In Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Roth utilizes multiple conflicts and allusions within the story to explore human nature and the reasons that people choose the paths to settle conflicts. In the opening and closing scenes, many conflicts are being discovered as well as resolved. The conflicts include white versus black, right versus wrong, ideology versus ambition, and loyalty versus betrayal. Roth uses the Berkshire community and the small Athena College in 1998 as a microcosm of the world in which he uses these conflicts, as well as classical and literary allusions to bring to light all of the possible decisions of the past and outcomes of the future. In the opening scene the protagonist, Coleman Brutus Silk is introduced through the eyes and words of the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman. Silk is an former professor of Greek and Latin as well as the dean of faculty at Athena college located in the Berkshires of New England. During one of his classes, Silk makes a classical allusion to the conflict between the powerful King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles over the maiden Briseis in Homer's epic, the Iliad. Agamemnon steals Briseis , who is a war prize of Achilles, after he returns his own captured maiden, Chryseis, back to her father. Achilles is enraged by Agamemnon's actions and vows to never assist the Greeks in their quests again. Silk is unknowingly describing, symbolically, the situation that he will be in only a few months into the future. Silk soon resigns from the college after being labeled a racist and his wife of more than forty years, Iris, passes away during the debacle. As a man of over seventy-one years old, he should have honored his wife and lived out the rest of his life in peace. Like a Agamemnon though, he was enticed by a younger woman. As Agamemnon says of Briseis, "Clytemnestra (the wife of Agamemnon) is not as good as she is, neither in face nor figure," so thinks Coleman Silk of Faunia Farley, the thirty-four year old woman whom Coleman is beginning to have an affair with (Roth 4). In the process of taking on this new lover though, Coleman has attracted a warrior not unlike Homer's mighty Achilles. Faunia's ex-husband, Les Farley, is a Vietnam veteran that has suffered heavily from post traumatic stress disorder. He made himself into a nearly mindless killer while in Vietnam "hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls," (Homer 1 l.
In the book, Shattered, the book is about a teen who begins to mature as he ages. The main character is starting to become more mature after he gets a placement at a soup kitchen. He starts to realise that there are many problems going on in the society. There are many types of conflicts that are going on around him. The four types of conflicts going on in the book are Human vs. Society, Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human and Human vs. Self. The one conflict that is really making this story apparent is Human vs. Society due to the Rwandan genocide. The Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human, Human vs. Self are the other conflicts that are making this story interesting after the Human vs. Society conflict.
The main themes in this book are war, power, heroism, love, loyalty and growth. We are given further insight into the classical Greek society as Alexas reminisces about his family life, his training as an athlete, the Olympic Games, his homosexual relationship with his mentor Lysis, and his encounters with Socrates the Philosopher. The main characters seem dogged by guilt, loneliness or failure, often the failure to love. The book ends on a triumphant note, with the Athenians defeating the Spartans, and liberating their city from the corrupt politicians.
The Iliad is not only a narrative of epic battles and armies, but also of the redemption of a man ruled by wrath. Achilles, whose wrath is the driving force of the whole tale, experiences redemptive changes in the following ways .Firstly by being able to experience empathy, secondly by being willing to forgive those who his wrath was kindled against ,and finally by being able to release the sinister emotions that ruled his life. Achilles does not experience a total redemption in a biblical sense, but instead experiences partial redemption of his character. The Iliad is a novel of a humanistic redemption that does not fully grasp the Christian sense of the word but is nevertheless still redemption.
Every day, struggle charges into peoples’ lives, causing rage, ruin, and wreaking havoc. Struggle is in every world, whether it’s on Earth or in a book, such as Divergent. Divergent, written by Veronica Roth, takes place in a dystopian world where a civilization splits its population into five factions that represent their beliefs: Abnegation for selflessness, Amity for peace, Candor for honesty, Dauntless for bravery, and Erudite for intelligence. After the main character Beatrice ‘Tris’ Prior goes through Dauntless initiation, she learns that Erudite is planning an attack on the Abnegation people. In order to significantly portray struggle in Divergent, the literary devices foreshadowing, mood, and conflict were used.
Looking at Poem 16, Sappho’s focus on the beginnings of the Trojan war and ultimately the epic of the Iliad is not about the rage of Achilles, the quarrelling between Agamemnon and Achilles, or Hector’s victory over Patroclus and Achilles’ subsequent retaliation, but rather it is about love. Sappho’s poem is about the love of Helen, and the power of love and how it is more important than that of any army, navy, parents or children.
It is a crucial time in today’s world concerning race and prejudice. In the book To Kill a
The prize was the daughter of an Apollon priest, Chrysies. The distressed father prays to Apollo who then sets a curse upon the king and townspeople. When Achilles hears that this was the cause of the horrible curse, he demands that Agamemnon return her. Agamemnon declares to Achilles that he must “fetch [him] another prize, and straight off too…” (line 138) to compensate for his loss. This shows how greedy and selfish the king really is and infuriates Achilles. To fetch someone else is a demeaning circumstance. Agamemnon reiterates his problem by griping that his prize is being taken away. By doing this, he tries to persuade and guilt Achilles into feeling bad for him. He wants Achilles to feel remorseful and hand Briseis to him. This conveys that women have no purpose to Agamemnon and are only thought of as objects. Therefore, he should see that the curse was his fault and nobody else’s. Instead, he should put the people before himself. Achilles is the best warrior who was willing to help the king out with his problem. He gestures that “We Achaeans will pay you back, three, four times over” (line 150) illustrating how forgiving Achilles can be in spite of the problem that has approached them. This depicts that he has pride and does not want the people to suffer anymore. He cares about the wellbeing of others. Furthermore,
Homer devotes the final passages of Book 18 of The Iliad to the description of the shield of Achilles. Only a quarter of the description concerns warfare, the essential grist of the epic. Instead, the bulk of the description presents a peaceful society and rural idylls, a curious choice for the most ferocious warrior of the Greeks, and an odd thing for both armies to fear. A narrative emerges from the scenes of the shield, and it is this that fits Achilles and repulses everyone else.
The Iliad, translated by Robert Fitzgerald, is an epic about the Trojan war which displays the complicated relationships between the Greeks and the Trojans in their final year of battle. Akhilleus has all the attributes of a great warrior and distinguishes himself as one of the strongest fighters on the Akhaian side. In The Iliad, Akhilleus’ motivation is led by his thirst for bravery and the desire to leave behind a legacy causing him to go to far extents to fulfill Akhilleus’ need for pride. However, this is only attained after his conversation with Priam, when Akhilleus learns what it means to show honor in a sense of camaraderie and loyalty.
The main characters in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon formulate two different narratives about the death of their daughter, Iphigenia. As a result of their stories and coping mechanisms being different, the unity of their home is disrupted. Like most stories with multiple authors there are discrepancies, exaggerations, disregarded information, and changes in the way the story is told in order to support the narrators’ agenda. In Agamemnon, Aeschylus reveals through the transformed relationship between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon-as a result of the death of Iphigenia-that when marital partners have discrepancies in shared personal memories that their ideas of home and homecoming are also inconsistent.
Achilles is introduced into The Iliad getting into a debacle with the leader of the Greek army, Agamemnon, during the last year of the Trojan War. Achilles starts a quarrel with Agamemnon because he has demanded possession of Achilles’ woman, Briseis, in consolation for having to give up his woman, Chryseis, so that the gods will end their plague upon the Greek soldiers. Achilles does all he can to get his loved one back, but he knows that nothing will waver Agamemnon’s decision. This is when Achil...
The afterward conflict be person against society, is well-known as the appearance of the struggles on skin color. The importance of conflict is the struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story. This demonstrate that Desiree is uncomfortable being accused with a misunderstanding of others. The author explains, “...they tell me I am not white” (Chopin 3).
Describe the conflict in less than 50 words. What is at stake? What are people fighting over? What is the problem? Remember that there is always a problem in literature. The human condition—the subject of all literature—is about problems.
Throughout the Iliad, a conflict develops through the process of each chapter which rests on the surface over a Maiden. The disagreement is caused due to one person or the other feeling far more powerful or superior than the other and is left to sense as if they should receive what is rightfully theirs even if it is not a fair exchange. This conflict is seen between two leaders who view each other with different status: Agamemnon the Argive leader of the expedition to Troy, who had inherited the role of king through his father, and Achilles the leader of Myrmidons. As the dispute develops, it is apparent that the discord between Agamemnon and Achilles is more than something about women; it seems to be their mindset distracting them from having a dispute between their views on power, honour, glory and pride amongst themselves.
The Iliad may be seen as an account of the circumstances that irrevocably alter the life of one man: Achilles, one of the greatest warriors. Throughout the course of the poem Achilles goes through many ordeals that change his character immensely. Starting with his quarrel with Agamemnon and withdrawal from battle, to the death of Patroklos, and with the slaying of Hektor. Achilles emotions and actions decide the fate of many warriors on both sides. Achilles struggles with anger, honor, pride, loyalty and love make the poem more that just a gruesome war story.