A Farewell to Arms and East of Eden
"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." This quote summarizes Catherine and Henry's love for each other. Even though Catherine died, Henry had a huge space of emptiness left in his heart. Marriages in today's society are very serious relationships although some people don't seem to take them so seriously. Take for example Dennis Rodman, who married Carmen Electra and they divorced a week later. This shows how men are sometimes over powered by looks. My essay contrasts the relationships in Hemingway's Farewell to Arms to the relationships in Steinbeck's East of Eden. E. Hemingway displays a sense of respect for couples whereas J. Steinbeck portrays that women are venerable can't hold a steady relationship. Abra gradually fell in love with Cal and eventually cheated on Aron with his brother Caleb. Cal slowly tries to ruin Aron. Cal influences Abra's thought of Aron by saying sweet things to her. Adam smiled at her. "You're pink as a rose," he said. (590) The passage shows that Cal is trying to romance Abra. He knows Abra is venerable because Aron is away in the army and she misses him. By Aron absent, Abra needs a man and she turns to Cal.
Henry and Catherine hold a steady, loving and trustworthy relationship even through the tough times of war. Even though there are disputes on whether Henry and Catherine really loved each other, they held a good relationship. They tended to each others needs. Catherine took it slow while Henry wanted to rush into things to quickly. "Hello," I said. "When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me." (91) Catherine and Henry were inseparable. Throughout the novel, their relationship became more serious and Henry had finally decided that he was in love with Catherine Barkley. "I really love you. I'm crazy about you." (92) This quote displays how Henry just can't get enough of Catherine how he wants to rush into things to quick. Henry doesn't like Catherine for who se really is but is taken over by the power of her looks.
Cathy is a back stabbing devil and everyone knows it. Cathy tricks Adam into drinking her opium medicine so it allows here to sleep with Charles. Cathy heard Charles footsteps as he returned home.
Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.
External conflicts between the main characters, Cathy and Adam, reflect the idea of good versus evil in their relationship. Cathy, who is much like Satan, creates a huge fight between Adam and his brother Charles with her manipulations. Later, she ruins Adam's dreams and breaks his heart when she shoots him and leaves, sending Adam into a deep depression. After twelve years, Adam snaps out of his dream world and confronts Cathy. Cathy is now called Kate and works in a whore house called Faye's. Despite her actions, Adam realizes that he doesn't even hate Cathy for the hurt she has caused him. He finds peace with himself, renewing his once abandoned relationship with his sons.
Curley’s wife is a complex, main character in John Steinbeck’s novella, “Of Mice and Men”. She is introduced as an insignificant secondary character, but evidently posses the importance of causing the end of the novella. Despite the weight of her role, her value is hindered because of the culture towards women in the 1930s. Steinbeck uses imagery, foreshadowing, and metaphors to show loneliness analyzed through a Feminist Lens.
To further contrast Edgar’s and Nelly’s opinion s of Catherine ways, Edgar sees Catherine as docile, calm, and loving. This side to Catherine can be attributed to when she stays at the Linton’s home. Catherine spends five with the Linton’s and while she is there she does not show her rough rude side in their company. As describe by the narrator, she took care not to act like a young ruffian and worse than a brute; comparing her to Heathcliff (her lover). While on the other hand, Nelly recognizes this calm behavior displays by Catherine as one of double standard; she being deceitful to get her own
"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain" (332). This last line of the novel gives an understanding of Ernest Hemingway's style and tone. The overall tone of the book is much different than that of The Sun Also Rises. The characters in the book are propelled by outside forces, in this case WWI, where the characters in The Sun Also Rises seemed to have no direction. Frederick's actions are determined by his position until he deserts the army. Floating down the river with barely a hold on a piece of wood his life, he abandons everything except Catherine and lets the river take him to a new life that becomes increasing difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Hemingway's style and tone make A Farewell to Arms one of the great American novels. Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. As illustrated on page 145 "She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it," one can see that Hemingway's style is to-the-point and easy to understand. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingway's and his characters' beliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they can't be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like "patriotism," so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete and the tangible. A simple "good" becomes higher praise than another writer's string of decorative adjectives. Hemingway's style changes, too, when it reflects his characters' changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henry's point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henry's thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage on page 13, "I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you
Heathcliff and Cathy have a sadistic relationship. They are only truly in love when they are hurting each other. As Catherine lay dying, she wants Heathcliff, her love, to join her in death. She pleads to him:
"East of Eden deals with the inexplicability of the emotion we call love" (Wyatt xxii). John Steinbeck’s East of Eden explores the enigma of love and attempts to explain the pernicious effects of love through the characters’ relationships. Proving very complicated, love takes many forms, spanning from a simple coquetry to deep romance. East of Eden explores three main types of love; romantic love, parental love, and sibling love. Romantic love, typically depicted as one-sided in the novel, has negative effects on the characters who fall for one another. All the men who adore Cathy have love that revolves around idealization and manipulation, this also appears true about Aron’s and Abra’s relationship. Parental love, or the lack of it, causes
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the scientific revolution brought about a slow change in societies’ thinking regarding math, earth science, physics, and astronomy. Early on, new ideas about our universe were not widely accepted, especially from the church. This soon changed due to the hard work and perseverance of several scientists and philosophers who unbeknownst to them brought about an era known as the Enlightenment.
The writers of Much Ado about Nothing, Wuthering Heights, and A Streetcar Named Desire all incorporate conflict in relationships as reoccurring theme in their texts. There are a number of different forms of relationships in the texts such as marital, romantic and family relationships and they are all presented with complexity by the authors as their opinions on the subject matter will be influenced differently due to the era they live in and their personal experiences. For example, in Much Ado about Nothing marriage is a means of creating a happy ending which is typical in Shakespearean plays but it is also a means of social advancement similarly to Wuthering Heights where couples married to either maintain or advance social class or property and not necessarily because they loved each other, Catherine openly says she wants to marry Edgar because “he will be rich”. In contrary marriage in A Streetcar Named Desire is a means of survival for Stella and Blanch having “lost Belle Reve”.
Marriage is a powerful union between two people who vow under oath to love each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. This sacred bond is a complicated union; one that can culminate in absolute joy or in utter disarray. One factor that can differentiate between a journey of harmony or calamity is one’s motives. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, where Elizabeth Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Mr. Darcy’s love unfolds as her prejudice and his pride abate. Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” explores class distinction, as an impecunious young woman marries a wealthy man. Both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Anton Chekhov’s “Anna on the Neck” utilize
The “Renaissance” refers to the period in European history when social and political changes were brought about as an interest for classical literature, art and learning spawned in the Italian city states during the 14th century. Revived from the values and intellectual traditions of the ancient Greece and Rome, this era led literary scholars and great thinkers to strive for self-perfection and to replace the predominant Christian church doctrines of the middle ages with the humanistic sentiments of the new age.
The Renaissance is famous for the artwork created during this period, but a rise of the arts was only one of the factors that helped to make the Renaissance one of the most developed time periods to exist. Starting around 1450 in Florence Italy, it quickly spread throughout Europe. Cities grew larger and economic development increased rapidly. Document Four, by Benedetto Dei states, “We have around thirty thousand estates, owned by nobleman and merchants, citizens and craftsmen…” The document also discusses how many of each type of shop exist in Florence, and shows how advanced and successful the Renaissance has become. The Renaissance sparked new ideas and ways of thinking, through a revival of learning from the classical time periods. Many new ideas were created, but others were continued on from previous time periods since not everyone supported the Renaissance. The Renaissance showed great development in society because of new ideas as well as continuities from the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance was a time of creativity and change in Europe. It produced many achievements in art, literature, and science, but most importantly it produced a new concept of how people thought of themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Catherines revenge does not make things better for her. Her revenge on Heathcliff by blaming him for her upcoming death does not meliorate her mind. Just before she dies, she ascribes Heathcliff for her murder. You have killed me, and thriven on it, I think (Bronte, 158). Catherine resembles what Oliver Goldsmith said: When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, isto die (Oliver Goldsmith, 1). Catherines death is caused by her lack of emotional control and her dual personalities. She and Heathcliff are each other (Bronte 80), but her wants of social status and popularity draw her toward Edgar (Bronte 78). She does not love Edgar, but her selfish material wants control her. Catherines revenge on Heathcliff does not assist her in finding happiness. She looks forward to dying and is wearying to escape into that glorious world (Bronte 160). Her death is, however, miserable as she wanders around the earth as a waif for 20 years, occasionally visiting Heathcliff and torturing him.
Catherine was happy in her marriage at first but later became overwhelmed by her desire to be with Heathcliff. She was forced to distinguish the difference between her love for Heathcliff and her love for her new life with money. In the end, Catherine Earnshaws husband, Edgar Linton, died, and Catherine finally realized that money and social class were not as fulfilling as her desire to have passion in her life. She knew that this desire could only be met by Heathcliff.