In Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, the story of the last days of the lives of the last humans on Earth is told. Victims of Global-Thermonuclear war, which they took no part in, they are aware of the massive radiation cloud drifting south towards Australia. The main focus of the novel is not the plot, but the characters, who they become and what they do in their last days. Two such characters are John Osborne, a scientist studying the effects of the radiation, and Mary Holmes, a Navy-wife and recent mother. Through the course of the novel, though there is little interaction between the two, it becomes apparent that they are foils for each other, portraying near opposite reactions to the impending end. John Osborne, a young scientist working to …show more content…
Chief among these was Mary Holmes, wife of Peter Holmes and a relatively new mother. Though she receives little characterization over the course of the novel, this, in fact, does provide her with character details. By remaining static, Mary Holmes shows stronger than any other character the denial to accept their fate. As the novel takes its course, Mary and Peter are seen preparing for life after August, buying supplies for their child for when she grows older, planting a garden and trees in their front yard, and ignoring the news of the radiation reaching the northern areas of Australia. In the novel, one of the flowers mentioned to be growing in the garden is the narcissus (245), which shares its name with a man in a Greek myth who ignored all but himself, a parallel that can be drawn to Mary Holmes and her actions, or lack thereof, in the end of the world. She seems to care only for her family’s future. She ignores the bad news on the radio, even when it is irrevocably telling her of the radiation sickness in …show more content…
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. This is the extreme of her denial, however she continues to plan for the future up until the end, having Peter go into town to find a lawn-mower days before they finally do succumb to the disease and together, as a family, take the
Blue Bird was about fourteen. They were taken in and made to feel at home.
Miguel Castaneda is the narrator and main character of the story “We Were Here”. Miguel is a young teenager from Stockton, California. He is dark complected because of his Mexican background but he does not have the personality to do the work like that of his Mexican relatives. I know this because in the story it says, “Told us we might be dark on the outside, but inside we were like a couple blonde boys from Hollywood.” He is very different from the rest of his family in terms of being able to handle situations that are put in front of him and completing the task at hand.
Hannie Rayson’s play ‘Hotel Sorrento’ explores the changing nature of Australian cultural identity. Rayson successfully perpetuates and challenges common Australian stereotypes in order to establish how the Australian National Identity has changed over time. She presents these stereotypes through the characters expectations of gender roles, attitudes towards Australian culture and the theme of ownership.
The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These appalling memories are an account of the impact of colonization on the Haisla territory which continues to haunt the Aboriginal community throughout generations.
The book Lives on the Boundary, written by Mike Rose, provides great insight to what the new teaching professional may anticipate in the classroom. This book may be used to inform a teacher’s philosophy and may render the teacher more effective. Lives on the Boundary is a first person account composed of eight chapters each of which treat a different obstacle faced by Mike Rose in his years as a student and as an educator. More specifically in chapters one through five Mike Rose focuses on his own personal struggles and achievements as a student. Ultimately the aim is to highlight the underpreparedness of some of today’s learners.
The first encounter with Helga Crane, Nella Larsen’s protagonist in the novel Quicksand, introduces the heroine unwinding after a day of work in a dimly lit room. She is alone. And while no one else is present in the room, Helga is accompanied by her own thoughts, feelings, and her worrisome perceptions of the world around her. Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that most of Helga’s concerns revolve around two issues- race and sex. Even though there are many human character antagonists that play a significant role in the novel and in the story of Helga Crane, such as her friends, coworkers, relatives, and ultimately even her own children, her race and her sexuality become Helga’s biggest challenges. These two taxing antagonists appear throughout the novel in many subtle forms. It becomes obvious that racial confusion and sexual repression are a substantial source of Helga’s apprehensions and eventually lead to her tragic demise.
What is the difference between effective or ineffective communication skills when working with children, this essay is determine to find out the appropriate ways to communicate with children by analyse, the video clip ‘Unloved’ by Tony Grison, where a young White British girl aged 11 was taken into care, due to her father being abusive towards her and mother not wanting to see her.
Saltwater summer is about a young man's first summer as a commercial salmon fisherman on the BC coast. Don Morgan is a seventeen-year-old who has made enough money trapping on northern Vancouver Island to buy himself a 32-foot West Coast salmon troller known as the Mallard. He thought this was all he wanted from life, now almost nothing about it was good. The fishing his first season began poor, and if things didn't pick up, the Mallard, which had only been his for three months, would have to be sold to repay old Shenrock for loaning him the money. Don collaborates with his friend, and fellow fisherman Tubby Miller, whom he had partnered with for years at Bluff Harbor School, and through trapping together during the previous winter.
In conclusion, Mary is clearly shown to have a very manipulative and sinister character because she was a cold blooded murderer who had no feelings for her husband when she killed him, and she made people believe her grieving stories to make them feel sorry for her. But, all she wanted at the end was to cover up all of the evidence so she does not get caught and go to jail.
Wit is a potent and emotional play that chronicles the last few months of Vivian’s life. With Vivian’s cancer as the main theme, Wit effectively shows the gradual change of Vivian’s attitude towards cancer and the inhuman treatments from doctors. Wit narrates a story of Vivian Bearing, an accomplished English literature professor who is diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer. However, in order to complete a research, her doctor, Harvey Kalekian gives Vivian eight months of experimental chemotherapy without clearly explaining the treatments and serious side effects. In addition, Kelekian’s fellow, Jason, as a former student of Dr. Bearing, shows no respect to Vivian. Jason does not consider Vivian as a patient or as his former professor, but a research object of cancer treatment. The play Wit introduces binaries between patients and doctors, students and professors, life and death. Among these different polarities, the comparison between life and death shows the greatest tension and implies the real meaning of death to readers. Death is kind of a rebirth of life. Edson efficiently describes the tension between death and life by making use of antithesis mostly.
Mrs Kay firstly asks Carol why she does not and go and look round the
...sad mood. Maxwell shapes his story around Miss. Vera Brown death and gives out hints that her death will occur, in order relate back to his main theme.
...ized by an obsession with the messages delivered by the radio. All the characters change the name that they use to refer to the event when the radio announcer does - a "feathery plume" (111), a "billowing cloud" (114), and finally an "airborne toxic event" (117). But this is only nomenclature. More telling is the fact that the girls' symptoms - actual objects with physical manifestations - constantly change with the radio reports. We learn that "Heinrich told her [Denise] she was showing outdated symptoms" (117). How can symptoms be outdated? The only solution is that we really have become media lemmings, ruled by the suggestion of beings who exist only in radiation rather than by our own selves. We have become slaves of the media, as DeLillo so vividly illustrates - and we should be terrified.
It is made apparent to the audience that the world will soon cease to exist, but there is no closure as to why that is. The wife inquiries about that mystery, asking is it “a war?” “The hydrogen or atom bomb?” “Or germ warfare?” (Bradbury 2) in which the husband confirms it isn’t any of these things and that instead it should be viewed as “just the closing of a book” (Bradbury 2). It is interesting that a story about the end of the world, one whose writing is focused on small details, has the actual threat missing from the text. This is intentional, because it is a detail that simply doesn’t matter. It is not end that is a concern, but rather the realization of what matters when faced with it that is
"Waterland" is a profound study of human nature that not only displays the intricacies of people but also analyses the men and woman that live among us and for which each of us can find a name. Thus we all know an Ernest Atkinson, a bourgeois born into wealth who finds a meaning in life in the texts of Marx which push him to oppose the life that has been imposed on him thus angering his town and family. Ernest is the most interesting character in that he shows how geniuses and men with unorthodox ideas are often called rebels and segregated from the rest of society in their uniqueness and intensity. Mary in "Waterland" leads a disturbingly bizarre life that ends with her kidnapping a baby; the transformation of her personality following the abortion and her increasing mental instability shows the fragility of the human mind. Her character as that of Ernest is astoundingly realistic and thus one of the most effective characters in the novel.