Within the pages of Hinds’ Feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard edifyingly captivates her readers by applying practical and sagacious truths to their everyday struggles. After the inhabitants of the Valley of Humiliation harass Much-Afraid to the point of despair, she yearns all the more to journey to the High Places where true love dwells. At the sheep’s pool, she expresses her wishes to the Shepherd—the King of the High Places. With eyes of joy, the Shepherd tells her that she needs the seed of Love planted in her heart for, “no one is allowed to dwell in the Kingdom of Love, unless they have the flower of Love already blooming in their hearts” (24). These words sink down into Much-Afraid’s heart before she asks the Shepherd to plant the seed of Love in her heart.
Supported by her two companions, Sorrow and Suffering, Much-Afraid disembarks on her journey to the High Places. Along the treacherous path, Much-Afraid meets her tormentors from the Valley of Humiliation who attempt to turn her back to her village of Much-Trembling, but fail in their endeavors. As she journeys to the High Places, Much-Afraid erects altars where she surrenders her will in submission to the Shepherd’s will. On an altar overlooking the mighty falls, Much-Afraid makes her most significant sacrifice of all by allowing the priest of the altar to wrench out the matured desire for natural human love. With the seed of true love taking full dominion in Much-Afraid’s heart, the Shepherd invites her to the High Places—the Kingdom of Love.
Through her many allegories, Hurnard echoes God’s call for His children to joyfully love, trust, and obey Him. She encourages her readers through the call of the Shepherd to strive after true satisfying love by forsaking thei...
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...bark on their own sanctifying journey to the High Places.
Love permeates throughout Hurnard’s novel—Hinds’ Feet on High Places. After hearing the loving words of the Shepherd, a spark of faith enlightened within Much-Afraid and motivated her to receive the seed of love. As Much-Afraid walks in the love of the Shepherd, she surrenders her will to delight in the Shepherd’s will. Throughout her journey, Much-Afraid faces much opposition, yet the love of the Shepherd helps her to endure. As her journey continues, the Shepherd’s love for Much-Afraid captivates her whole being. Upon reaching the High Places, the Shepherd glorifies Much-Afraid and changes her name into Grace and Glory. In her glorified state, Grace and Glory revels at the Shepherd’s love for her. With her heart bursting with love for the Shepherd, she gives herself fully to his service in self-giving.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, characters Adah and Rachel Price differ in their outlooks on life. Adah contrasts Rachel with her inside reality, her dark fiction, as well as her dependence on others due to her slant. Rachel, on the other hand, loves the outside reality, compares her life to that of a light fairy tale, and is independent. Kingsolver’s choice of two vastly different characters aids in the demonstration of the complexity each character has. In order to portray each character’s aspects, Kingsolver uses forms of diction, metaphors, and symbolism.
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
Mrs. McIntyre is a divorced and widowed woman who has learned to depend only on her own strength during the day to day operating of her farm. She has created a comfortable world to exist in, and she fears change in that world. Mrs. McIntyre's lack of spiritual dimension stems from this constancy of her surroundings. She has never been challenged by her circumstances and was thus never forced to examine her spiritual beliefs and their depth. We can see her fear of change when she speaks of the peacocks. She if afraid to let them all d...
With a heart-full of advice and wisdom, Dinah maturates from a simple- minded young girl to a valiant independent individual. “For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, the thought passes quickly. I could only be what I was. And that was a woman” (170). This act of puberty is not only her initiation into womanhood but the red tent as well. She is no longer just an observer of stories, she is one of them, part of their community now. On account of this event, Dinah’s sensuality begins to blossom and she is able to conceive the notion of true love.
The problem we find in this story, and in puritanism, is that it presents contrasting views of love. Attachment to earthly possessions, to other people in fact, is discouraged, because everything physical leads to temptation and damnation, and ultimately hell, while the road to salvation of the individual wanders through a spiritual discipline, rigour, austerity. A man should not love his wife more than he loves God; in fact, it is recommended that he not derive pleasure from his wife, but rather seek suffering, in order to redeem himself from his earthly condition, his impure state.
Literature has been a medium for getting messages across for centuries. Various authors from Aesop to Shakespeare have used writing as a vehicle to get a message across to their audiences. All of these authors are widely respected and admired for their works. One author who transcends her peers and breaks away from traditional secular teaching is Flannery O’Connor. She is widely known for her usage of Christian themes to get across a message of our worlds need for a savior in Jesus Christ. Her style of writing is unique in that she conveys spiritual messages in everyday, fun-to-read stories. This is important as it creates a medium in which she can spread the gospel in a clever manner. Image books stated, “Her expert craftsmanship, her uncanny ability for characterization, the depth and intensity of her morality-combined in strict discipline-make her one of this generation’s most respected authors” (Books, Image 1). Flannery O’Connor uses various themes to get across a religious message, but the two that have a large impact are grace and suffering. The themes of grace and suffering can be seen in her short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, “The River”, and “The Lame Shall Enter First”. The themes of grace and suffering in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories are used to represent Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins.
In the opening lines of the tale there is a compulsion, representing internal conflict, indicated on the part of both the protagonist and his wife Faith:
A devoted mother, Anne Bradstreet is concerned with her children as she watches them grow up. “Or lest by Lime-twigs they be foil'd, or by some greedy hawks be spoil'd” Anne Bradstreet uses to describe her fear for her children. Not wanting to see her children suffer, Anne Bradstreet turns to God to help her children. Bradstreet imagines her bird’s being stuck on a branch and a hawk eating them, a grim image of all of her sacrifice being lost in a single moment. “No cost nor labour did I spare” describes how much Anne loves her children.
...hing “bad” happened they found a way to rejoice in the suffering. The Puritan believers were selfish with sharing their faith. A plantation missionary stated that sharing the gospel to slaves would “promote our own mortality and religion.” However the gospel and religion the masters shared with their slaves did not remain the same. The slaves were able to apply their faith to their lives, their work, and their future. The faith the slaves possessed was rich in emotion and free from preexisting regulations. In this class we focus on the many faces and interoperations of Christ that change with the seasons of history. The slave faith represented in Jupiter Hammon’s poem shows a high level of integrity and selfless, personal application of faith. The emotion and need for Christ the slaves had during this time created a new realm of relationship in the evangelical era.
In the gothic novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the author hides motifs within the story.The novel contains two major love stories;The wild love of Catherine, and Heathcliff juxtaposing the serene love of Cathy,and Hareton. Catherine’s and Heathcliff's love is the center of Emily Bronte’s novel ,which readers still to this day seem to remember.The characters passion, and obsession for each other seems to not have been enough ,since their love didn't get to thrive. Hareton and Cathy’s love is what got to develop. Hareton’s and Cathy’s love got to workout ,because both characters contained a characteristic that both characters from the first generation lacked: The ability to change .Bronte employs literary devices such as antithesis of ideas, and the motif of repetition to reveal the destructiveness of wild love versus a domestic love.
Catherine and Heathcliff reveal their fervent devotion and affection for each other when the former is lying on her deathbed, and in those tender, moribund moments earnest and ardent confessions are made that signify their mutual adoration and are harbingers of Heathcliff’s adumbrative vengeance. Heathcliff suffers to see Catherine in such a ghostly state, and weeps at the idea of being without her, crying, ““Would you (Catherine) like to live with your soul in the grave?”” (151) In saying this he demonstrates not only his own pain at her imminent fate, but also their metaphorically entwined lives. He does so by connecting the departure of her soul to his own, claiming that when she dies, so too will he. Additionally, by mere fact that the normally stoic Heathcliff was found in a state of grievance over the unfortunate circumstances is indicative of the gravity and desperation that with her passing he regards. Nelly points out as much by her matter-of-fact remark, “...it seemed Heathcliff could weep on a great occasion like this.” (151) Therefore, Heathcliff’s anguish befo...
. The reader sees an extraordinary inwardness in Emily Bronte’s book Wuthering Heights. Emily has a gloomy and isolated childhood. . Says Charlotte Bronte, “ my sister’s disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favored and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church, or to take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home.”(Everit,24) That inwardness, that remarkable sense of the privacy of human experience, is clearly the essential vision of Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte saw the principal human conflict as one between the individual and the dark, questioning universe, a universe symbolized, in her novel, both by man’s threatening and hardly-to-be-controlled inner nature, and by nature in its more impersonal sense, the wild lonesome mystery of the moors. The love of Heathcliff and Catherine, in its purest form, expresses itself absolutely in its own terms. These terms may seem to a typical mind, violent, and even disgusting. But having been generated by that particular love, they are the proper expressions of it. The passionately private relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine makes no reference to any social convention or situation. Only when Cathy begins to be attracted to the well-mannered ways of Thrushcross Grange, she is led, through them, to abandon her true nature.
In life it is important that each person thinks rationally in every decision they make, but it is equally important that everyone follows their heart, too. For some people, thinking rationally while following their heart is not an easy task, and it often causes more tragedy than good. Thomas Hardy, a famous British author, repeatedly wrote novels depicting the cross between logical thinking and following one’s heart. For example, his first novel, Far from the Madding Crowd, involves a love circle during a period when women were trying to prove their independence. Bathsheba, the main character, manages a farm on her own and strives to continuously prove her dominance in a male dominant world. She finds herself distracted and stressed due to the fact that three men wish to marry her. Bathsheba significantly wishes to keep her independence, so she turns down the first two men. However, Troy, an untrustworthy womanizer, steals her heart for a moment until she again thinks realistic enough to not fall under his love traps. Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy, depicts the cross between thinking both rationally and irrationally once love is present in one’s life, which is common in all of Hardy’s books through the character development, central themes involving love, and gender confusion.
" Christianity & Literature 58.1 (2008): 81-92. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. Fienberg, Lorne. "
The love that the Shepherd has for her is not real love it is more of a lust type of feeling. He is living in the moment, a...