Cousins; Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren live on a private island called Beechwood during the summer with their families and friend, Gatwick. “Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure” (Lockhart 1). Life appears perfect, but pain and secrets lurk behind every corner. “It doesn’t matter if divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts so that they will hardly beat without a struggle. It doesn’t matter if trust-fund money is running out; if credit card bills go unpaid on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table” (Lockhart 2). When the twisted reality of the Sinclair family is faced head-on, a fire is ignited and lives are lost. Characters and symbols in We Were Liars represent the complex components of tragedy.
Mirren, Gatwick, and Johnny symbolize the
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loss of innocent life, but their death’s also demonstrate the unpredictability of tragedy. Johnny understood the value of loyalty and friendship despite his corrupt family. “…but he was as committed to the things that mattered to him as anyone could possibly be…His sense of what was right. He gave up his college fund without a second thought, to stand up for his principles” (Lockhart 61). Mirren always carried a sense of joy and hopefulness regardless of the unhappy world around her. “…she is sugar, curiosity, and rain” (Lockhart 9). Gatwick never stopped thinking about how to correct the injustices of the world. “Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don’t have work. Some don’t have food” (Lockhart 11). Death, however, does not care for morality, joy, or compassion. Age, wealth, and status mean nothing in the eyes of flames and gasoline. In the end, anyone can be the target of tragedy. The mothers; Carrie, Bess, and Penny and the leftover children; Cadence, Liberty, Bonnie, Taft, and Will demonstrate the two very different ways of handling pain. In the beginning, both groups mourn the lost teenagers. “The mothers, they crumbled in rage and despair. They drank and shopped, starved and scrubbed and obsessed…The children, they were crazy and sad. They were racked with guilt for being alive, racked with pain in their heads and fear of ghosts, racked with nightmares and strange compulsions, punishments for being alive when the others were dead” (Lockhart 63). As time passed, however, the mothers began to see their dead children as a mark of glamour. “The three beautiful daughters became more beautiful still in the eyes of their beholders. And this fact was not lost upon them” (Lockhart 63). Carrie, Bess, and Penny thrived in the attention, while the children never lost sight of havoc tragedy causes. “…they know that tragedy is not glamorous… Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing” (Lockhart 63). Clairmont represented the Sinclair family’s issues and pain that ultimately resulted in tragedy. “Clairmont was like the symbol of everything that was wrong” (Lockhart 51). Gat, Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren truly believed if they burned the house down, the constant arguing and competition of their family would also be destroyed in the flames. “They would repent of their deeds. And after that, learn to love one another again. Open their souls. Open their veins. Wipe off their smiles. Be a family. Stay a family” (Lockhart 51). However, Johnny, Mirren, and Gatwick died in the fire. “Then they built a new house on the ashes of the old” (Lockhart 58). Grandfather Harris began work on New Clairmont, a house completely devoid of emotion, soon after the original mansion was obliterated. “The new house is built on the grave of all the trophies and symbols of the family: the New Yorker cartoons, the taxidermy, the embroidered pillows, the family portraits” (Lockhart 45). Made to be intentionally uncomfortable, New Clairmont acts as a reminder of the Sinclair family’s tragic past. Characters and symbols linked to tragedy can be seen throughout the entirety of We Were Liars.
The killing of teenagers with big dreams and hopeful futures represents death’s unpredictability. “He will never go to college… He will never satisfy his curiosity, never finish the hundred best novels ever written, never be the great man he might have been” (Lockhart 60). Through the adults and living children, the two incredibly different ways of dealing with and understanding tragedy are shown. “They know it doesn’t play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person” (Lockhart 63). Clairmont symbolizes the problems of the Sinclair family, while New Clairmont stands as a reminder of the dead children. ““New Clairmont seems like a punishment to me… A self-punishment. He built himself a home that isn’t a home. It’s deliberately uncomfortable”” (Lockhart 53). In conclusion, connections to tragedy linger in every corner of We Were Liars through symbolism in characters and
objects.
In the true crime/sociology story, “Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry” the author, Robert Sam Anson had provided an immense amount of information from reportings about Edmund Perry’s death and life before he died. Anson has developed Edmund’s character and experiences through reporting that I have related and connected to. Information reported by Anson has helped me find a deep connection towards Edmund Perry’s home environment, junior high experiences, and personality at Philips Exeter. Themes such as hopes and dreams, loyalty and betrayal, journey, and family ties are intertwined in the story and becomes blatant. The congruences between our lives have better my understanding of the story and Edmund’s life.
Guilt is a powerful emotion that can affect the path of a person’s life. Dunstan’s character in Robertson Davies’s “Fifth Business” experienced guilt at an early age and stayed with Dunstan throughout his life, and continually affected his relationships with Mrs.Dempster, Boy and Paul into an unhealthy one. Dunstan took the blame for the snow ball entirely without acknowledging boy was at fault. “I was contrite and guilty, for I knew that the snowball had been meant for me” (Davies, 11). From that point in his life, his guilt had the dynamo effect. He took blame for every tragedy that happened to the Dempster family since. Dunstan’s battled guilt ultimately controlled his action and relationships.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
Polley highlights the notion of truth and how each individual sees it differently. In her film, she denotes that in order to understand the truth and its subjectivity, stories must be seen, heard, and told (Vulture 2013). The interviews depicted in Stories We Tell allow the audience to absorb the subject as well as witness each character revisit the past and see it in a different light. This is shown near the end of the film where each character is seen reflecting on the subject of their mother, reflecting on their “private memory, his or her ‘truth’” (Vulture 2013). Through presenting this near the end of the film, it allows the audience to register how subjective the truth is, in that although they all spoke about the same topic, the way in which they reflect on this is entirely associated with what they remember.
It reminds us of a time not so different from where we live now, a world filled with lies, hatred, and moral ambiguity. It’s a story that largely reminds us as humans who we are, prone to mistakes and preconceptions that can lead to disastrous results, but also capable of growth and redemption. This story really allows you to understand different philosophies, perceptions, and differing opinions of morality and
The presence of death in the novel looms over the characters, making each of them reflect on the
The critics who perceived this book's central theme to be teen-age angst miss the deep underlying theme of grief and bereavement. Ambrosio asks the question, "Is silence for a writer tantamount to suicide? Why does the wr...
All three writers explore self-deception using specific characters, none of whom have the same world-view as the other characters in their respective texts. The
'Young Goodman Brown,' by Hawthorne, and 'The Tell Tale Heart,' by Poe, offer readers the chance to embark on figurative and literal journeys, through our minds and our hearts. Hawthorne is interested in developing a sense of guilt in his story, an allegory warning against losing one's faith. The point of view and the shift in point of view are symbolic of the darkening, increasingly isolated heart of the main character, Goodman Brown, an everyman figure in an everyman tale. Poe, however, is concerned with capturing a sense of dread in his work, taking a look at the motivations behind the perverseness of human nature. Identifying and understanding the point of view is essential, since it affects a reader's relationship to the protagonist, but also offers perspective in situations where characters are blinded and deceived by their own faults. The main character of Poe?s story embarks on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing everything from terror to triumph. Both authors offer an interpretation of humans as sinful, through the use of foreshadowing, repetition, symbolism and, most importantly, point of view. Hawthorne teaches the reader an explicit moral lesson through the third person omniscient point of view, whereas Poe sidesteps morality in favor of thoroughly developing his characters in the first person point of view.
with a mortal frame” (Hawthorne 354). By tracing the tipping scales of perfection vs. dissatisfaction, readers of “The Birthmark” witness the slow demise of Georgiana and Aylmer, and gain important insight into human nature.
...ror of Pecola’s first sexual experience: her father rapes her), and a difficult marriage situation (caused by his own drunkenness). The “bads” certainly outweigh the “goods” in his situation. Thus, the reader ought not to feel sympathy for Cholly. But, Morrison presents information about Cholly in such a way that mandates sympathy from her reader. This depiction of Cholly as a man of freedom and the victim of awful happenings is wrong because it evokes sympathy for a man who does not deserve it. He deserves the reader’s hate, but Morrison prevents Cholly covered with a blanket of undeserved, inescapable sympathy. Morrison creates undeserved sympathy from the reader using language and her depiction of Cholly acting within the bounds of his character. This ultimately generates a reader who becomes soft on crime and led by emotions manipulated by the authority of text.
He has grown up in the backwash of a dying city and has developed into an individual sensitive to the fact that his town’s vivacity has receded, leaving the faintest echoes of romance, a residue of empty piety, and symbolic memories of an active concern for God and mankind that no longer exists. Although the young boy cannot fully comprehend it intellectually, he feels that his surroundings have become malformed and ostentatious. He is at first as blind as his surroundings, but Joyce prepares us for his eventual perceptive awakening by mitigating his carelessness with an unconscious rejection of the spiritual stagnation of his community. Upon hitting Araby, the boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist outside of his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and comes to realize his self-deception, describing himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity”, a vanity all his own (Joyce). This, inherently, represents the archetypal Joycean epiphany, a small but definitive moment after which life is never quite the same. This epiphany, in which the boy lives a dream in spite of the disagreeable and the material, is brought to its inevitable conclusion, with the single sensation of life disintegrating. At the moment of his realization, the narrator finds that he is able to better understand his particular circumstance, but, unfortunately, this
As a literal deathbed revelation, William Wilson begins the short story by informing the readers about the end of his own personal struggle by introducing and immediately acknowledging his guilt and inevitable death, directly foreshadowing the protagonist’s eventual downward spiral into vice. The exhortative and confession-like nature of the opening piece stems from the liberal use of the first person pronoun “I”, combined with legal and crime related jargon such as, “ crime”, “guilt”, and “victim” found on page 1. Poe infuses this meticulous word choice into the concretization of abstract ideas where the protagonist’s “virtue dropped bodily as a mantle” (Poe 1), leading him to cloak his “nakedness in triple guilt” (Poe 1). In these two examples, not only are virtue and guilt transformed into physical clothing that can be worn by the narrator, but the reader is also introduced to the protagonist’s propensity to externalize the internal, hinting at the inevitable conclusion and revelation that the second William Wilson is not truly a physical being, but the manifestation of something
The Sinclairs in “We Were Liars” are acting of their free will instead of according to the fairytales due to how Cadence modifies the stories to fully suit the events that happen. The book goes through Cadence’s experience as her family has arguments and she’s faced with having to deal with the brunt of these problems. She gets into an accident that renders her memory unreliable, so Cadence begins writing fairy tales to cope with the situation and having to deal with her family issues. She writes using original fairy tales and some elements of these fairytales line up with the event she describes. However, the main factor that separates the Sinclairs from acting just like the narratives is how the tales never completely apply to them. Cadence
It is not the tragic subject matter of the text that is of primary interest - but rather the manner in which the plot is developed. The story line progresses as if the reader is "unpeeling an onion."