Throughout the short story unit we learn that the human mind is a powerful tool. First, Amy uses her mind to defeat her brother. Secondly, Mary uses her mind to manipulate the police in order to get away with murder. Therefore, the protagonists in our stories all follow a similar pattern of behaviour - each heroine uses her mind to overcome the antagonist against her.
In the story “Gore”, by Sarah Ellis, Amy defeats her twin brother Lucas by using psychological warfare. Amy is a complicated character. For an example, one could say that Amy is imaginative. One could prove this with information from the story. She creates a scenario and makes Lucas believe that it is really happening. One could further prove this with a quote: “Amy, you’re
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just kidding, aren’t you?” (Ellis 7). Amy is also very clever. In the story, she is able to use her intelligence and her abilities to her advantage. According to the story, Amy has “an extensive vocabulary and a gift for voice impersonation” (Ellis 4). However, Lucas has an interesting disposition as well. Aggressive is a trait that describes Lucas. This can be proven with another quote from the story: “Lucas attacks without provocation” (Ellis 4). Lucas is also mischievous. According to the story, Lucas has committed many “sins, crimes, misdemeanors and shady dealings” (Ellis 5). In the story, Amy tricks Lucas into stepping out of the bathroom using her voice. She uses her “gift for voice impersonation” to act a scene in which she is attacked by a group of foul-smelling creatures with mask-like faces and hair that moves as if there are small animals stirring within it. Of course, this is all in her head, but she manipulates her voice enough to make Lucas become convinced that this scenario, which she imagined off the top of her head, is really happening. She did this because Lucas swiped the book she was reading and made off to the bathroom with it, locking the door behind himself. In the future, the bond between these two polar opposites could strengthen. Sibling relationships usually don’t mean much to children and teenagers until later in life, when they realize that these bonds are precious and they should see through their differences and try to get along. In conclusion, Amy uses her intellectual capabilities to vanquish Lucas and get back her book. In the story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, by Roald Dahl, Mary Maloney stands up to her insensitive husband Patrick and tricks the police into believing she is innocent.
At the beginning of the story, a trait that described Mary was charming. She seemed like a fairly pleasant woman who loved her husband unconditionally. There is a quote from the story to prove this: “There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did.” (Dahl 10). She was also very tidy, which can be proved by this quote: “The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-- hers and the one by the empty chair opposite” (Dahl 10). Her husband Patrick, however, seemed to be cold. This can be proven with this quote: “Her eyes waited on him for an answer, a smile, a little nod, but he made no sign.” (Dahl 12). He also seemed to be a bit of a dipsomaniac. To prove this, I have a few quotes from the story: “He lifted his glass and drained it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it, left.” (Dahl 11); “When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was dark amber with the quantity of whiskey in it.” (Dahl 11); “She watched him as he began to sip the dark yellow drink, and she could see little oily swirls in the liquid because it was so strong.” (Dahl 11). Mary stands up to her husband through second-degree murder. She tricks the police by devising an alibi and cooking the evidence in her oven. As a result of these events, Mary may grow more
confident in her intelligence and become more independent. If Patrick had lived, he’d have become more fearful of women and respect them more as a result of that. Amy and Mary use their minds to defeat the forces against them. As a result, they teach their enemies the power of mental strength. Each heroine has gained new confidence; the antagonists have learned not to take advantage of them. This will be reflected in the actions, choices, and behaviors of the characters from now on.
Women nowadays are allowed to do everything that men can, but it was not always this way. In Geoffrey Trease’s Cue for Treason, Katherine Russell, a young lady in Elizabethan England plays the role of one of the protagonists who goes on an adventurous journey. Russell is a remarkable ambassador of equality for women because she is able, daring and intelligent.
“The only Mary story we talked about was the wedding story-the time she persuaded her son, practically against his will, to manufacture wine in the kitchen out of plain water.”
The new phases of life and social context is predicated through the sum of feats and experiences as crises and adversity are usually the greatest motivator which propel individuals to become better than they were before. J.C. Burke’s ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’ (TSTB) is an example of the transitional process through entering a new, unknown area which acts as a catalyst for beneficial change. Obstructed by turmoil both mentally and physically, the protagonist Tom Brennan relieves his severe life in the town of Coghill achieving new standards in conjunction to Lisa Forrest’s article ‘Testing new waters after leaving the swimming pool’ (TNWALTS) is another type towards transitional change that explores the personal crisis and career changes over
A basic sense of honesty is another of Mary Warren’s traits. In Act I she goes to Salem to convince Abigail to tell the truth about what really happened in the woods. When the witchcraft scare gets out of hand, Mary joins Abigail and the other girls in falsely accusing women of being witches. These false accusations are motivated by hysteria. There is evidence that Mary really believes that the women in court are bewitching her. She tells the judge that she thought she saw spirits. The other girls were screaming, and before she knew it, Mary was screaming with them. When she realizes that there are no spirits, Mary is willing to be truthful. After Elizabeth Proctor’s name is brought up in court, Mary Warren defends her against the accusation. At the end of Act II, the reader hopes that the basic sense of honesty will remain strong enough to allow Mary to testify on behalf of the accused women in Act III.
Mary Rowlandson was a daughter, wife and mother. It is said that she was of English descent and was born to an affluent father. After immigration from England, she settled in Massachusetts (Toulouse, 2011). When her father passed on, she met and got married to Joseph Rowlandson. Both Mary and her husband were devout Christians, and in the year 1660 their faith went higher as Joseph rose to become a Puritan minister. During the course of her marriage, Mary bore four children, but unfortunately, one of them passed on when she was still an infant. Even before she is taken captive, her role as a mother to her children is well exposed. When she was in captivity, she is shown to care deeply for her smallest daughter, Sarah, until her demise. Sarah succumbs to injuries she had sustained during her capture. She narrates the depths she went into to nurse Sarah back to health with no success. Her account reveals that even when Sarah died, in her distress, Mary lay down with her. As difficult as her circumstances were in captivity, Mary did not abandon her responsibilities as a mother, but is seen to struggle even harder to continue playing her role. After her release, this does not change. She continues to raise her children, eve...
During the course of the novel Mary becomes more vigorous and courageous. She is the one who takes the initiative to save her mother when Caleb loses hope. As the novel progresses she becomes more and more courageous. To sneak around and attack who used to be your best friends and defile the law takes a lot of courage. One of the greatest examples is that she will do anything to save her mother. This is shown when Mary and Caleb kill a lamb to scare Constable Dewart, “A hooded figure jumped out from behind the boulder, but instead of a human face, the head of a sheep stared at constable Dewart” (257).
Would lie to save yourself from punishment , or tell the truth regardless of the consequence?
The thought of even having to touch the aides disgust Mary because they are a physical representation of the reality she is denying. When she is told that she may have to kill her daughter, she reacts poorly, as most would expect a mother to, however she has gone to extremes. She accuses her husband of having never loved their daughter and that the only thing keeping them married was the daughter and that without Jennifer, Peter would have left Mary (156-158). This intense outburst from a woman who is usually so calm when tragedy affects those outside of her narcissistic bubble only goes to show further the indifferent attitude of denial. When made to recognize the oncoming death, she cannot fathom it, and tries to find other reasons for Peter trying to get her to come to terms with “murdering” her daughter.
She has a secret dream of writing romance novels that no one, except her teacher, Mr. P, had known about. The book explains, "People just don 't live and hide in basements if they 're happy" (Alexie 39). Mary was not happy where she was at, she would not let anyone read her pieces of writing. Skip downing states in his article, “ Victims are people who do not feel they are in control of the outcomes in their lives” (Downing 42). The way she acted made it seem like she was not confident in what she had been doing. Victims, like Mary, feel they are stuck and that they have to support which makes their ability to reach their goals fall short. Mr. P explains, "She always thought people would make fun of her" (Alexie 37). All this has shown that being in the basement and not pursuing her dreams had taken a toll on her. Mary never acted different than
Thomas Pringle wrote "The idea of Mary Prince's history was first suggested by herself. She wished it to be done, she said, that good people in England might hear from a slave what a slave had felt and suffered.” Mary Prince, was the first black woman to have her story published in Britain. Due to Mary Prince’s graphic detail, her anecdotes were sadistic to the extent that very few believed her . Mary Prince conveys that both slave owners and their slaves suffer physical and emotional effects of slavery, confirming Pringle’s write that "slavery is a curse to the oppressors scarcely less than the oppressed; it's natural tendency is to brutalize both.”
Near the middle of the story we see Mary exhibit her bad sinister character; her personality and feelings suddenly change when she murders her own husband by hitting him at the back of the head with a frozen lamb leg. After denying all of Mary’s helpful deeds, Patrick told her to sit down so that he can tell her something serious; the story doesn’t tell us what he says to her but Mary suddenly changes after he tells her something, her “instinct was not to believe any of it” (Dahl 2). She just responded with “I’ll get the supper” (Dahl 2) and felt nothing of her body except for nausea and a desire to vomit. She went down the cellar, opened the freezer, grabbed a frozen leg of lamb, went back upstairs, came behind Patrick, and swung the big leg of lamb as hard as she could to the back of his head killing him. This act of sudden violence shows how much she has gone ...
Baruch Spinoza once said “Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” He compared free-will with destiny and ended up that what we live and what we think are all results of our destiny; and the concept of the free-will as humanity know is just the awareness of the situation. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores this struggle between free-will and destiny, and illustrates the idea of time in order to demonstrate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut conveys this through irony, symbolism and satire.
...ive in prison until the trial. It is believed that, because of her family’s wealth, she had a nicer cell and decent food. She was then tried by a twelve man jury. Her husband was friends with a man on the jury, who probably helped Mary. He inevitably appealed to the other jury members on her behalf. Her family’s wealth and influence undoubtedly helped her obtain release, as well.
Mary Rowlandson’s narrative has a lot of contradicting statements dealing with the debate of rather or not Rowlandson is expressing herself as a puritan or an individualist. There is evidence in the narrative that can be argued for either side. However, the fifth remove shows evidence for the side that believes Rowlandson did not write this as a pure puritan. The fifth remove shows that she wrote this as an individualist giving God some credit while also subtly acknowledging the fact that she had a major hand in her own survival.
Mary lived a life a scandal during her time. Not only did she have children out of wedlock, but she was