In Damien Chazelle’s 2014 musical drama Whiplash, the titular hero, Andrew Neiman, is a protagonist who is willing to risk it all to achieve greatness. Andrew’s blood, sweat, and tears are sacrificed in his pursuit of becoming a highly esteemed drummer while believing that any and all company he keeps will only set him back, whether it be his friends or his girlfriend. Curiously enough, the only person he does allow in his head is his teacher Terence Fletcher, an elite professor known for his harsh style that has supposedly driven some to insanity and even suicide. As the movie progresses, the audience can only witness Andrew’s mental state crumble and deteriorate under Fletcher’s constant litany of humiliation, leading us to question why Andrew puts up with Fletcher’s barrage of not only physical, but mental abuse. In Whiplash, Andrew’s quest to become one of the greats by means of immense suffering is a type of self-justification in which his miseries are rationalized and pushed aside. In doing so, Andrew sacrifices not only his physical wellbeing, but also his fundamental morals to become perfect. In Whiplash, these type of instances continue building on top of each other until …show more content…
By believing that Fletcher’s abuse grants him the right to continue playing, Andrew is actively justifying his actions by means of abuse. After he is expelled from the music school, when questioned about what it is exactly that is driving him, he goes blank. Without Fletcher’s presence in his life, our protagonist begins to reflect on why he had acted in the way he did. His passionate love for drumming had initially gone hand in hand with his motivation, but as the movie persists, we see Andrew become nothing more than a hollow shell of perfection. Upon the end of the movie, he earns Fletcher’s approval, but it comes at the cost of his
Media makes celebrities seem as if they live life facing no problems or hardships. In reality, they do not live a perfect life, but that characteristic of celebrities' life tends to go unseen. In Charles Dickens’s, A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens develops Mr. Lorry into a character where business engulfes his life. Mr. Lorry continually tries to suppress his emotions using many different strategies. Even though business is always Mr. Lorry’s top priority, he always has a special place in his heart for the people he cares about, the Manette’s. Through the use of characterization and dialogue, Charles Dickens uses Mr. Lorry to promote how humanity overrides one’s business side no matter how hard they try to suppress it.
He was a mysterious unknown figure in the shadows; a slithering serpent in the courtroom. The defense attorney for the Scopes Monkey Trial was a cunning man. Clarence Darrow had difficulty defending his client, John T. Scopes, against his opponent, William Jennings Bryan. To everyone’s surprise however, he proved that he could prevail, even if he was under pressure from the world around him. Though Scopes was found guilty under Darrow, he surprisingly only had to pay a fine of one hundred dollars. With such a minor sentence, Darrow is said to be the person who actually won the trial. In the play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the character, Henry Drummond, parallels his real-life counterpart, Clarence Darrow, through intelligence, bitterness, and determination.
There is no doubt that Miss. Strangeworth is not an easy person to deal with, let alone live with, and although her character is fictional, there are many people with the same personality. We can tell quite easily that she is a very meticulous woman, with a lot of perfectionist tendencies, a few of which are to nitpick people’s lives and make sure that even the most minute detail is up to her standards. I know of someone with these attributes and as difficult as they are to deal with, with their list of requirements to be met and their eagle-eye for detail in even the smallest things, they mean the best, and are always trying to help, despite the possible repercussions.
A Ticket out of the Past By (Teresa) Yung-Ching Chuang. Life is like an ascent, the more you climb, the higher you will get. J. C. Burke skilfully undertakes this philosophy as a source of inspiration for ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’. It is not another crazy adventurous tale with a heroic storyline that seems unrealistic; the novel is about individual representation as Burke insightfully illustrates the long and slow journey of Tom Brennan, navigating through his road of self-discovery that eventually leads to his destination and achieves his “ticket out of the past” (Burke, pg 182). The catalyst of the novel is a traumatic car accident causing two instant deaths and one paralysis.
to begin climbing in the first place. Chris McCandless was determined to not only go but to complete the climb as well. Furthermore, as Chris aged and entered high school, his rareness showed even more prominently. He became the captain of the cross-country team. He loved the role and concocted grueling training regimens that his teammates remember still well. “He was really into pushing himself,” recalls Gordy Cucullu, a former member of the team. “Chris invented this workout he called Road Warriors: he would lead us on long, killer runs through places like farmers’ fields and construction sites, places we weren’t supposed to be, and intentionally try to get us lost. We’d run as far and as fast as we could, down strange roads, through the woods, whatever. The whole idea was to lose our bearings, to push ourselves into unknown territory.
In the short story The Devil and Tom Walker, written by Washington Irving, the protagonist Tom Walker, is characterized as being a negative man. This is demonstrated through Tom Walker being characterized as being meager, outspoken, fearless, greedy, stubborn, and unloving.
In the novella of The Crucible by Arthur Miller vengeance is walking Salem in causing several conflicts throughout the Salem village. Many of the conflicts are due with getting back at one another with the need for revenge. “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 81). This quote is trying to prove the point the proctor has a very good understanding of what is happening in how the little girls are rebelling and acting out. They are accusing several women of being witches. “Why, Abigail Williams charge her” (Miller 77). The quote is trying to show how many of the girls are calling out the wives in the Salem village.
Most things came easy to Chris. In reality, there were very few things that he was not good at. He came from a privileged background. He was accepted and graduated from Emory University, an elite academic institution. All of these variables resulted in Chris despising the society from which he be...
In my fourth and final meeting for book club, my group and I have read the whole novel of Shattered. And when our roles were shared, I learned new things about the novel such as why the novel is called Shattered as well as a connection between the main character Ian to myself. To begin, I obtained knowledge of the reason to why the novel has the name Shattered. Evidence to support from the novel is when Jacques says “You see those shards of glass? He said, pointing to the jagged pieces of the bottle on the ground. Do you think you can put them together again? Do you think anything or anybody could ever make it whole again? Well, do you? It’s not just broken, it’s shattered into a million pieces and it can never be put back together again. Never.
Fame, flashing lights, screaming fans. Poverty, neglectful parents, no real feeling of having a home. Even though these words paint two very different pictures, they both have one thing in common, a story of resilience. In the autobiography Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It by Nick Carter and Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, Carter and Walls both have internal and external factors that are the basis of their struggles, but their mental and emotional resilience helps them to overcome their hardships in an unfavorable environment.
He then continues to say, “Do you want to miss a match? Blow your ride?” The pressure that his dad puts on him to be rebellious like him made Andrew get into detention in the first place simply because he got caught. Andrew describes that he “taped Larry Lester’s buns together”, he then goes on to say “that the bizarre thing is that I did it for my old man.” This further proves that Andrew’s dad has influenced the way he has behaved, and his parent-adolescent conflict worsens as his push for freedom establishes a harsher, goal-seeking father. Instead of becoming close in a new, harmonious way, it appears Andrew and his father will eventually distance themselves from one another. He wonders if he will end up like his parents or not: “Oh God, are we gonna be like our
Sonny states, “Her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes--when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And---and sure [...] It makes you feel---in control. Sometimes you’ve got to have the feeling.”(Baldwin,16). Baldwin uses the comparison of music and heroin to emphasize the addictive quality of music for Sonny as well as the feeling of control it gives him. This imagery of the overwhelming feeling shooting heroin serves as an illustration of the power that music has over Sonny. Through this metaphor, the reader gains an understanding of why Sonny needs music.
“Sonny’s Blues” is a short story in which James Baldwin, the author, presents an existential world where suffering characterizes a man’s basic state. The theme of tragedy and suffering can be transformed into a communal art form, such as blues music. Blues music serves as a catalyst for change because the narrator starts to understand not only the music but also himself and his relationship with Sonny. The narrator’s view of his brother begins to change; he understands that Sonny uses music as an outlet for his suffering and pain. This story illustrates a wide critical examination.
Turning his back on society, Chris McCandless throws away materialistic comfort and immerses himself in the values he believes to be important and pursues the ideals that he feels are worthwhile. He branches away from his family, friends, school and entirely abandons his identity as Christopher McCandless and creates a new one as Alexander Supertramp. His actions, often considered to be selfish and cruel, might have been necessary and almost noble change for him. By not even communicating with his sister, Carine, the one person to whom he was quite close to, Chris makes it quite obvious that he does not want to be found. Before, Chris had pushed himself through university, academically and physically as a top student and athlete and later on his journey, pushes himself to be completely independent because, “…it was important for him to see how independent he could be” (Krakauer 125). This quote illustrates the side of Chris that challenges himself to simply challenge himself— not a result of his romantic infatuation for self ...
The story “Sonny’s Blues” By James Baldwin is about a jazz musician and his brother in 1950’s Harlem. The story centers on Sonny who uses jazz music as an escape from his depression. James Baldwin captures the art of jazz during this time period. The themes in this short story are perhaps varied, but all of them revolve around some form of suffering. One theme shows how music can promote change and understanding within relationships. A second theme reveals suffering caused by guilt. Yet another theme references the results of suffering brought about by searching for ones’ identity and how that leads to misunderstanding. There are also subthemes concerning racism and poverty.