One cannot imagine developing an intimate relationship with someone so different from oneself in every aspect, especially during a time where getting to see tomorrow is uncertain. But the hostages dared to do so. According to James Polk, New York Times literary critic, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, offers insights into the various ways in which human connections are forged, despite whatever pressures the world might place upon them. We agree with James Polk that status can forge human connections because as we saw in the book, two opposing status were forced to live together with numerous limitations on what they could do but they still formed relationships. There is more kindness when status is taken away. When Ruben notices General Benjamins eye infection. He decides to help, by giving him his leftover antibiotics saying, ‘“What you need,” Ruben said. He …show more content…
reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of pills with his name on them. “Antibiotics. Look they gave me more than I would ever need. They stopped the infection in my face .”’(241) This implies that Ruben cares about Benjamins health, by aiding his infection. Also Ruben is of a lower status compared to General Benjamin who is in control of him, yet Ruben still lends a helping hand. Adding on to that, In the beginning of Bel Canto, the generals injured Ruben’s face but he did not hold a grudge against him. This all reveals pure kindness. When Gen sends a message to Carmen asking for a big favor, to sneak Mr. Hosokawa into Roxannes room that night, she agrees too even with the risks. This favor was a huge betrayal to her fellow terrorists, yet she still went along with it because she wanted to help out her new friends. They were kind to her before, Roxanne had treated her as if she was her sister by braiding her hair and letting her sleep in her comfy bed for a bit every now and then, and Gen by educating her every night in the China closet. Carmen is considerate remembering those times and knowing she should make up for it. Carmen was also thoughtful, noticing the fondness between Mr. Hosokawa and Roxanne and supported their relationship. Terrorists and hostages are of completely different statuses but gradually when their boundary line fades kindness forms within them. In addition, when taking away status, the end result is forming peace with each other. For example, they start having small conversations with each other, one being of where the hostages were from. “At first there had been a rule that they were not to address their prisoners but even that was growing slack for some of them. Sometimes now they spoke to the hostages, especially when the Generals were busy conferring. “Where are you from?” was the favorite question, though the answers rarely registered.” (111) A couple of the hostages answered the question, like Roxane pointed to Chicago and Gen pointed to Japan. The terrorists communicating with the hostages in a positive manner, as to opposed of pointing their guns at them all the time. Next, music creates harmony and peace between the terrorists and hostages. “The felt-covered hammers tapped the strings gently at first, and the music, even for those who had never heard the piece before, was like a memory. From all over the house, terrorist and hostage alike turned and listened and felt a great easing in their chests. There was a delicacy about Tetsuya Kato's hands, as if they were simply resting in one place on the keyboard and then in another.” (127) This signifies that with terrorists and hostages living in the mansion, not everything and everyone needs to be harmful and kills one another. Even though terrorists and hostages are two completely different statuses, when status is taken away, they can form peace with one another. These were not the only bonds that developed, the difficult times in the Vice President's house leads to the formation of several relationships, one including the blossoming relationship between Gen and Carmen.
These strong bonds make the hostages and the terrorist forget about their status and truly enjoy life. For example Gen, an upper class male, fell in love with Carmen, a female terrorist, and when he meets her in the china closet to convey Roxane's message to Carmen, he love as, “Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame,”(250) signifying that no pressures the world places upon them could affect them, be it status, money or violence. The hostages, though held in captivity did not fear the terrorists because of the strong bonds that they all built. After Roxane has sung her final note and Carmen is talking to Gen about Roxane and Mr Hosokawa's relationship, Gen stares at Carmen's beauty and describes her as, “The woman... who dresses as a boy and... lives in a village in a jungle.”(203) This highlights the fact that Gen does not care about the fact that he and Carmen come from conflicting
status. Being in a hostage situation allows people to forget about their statuses and be able to develop relationships without competing against each other. Months held in captivity, Ruben Iglesias is tending to his garden and he asks Ishmael, a terrorist, to help aerate the soil with his gun, to which Ishmael refuses. Upon the refusal, Iglesias thinks, “He found himself thinking that Ishmael could be his son, his other son.” (286) The bond between a young terrorist and a powerful man most develops when Ruben discovers that Ishmael and himself are not a different as some people would assume. Ruben knows that Ishmael can kill him, but still considers him as part of his family because of the bond they developed after spending time together. As a result, the reader learns that the statuses of Ruben and Ishmael are irrelevant because all of the hostages and terrorists are now equal, which allows them to develop bonds and relationships. As Gen Watanabe goes back and forth between translating for various people he thinks, “Could they spare Gen at this particular moment?” (132) Gen’s exhaustion shows the amount of time he translates for the foreign businessmen, who are making efforts to communicate with each other. Since competition is frequent between businessmen,the businessmen felt like they needed to compete against each other for a higher status before the hostage situation. With the pressures of status gone, people can communicate with each other easily without the competition. When people of different statuses are allowed to forget about their place in society, it is easier for people to communicate and develop relationships with others. Despite the diversity in status, the hostages and the terrorist managed to build and sustain relationships because over time status did not matter to the hostages and terrorists. When status was taken away, there was more kindness, peace and no more differences, which led to love and friendships. Ruben Iglesias gives General Benjamin antibiotics and Carmen helps Roxanne sneak in Mr. Hosokawa’s room, this shows acts of kindness despite the differences in status in the beginning. Peace between the terrorists and hostages developed when the terrorists asked questions without the need to use their guns or violence and when Kato played the piano. Neither diverseness in the status of Gen and Carmen or the other pressures including violence or money affect the love between the two. Ruben Iglesias developed a bond with Ishmael because Ruben noticed that there weren’t differences between them and the foreign businessmen were able to communicate and develop relationships because there were no more competition for a higher status.
In constructing “ The Unredeemed Captive,” John Demos uses many styles of writing. One of the most pronounced styles used in this book is an argumentative style of writing. John Demos argues many points throughout the book and makes several contradictions to topics discussed previously in the work. John Demos also uses several major themes in the book, suck as captivity, kinship, negotiation, trade, regional and national development, and international relations. Each one of these themes, in my opinion, are what separate the book into its major sections.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
In all, Tademy does a great job in transporting her readers back to the 1800s in rural Louisiana. This book is a profound alternative to just another slave narrative. Instead of history it offers ‘herstory’. This story offers insight to the issues of slavery through a women’s perspective, something that not so many books offer. Not only does it give readers just one account or perspective of slavery but it gives readers a take on slavery through generation after generation. From the early days of slavery through the Civil War, a narrative of familial strength, pride, and culture are captured in these lines.
The Notebook (Cassavetes, 2004) is a love story about a young couple named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who fall deeply in love with each other. The Hamilton’s are financially stable, and expect for their daughter Allie to marry someone with the same wealth. Noah on the other hand works as a laborer, and comes from an underprivileged family. Throughout the film there were several negative behaviors, and interpersonal communications within the context of their relationship, which relates to chapter nine. This chapter explores relationships, emphasizing on affection and understanding, attraction, and the power of a relationship. The focus of this paper is the interpersonal conflict with Noah, Allie and her mother, Anne Hamilton.
Laurence Hill’s novel, The Book of Negroes, uses first-person narrator to depict the whole life ofAminata Diallo, beginning with Bayo, a small village in West Africa, abducting from her family at eleven years old. She witnessed the death of her parents with her own eyes when she was stolen. She was then sent to America and began her slave life. She went through a lot: she lost her children and was informed that her husband was dead. At last she gained freedom again and became an abolitionist against the slave trade. This book uses slave narrative as its genre to present a powerful woman’s life.She was a slave, yes, but she was also an abolitionist. She always held hope in the heart, she resist her dehumanization.
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 1308-1311. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Imagine being discriminated against because of your ethnicity; or being the only woman on a ranch, stuck in a loveless marriage, when all you really want is someone to talk to. What about having to kill that friend, and bury all chances of breaking free from the life of the average migrant worker? How would you feel? These scenarios in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men illustrate the need and desire for companionship in life. There's Crooks, the negro stable buck; Curley's wife, whose marriage to Curley hasn't exactly been lively; and George and Lennie, whose friendship is strong enough to get them to a better life and out of the negetive cycle that the average migrant worker became trapped in during the Great Depression.
Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” deals heavily with the concept of myth in literature, more specifically the myth La Malinche, which focuses on women, and how their lives are spun in the shadows on men (Fitts). Myths help power some of the beliefs of entire cultures or civilizations. She gives the reader the mind of a Mexican-American woman who seems traitorous to her friends, family and people she is close to. This causes destruction in her path in the form of love, power, heartbreak, hatred, and an intent to do harm to another, which are themes of myth in literature. The unreliable narrator of this story was created in this story with the purpose to show her confusion and what coming from two completely different cultures can do to a person, and what kind of confusion it can bring.
When inquiring about the comparisons and contrasts between Melville’s Benito Cereno and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, Written by Himself, the following question almost inevitably arises: Can a work of fiction and an autobiography be compared at all? Indeed, the structure of the two stories differs greatly. Whereas Douglass’s Narrative adapts a typical pattern of autobiographies, i.e. a chronological order of birth, childhood memories, events that helped shape the narrator etc., Benito Cereno is based on a peculiar three-layered foundation of a central story recounting the main events, a deposition delineating the events prior to the first part, and an ending.
The adjustment from years on the frontlines of World War I to the mundane everyday life of a small Oklahoma town can be difficult. Ernest Hemingway’s character Harold Krebs, has a harder time adjusting to home life than most soldiers that had returned home. Krebs returned years after the war was over and was expected to conform back into societies expectations with little time to adapt back to a life not surrounded by war. Women take a prominent role in Krebs’s life and have strong influences on him. In the short story “Soldier’s Home” Hemingway uses the women Krebs interacts with to show Krebs internal struggle of attraction and repulsion to conformity.
“Of Mice and Men” is a 1930’s novella written by the American, John Steinbeck. It is a tale not only of isolation and loneliness, violence, dreams, and the competitive urge to dominate others, but also a tale of the journey of true companionship. True companionship is emphasized by indescribable loyalty and extreme devotion between two men, George and Lennie, during the hardships of the Great Depression. The story takes place south of Soledad, California during the 1930s and is told from the perspective of a third-person omniscient narrator. The story’s genre is fiction and tragedy; a tragedy so well crafted by John Steinbeck, that the conclusion leaves the reader questioning the inherent contradictions in both loyalty and devotion. George shows extreme devotion and loyalty to Lennie, serving as Lennie’s “guardian angel” – sticking up for him and staying with him in difficult situations, which eventually leads to heartbreaking sacrifices.
Over historical progression, African Americans have faced a surfeit of injustices that are addressed throughout numerous works of literature. One of the most frequently discussed themes in African American literature related to these injustices is social issues in an interracial community. With various literary techniques, the central topic of social issues due to race portrayed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record and Alain Locke’s The New Negro address the social issues of racial brutality, inferiority and social controversy in an interracial society.
Brothers tend to have a unique relationship, one that is incomparable to a friend, but in the story “The Red Convertible” by writer Louise Erdrich, shows us how war can alter the friendship between two brothers, when one of them comes back from war. The Author takes us through the struggles that two brothers will face, and try to overcome after on of them, Henry, comes back from war. Upon Henrys’ return, Lyman will try to fix his relationship with his brother, until both will give up and accept, the consequences of the experiences they faced through the story. war can benefit a relationship, the red convertible shows us how the friendship between two brothers is before the war, and how it changes after it, and all the damages that causes to someone’s mental state.
The men of the story were ordinary citizens put into an extraordinary situation and came out on top. These men often bonded together through some of the harder times, for example in the text there was a time where one soldier was able to be sent home to the states but refused it because he wanted to stay with his friend. “It’s either I stay here or he comes too,” those were the feelings of many people in the war that shared a special attachment with another man.
Stephen's relationship with the opposite sex begins to develop early in his life. Within the first few pages of the novel lie hints of the different roles women will...