Life is unpredictable and always changing. Sometimes life moves so fast it passes one by. James Dean quotes, “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” One should embrace life because tomorrow is never promised. Living life to the fullest is living beyond one’s comfort zone. Individuals need to appreciate and experience all the things life has to offer. Henry James and Mary Wilkins Freeman suggest that an individual can live life to the fullest by living in the moment, focusing on the positive, and being true to oneself. John Marcher, a man obsessed with the idea that something terrible will happen to him, in Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle”; Daisy Miller, a innocent and young American girl, in James’ “Daisy Miller”; …show more content…
and Sarah Penn, a meek and patient wife and mother, in Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother” depict how one should live life to the fullest. One way an individual can live life to the fullest is by living in the moment, as Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle” illustrates.
Life has a series of moments. The moments in an individual’s life deserve full attention. One does not need to disregard the present because tomorrow is never promised. John Marcher’s constant worry that “something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle” (486) causes him to not appreciate the present. His obsession with the beast causes a lack of emotional attachment and blinds him from having a deeper relationship with May Bartram. John’s inability to consciously live in the moment impairs him to see that May holds the answer to his fate. Because John is not living in the moment, he never realizes May’s love and affection for him. May’s love for John is evident as she “diminished the distance between them, and stood nearer to him, close to him” (497). He spends most of his adult life waiting for the beast to spring out. Because John is waiting on this terrible event to occur, he is wasting away his life and not living his life fully. May’s death causes John’s realization of the beast. The beast is his failure to love her. He realizes his escape “would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived”
(506). Another way an individual can live life to the fullest is by focusing on the positive, as James’ ‘Daisy Miller” illustrates. A positive approach to life allows an individual to be happy and carefree. It also allows one to deal with anything life throws at them. Daisy Miller’s positive desire to enjoy all that French society has to offer causes a stir of negative opinions about her. She goes against the norms of European society and how a young and unmarried lady is to act. Daisy’s notion to see things on the positive side allows her to live outside of society’s expectations. She states, “I don’t see why I should change my habits for them” (450). Because of her inability to control everyone’s opinion about her, she creates awareness to her thoughts about her situation and chooses to see the positive, rather than the negative. Daisy’s positivity allows her to ignore the negative opinion of others. While others talk negative about her, Daisy manages to “present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence” (445). Finally, being true to oneself allows an individual to live life to the fullest, as Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother” illustrates. Being true to oneself is being in unity with one’s own identity. It means being different and standing out. The pressures of society can cause an individual to lose their integrity. Sarah Penn’s risk to overcome the pressure to conform to society enables her to be true to herself. She states, “I’ve got my own mind an’ my own feet, an’ I’m going to think my own thoughts an’ go on my own ways” (671). Being true to oneself means listening to one’s own feelings and living from the heart. Because Sarah acts out what she feels in her heart to be right, she remains true to herself. She states, “I’ve thought it all over an’ over, an’ I believe I’m doin’ what’s right” (670). Sarah reveals her true self and determination. In the end “she is overcome by her own triumph” (672). “The Beast in the Jungle,” Daisy Miller,” and “The Revolt of Mother” allow readers to conclude how to live life to the fullest by living in the moment, focusing on the positive, and being true to oneself. John Marcher’s constant worry about the terrible event of the beast and his inability to love May results in a wasted life. Daisy Miller focuses on the positive things life has to offer, rather than the negativity of others. Sarah Penn’s risk to remain true to herself by overcoming the pressures of a conforming society and acting what she feels right in her heart leads to her triumph. One should embrace all that life has to offer and live it to the fullest. Abraham Lincoln quotes, “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that counts. It’s the life in your years.”
Both awe-inspiring and indescribable is life, the defined “state of being” that historians and scholars alike have been trying to put into words ever since written language was first created. And in the words of one such intellectual, Joshua J. Marine, “Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”. Essentially, he is comparing life to a bowl of soup. Without challenges or hardships into which we can put forth effort and show our potential, it becomes a dull and flavorless broth. But for characters in novels like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
John feels guilty for leaving his brother behind, starting a new life, and putting distance between them. John’s “running away” (Wideman 47) can be compared to the river that Robert sees every day at prison, “a natural symbol of flight and freedom” (Wideman 46); consequently, John’s guilt stems directly from this imagery of separation. With this guilt and separation also comes fear. John knows how the distance between him and his brother has widened, and the why aspect can be associated with John’s fear “that evil would be discovered [in him]” and that “he would be shunned like a leper” (Wideman 47). Clearly John is afraid of the separation-the distance- between his brother, family, and past, knowing that he will never be as close to these things as he once was; they are only vague images to him
or Paulina, the present is merely an interval to be endured, since she is bound by her longings for the future and by her losses in the past. The temporal paradox of feeling arises because the present is interrupted from within by a habit of unhappiness, by the repeated insistence of grief and ardor that signals to other times and places. Again, though, this division between the inner and outer sense of things defines the peculiar kind of intimacy which emerges in this text. In the passage above, for instance, the narrator conveys to the reader with the word “trembling” her empathy for the young girl’s authentic feeling and her stoicism, necessary in a world where her emotional needs can be neither met nor
Henry James's Daisy Miller and Kate Chopin's The Awakening were first published twenty-one years apart, the former in 1878 and the latter in 1899. Despite the gap of more than two decades, however, the two works evince a similarity of thought and intent that is immediately evident in their main themes. Both works display characters whose lives have been governed almost solely by the conventions of their respective societies. Furthermore, both works also attempt to demonstrate to the reader what happens when these conventions are challenged by individual instincts, which more often than not are in direct contradiction to the dictates of convention.
In John Gardner's novel, Grendel, the protagonist himself, Grendel the monster, loses sight of that joy in life when he forgets that it is the life itself for which he is living, not some outside force which governs his actions. In this slip, he dooms himself to a living death of machine-like actions culminating in his physical de...
After years of loneliness and misery, Marcher realizes what he had been oblivious to and, ultimately, everything he had lost, most importantly, the love he had lost. “This horror of waking—this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze” (1177). He could have escaped his fate of nothingness and loneliness, “The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived” (1176). Marcher’s punishment for being so selfish and self-absorbed was that “he had been the man of his time, the man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened” (1176). This was the story of a man whose ego was the “beast” in the “jungle” of
Daisy Buchanan, this woman is crazy, uncaring, and many would argue cold hearted. She is married to Tom and yet, has an affair with Gatsby. Tom is her husband, a very well-off man that goes off and has affairs, and never attempts to hide the fact. Then there is Gatsby. Ah, Gatsby. The young man she was so in love with as a teenage girl. Tom and Gatsby have many similarities; from the fact that both Tom and Gatsby want Daisy all to themselves to the fact that they both love her. While they share many similarities they have far more numerable differences between them. The differences range from how they treat her to how rich they and what social class they are in, to the simple fact that Tom lives in “East Egg” and Gatsby in “West Egg.” Both the similarities and differences between these two men are what ultimately cause Daisy to believe that she is in love with Tom more than she is with Gatsby.
The story “Daisy Miller” is a romance of a love that can never be. The character Annie P. Miller (known as Daisy Miller) is portrayed as a young naive wild yet, innocent girl who want to do nothing more but have fun with the company she please. The story “Daisy Miller” is a lot like The Age of Innocence. In both the movie and the book the leading lady was shunned from society because of their behavior. Both Daisy and the Countess Olenska were misunderstood and out-casted because they were saw as different. These women did not want to conform to what the society thought was proper and good, they had their own opinion and was bold in their time to state it.
Comparing the Role of the Narrator in Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller and Hwang’s M. Butterfly
James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle." The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995.
In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy struggles between her desire to be with someone she truly loves and her rational to be with someone who will give her social and financial stability. Ultimately, Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby as he is the safer option once Gatsby is revealed to be untruthful, showing that she is predominately interested in a steady life.
The story of Daisy Miller starts off in Vevey, Switzerland with Winterbourne and Daisy meeting through Daisy's brother Randolph. Winterbourne is immediately attracted to her stating, "she was strikingly, admirably pretty" (James 470). The story continues with Winterbourne giving Daisy a tour of the Chateau de Chillon, and Winterbourne returning to Geneva, where he had an older women waiting for him. Daisy ends up meeting an Italian man, Giovanelli, which eventually leads to her death of malaria. Although the characters seem simple enough, they symbolize much more than themselves. In Henry James's Daisy Miller, Daisy symbolizes all American women who travel abroad to Europe, while Winterbourne symbolizes the European mentality of American tourists.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a touching video revealing the significance and meaning of life (Albom, 1997). The main character Morrie, enlightens a former student Mitch, what it truly means to live a fulfilling and rewarding life as opposed to allowing life to merely happen. This profound message is inspirational, embracing the transformation of the monotonous events in life to develop into a mature perspective of appreciation for others. A deep life lesson rooted from a dying man in his last several months speaks volumes for the younger generations. The purpose of this paper is to present my initial reaction of the video, discuss touch and intimacy, provide insightful interpretations of Morrie, and analyze the significance of quotes from the
Dan Moller defends the argument he calls “the bachelor’s argument,” which is an “argument against marriage.” By pointing out how not everyone that gets married isn’t guaranteed a happy and successful out come, such as a happy and loving marriage. If we were follow through with the bachelor’s argument as if it was set standard set in stone, not giving marriage a chance could possibly lead to the lose of one finding true because they never got a chance to marry the person they thought they’d love and could have lasting relationship. Moller argument isn’t enough to reject marriage as a whole because it just emphasizes of the things that could go wrong in a marriage and how hard it’d be to get out of such a commitment.
Daisy Miller starts out in a hotel in Vevey, Switzerland when a gentleman named Winterbourne meets Daisy, a young, beautiful American girl traveling through Europe. Daisy, her younger brother Randolph and her mother, Mrs. Miller, are traveling all over Europe while her father is home in Schenectady, New York. While Daisy is in Europe, she does not accept European ideas to be her own. Winterbourne, to the contrary, has been living in Europe since he left America when he was younger. Winterbourne takes a strong liking to Daisy even though his aunt, Mrs. Costello, does not approve of him even speaking to Daisy. Winterbourne claims that Daisy is an innocent person, but his aunt believes she is too common and not refined enough for him. Winterbourne and Daisy spend much time together, and even had a date at a close by castle named Chillon. Winterbourne then returns to Geneva where he is studying, but agrees to visit Daisy again that winter in Rome.