words and actions, but as the story unfolds, his life is renewed by these Spirits who shed light and truth upon him, resulting in making him become a better man, portraying the virtue of charity.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson uses literary devices such as personification and imagery, in the passage Milk Glass, to convey the narrator values Christmas time and the milk glass.
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
In “My Favorite Holiday Movie Involves a Giant Rabbit”, Boylan discusses her favorite Christmas movies and how their meanings have influenced her during the holidays. Through the use of allusions, metaphor, and imagery, Boylan argues that the holiday season is really about believing and practicing internal virtues to uplift oneself and one’s life. For example, Boylan makes several allusions to popular Christmas movies, like “The Snowman”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, and “It’s a Wonderful Life”. However, her most prominent allusion throughout the article is to “Harvey”, which “on the surface… is not a Christmas movie at all but the story of a man whose best friend is a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit”. At first, Boylan’s choice to reference
The image enforces the meaning of Christmas being lost, and that the people need to be aware of this now sacrilegious, laic time. The source displays the change from sacred Australia, which was a time of religion, to a more secular period. The source presents the contemporary cultural values of Australians today, often disassociating themselves from holy, divine objects, places or people. Losing their sacred connectedness to God or their purpose with religion. Taking Christ out of the equation presents how Jesus has been neglected by those supposed Christians of the modern day, who have forgotten the sole meaning of Christmas and their religion. This image imposes a reinforced message through an image presenting secularism of contemporary Australian Christmas with the words “missing”, and “what Jesus has become”. The view of Source 3 displays that anything of great importance in the religious sense, including Jesus, in temporal culture which exists in Australia is lost.
Charles dickens classic novella “A Christmas Carol” endorses the notion that “Generosity involves more than the giving of money, it’s also about the giving of one's goodwill, compassion, sympathy, empathy and kindness. By taking his seemingly irredeemable protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge on a supernatural journey, Dickens’ intends to convey to all of society the importance of generosity. He proclaims that generosity of the spirit defines Christmas, and goes a large way towards defining true humanity for him as well.
Meeting the Ghost of Christmas Past begins the first stage of Scrooge’s transformation: regretting his actions. When Scrooge is shown his younger self alone in his classroom on Christmas, he regrets chasing a Christmas caroler away from his door. The Spirit skips ahead a few years to show him a happier time. His sweet little sister Fan arrives to take him home, and this is his first Christmas in a long time that is spent with family. Unfortunately, Scrooge doesn’t see it that way; seeing this scene makes him “uneasy in his mind” as he thinks about the way he treats his nephew Fred. Instead of treating him like his only family member, Scrooge denies invitations to Christmas dinner every year and is rude whenever Fred speaks to him. He doesn’t have time to dwell on this for long, however; Scrooge has many other important things to think...
Nodelman claims that children 's literature ultimately has a larger goal than to entertain children, "children 's literature is essentially and inevitably an attempt to keep children opposite to ourselves and an attempt to make children more like us" (33). Adults fill their stories with certain morals and attitudes that are geared towards making them into what they have envisioned kids to be. Adults talk as if they remember what it was like to be a child, but Nodelman claims that this may not even be the case. Our idea of a childhood may be fabricated, "we [adults] ourselves in both our childhood and our adult lives have also read books by and had interactions with adults who worked to impose their visions of childhood upon us? Perhaps what we [adults] call 'childhood ' is always an imaginative construct of the adult mind" (33). Nodelman is saying that childhood is not as pure and innocent as any adult like to believe; adults have formed this idea of childhood being nothing but innocence. And, adults now impose this idea on children so the cycle continues, as they raise children to be a certain way that they have imagined children to
In No Great Mischief, Alistair MacLeod proves to the reader that it is impossible to talk about the Scottish-Canadian heritage without mentioning tradition, family and loyalty. MacLeod wrote this book about loyalty to family tradition. It is common to talk about these three things when one describes his family or his past in general, but in this book, MacLeod has included every single intricate detail about each one of the three aspects.