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Good and evil in literature
Good and evil in literature
Good versus evil in literature
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Darkness Consumes All A flame of match is all it takes to illuminate path to riches, but just as easily it takes a wisp of a breeze for one’s path to be engulfed in darkness. That is when demons and evil come to play.
In The Road by Cormac Mccarthy, good and evil are common themes, but evil often prevails. In the novel, the main characters, the man and the boy, encounter many challenges that show just how much power evil has in the post-apocalyptic world.
When the man and the boy are starving and desperate for food, they come across a house in which the man decides to go into the house. When looking through it they find the basement and once they go down they see encounter something far from good, “huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with their hands. ...then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered” (110). People in this world are so desperate and no longer hold any emotion towards others they imprison and slaughter their own kind in horrific ways.
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As they look around the abandoned campsite the boy comes across, “...a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit” (198). If good truly was the force with the most fire in this book a baby barbeque would not be a situation to be faced by our main characters. Children are symbols of hope of the future and how much people as a species can and will continue to grow, but as seen in the quote that is completely crushed. Any good that could have shown through is most likely lying on the forest
Under what circumstances would you go through to better and provide for your family? Would you embark on these six deadly sins above to just get a simple loaf of bread on the table? There is no solid blame or black and white definite answer throughout this novel, The Devil’s Highway. The author Luis Alberto Urrea takes his readers to different perspectives and offers different points of view whether you appear to be a walker, coyote, or the border control on the topic of illegal immigration. Being that Urrea puts the reader in each person shoe’s and truly sees what immense, harsh, conditions for example these immigrants had to go through. Again there is no solid blame or black and white answers, both sides are at fault and in need of a solution to the problem.
It’s the year 2028, and the world we used to know as bright and beautiful is no longer thriving with light. A disease similar to the plague broke out and caused great havoc. Although it may seem like forever ago, sickness spread only a few years ago. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a man and his son who fortunately survived this sickness; although they made it, the struggle to keep going is tough. Before most of the population became deceased, people went insane. They started to bomb houses, burn down businesses and towns, and destroy the environment. Anyone who had the disease was bad blood. Many saw it as the end of the world, which in many cases was true.
The battle of good versus evil is present in all aspects of life. Actions taken by people can determine how others view them. Some choose to do what is right and good, while others choose what is wrong and evil. Many characters are forced to choose between the two, and some do not foresee the consequences of their actions. In the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, actions committed by the Davy, Jeremiah, and Jeremiah’s friends, both good and evil, always have consequences.
We see that good vs. evil has been a theme that is ubiquitous in many writings. The story "The Devil and Tom Walker" is a story about a man who lives an immoral life of greed. Walker lives in a wooded area, where it is solemn, and quiet area of New England. Walker runs into the devil and sees that the devil is cutting down someone else's timber.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” the author not only focuses on portraying different gender roles but also focuses on the theme of good versus evil within the marriage of Sykes and Delia. Hurston portrays Delia as the good in the marriage and Sykes as the evil. The use of religious symbolism and imagery is the support that makes this theme so strong and influential. As the short story progresses you witness the transition of a clean, moral woman who overcomes evil.
"Our greatest evils flow from ourselves" (Tripp 192). This statement, by Rousseau, epitomizes many points of evil that are discussed in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. In our world, we constantly come face to face with evil. Evil presents itself in many forms, including prejudice, alcoholism, drug abuse, irresponsibility, and violence against others. The most prevalent faces of evil in To Kill A Mockingbird are prejudice, alcoholism, and gossip.
Most people wouldn’t think before killing someone in this world, even if they were a child, or even an elderly, just so they could cure their starvation. The man and the boy are different. They aren’t like this. The man will only kill people who threaten the boys life, even if this means that it’s harder for them to get food. “I don't think you should touch him. Maybe we could give him something to eat. He stood looking off down the road. Damn, he whispered. He looked down at the old man. Perhaps he'd turn into a god and they to trees. All right, he said.” (Page 78). “No you can't. If you look at him again I'll shoot you.” (Page 31) In both of these quotes, the man and boy come across someone who they don’t know and they don’t know the ability of these people or what their intentions are. In the first quote, the boy tells the man to not touch the old man but to help him. The man contemplates it and agrees with the boy. The man does this to keep the boy from having to see the horrifying event of his own father killing someone. In the second quote, the father is threatening to shoot an unknown man because he was just looking at the boy. The man only cares about killing people if they have any chance of hurting the boy. Both of these quotes support the idea of paternal love because they show that the man risks not only his life but their starvation just to make sure no one hurts the boy. When there isn’t much food left,
It is often said that a dog is a man’s best friend. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Crossing, a deep affection and fondness are established between man and animal. In a particular excerpt from the novel, Cormac illustrates the protagonist’s sorrow that was prompted from the wolf’s tragic death. As blood stiffens his trousers, the main character seeks to overcome the cold weather and fatigue with hopes of finding the perfect burial site for the wolf. McCarthy uses detailed descriptions and terminology in his novel, The Crossing, to convey the impact of the wolf’s death on the protagonist, a sad experience incorporated with religious allusions and made unique by the main character’s point of view.
The Road, a post-apocalyptic, survival skills fiction book written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006 is part of the Oprah Winfrey book club. During an interview with Oprah, McCarthy answered questions about The Road that he had never been asked before because pervious to the interview he had never been interviewed. Oprah asked what inspired the heart breaking book; it turns out that McCarthy wrote the book after taking a vacation with his son John. While on the vacation he imagined the world fifty years later and seen fire in the distant hills. After the book was finished, McCarthy dedicated it to his son, John. Throughout the book McCarthy included things that he knows he and his son would do and conversations that he thinks they may have had. (Cormac). Some question if the book is worth reading for college course writing classes because of the amount of common writing “rule breaks”. After reading and doing assignments to go along with The Road, I strongly believe that the novel should be required for more college courses such as Writing and Rhetoric II. McCarthy wrote the book in a way to force readers to get out of their comfort zones; the book has a great storyline; so doing the assignments are fairly easy, and embedded in the book are several brilliant survival tactics.
Written during the American Romanticism period, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” by William Irving, personifies the belief in the primacy of imagination. The period of Romanticism in America is often seen as the crucial period of American culture, as it was the central movement of the Renaissance period that moved into a more free-feeling and artistic approach to literature. American Gothic literature made its early appearance with William Irving, first with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820, and carrying over to “The Devil and Tom Walker” in 1824, both of which use a macabre approach to establish a moral ending (Matterson). Told by a narrator known as Geoffrey Crayon, “The Devil and Tom Walker” takes on the tone of a legend or tall tale as the story describes the life of a greedy money lender by the name of Tom Walker, who sells his soul to the devil to gain wealth. Irving ultimately uses literary elements such as symbolism and character development, as well as themes such as greed and hypocrisy to establish a moral to the corrupt man’s tale.
The man and the boy are always in search of food, and the lack of it in the winter times eventually leads to the man's death, since he sacrifices almost everything he can find for the wellness of his son.
The persona begins to think about how he cannot take both paths and be the same “traveler”
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, follows the journey of a father and a son who are faced with the struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The two main characters are faced with endeavors that test a core characteristic of their beings: their responsibilities to themselves and to the world around them. This responsibility drives every action between the characters of the novel and manifests in many different ways. Responsibility is shown through three key interactions: the man to the boy, the boy to the man, and the boy to the rest of the world. It is this responsibility that separates McCarthy’s book from those of the same genre.
When they break open the lock and descend into the basement they see many humans who are shackled and missing body parts. At this point they knew the people who took over the house where keeping these innocent people as food. This was one of the many disturbing scenes that the father and the son
“Young Goodman Brown”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, delves into the classic battle between good and evil; taking the protagonist, Goodman Brown, on a journey to test the resolve of his faith. Goodman ventures out on his expedition deep into the sinister forest, in order to repudiate the attempt of the devil to sway him from Christianity; a test he believes his devout faith is prepared to confront. Goodman Brown is forever altered in ways unforeseeable by taking a stroll with the ultimate antagonist, the devil himself. The prevailing theme in this literary work, which is common in Hawthorne’s gothic writing, is the realization that evil can infect people who seem perfectly respectable. Throughout the course of his journey, Goodman Brown discovers that even highly reputable people of Salem are vulnerable to the forces of darkness.