Have you ever felt safe with someone, even though by all appearance you should be terrified? In Crispin, written by Avi, “Asta’s son” faces a similar dilemma. Everyone agrees that Crispin remained with Bear after being captured, but some believe that Crispin should have stayed with Bear and some believe Crispin should not have stayed with Bear. During the reign of Edward III, a young boy and his shunned mother Asta, live in a miniscule cottage on the edge of village in Stromford, England. Having never been christened, this boy is nameless so the villagers call him Asta’s son. Upon the death of his mother, Asta’s son learns some exceptionally strange truths from the local priest. He discovers that he had been secretly christened, Crispin, a name far too noble for his position and that his lowly mother had been educated. Soon after this new knowledge, the cruel village steward accuses Crispin of stealing and proclaims him a wolf’s head forcing him to leave the town and flee for his life. While on the road, Crispin discovers an abandoned town. During his search for food, in this crumbl...
At first Crispin was just a servant to Bear, but later started to get to know him through there travels. Bear helped Crispin to find his true identity, by teaching him to play the recorder and how to have courage. Whenever Crispin needed to ask questions Bear always answered them and every time he answered Crispin always learned something new. One thing Crispin learned from bear was to smile, “ ‘Do you ever smile, boy? he demanded. ‘If you can’t laugh and smile, life is worthless. Do you hear me?’ he yelled. ‘It’s nothing!’” (Avi 73) This is one of the first out of many things Crispin learns from
Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have Mattie as his own; however, his morals along with his duty to Zeena and his natural streak of honesty hinder him in his ability to realize his own dreams. Throughout this suspenseful and disastrous novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton effectively employs situational irony enabling readers to experience a sudden shock and an unexpected twist of events that ultimately lead to a final tragedy in a living nightmare.
Crispin knew that along with making the right decision it could follow with many repercussions. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies and this reflects how Crispin took a dauntless action to help save Bear by going back and risking his own life. For example, “If you’ll let the two of us – both him and me – leave Great Wexly, we will not come back…. I reacted by reaching down, snatching up the dagger, and leaping forward, flinging myself at his back.” In addition, “…the one thing I knew for sure was that Bear had helped to free me, he had given me life. Therefore I resolved to help free him – even if it cost me.” This valiant attempt indicates the boldness and willpower of this 13-year-old boy. Clearly, Crispin thought Bear was worth fighting for and he took action in something he was afraid of doing in order to prevent others from getting
The narrator depicts each of the characters in different lights so as to elicit certain perceptions from the readers toward Mr. Dombey, his son, and the seemingly irrelevant Mrs. Dombey. After the author establishes Mr. Dombey as a contemptible character, a man worthy of scorn, he invokes sympathy for Mrs. Dombey and the newborn child.
The story is based off of four twelve year old friends who at the end of one summer go on a journey into the woods to see a dead body. While on their journey they learn about life, friendship, and are propelled from innocence to experience. On the surface of the story it appears to be a simple journey with its occasional mishaps, but the true magnificence is that this story is just another way of King displaying his life in words. The main character, Gordie Lachance, an avid story is a boy growing up on his own through the memory of his dead older brother. Since his death, Gordie's parents have apparently shut themselves away from Gordie. This, to an extent shares an autobiographical reference to King, being that his father left with no intention of returning when King was only two, and his mother, always on the go, working nonstop, he never actually had any parental guidance. At the time of his flashback, Gordie is a bestselling author who has returned to his home town of Castle Rock to revisit his past. King's home town of Durham is used in many difference stories he has written, under the fictional town name of Castle Rock. It is also noticeable how in the story, when Gordie "looks" back in time, his brother is the only person who cares for him. He noticeably goes out of his way to look out for Gordie, and is always encouraging him and asking him about his writing, while all his parents seem to act as if Gordie barely exist. This also can be related to King's past because while growing up, his brother while only two years older than he, always seemed to be there for Stephen and look out for
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, she constantly places the reader in an uncomfortable environment. The story takes place in a not so distant future where today’s world no longer exists due to an unknown catastrophe. The only human is a man who calls himself the Abominable Snowman or Snowman for short, but in his childhood days his name was Jimmy. If the thought of being all alone in the world is not uneasy enough, Atwood takes this opportunity to point out the flaws of the modern world through Snowman’s reminiscing about Jimmy’s childhood. The truths exposed are events that people do not want to acknowledge: animal abuse for human advancement, elimination of human interaction due to technology, and at the core of the novel is the disturbing imagery that slavery is still present. Modern day servitude is an unsettling topic that has remained undercover for far too long. However, the veracity is exposed in the traumatic story of Oryx. In order to understand the troubled societies of today, Atwood unmasks the dark world of childhood bondage through the character Oryx, but she gives subtle insights on how to change the world for the better before it is too late.
As the reader frolics in the flowers, the wolf races to Grandmother’s home by masking his voice as Little Red Cap’s, the wolf tricks Grandmother into opening the door. Further, the anti-Semitic symbolism of the wolf takes the central stage as he knocks on the door within the lines, “the wolf ran straight to the grandmother’s house and knocked on the door. ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Little Red Cap. I’m bringing you some cake and wine. Open the door.” The wolf depicts repulsive characteristics, as he not only deceives a Little Red Cap into abandoning the route but also imitates her, thus obtaining passage into the Grandmother’s home. Observing Little Red Cap as a manifestation of the reader, then one could morph the form of the wolf into the design of anything that the reader contemplates as the distant other. Furthermore, not only is the reader ascertained to be small but also a fool, who is hoodwinked into one’s own demise. Little Red Cap provides away knowledge that places both herself and family members’ lives in peril, thus portraying the mental deficiency of the reader in relation to the superior wolf. Also, glancing towards the simplistic symbolism of the wolf knocking at the door, one could deduct that the wolf is emblematic of the Jewish population
The first thing I would like to talk about is Kings use of language in this story. He begins by describing Miss Sidley as a small, constantly suffering, gimlet-eyed woman. He also mentioned that she knows she is getting old, and the word Miss before her name allowed us to know that she is not married. She is an unhappy woman. We can gather what kind of person she is from her reference to the children as monsters, bitches, evils, who have nasty little games. The diction of the story emphasizes wickedness. King uses metaphors, and almost every one of them suggests a likeness with something evil, taking for example the giggling, like the laughter of demons...or they were ringed in a tight little circle, like mourners around an open grave. Irony also exists in this story. Sidley seems to be the ideal teacher, who is efficient at her job and knows how to keep her students quite in class, when actually she is the one who has a disturbing behavior and ends up surprising her colleague in school when she is found about to kill one more child. King also used an interesting style to introduce a new character to the story: Buddy Jenkins was his name, psychiatry was his game. As soon as we read it, we immeadiately know he will have a destiny such as Sidleys because that was exactly the way she was introduced (Miss Sidley was her name, teaching was her game). The writer also uses italic writing to emphasize the teachers toughts. However, the presence of one or two loose words in the middle of sentences will contribute to cause an eye effect, to catch the readers attention to those words, such as admit, change and she.
A Kestrel for a Knave tells the story of a day in the life of Billy Casper. The story is written in the third person, but there is little doubt that we are encouraged to look through Billy’s eyes. The setting is South Yorkshire in the 1960s – probably Barnsley – though Hines never names places. In the novel of Kestrel for a knave, it shows the lack of opportunities, lifestyle and just how much the education system fails him. Throughout the essay I will describe and explain each character as they appear and how they affect Billy. The novel is about a boy named Billy Casper and it shows how he lives, his passions and how the schools fails him and his class academically. The novel also highlights and condemns bullying and recognises social issues that affect the character of Billy Casper. However, there is one glimmer of hope in the form of Mr Farthing, he gives skills for life and supports the children. Nearly the whole novel looks upon the education system in a critical way.
Despite being rampantly popular, the questionable plots of gothic novels is both satirized and parodied in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. However, while Austen mocks the gothic romance genre through Catherine’s intent fascination on its dark conditions, she simultaneously uses the setting of Northanger Abbey as a metaphor for the literal and realistic horrors underlying society. Initially introduced as naïve and trusting, Catherine’s time at Northanger Abbey is the setting of her bildungsroman and by the end of her stay one can consciously affirm her status as a heroine. Ironically, while Catherine is oblivious of the unscrupulous intentions of the Thorpes and General Tilney, she is hyperaware that the road within Northanger Abbey was “odd
In Walter Farley’s classic novel, “The Black Stallion”, Alec Ramsay learns to be more responsible and mature. The novel starts off with Alec, after a summer in India with his Uncle Ralph, returning home for school. On the voyage home to New York The Drake stopped at an Arabian port to pick up a large, wild, untamed black stallion. The boy became intrigued by the stallion and confronted him one night, giving him a peace offering of a sugar cube. Night after night the boy continued to give a sugar cube to the savage stallion. One night, The Drake started to sink. The boy found himself in the ocean trying to find some way to stay alive. After spotting the stallion, he attached himself to a rope tied onto the horse’s halter. Hours later, the boy and stallion washed up on a deserted beach, hungry and tired.
Folktales has created men as the most powerful character in most stories but that does not mean always as there’s a difference in Grandmother’s tale and Little Red Riding hood. Different genders have different expectations according to their characteristics. The Red Riding Hood and Grandmother’s tale has produced ideas such as how a girl’s life is looked upon in the past and how the male has the upper hand in most situations according to the stories. This essay will argue about how the girl’s gender played a major role in the context of the story and how the wolf is represented by a male character and why the male is not always the most powerful character in all stories and the comparison between the two stories.
Catherine’s quite solid rebellion against her father can find its best expression in 3 aspects: the offense against her father, the negligence of her father’s power, and therefore the replacement of him by others.once her father lives, she loses favor with him. Catherine Earnshaw is twelve years previous once her father died. when the death of her father, Hindley, Catherine’s brother, heritable everything fromprevious man. Earnshaw. In contrast to her father, Hindley has no warm heartedness for Catherine and hate Heathcliff. Hindley degrades Heathcliff to a servant; he flies into a temper if Catherine shows any warm heartedness for Heathcliff. With none doubt, Hindley turns the family into one imbued with indifference, liveliness, dread and
Anxiously, villagers rush to the scene to help the young boy, only to be derided by him. After multiple incidences with the young shepherd, the villagers stop coming to help him, assuming it is just another hoax. After the villagers decided they had, had enough of the boy’s lies, is when he needs them most. One day a wolf actually was attacking his flock. He screamed for help in dismay, only to realize that his past perfidious claims, ultimately lead to the massacre of his flock.
As the son of the most powerful and most feared black witch ever, Nathan is seen as insidious and as a jeopardy to the community. Nathan is a son to not only a powerful black witch but also to a white with mother. In Half Wild, Nathan is on his own he has lost Gabriel. One day while in the woods where he has lived while searching for Gabriel he comes across Nesbitt. Nesbitt is a half blood, part fain and part black witch. Nesbitt works for Van, who has Gabriel because she saved his life. Nathan and Nesbitt go to Van and Nathan is reunited with his best friend Gabriel. As they all go on a path to finding Gabriel’s real self and Nathans childhood friend they encounter many struggles. While reading this novel, I made connection to the character Gabriel, questioned the choices made by Nathan, and evaluated Nathan and Gabriel’s relationship.