Through David Bergen’s A Year of Lesser and Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness, one can learn what salvation means to Mennonites. Protagonists Johnny Fehr and Nomi Nickel struggle with the concept of salvation through the novels and eventually, the question of salvation remains ambiguous. It is unclear at the conclusion of both novels whether the characters have achieved salvation and whether salvation itself is the key to a happy, fulfilled life. Authors Toews and Bergen are keenly and self-consciously aware of the complex notion of salvation and address it through complex characters who are not sure exactly what salvation is themselves. These characters parallel Mennonites own confusion regarding this integral aspect of faith. The methods that salvation manifests throughout the two stories of Johnny and Nomi are unique to their particular situations but transcend beyond the stories created by Bergen and Toews. The elaborate view of salvation portrayed through these two secular Mennonite authors reflects the ambiguity of salvation that Mennonites themselves have been struggling with for generations. Nomi Nickel, a sixteen-year-old Mennonite girl living in the conservative town of East Village, longs to both fit in and stand out. Although this is typical of many teenaged adolescents, Nomi is unique because of her religious background. She stands apart from J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield because Nomi’s coming-of-age story reflects an innate need to remain connected to her Mennonite upbringing. This connection to her cultural and religious background transcends to Nomi’s creator: Miriam Toews. Mennonite author, Patrick Friesen, writes: where I grew up, I rarely thought of pacifism as meaning that you didn't fight; I ... ... middle of paper ... ... Lesser, HarperCollins: Ontario, 1996. Born, Daniel. “A year of lesser.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 72, no. 4 (1998): 693-694. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed November 12, 2013). Houser Hamm, Marilyn. “Singing our salvation.” Vision (Winnipeg, Man.) 7, no. 1 (2007): 54-60. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed November 19, 2013). Huebner, Harry. “The politics of memory and hope.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 76, no. 1 (2002): 35-48. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed November 14, 2013). Toews, Miriam. A Complicated Kindness, Random House: Toronto, 2004. Toews, Miriam, and Natasha Wiebe. “‘It gets under the skin and settles in’: a conversation with Miriam Toews.” Conrad Grebel Review 26, no. 1 (2008): 103-124. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
dacc.edu/assets/pdfs/PCM/merechristianitylewis.pdf. MacQuade, Donald. The Harper single volume American literature. Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.
Naka, T. (2010). Faith At Work: Mennonite Beliefs and Occupations. Ethnology: An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology 47. Retrieved January 27, 2014 from http://ethnology.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Ethnology/article/view/6040/6217
Brown, Raymond. A Crucified Christ in Holy Week: Essays on the Four Gospel Passion Narratives. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1986.
Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye are two novels in which characters reflect on their attitudes and experiences as a source of emotional growth and maturity. Salinger and Toews show the importance of this reflection through the evolution of their characters’ – Holden Caulfield and Nomi Nickel – similar attitudes towards their schools, communities, and lives. Though Nomi and Holden both do poorly in school for various reasons, Nomi overcomes her obstacles by working to identify the source of them. Both characters also resent their communities because of the hypocrisy found within them. However, Nomi manages to find good within the East Village through self-reflection, while Holden completely severs his ties to his community. Nomi and Holden also possess similar outlooks on life. The evolution of these attitudes and the hope present for both characters at the end of their novels prove that true growth can be achieved only through rumination. Nomi changes her outlooks and learns from her experiences in A Complicated Kindness because she reflects upon them. Holden on the other hand, tries to escape his problems throughout the course of The Catcher in the Rye and as a result loses the valuable opportunities they present for personal growth. Through the evolution of Nomi and Holden over the course of A Complicated Kindness and The Catcher in the Rye, both Salinger and Toews demonstrate that it is only through introspection that people are able to mature and experience emotional growth.
The Catcher in the Rye is not all horror of this sort. There is a wry humor in this sixteen-year-old's trying to live up to his height, to drink with men, to understand mature sex and why he is still a virgin at his age. His affection for children is spontaneous and delightful. There are few little girls in modern fiction as charming and lovable as his little sister, Phoebe. Altogether this is a book to be read thoughtfully and more than once. It is about an unusually sensitive and intelligent boy; but, then, are not all boys unusual and worthy of understanding? If they are bewildered at the complexity of modern life, unsure of themselves, shocked by the spectacle of perversity and evil around them - are not adults equally shocked by the knowledge that even children cannot escape this contact and awareness?
"Hymn: Safe in the Arms of Jesus." Hymnalnet RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Peace Shall Destroy Many, by Rudy Wiebe, is considered to be a groundbreaking novel. When first published in 1962, it became the, “first realistic novel ever written about Mennonites in western Canada” (RandomHouse.ca). The novel takes place during World War II, and is set in a community that has cut itself off from the rest of the world to strengthen their relationship with Christ. The founder of the community, Peter Block, leads this community to follow the traditional path of those before them, known as “the fathers.” It is the community’s Christian values of peace and love that are called into question by the 20-year old farmer, Thom Wiens, the main character in the novel. In John 15:12, the Bible states: “This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you” (New American Standard Bible, John. 15.12). By reading Peace Shall Destroy Many, the reader discovers that, in the Mennonite religion, this commandment means that everyone must be treated and loved equally. However, it is the inconsistent use of this commandant, by Thom's community that leads him to question the views and opinions of various influential people in his life. Thom sees that this commandment is applied inconsistently when trying to explain why certain members of the community were treated the way they were, why the Mennonites are pacifists, and why the Mennonites do not associate with the nearby Métis. It is through Thom's questions, on his quest to find truth, that he develops as an individual.
This proposal will identify the social construction of gender roles for women as the “other” in the primary source writings of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Arrogant Beggar by Anzia Yezierska. Beauvoir’s Second Sex provides a primary source evaluation of the historical distortion of women’s role in society as the “other” through patriarchal traditions that have no basis in genetics or science. Yezierska’s experiences as a Jewish woman in New York “workhouses” define the subjective gender roles assigned to women as being submissive and “invisible” in patriarchal American culture. These two primary sources define the subjective and non-scientific distortion of women‘s roles as the “other” in patriarchal European culture as a historical
Innocence lies within everyone in at least one point in their lives, but as reality consumes them, that purity begins to vanish slowly as they learn new experiences. In the coming of age novel set in the nineteen-forties, J.D Salinger writes about a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield who stands between a road that separates childhood from adulthood and is confused about which path to take. On a three-day trip in New York away from his family and fellow peers at school, Holden encounters many situations in which lead him to think twice about who he wants to become and how he wants to guide others who are in the same situation he is in. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger utilizes symbolism, vivid imagery, and slangy diction to expose Holden’s struggle to preserve the innocence of the people that he loves while alienating himself from the adult world he calls “phony.”
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger is a coming-of-age novel set in New York during the 1940’s. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the story, is a detached seventeen-year old boy harboring feelings of isolation and disillusionment. He emphasizes a general dislike for society, referring to people as “phonies.” His lack of will to socialize prompts him to find nearly everything depressing. He’s alone most of the time and it’s apparent that he is very reclusive. This often leads him to pondering about his own death and other personal issues that plague him without immediate resolution. Holden possesses a strong deficit of affection – platonic and sexual – that hinders and cripples his views toward people, his attitude, and his ability to progressively solve his problems without inflicting pain on himself. The absence of significant figures in his life revert him to a childlike dependency and initiate his morbid fascination with sexuality. In this novel, Salinger uses Sunny, Sally Hayes, and Carl Luce to incorporate the hardships of discovering sexual identity and how these events affect adolescents as they try to understand their own sexuality.
Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from MELEUS, Vol. 19, No.1 (Spring 1994). 1994. The Society for Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 5 May 2010.
Winthrop, John. "A Model of Christian Charity." Franklin, Wayne, Phillip F. Gura and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007. 147-158.
The Catcher in the Rye,written by JD Salinger, is a marvelous thought provoking book that take a look into the dynamic of the anthropology of human nature . Salinger demonstrates a clear understanding of the culture of adolescents, and throughout the book uses the leading character, Holden, to generate various absorbing points about teenagehood. An outstanding point extracted from the book the Catcher in the Rye,through virtue of the character Holden, is that making connections with older age groups can often feel extremely arduous when dealing with the trials of adolescents. This essay will confirm this concept through the medium of various examples taken from the text, such as the solomon interactions between the youth and adults, and the contrast between those interactions and those between youth and children,.
Growing up and becoming mature can be an intimidating experience; it is difficult to let go of one’s childhood and embrace the adult world. For some people, this transition from youthfulness to maturity can be much more difficult than for others. These people often try to hold on to their childhood as long as they can. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. One cannot spend their entire life running from the responsibilities and hardships of adulthood because they will eventually have to accept the fact that they have a role in society that they must fulfill as a responsible, mature individual. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger follows the endeavours of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who faces a point in his life where he must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In an attempt to retain his own childhood, he begins hoping to stop other young children from growing up and losing their innocence as well. As indicated by the title, “The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that explores a theme involving the preservation of innocence, especially of children. It is a story about a boy who is far too hesitant to grow up, and feels the need to ensure that no one else around him has to grow up either. His own fear of maturity and growing up is what leads to Holden’s desire to become a “catcher in the rye” so he can save innocent children from becoming part of the “phoniness” of the adult world.
Lineberry, John. Salvation Is of the Lord: Topical and Word Studies. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959.