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Recommended: Atonement critical essay
Relationships are hard enough, even without the horrors of war, rape, and incarceration. Due to rash decisions, a wild imagination, and childlike innocence, Briony Tallis commits an unspeakable crime condemning the fate of lovers Robbie and Cecilia. A precious family heirloom foreshadows a sequence of unfortunate events that unravels between the Tallis family. With each break of the smooth porcelain, a bond is broken and family ties are severed. In the novel, Atonement, author Ian McEwan tells a tragic story of life, love, and loss through the body of a porcelain vase.
To the Tallis family the Meissen vase serves as a commemoration to the late Uncle Clem. The vase is especially important to Jack Tallis since Clem was his only brother. The
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen” (“Brainy Quotes” 1). In Edith Wharton’s framed novel, Ethan Frome, the main protagonist encounters “lost opportunity, failed romance, and disappointed dreams” with a regretful ending (Lilburn 1). Ethan Frome lives in the isolated fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts with his irritable spouse, Zenobia Frome. Ever since marriage, Zenobia, also referred to as Zeena, revolves around her illness. Furthermore, she is prone to silence, rage, and querulously shouting. Ethan has dreams of leaving Starkfield and selling his plantation, however he views caring for his wife as a duty and main priority. One day, Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to assist the Frome’s with their daily tasks. Immediately, Mattie’s attractive and youthful energy resuscitates Ethan’s outlook on life. She brings a light to Starkfield and instantaneously steals Ethan’s heart; although, Ethan’s quiet demeanor and lack of expression causing his affection to be surreptitious. As Zeena’s health worsens, she becomes fearful and wishes to seek advice from a doctor in a town called Bettsbridge giving Ethan and Mattie privacy for one night. Unfortunately, the night turns out to be a disastrous and uncomfortable evening. Neither Ethan nor Mattie speaks a word regarding their love for one another. Additionally, during their dinner, the pet cat leaps on the table and sends a pickle dish straight to the floor crashing into pieces. To make matters worse, the pickle dish is a favored wedding gift that is cherished by Zeena. Later, Zeena discovers it is broken and it sends her anger over the edge. Furious, Zeena demands for a more efficient “hired girl” to complete the tasks ar...
Weiner compares the protagonist’s, Allison Weiss’s, realization of her husband’s cheating to an “infected tooth” (63) to represent her dwindling faith in her husband’s devotion and connect her present situation to her emotions. The imagery of an infected tooth as it decays and rots depicts the deterioration of her husband’s commitment as time progresses. The decaying and rotting tooth also affects an individual’s health. A disintegrating tooth is painful and corresponds to the domino theory: when a small part of the tooth is infected, the rest of it soon follows. Similarly, the realization that Allison’s husband is cheating on her develops in her brain and travels through her body to inflict pain upon her heart.
‘’Salvation’’ emphasized my own need for acceptance while at the same time making me fear the rejection of being different. Where ‘’Salvation’’ showed me my weakness, ‘’Mothers’’ showed me growth. My father leaving played a bigger part in my life than I had remembered, and ‘’Mothers’’ simply showed me the door towards that again. Besides being torn with my relationship with my father Quindlen made me grateful for the best friend that I have found in my mother. Hughes brought up all the ‘’skeletons in my closet’’ that I never told my mother. [Instead of feeling ashamed about haven hidden secrets and relationships from her, I felt ashamed for every time I lied to save myself from her wrath.] Both authors took me to moments in my life that had lasting impressions on me. ‘’Mothers’’ made me relive the birth of my baby sister, and ‘’Salvation’’ made me reenact countless disagreements that I’ve experienced with my parents. Although I would like to secrete these memories, it was healthy for me to remember the lessons I learned from them.
The piece comes to fruition as “The Golden Vanity,” sold to The New Yorker for $8,000 dollars and used to pay off Alex’s wisdom teeth bill. The piece is about the crossing of reality and fiction The way that this comes into relief is not through an action that is completed that shows a ‘horizontal extension of love’ of a reader, but instead through the author of the author of the piece, the
The coming of age novel, Atonement by Ian McEwan, discusses guilt, forgiveness, and the complicated nature of love through the struggles of growing up. The novel begins in England during World War II, where 13-year-old Briony Tallis is part of a family with dysfunctional dynamics. Her older sister, Cecilia, experiences true love with the family’s gardener, who is the son of their housekeeper, but their relationship is riddled with many obstacles. Most troubling is that Briony naively imagines their intimacy as something more aggressive towards her sister. Her innocence and shielded view of the world causes an unfortunate series of events that tears the family apart and alters the course of the rest of Briony’s life. In Atonement, McEwan demonstrates the maturation of love and how prosperous, yet destructive love can be between lovers and family alike.
The loss of innocence is an occurrence that happens in every life, and it is so easily taken. A traumatic moment is often the thief of innocence, leaving the victim scarred from the experience. Events like these are often the process of paving the road into adulthood, and aid in the metamorphosis of a child to an adult. In “My Father’s Noose” by Grace Talusan, “Dothead” by Amit Majmudar, and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, each of the characters do not understand the concept of negligent personages. Once the protagonist knows that society is not composed of perfect people, their character and personality changes, as it forces them to take a look at their own morals. This prepares the protagonist for the lives
Clementine Rivers (“Tish”) and her fiancé Alonzo Hunt (“Fonny”) are planning to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman. While Fonny is in jail, Tish informs him that she is pregnant with his child. Tish’s family then goes on a quest to find evidence that will set Fonny free, showing how much they cared about him and the child. The love poured out from the Rivers’ dedication to freeing Fonny is evident of how one family will give and do everything to help their future son-in-law, even when his family will not. They stick together through thick and thin, giving nothing but their best for Fonny. This novel by Baldwin is not as popular as some of his other works, receiving only about 4,000 ratings on Goodreads.com,
Briony Tallis is a character that has to have the world and its occupants in line with her wishes. By having these high expectations, she sets herself up for failure when people fail to live up to her assumptions of them. This causes her to give a bias and unreliable retelling of her life through the novel Atonement. The self-pity Briony generates for herself drives many of her relationships to breaking point and beyond, therefor she changes the characters, like herself, Cecilia and Robbie, to fit how she sees them not necessarily how they really were.
"Vanitas still life with portrait of a young painter " by David Bailly includes such objects as dying flowers, a skull, a painting of musician, musical instruments (recorder, conductor’s baton), statuary of a young, virile man and a young child, a portrait of another young man, and a clean palette hanging on the wall. The meaning behind these articles can be manifold, depending upon one’s point of view, but I think they are all important symbols of the passing nature of vitality and life itself. The flowers, once brilliant and lovely, are now withering in their vase. Music, represented by a man playing a lute in a portrait on the wall and by numerous music related items (a recorder, a conductor’s baton) is itself transient and elusive. Obviously a skull can represent death, but it can just as easily be a reminder of what remains behind. The clean palette hanging on the wall is evocative of a clear start, a new beginning, the option available to us all to begin again, before it’s too late!
Director Andrew Adamson’s intriguing film “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion Witch and Wardrobe”, is based on C.S. Lewis’s novel. The film tells the story of four children who are evacuated to the countryside during the Second World War bombing of London and find a magical wardrobe that leads to another world which has been cursed to eternal winter by the evil White Witch Jadis. Forgiveness is a suggested theme throughout the film. There are many examples in the film that show the siblings have to go through forgiving each other and friends.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Aristotle). Broken down, chapter by chapter and piece by piece, Jamaica Kincaid’s Mr. Potter tells many different stories about a man who curses God, a little girl asking her estranged father for money to buy school supplies, a woman stealing the life savings from a man she loves, and many more. As a whole, however, the book not only illustrates the author’s search to understand her father’s life, but also conveys the idea of a world without love. When viewed as a part of the entire book, Chapter Four refines this theme through Mr. Potter’s relationship with his mother and her abandonment of him.
Maupassant, Guy de. "The Necklace." Understanding Fiction. 3rd ed. Eds. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979. 66-72.
Throughout Jenny Valentines novel Broken Soup a teenage girl named Rowan manages to face many obstacles all while developing true friendships and trying to keep her broken family from falling apart. Although she is tough and independent, those friendships teach her that being strong does not mean she has to face life alone. A simple misunderstanding is all it takes to change one girl's life...
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."
The prologue of this tale describes how Arthur travels to besiege Lancelot, who was his former best friend that had an affair with his wife, until he is forced to return. In both Sensibility and Sense by Jane Austen, and Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, the idea that a person’s closest loved ones can cause the most torment is highlighted through techniques such as plot development and foreshadowing.