"A Night of a Thousand Suicides" by Teruhiko Asada The novel based on actual events "A Night of a Thousand Suicides" by Teruhiko Asada, took place in an Australian prisoner of war camp, during World War II. The story involves captured Japanese soldiers planning an escape from an Australian POW camp. The soldiers knowing that a successful escape was most unlikely were faced with the reality of certain death. The battle came not only from their captors but mostly from within themselves. The struggle
How the Catholic Church Survived Two Thousand Introduction On theDay of Pardon in the Year of Jubilee, 2000 years after the birth of JesusChrist, Pope John Paul II and several other high members of the Catholic Churchperformed a prayer of forgiveness and confession, apologizing for all thewrongdoings of the Church. The Pope said later that they had been preparing todo this for several years, but had chosen the year 2000 Further, the Popeactually apologizing for the wrongdoings of the Church
A Fine Balance, written by Rohinton Mistry’s, illustrates the path to wisdom and humility before a calamitous end. The novel, A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley parallels a lot of similar themes and ideas depicted in A Fine Balance. As the story develops, a connection forms between the improbable household in both books and they generate an unbelievably uneven dysfunctional family, to either protect or torment one another through the experiences they encounter. Both novels develop the themes of, concern
Choice in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Thousand Cranes The issue of choice arises when comparing Gabriel Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes. The men in each novel forever seem to be repeating the lives of their male ancestors. These cycles reveal that man as a being, just like the mythological heros, has no true choice in the ultimate course his life will take. The male characters' personal development is overshadowed by the identity of
The Character of No-one in Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Alan Quatermain, sitting hunched over and delirious from opium withdrawal, has been taken aboard a huge submersible vessel. The aging adventurer says, "P-please. I feel so sick. Need my medicine." A cold voice answers him, "You are aboard my ship, sir, and my remedies are bitter." Quatermain turns, with his eyes rolled back, teeth clenched, and streams of sweat rolling off of his face, and he says, "Who said that? .
Body and Nature as Metaphor in A Thousand Acres Most issues on a farm return to the issue of keeping up appearances. (Smiley p.199) [T]he female body is a reservoir, a virgin patch of still, pooled water where the fetus comes to term. (Paglia p.27) [A] fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. (Paglia p.11) The epigraph to this novel is from "The Ancient People and the Newly Come": The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other
The landform of the current Thousand Islands National Park was created in two stages; the folding of the Frontenac Axis which created an ancient mountain range which is an extension of the Canadian Shield to the Adirondack Mountains in New York, and the continental glaciation erosion that scraped and rounded the tops of the mountain range. During the receding of the glacier, a channel was carved out to the Great Lakes basin, where the dammed water and meltwater of the glacier filled the channel now
Incest in A Thousand Acres Incest in A Thousand Acres invades all the other items: it is there, and is crucial for everything that happens, but it is hidden beneath the surface of appearances. Tim Keppel has pointed out not only that "Smiley's major departure [...] is her decision to tell the story from the viewpoint of Ginny and explore the inner lives of the so-called 'evil' sisters" (Keppel, p.105), but that "Smiley makes her most dramatic re-vision of Shakespeare" (Keppel, p.109) in the storm
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Photography may be a more effective and reasonably inexpensive alternative to drawing or painting, but more thought and feeling goes into a painting than a photograph. Photography is relatively simple in comparison to painting, which is a much more complex task. With photography, the composition is already completely arranged, but with a painting the objective is much more open to interpretation by the artist. The artist has the ability to capture much more
A Thousand Acres and King Lear: A New Twist When Jane Smiley wrote A Thousand Acres, she consciously made the story parallel to Shakespeare's King Lear for several reasons. The novel's characters and basic storyline are almost direct parallels to King Lear, but Smiley's dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation of King Lear is showcased in her modern day version (Berne 236). The story of the Cook family is almost a carbon copy of the saga of Lear's family. The ruler, or father, possesses
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words If I were to take a room filled entirely with people and ask them to write about something that holds value to them, what would it be? To some, the word “value” means something that holds only a monetary value, something that can be bought and sold. The values that I am referring to are the values that an individual cannot place a price tag on. They are of special significance that hold a dear meaning to us deep down in our hearts. They are the things that
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, is a realistic fiction novel, set in Afghanistan. The purpose of the book is to entertain and inform readers of the hard life of the Afghan people. The book was very informative and detailed, which kept you entertained the whole time. These things made me want to keep reading and as a result I loved the book. Throughout the book the characters face many trials, the first one being with Mariam, the main character of the book. When Mariam returns home
Covert Control in A Thousand Acres Though there are instances of overt control and destruction performed by the patriarchy upon both women and nature, the most pervasive forms the Apollonian controlling impulse takes, are covert. What Ginny says about Larry, also goes for the system of which he is the ultimate signifier: "I feel like there's treacherous undercurrents all the time. I think I'm standing on solid ground, but then I discover that there's something moving underneath it, shifting from
The Corrupt Patriarchal Society of A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres tells a dark tale of a corrupt patriarchal society which operates through concealment. It is a story in which the characters attempt to manipulate one another through the secrets they possess and the subsequent revelation of those secrets. In her novel, Smiley gives us a very simple moral regarding this patriarchal society: women who remain financially and emotionally dependent on men decay; those able to break
A Thousand Splendid Suns takes place in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, particularly Kabul, from about 1960-2000. This was a very bad time to be a woman in Afghanistan as women were considered inferior to men. This was only made worse by the warlords that rocked Kabul and later, the Taliban. Mariam lived a hard life. Born a harmani, and married young to a man she’d never met, Mariam left the life she’d known for fifteen years to go live with Rasheed, her husband. This is her only option, for she
Body and Visibility in A Thousand Acres The west insists on the discrete identity of objects. To name is to know; to know is to control. (Paglia, p.5) [Woman's beauty] gives the eye the comforting illusion of intellectual control over nature. (Paglia, p.17) If the male gaze is a tool to conceptualize reality, then -like an axe- it can also be used as a weapon. The Paglia quotes above refer not only to matters of epistemology or even ontology ("This is what we see; therefore, this is what exists")
King Lear by William Shakespeare and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley are both fantastic tragedies that follow a similar story arc. Although King Lear was written in 1606, and A Thousand Acres was written in 1999, they contain the same essential elements of a tragedy. Jane Smiley modeled her novel after King Lear, focusing less on Lear’s story, and more on the daughters’ stories. Both story-lines are extremely similar: a father chooses to divide his land amongst his daughters, and everything following
“Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive, Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not (Hosseini 365).” A Thousand Splendid Suns, written by Khaled Hosseini, is a story that is set place in modern-day Afghanistan. It is one depicting the lives of two particular women who live under the control of a persecuting husband and the infamous rule of the Taliban. And through these two women (Laila
REVIEW OF LITERATURE “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, focuses on mothers and daughters, their legitimate rights and their plight. This novel features a villain and a saintly best friend who commits self-sacrifice to help the friend. It also focuses on Afghanistan’s violent history. The author makes use of straight forward, utilitarian prose and creates characters who are very simple and have emotions just like a fairy tale. It include unhappy families, abusive marriages, violent talibans, oppressive government
Rose’s Breast Cancer in A Thousand Acres Pete, representing erratic male rage in the novel, has a history of abusing Rose. This climaxes when he breaks her arm. It follows a terrible logic that since male rage hurts her body, so does her own, the impetus of which is provided by the patriarchal system. Ginny's description of Pete fits Rose equally well, with an anger that "would be quiet, but corrosive, erupting at odd times" (31). Rose's breast cancer symbolizes the way she is literally consumed