In the excerpt from “Some Observations”, Henry Ward Beecher compares the idea of death in a city, and a small village. He is able to make these comparisons by criticizing the massive amount of people in a city. His purpose for writing this was to demonstrate that Society should change their ways, and become a bigger part of each other’s lives. This topic proves to be an important message for all of Society. This idea shows the reader just how massive the world truly is. This excerpt presents the idea of living in a place that is filled with thousands of people that you never really go to know. He is also able to explain the sentimental value of getting to know other people.
The excerpt begins by Beecher criticizing cities by stating that thousands of people die every month, yet you wouldn’t have felt any emotions for those people. He states, “But, outside of the special grief, there is a moment’s sadness, a dash of sympathy, and then life closes over the grief.” Since there are many people that you are surrounded by people could
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die at any moment, and you wouldn’t have realized someone was missing. He explains to the reader that when death occurs people will just demonstrate an instant of sincerity, and it doesn’t actually have any significant meaning. He also provides different examples in which a person is able to become acquainted with each other. He states, “We did not greet at the church; we did not vote at the town meeting; we had not gone together upon sleigh-rides, skating, huskings, fishings, trainings, or elections.” The point Beecher is trying to prove is that in villages people care for one another, and they will act like one big family. When he states, “when a bucketful is drawn out of the ocean.” He is providing a simile in which he explains how insignificant losing a bucket of water from the ocean is. People wouldn’t have missed the bucket of water from the ocean because you could potentially go grab another bucket of water. He also says, “He was not of my house, nor of my circle; his life was not a thread woven with mine; I did not see him before, I shall not miss him now.” Beecher places himself into an example of death, and he states that things wouldn’t be any different than they already were. Since he didn’t know the person very well he wouldn’t display any sorrow. When it comes to a village, Beecher explains that he prefers living in a location where there are only a few hundred people.
He states, “In a village of a few hundred inhabitants all are known each to each. There are no strangers.” Since a village is small, every person goes to the same church and schools, so the villagers are able to becoming a bigger part of each other’s lives. He is proving to the reader that the village acts sort of like an enormous family. He states, “The village church, the Sabbath-school, and the district-school have been channels of intercommunication; so that one is acquainted not only with the persons, but, too often, with the affairs—domestic, social, and secular—of every dweller in the town.” The church and schools provide a place in which the people are able to learn new things about each other that they didn’t know before. The people are able to find out what is happening in a person’s life, and their
affairs. In conclusion, Beecher explains the differences of a death between a city, and a village. He not only proves the small amount of sentimental value of death in a city, but he is also able to express how much more meaningful a death is if the reader had known the person that passed. He proves to the reader that living in a small village where there are no strangers is more important than living in a city where you know only a few people. A village is a place where the people are like a family. If a person from your family were to die, everyone would feel sorrow and grief because that person played a significant role in your life.
How could a family be shattered overnight in the most horrifying way imaginable and the next week a fore sale sign be the only remnant that a family once lived there? This is what started Lovenheim’s fascination with the associations we share with those who live around us. This brings to mind something expressed in the Catholic Update Guide to Faithful Citizenship. Under the Social Justice portion, Mary Carol Kendzia writes, “Equally fundamental is the principle of the human community. Nobody lives all alone in the world and nobody can survive without interacting with others” (Kendzia, p32). While we understand that it is possible to live isolated from others, what Kendzia is conveying is that the sense of community is innate and is what has helped us thrive as creatures of God. To go against this is not conducive to a healthy community. This innate sense of community was ignored by Lovenheim, and possibly all the residents in the neighborhood, until the tragic even that occurred snapped him out of his learned complacency. Now he was on a mission to get to know his neighbors, but not in a conventional
The main point Perry stresses in Population 485, is the important role community plays in helping a person feel at home. The definition argument plays an important role in conveying Perry’s message of the importance of community, using both the operational and example definition methods. The example definition method is exemplified numerous times throughout the story, as Michael Perry uses his own personal examples to display how crucial those in his community are in providing him with a sense of belonging. Additionally, Perry employs the operational definition method by including tragedy in the majority of his stories. The inclusion of tragedy in his stories create allow readers to conclude that tragedy brings people closer together. While this may be true in this case, tragedy does not always bring people closer together. Belonging, in the eyes of Michael Perry, is the feeling of finding family inside his community, rather than simply knowing the people in his community.
How does this text either help you to explore and understand the possibilities of belonging or exclude you from connecting with the world it represents?
All in all, Chris McCandless is a contradictory idealist. He was motivated by his charity but so cruel to his parents and friends. He redefined the implication of life, but ended his life in a lonely bus because of starvation, which he was always fighting against. Nevertheless, Chris and the readers all understand that “happiness only real when shared.” (129; chap.18) Maybe it’s paramount to the people who are now alive.
This extract emphasises the lonely, outworld feeling that would have been felt living in such settings. This puts into perspective the feeling that will be felt during the coarse of the plot development.
This theme of community is present throughout the book; for example, Muley Graves says that if a man has food, and sees a fellow man hungry, he must share it (Lisca 102). This sense of community is present throughout the book as many migrant workers who are in the same pair of shoes find a need for another family and fill it as best they can. For example, instead of splitting their train car with another family, Jenkins 2 Al tears down the tarpaulin between the two families and the family welcomes them (Lisca 102). Finally, Casy is killed in a strike advocating for what he believed in. It wasn’t for himself; it was for others he died, just as Jesus Christ did.
...ected by the differences (and perhaps similarities) of their lives and those less fortunate. They stand at the crossroad that would define their character and their future course of action. Some choose ambivalence, some choose to see and turn away, others may even convince themselves that they are actually better than they used to be. But without acting on any internal change these people have failed to convince the reader that they have been redeemed. Their inability or unwillingness to extend themselves to the cause of brotherhood and human kindness is their testament. The reader has no pity for these men, but unlike them the reader can internalize the lessons of their experiences and effect change in their own lives. Their failure to act is their greatest folly, but the reader can rise above these characters, recognizing their failure and take a different path.
He learned over some time, that it is possible for one to retain separateness but keep individuality, and one can be a public person as well as a private person. He says that at first he wanted to be like everyone else (fit in), and only when he could think of himself as American it was than okay to be an individual in public society. He speaks of a man from Mexico who held on to Spanish: "For as long as he holds on to words, he can ignore how much else has changed his life" (35). The message is to not take words for granted and not to misuse words because they certainly do have meaning. For example, `brother' and `sister' is becoming a public repetition of words. The meaning will become lifeless. Words mean something when the voice takes control "the heart cannot contain!" (39). It forms an intimate sound.
E. Cummings creates a critical and intolerant tone. He uses his work to criticize “most people” and how they blindly follow others. Cummings intolerance arises from others critical opinion of not normal people, whom the townspeople of the writing do not acknowledge. The uniqueness of both the main characters in the writing and Cummings is shown by the distinctiveness, inconsistency, and incorrectness of the writing. This tone directly relates to the theme and how anyone and noone are compassionate, caring people who actually recognize the value of life ,but are surrounded by townspeople who just stumble through life without a care or emotion. Cummings uses the seasons, bells, his unique composition and the repetition of “Women and men” and “anyone” to create and emphasize the unfortunate cycle of life. The use of the seasons in lines three,eleven, and thirty-four emphasise the passing of time and the unchanging ways of the townspeople. “Women and men”, in lines five and thirty-three,are used to remind us of Cummings definition of “most people” and how people tend to blend in and follow. The bells in lines two and twenty-four are used to indicate a change in the character 's, the first bell is before love and the second bell is rang before death.These significant life transitions show how love and death are final. life The character “anyone” introduces a person, unlike any others in the town, between him and his
He immediately puts the individual in his meager place which is inferred from the image of "A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. " The individual is minute compared to the overwhelming World State building which is symbolic of the scientific and technological domination of the World State over the individual. The images of the "harsh light" penetrating and "hungrily" seeking to be consoled by human touch only to unveil the "pale corpse-coloured rubber" hands of workers touching cold test tubes convey the cold impassionate feeling involved in the "Fertilizing Room. " This inconceivable concept is appalling and mystifying, and through the tour the reader is introduced to the enthralling theme of Huxley's work -- the notion that science and technology could replace the
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
... authors conclude that it is through alienation within a small society that ultimately leads to the primary characters’ demise and death. Whether their individual cases are self imposed or externally imposed, the results and the impact are the same, annihilation of the human soul. Their craft make emphatic use of setting to the successful depiction of this theme. Both characters ultimately fall into the abyss of loneliness and despair proving that human existence cut-off and on its own is more destructive than positive . Thus their message seems to suggest that as humans, we need society in order to truly belong and have a connection, purpose and worth in this life, in order to truly live.
His own loneliness, magnified so many million times, made the night air colder. He remembered to what excess, into what traps and nightmares, his loneliness had driven him; and he wondered where such a violent emptiness might drive an entire city. (60)
“Its deserted streets are a potent symbol of man and nature 's indifference to the individual. The insistence of the narrator on his own self-identity is in part an act of defiance against a constructed, industrial world that has no place for him in its order” (Bolton). As the poem continues on, the narrator becomes aware of his own consciousness as he comes faces nature and society during his walk. He embraces nature with the rain, dark and moon but he also reinforces his alienation from society as he ignores the watchman and receives no hope of cries for him. The societal ignorance enforces our belief that he is lonely on this gloomy night. “When he passes a night watchman, another walker in the city with whom the speaker might presumably have some bond, he confesses, ‘I… dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.’ Likewise, when he hears a voice in the distance, he stops in his tracks--only to realize that the voice is not meant "to call me back or say goodbye" (Bolton). The two times he had a chance to interact with the community, either he showed no interest in speaking or the cry wasn’t meant for him. These two interactions emphasize his loneliness with the
This short novel, even though written almost 250 years ago, demonstrates that Werther's critique of society is still relevant in today's society. It does not matter whether one is an aristocrat or a low class worker, everybody at the end need "empathic love."7 As Goethe claims in page 64 of his work "Without doubt, the only thing that makes Man's life on earth essential and necessary is love."