Violent acts in literature function as more than just physical action in that they often tell the audience something. For example, the motives and desires of the perpetrator are generally revealed during the fight. Truly great works use these violent acts to indicate a theme. One such example is “Sunshine” by Lynn Freed. In this short story, Julian de Jong, a man whose wealth allows him to evade punishment for raping children, finds a young girl in a pile of leaves. This man tames the girl with the help of his maids and earns her trust only to force himself on her at the end. De Jong and the child fight with the girl emerging as the victor. In this crucial scene, it is shown that Freed wishes to criticize the villagers’ morality in allowing …show more content…
Of course, the latter’s self-centeredness and depravity are already well-established when it becomes known that he rapes young girls, but other villagers are also guilty when they allow him to continue. In many cases, it is greed that prevents them from standing up since some know “that when he [is] finished with them, the girls would fetch a decent bride price” because of how scared and docile they become because of these incidents (296). Even if this brings money to a poor family, Freed uses the nameless girl’s story of her rape to demonstrate that no amount of trauma given to any victim is worth any material comforts. In a similarly selfish case, Grace, de Jong’s maid, is delighted to hand captured girls over to her master because “then she’d have her two weeks off” (300). Although she begins to feel a special bond with this girl in particular, the fear of de Jong and the desire to be free for two weeks outweigh that attachment, and she acquiesces to his demands. However, during the fight, Freed shows how wrong Grace is and how horrible it is that an innocent girl has to suffer from this society because people are more willing to save their own skins than to stand up, leaving the child no choice but to resort to violent means
During 1910 and 1970, over six million blacks departed the oppression of the South and relocated to western and northern cities in the United States, an event identified as the Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns is a powerful non-fiction book that illustrates this movement and introduces the world to one of the most prominent events in African American history. Wilkerson conveys a sense of authenticity as she not only articulates the accounts of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, but also intertwines the tales of some 1,200 travelers who made a single decision that would later change the world. Wilkerson utilizes a variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, and economics in order to document and praise the separate struggles but shared courage of three individuals and their families during the Great Migration.
When an author romanticizes a piece of literature, he or she has the power to convey any message he or she wishes to send to the reader. Authors can make even the most horrible actions, such as Dustan murdering ten savages in their sleep and justify it; somehow, from both the type of mood/tone set in this piece of literature, along with the powerful word choice he used, Whittier had the ability to actually turn the tables on to the victim (i.e. the ten “savages” who were murdered in their sleep). “A Mother’s Revenge” by John Greenleaf Whittier, is a prime example of how authors can romanticize any situation into how they want to convey their message.
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
And readers are thus exposed to the exploitation and extortion that goes on in this cycle of sympathizers. While the gathering of the women is supposed to be a period of preparing the widows for their confinement, it turns to a period of financial exploitation of the widows. Ramatoulaye succinctly expresses her displeasure,
This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear, contempt, and affection toward Rufus that she does.
Justine, too, is an ‘idealised figure’, described during the trial as having a countenance which, ‘always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful.’ She is the archetypal innocent, being beautiful, weak and entirely accepting of her fate to the point of martyrdom.
Our environment shapes our personalities and decisions in all aspects, one way or the other. This is also true for fictional characters in books. The author of A Raisin in the Sun described the play to be set in southside Chicago during the 1950s. This setting in A Raisin in the Sun created by Lorraine Hansberry creates an outline of characteristics for Walter, Beneatha, and Mama to exhibit throughout the play.
In the middle of the night, four white men storm into a cabin in the woods while four others wait outside. The cabin belongs to Alice and her mom. The four men pull out Alice’s father along with her mom, both are naked. Alice manages to scramble away. The men question Alice’s father about a pass, which allows him to visit his wife. Her father tries to explain the men about the loss of the pass but the men do not pay any attention to him. Instead they tie him to a tree and one of the white man starts to whip him for visiting his wife without the permission of Tom Weylin, the “owner” of Alice’s father. Tom Weylin forbid him to see his wife, he ordered him to choose a new wife at the plantation, so he could own their children. Since Alice’s mother is a free woman, her babies would be free as well and would be save from slavery. But her freedom “status” does not stop one of the patroller to punch her in the face and cause her to collapse to the ground.
While reading the poem “Daystar,” written by Rita Dove, its readers most likely do not ask thought-provoking questions like “Why did Dove write this?” or “What is the true meaning behind this poem?” but the poem has deeper meaning than what its outside layer portrays. Dove, an African American woman born in 1952, has not only viewed the racism of the United States society, but she has also seen how gender can or cannot play a role in the advancement of a person’s life (Rita Dove: The Poetry Foundation). The poem “Daystar” not only takes an outside perspective on the everyday life of a woman, but it closely relates to Dove’s family history. Dove uses the experiences of her life as a woman, and the knowledge gained from living in countries other than the United States, to depict the pressure and desire felt by mothers and/or wives on a daily basis.
She is sorely bruised, but cannot talk about it, which typifies the domestic abuse that women, and the girl child suffer. Some women are forced into silence because they want to keep their family together, while others are silence because the society blames them in the end. Turtle’s silence mirrors the author’s experience in her younger years as a rape victim. She could not talk openly on it because she was blamed for the rape which was labelled ‘acquaintance rape’ (Critical Companion 6). Lamenting what Turtle had gone through as a child, Kingsolver wrote, “The Indian girl was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine” (The Bean Trees 25). Here, the author shows that being a girl usually herald an uneasy life, and this theme is explicated throughout the rest of the
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
The image of the pure girl who sacrifices herself for the sake of another seems very positive at first glance. However, this figure perpetuates the notion that girls should be selfless; rather than portray selflessness as a desirable characteristic for any morally upright human being, it is portrayed as a suitable characteristic for women. The female is supposedly the moral center of society, so she is the character who sacrifices herself for others. The martyr figure is a role model for all good girls to follow, while boys have brave heroes to look up to.
The women of Mango Street are looked down upon by men based on their lack of respect for women. Marin and Minerva feel trapped and will not leave to restraints of Mango Street. Sadley even in 2015, this happens to women all over the world, not just Mango Street. Cases of these abuse crimes come up everyday in the newspapers, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, no one is
What do you picture when you are told to imagine a perfect world? A world with no crime, hate, and rules, where order is always kept and everyone is content. Keep that in mind, now imagine just below the surface of that perfect community is a terrible ghastly secret. A secret the whole town knows about and decides to turn a blind eye on. Now what do you think of that town? This is the plot in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, and the secret they hide is that beneath the city they imprison a small child and make him live his life in fear and misery in exchange for their happiness. The citizens of Omelas are all aware of this deal from a young age and are even allowed to visit the child in his soiled dungeon, yet no kind words or actions are to be shown to him or the deal is terminated. Consequently, the inhabitants of Omelas see the cruel treatment of the boy and must face the internal conflict of knowing what their ‘Utopian’ living brings. Ultimately, they must decide on the lesser of the two evils, to stay, or to leave, but with each option carrying negative side effects, the people of Omelas must make their decision wisely and consult their own inner morals to decide what is right and wrong, a conflict everyone must face in their life at some point, even in today’s society.
Dickens notes that in the midst of a revolution, heavy bloodshed must be made in order to achieve the vengeance that the peasants desire. Though the peasants were originally people of good faith, they were forced by the aristocratic government to take drastic actions. Poverty, the mother of all crimes, along with the aristocrats “crushing humanity out of shape once more” gave the peasants no choice.” Dickens conveys here that because of the negligence of the government, the people were forced to sacrifice their good nature and engage in the violent acts that caused a time of great animosity and dejection. Sacrifices are often made to strengthen bonds, and no other bond in the novel is stronger than the one that Lucie Mannette shares with her father, Dr. Manette.