In the final half of David Adams Richards, Mercy Among the Children, the novel is expanded with the support of the archetypal criticism and theory. According to Carl Jung’s views on archetypal theory, our knowledge of legends and dreams have all been developed based upon one another's past beliefs. Lyle and his life deal with many archetypes in which help the reader make other beliefs revolve around the characters and situations. The main archetypal characters in the story are the mother figure and the victim. The victim in this novel is set as a main bestowing factor throughout the story as it is a direct connection to Lyle himself; his father. Lyle's father Sydney is victimized in his community all the time, this teaches Lyle to have the strength …show more content…
and bravery to stand up for his family in situations that could be harmful. A victim makes people aware of their surroundings that are conducive of being taken advantage of. “Dear Lyle: You are right of course. All my life I have been a burden to those who see things more clearly than I. I was a burden to my father, and now I am a burden to you and little Autumn. I will stay at work until our debt is paid. Than maybe things will be better. Take care of yourself and Autumn and Percy, and be kind to whoever comes to our door. Love, Dad.” (Richards 229). This quotation is explaining how Sydney began to feel after Lyle starts to rebel against his wishes. Sydney felt miniscule to his own son and decides that it is time for change. It strikes me that, the Henderson family is greatly preyed upon by society and viewed as lower class to to Sydney's past mistakes and poverty.
Walking home from midnight mass, Lyle experiences first hand the brutality towards his powerless father. Sydney is shoved down by three men and is continually kicked, while one man repeats, “I told you I’d get you back” (Richards 58). Sydney, declining to defend himself or fight back, is assaulted in front of his family on Christmas Eve. Witnessing the attack, Lyle “for the first time realized there was a poverty in us that had nothing to do with dirt” (Richards 58). Poverty had robbed the Henderson family of their dignity and self worth; Sydney’s morality had been embedded into them to believe “the vanity and falseness of violence” (Richards 111) however, it only brought apon more austerity. Lyle feels betrayed by his father’s morals and becomes enraged with him for not defending himself, instead cohereing to his pact with God. Degraded by his beating, Sydney holds onto the only truth he knows, “they cannot do this and not destroy themselves. This will lead to their own destruction” (Richards 193). The repercussions of Sydney's action continually show their lower social
class.
After feeling ostracised by the township, the alienated Brennan family are driven to leave the town of Mumbilli at 4:30am. With hardly any peer support, Tom begins to lose his sense of security, resulting in his transformation into an unconfident teen who is afraid of public opinion. It is no wonder that Tom is unable to move on in his new town as he is being held back in fear of revealing his past. Burke tactfully illustrates Tom’s emotional kaleidoscope through phrases such as “I felt the knot snap” and “my guts landing at my feet” (Burke, pg 172) when reflecting on the accident. On the contrary, with encouragement from family members, Tom begins to step out of his comfort zone and face the future that is to come.
Glasspell, Susan Trifles. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing 4th Ed.
...olent incidences contrast in specific details and their fathers personas, both children lose their innocence and gain the experience and knowledge to question life and make logical decisions.
Studies have shown that what children see and hear can have an impact on their lives. If a child is exposed to kindness and compassion, they start to take on those characteristics, yet if a child is exposed to abuse and hatred, they will take on the negative characteristics. In the novel, Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci, the protagonist Vittorio Innocente's childhood is ripped away from him through his great suffering. Vittorio's innocence is tainted through the negative impact of his experiences with friends and his encounters with violence and death, thus leading him to mature at an earlier age.
He has endured and overcame many fears and struggles, but during this section, we truly acquire an insight of what the little boy is actually like – his thoughts, his opinions, his personality. Contrary to his surroundings, the little boy is vibrant and almost the only lively thing around. I love him! He is awfully appalled by the “bad guys” and shockingly sympathetic toward dead people. For example, when the father raided a house and found food, the little boy suggested that they should thank them because even though they’re dead or gone, without them, the little boy and father would starve. My heart goes out to him because he is enduring things little boys should never go through, even if this novel is just a fictional
One’s mythology can cause another’s to change. The main one being Boy’s and Dunstan’s: Since the snowball incident Dunstan and Boy have remained friends on the surface, with Boy helping Dunny financially, and Dunny showing up to Boy’s events as the war hero. But Boy’s personal mythology, unlike Dunstan’s, revolves around money and materialism. Boy believes in having a high social status along with a trophy wife. He tries to “make [Leola] into the perfect wife for a rising young entrepreneur in sugar” (124). While Dunstan is haunted everyday of the guilt of Mary’s condition, Boy doesn’t even acknowledge that the event ever occurred. But, because Dunstan is faced by the guilt his entire life, he can embrace his shadow. However, for Boy, his ego has been covering up and pushing away his shadow for most his life. In the end Boy’s shadow is simply to big to accept or overcome, the guilt of sixty years, to big to swallow, is finally eating away at him his has no other choice but to take his own life. Boy’s mythology influences Dunstan’s personal mythology to not care for money and wealth. Carl Jung, creator of Jungian Psychology said, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Dunstan stays away from the things that irritate him about Boy, he learns from Boy what life is not about, and is sure not to let himself become like Boy. By
In modern times, phrases such as “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” are commonly used. Also, the mere word revenge holds negative connotations as it is seen as immature and unnecessary. The theme of revenge uses archetypes to develop ideas without having to reiterate their meaning. According to the creator of the term, Carl Jung, “archetypes are defined as being a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.” (Dictionary) The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the novels that pioneer this theme, tells the story of a man’s quest for revenge on those who betrayed him. This man spends 14 years of his life imprisoned because of his betrayers, but he manages to escape to avenge his suffering. In the novel The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas uses the archetypes of the byronic hero, the betrayer and the old sage to demonstrate that one’s suffering doesn’t give them the right to seek revenge on those who have failed them.
This story makes the reader wonder, why must parents do this to their children, what kinds of motifs do they have for essentially ruining their child’s life. I believe
Antwone Fisher was an individual that endured so many things. He faced a lot of challenges that may have seemed impossible to recover from. This story was an example of the many things that some children may experience. Antwone was not raised in an upper crust home. He did not grow up in a home in which his mother and father was present. Instead of having positive role models, he had to live with individuals that were abusive to him. When observing Antwone’s personality, one may refer to two different theorists such as Bandura and Rogers.
In Harper Lee’s fictional novel To Kill A Mockingbird, an African American field hand is falsely accused of raping a white women. Set in the 1930’s in the small town of Monroeville Alabama, Addicus Finch an even handed white attorney tries to shed a light on the injustice of this innocent black man’s conviction. Atticus feels that the justice system should be color blind, and he defends Tom as an innocent man, not a man of color.
In literature, an archetype is a character, situation, or experience that represents the recurring patterns of human nature. Loss of innocence, a well used archetype, tends to focus on young individuals and shows how their innocence fades away, but is replaced by experience and gained knowledge through it. In Ian McEwan’s Atonement, McEwan shows the loss of innocence through Briony Tallis, Robbie Turner, and Lola Quincey. These three characters show how one’s mistake, tragedy, or experience can cause the loss of their innocence, but other character’s futures and innocence as well. Through this archetype, Ian McEwan’s Atonement shows how the loss of innocence plays a major role in each of their lives and how it changes their future, showing
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions
In Mercy Among the Children, Sydney and Lyle view faith as the reasoning behind how events unfold. Sydney and Lyle present questions for God, which either strengthen or alters their faith. The Henderson family are active church members and living in the Miramichi stumps, church locations are vast. From the young age of twelve, Sydney’s creates a vow with God help change his concerning violent lifestyle: “Whatever pact you make with God, God will honour. You may not think He does, but then do you really know the pact you have already made? Understand the pact you have made, and you will understand how God honours it” (Richards 24). Notably, Sydney put his trust in God with the expectation that his only chance at change is with God’s guidance. At this moment, Sydney professes his faith
“Mothers are all slightly insane.” This quote by acclaimed American writer J.D. Salinger accurately describes the nature of all mothers. The innate nature of mothers to be insane, or to think without logic or reason is vividly displayed in Toni Morrison’s Beloved through the protagonist Sethe. Sethe, an Ohio infanticide, displays loving traits throughout Beloved, and often leads the reader to question her motivations behind the killing of her child, Beloved. The reader is never truly delivered an exact reasoning behind Sethe’s infanticide, but Morrison has recurring elements that help chain together anachronistic events in pursuit of aiding the reader to build his/her own reasoning. Morrison uses Sethe’s milk and the recurring element of forgiveness to craft a story that exemplifies the insanity associated with responsibilities of a mother, while retaining ambiguity associated with the morality of “motherly” infanticide.
Adam, a corporal officer, starts as man who works everyday to catch the ‘villains’ of society, but is not spending enough time with his family, especially his son. He favors his nine year old daughter over his fifteen year old son. Adam views his daughter as a sweet child, and his son as a stubborn teenager who is going through a rebellious stage. However, when his daughter is killed in an accident, his perspective of family changes. In his grief, he states that he wishes he had been a better father. His wife reminds him that he still is a father and he realizes that he still has a chance with his son, Dylan. After his Daughter’s death, he creates a resolution from scriptures that states how he will be a better father. Because of the resolution he creates, he opens up to and spends more time with his son. By th...