I am the Cheese - Theme
Heroes are not always credited for their honesty and righteousness. This is the view towards society that Robert Cormier exhibits in the novel ¡§I am the Cheese¡¨, where the individual is punished for standing up to himself. In this society, the non-valiant are rewarded for their ignorance and compliance, narrated through the characters of Grey and Whipper. Moreover, Robert Cormier portrays this society to be void of truth and justice. This is seen through exploring the innocence behind Adam¡¦s parents¡¦ suffering and death. Nevertheless, the author holds reserve for truth and justice when Adam tries to complete the puzzle of his past.
The character David Farmer, father of the novel¡¦s protagonist, plays the victim of the society in ¡§I am the cheese.¡¨ Through testifying to the truth, he and his family have had their freedom lacerated, and ultimately, have suffered the penalty of death. David Farmer began the case with the belief that ¡§he would be protected, his identity kept secret.¡¨ Although aware of the perilous circumstances and the hazards, his determination to act patriotically prevailed. His powerful motive for his precarious action was that ¡§he was an old-fashioned citizen who believed in doing the right thing for his country, to provide as much information as possible.¡¨ David Farmer was under no obligation to disclose his researched information, and yet chose to take the risk. Clearly, this is an example of an individual standing up to himself, acting accordingly to his own beliefs and values. Nevertheless, David Farmer and his family were punished lethally. Even the interim between the testimony and his death was a metaphor for a cage, an insecure prison bound for the Never Knows, and yet was always destined for death. The example of the bomb that was planted to detonate the entire family and the ¡§undercover policeman¡¨ whose supposed job was to protect heralded an unending chain of misery.
These events introduced Grey, who identified himself to be involved with the US Department of Re-Identification. Grey, who shot the assassin, was the trusting saviour of David Farmer. Grey warned the Farmer family about the car bomb. He distributed new identities for the entire family, produced new birth certificates and arranged a move to Massachusetts. He was the eternal alert watchdog who packed the family away when chances took their position for a Farmer whereabouts leak. Grey had the power to dismiss 3 lives at his will.
In the short story “The Hunter” the author Richard Stark introduces Parker, the main character of this book. The main character is a rough man, he’s a criminal, a murderer, and even an escaped convict. He’s described as crude and rugged and though women are frightened by him, they want him. Parker is not the classic criminal, but rather he’s intelligent, hard, and cunning. In this story the author carefully appeals to his audience by making a loathsome criminal into a hero, or rather, an anti-hero. The author, Richard Stark uses ethical appeal to make his audience like Parker through the use of phronesis, arête, altruism and lastly the ethos of his audience.
The harsh reality is one which hit everyone in America in the 1930. People found work hard to find and crime was on the uprise. This meant, unfortunately, that innocent people were the easy prey and, as we see in the Of Mice and Men, there were plenty of characters that were easy prey. Of Mice and Men characters have and do thing that make them vulnerable in way which do cause trouble. In this essay, that harsh reality and easy prey will be shown through to see which characters are the most vulnerable.
In Harry Mulisch’s novel The Assault, the author not only informs society of the variance in perception of good and evil, but also provides evidence on how important it is for an innocent person experiencing guilt to come to terms with their personal past. First, Mulisch uses the characters Takes, Coster, and Ploeg to express the differences in perspective on the night of the assault. Then he uses Anton to express how one cannot hide from the past because of their guilt. Both of these lessons are important to Mulisch and worth sharing with his readers.
Many times in life things are not as they seem. What may look simple on the surface may be more complicated deeper within. Countless authors of short stories go on a journey to intricately craft the ultimate revelation as well as the subtle clues meant for the readers as they attempt to figure out the complete “truth” of the story. The various authors of these stories often use different literary techniques to help uncover the revelation their main characters undergo. Through the process of carefully developing their unique characters and through point of view, both Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway ultimately convey the significant revelation in the short stories, “Roman Fever” and “Hills Like White Elephants” respectively. The use of these two literary techniques is essential because they provide the readers with the necessary clues to realize the ultimate revelations.
“The Hero’s Journey.” Ariane Publications, 1997. Course handout. AS English I. Dept. of English, Woodside High School. 26 October 2013.
Flannery O’Conner, a woman with lupus and a Southern Gothic novelist, wrote 31 stories all in which each protagonist fights their own battle with the balance between intelligence and faith. The concept is conceptually developed within the two texts Good Country People and The Lame Shall Enter First through the use of character relations and the idea of broken prophets.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a story of Billy Pilgrim 's capture by the Nazi Germans during the last years of World War II. Throughout the narrative, excerpts of Billy’s life are portrayed from his pre-war self to his post-war insanity. Billy is able to move both forward and backwards through his life in a random cycle of events. Living the dull life of a 1950s optometrist in Ilium, New York, he is the lover of a provocative woman on the planet Tralfamadore, and simultaneously an American prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. While I agree with Christopher Lehmann-Haupt that Slaughterhouse-Five effectively combines fact and fiction, I argue that the book is more centralized around coping.
Renascence: Essays on values in Literature 59.2 (2007) : 93. Literature Resources from Gale Web. 24 Feb. 2010. Hatcher, Melissa. A. McCrory. The “Mythlore.”
There is an important time, though, during someone’s life where this innocence is stolen and leaves as different person. This event is the main function in “My Father’s Noose”, “Dothead”, and The Glass Castle. Each character has their own certain tick that their innocence blinds them from. Jeannette Walls’s ignorance blinds her from the abuse of her family and peers, while Totoy’s blinds him from his mother’s abuse. The speaker in “Dothead” is blind to the abuse of his peers. After going through each ordeal, the characters lose their innocence by gaining knowledge of the way people work. Discovering that not all people are good pressures the characters to take a deep look at the way they act and their code of
People cannot choose the time to live and die. Ginzburg had to live through the horrors of war: destroyed houses, air raids, arrests, and death. She shows how the war not only deprives people of their belongings, but also distorts the primary meaning of things and concepts. The world “police” no longer bears the meaning of protection and help but rather that of fear and suspicion. All pretty things that decorate a house, as well as the house itself, come to be viewed simply as raw material that will eventually turn to dust. Children of the war had seen too much terror and suffering in real life; therefore, Ginzburg asserts that this makes it impossible to raise children telling them fairy tales as the previous generations did. The only advantage the Ginzburg’s generation got from the war is the ability to see and speak the truth. As the generation of men they have no illusion they will find some peace or certainty in life, but they have found “strength” and “toughness” to “face whatever reality may confront” them and they are “glad of their destiny”.
Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of murder and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado”, offers a unique perspective into the mind of a deranged murderer. The effectiveness of the story is largely due to its first person point of view, which allows the reader a deeper involvement into the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist, Montresor. The first person narration results in an unbalanced viewpoint on the central conflict of the story, man versus man, because the reader knows very little about the thoughts of the antagonist, Fortunato. The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, in the dark catacombs of Montresor’s wine cellar, contributes to the story’s theme that some people will go to great lengths to fanatically defend their honor.
Human nature is a conglomerate perception which is the dominant liable expressed in the short story of “A Tell-Tale Heart”. Directly related, Edgar Allan Poe displays the ramifications of guilt and how it can consume oneself, as well as disclosing the nature of human defense mechanisms, all the while continuing on with displaying the labyrinth of passion and fears of humans which make a blind appearance throughout the story. A guilty conscience of one’s self is a pertinent facet of human nature that Edgar Allan Poe continually stresses throughout the story. The emotion that causes a person to choose right from wrong, good over bad is guilt, which consequently is one of the most ethically moral and methodically powerful emotion known to human nature. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe displays the narrator to be rather complacent and pompous, however, the narrator establishes what one could define as apprehension and remorse after committing murder of an innocent man. It is to believe that the narrator will never confess but as his heightened senses blur the lines between real and ...
It is often said that there are no more heroes in today\\'s world or even that this is an age of the anti-hero. Yet anyone who is blessed with the opportunity to observe children for any length of time will see that regard for those who exemplify certain ideals (heroes) is a spontaneous element in basic human psychology. The reported lack of heroes and the cult of the anti-hero are the fruit of a disillusioned Aadult@ mentality which has been lied to on this as well as other subjects and hence robbed of the natural inclination of a normal human being (a child) who is as yet untainted by the cynicism and Asophistication@ of a deeply troubled society. The more often the lie is repeated the more firmly it is held to be true. But, heroes do still exist -- it is rather that a society which values valuelessness no longer has eyes to see them and has lost the ability to produce them. For those who have eyes to see, one such hero is the author of the book under review here.
“Slaughterhouse-Five” is an anti-war novel. It describes a flesh-and-blood world. Main character is Billy Pilgrim, he is a time traveler in this book, his first name Billy is from the greatest novelist in the USA in 19 century’s novel “Billy Budd” ; and his last name is from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan. Differently, the main character in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” ’s traveling has meaning and discovering, Billy Pilgrim’s traveling just has violence and escape. In the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut ’s main character, Billy Pilgrim is sane and his time travel is half in his mind half is real. He is looked so innocent and weakness, there is a sentence which is spoken by Billy Pilgrim “So it goes.” (2) This quotation shows that a poignant sense of helplessness.
Anderson makes effective use of fantasy to teach a moral lesson. He builds up the story in such a way that the reader does not care for the validity of the incidents. The moral lesson is that the proud and the disobedient must suffer.