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Essays on symbolism in literature
Interpretation in literature
Common themes in literature
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How much time is wasted every day? In "Our Town" by Thorton Wilder two children destined to marry go through life ignorant and blind but, when confronted with death their eyes are opened revealing the small things in life they never get to enjoy again. Furthermore, In an excerpt from "Macbeth" life is depicted as a brief, fragile candle that soon dies and is lost in the shadows. Lastly, In an excerpt from "Endymion, it is told that life is full of highs and lows, and to enjoy what time is gifted. The passages all create a similar theme about living life to the fullest by emphasizing the brevity of life and the time wasted on trivial matters, as well as the importance of enjoying the small things in life.
Firstly, the brevity of life ,according to Macbeth, "It always passes before you know it. Out ,out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow..." This depicts life as a fragile flame that can go out at any moment. Referring to "Our Town, " I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed." Emily never realized how easy life is given and how easy it can be taken away. There is a common theme among these texts, which is previously stated, that life is wonderful but fragile gift that can fade away at any moment.
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They walked through life forgetting what is important. " Creeps in this petty pace from day to day … the way to dusty death." In this time is a slow moving force, shoving everyone closer and closer to death. Life needs to be enjoyed and not wasted away. Life never stops and should be lived to the fullest. Trivial matters should be set aside and goals of life held
Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate is the story of an African boy, Kek, who loses his father and a brother and flees, leaving his mother to secure his safety. Kek, now in Minnesota, is faced with difficulties of adapting to a new life and of finding his lost mother. He believes that his mother still lives and would soon join him in the new found family. Kek is taken from the airport by a caregiver who takes him to live with his aunt. It is here that Kek meets all that amazed him compared to his home in Sudan, Africa. Home of the brave shows conflicts that Kek faces. He is caught between two worlds, Africa and America. He feels guilty leaving behind his people to live in a distant land especially his mother, who he left in the midst of an attack.
...isoners, as one never knew when the next death would be coming. It became a pointless waste of energy, which was critical to their ability to work. Since their work was essential to their survival, alienating oneself from fellow men and focusing solely on survival was in one’s best interest.
The author Ralph Ellison is a renowned writer and scholar with significant nonfiction stories credited to his name. He was born in Oklahoma City about the year 1913. His family had a small business wherein his father worked as a foreman but soon died when he was only three years old. After several years, he later found out that his father wished that he would someday become a poet after the great American essayist popularly known as Ralph Waldo Emerson who became his namesake. His mother was Ida Millsap Ellison who was involved as a political activist campaigning for the Socialist Party. Moreover, she was arrested several times in violation of the segregation orders.
Though, the ironies of the Grandmother arise from her own perceptions of her society, while Emily’s arise from the way she is perceived by her own society. Emily’s discord with change is because she does not understand social norms. The Grandmas resentment to change is because she is biased in her memories of the past, thinking that people valued the things that she values more in the past. Emily lived as the last legacy of her family, and with her death so did the antiquated virtues of the Grierson’s prime. It In the moment’s before the Grandmother’s death, she feels genuine compassion for the first time in her life: She finds grace. Portraying the overarching theme of death through unique circumstance and notions, both stories encompass death with chiefly the same
Life is sad and tragic; some of which is made for us and some of which we make ourselves. Emily had a hard life. Everything that she loved left her. Her father probably impressed upon her that every man she met was no good for her. The townspeople even state “when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad…being left alone…She had become humanized” (219). This sounds as if her father’s death was sort of liberation for Emily. In a way it was, she could begin to date and court men of her choice and liking. Her father couldn’t chase them off any more. But then again, did she have the know-how to do this, after all those years of her father’s past actions? It also sounds as if the townspeople thought Emily was above the law because of her high-class stature. Now since the passing of her father she may be like them, a middle class working person. Unfortunately, for Emily she became home bound.
In “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Landlady” by Roald Dahl, both authors create stories that are largely symbolic and similar in many ways. Faulkner and Dahl have somewhat similar writing styles, and both of their stories are centered on death. Although several themes occur in both, death is the one that they share in common the most. Dahl focuses on how hard it is to lose people with his inclusion of the landlady who preserves old bodies and Faulkner focuses on this theme in the form of Emily keeping dead people in her house. This is intriguing because this shows that love can turn people to take twisted actions, and
...s story he writes about how earlier in Emily’s life she refuses to let the town’s people in her house even though there is a strong odor that is coming from her property. In this section her father has just passed away and was abandoned by a man who she wanted to marry. This section she becomes very depressed. In section three it talks about how Emily is starting to come down with an illness after all of the depressing events she had to endure. In sections four and five Faulkner describes how there is fear throughout the towns people is that of which Emily is going to possibly poison herself. A while later she then she passes away. In section five is when the truth is revealed to the public about her sickness. Faulkner uses the view point of an unnamed town member while he uses a third person perspective to show the general corrosion of the southern town’s people.
...seeing their friends, father, or brother dying that way made them to become cruel among themselves, with everyone consent just with his own survival. This were group of people from the same community, and some of them were fellowshipping together. But they changed the point that they acted as if they did not know each other.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
Jean-Louis Kerouac aka Jack was born on March 12th, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts to Leo and Gabrielle who were immigrants from Quebec, Canada. Kerouac learned to speak French at home then he learned how to speak English at school. His father owned a print shop and his mother stayed a home. In the summer of 1926 Jack's older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at nine years old. The family was overcome by grief and became more involved in church as is shown in some of his books. Jack loved to play sports and read on his free time. He was on the basketball, track, and football team. Even though he wanted to start writing he felt that playing a sport wound help him more in his future. During the great depression his family struggled financially and his father became an alcoholic and gambler while his mother got a job at a local shoe store to provide for her family. In 1936 the family was devastated by the Merrimack River flooding that wiped out there printing shop which only increased his fathers alcohol addiction and the family lived live in poverty, but jack shined in his sports as he was the star running back at his high school Lowell High. With this he obtained a college scholarship. After graduating Lowell in the year 1939 he received his scholarship to Columbia University. But before attending university he went to Horace Mann preparatory school for boys for a year in Brooklyn at the age of 17.(biography.com) During his freshman year at Columbia university he cracked his tibia. He also argued to mush with his coach, Coach Lou Little, who benched him. While being benched jack began writing for the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper with sports articles and later joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. As his footb...
Death it seems terrible. But For Emily Bronte it was something she longed towards the end of her life. Throughout Emily’s early childhood, she was surrounded death. People in her family who she loved and cared about was overridden a sickness called Tuberculosis. “The first death that somehow affected Emily’s life was the death of her mother who died of cancer.”(Biography of Emily Bronte). The next deaths that furthermore impacted Em...
...le circumstances, alone in the world, as increasing age, no husband, no children, and no money but not for others to feel pity for her. She did not allow anyone to feel pity for her. As Faulkner might say Emily was a symbol of the humans never wither, always pride. Elements of horror: dead, iron-gray hair gives us a suggestion of the kind of man does not wither. Although Emily died but she has lived forever in the hearts and memories of people at the village of Jefferson, even the destructive love of Emily: killed her sweetheart to keep him beside her forever. Although she was always against the norm of the community, pride to place herself outside the norm, but the people of Jefferson from the old to the young man to the woman they love and respect her. Of course there are the whispers but people think of her as to think of a thing to be respected, maintained.
Life and death are but trails to eternity and are seen less important when viewed in the framework of eternity. Emily Dickinson’s poem Death is a gentleman taking a woman out for a drive.” Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me” (Dickinson 1-2). Emily describes being a busy woman who is caught up in everyday situations.
However, every moment we have on this earth is precious and it is our choice to make the most of it. As Carter and Edward learned that they had little time left , they reflected back on their lives and the achievements they had made. According, to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, these two men look back with despair and strive to escape the harsh truth, death. However, as they embark on the adventure of a lifetime, they soon realize that rather than escaping the inevitable, the importance of life is the joy that we share with others. In the end, these two men died with a sense of integrity and reached the final stage of death, acceptance. Even though they were not able to achieve their lifelong dreams, they lived a life filled with love and wholesomeness. In the end, death is part of reality, and we all must come to terms with it, “we love, we die, and the wheels on the bus go round and
...derstanding of time passed and time that remains allows one to become comfortable with such circumstances and express a love that must soon retire.The metaphors that represent the theme throughout the poem are similar in the way they all show the devastating and destructive factors of time. Further more, they provide a discourse surrounding the issue of mortality. With anticipation increasing from beginning to end, Shakespeare is able to demonstrate a level of comfort surrounding the inevitable. The continual imposition of death on life is a universal experience. Autumn turning into winter, day turning into night, and a flame diminishing entirely all illustrate this. The increase in intensity of associated color with metaphors mimics the intensity of the ending. As the end draws increasingly near, it becomes undeniable and provides the catalyst for the lesson of love.