Perhaps the hardest of ideas to express through literature is the idiom “actions speak louder than words”. There exist an innumerable number of people who have much to offer through the simple means of words. Yet, there also exist several others who, though silent, express their emotions and beliefs via the medium of actions. Manya, an obscure character in Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen, belongs to this limited group of “silent contributers”. Manya, the Malter family’s Russian Housekeeper adored the Matler family, Reuven Matler in particular. She frequently expressed her affection for the family by her actions and rarely through her words. Through different circumstances, Manya silently contributed to the Malter Family with her thoroughness, empathy, and dedication. Manya remained thorough in all the things she did. She probably always found her misplaced items as she would “leave no stone unturned”. Nothing would be considered completed unless they could meet up with her high standards. When Reuven left the slightest of dirt marks on the house floor, it was a big deal in Manya’s eyes, as seen from Reuven’s lamentation. “Manya was forever muttering about the streaks of black tar that clung to my shoes and sneakers and rubbed off on the floor of the apartment.” (175) This spoke well of Manya’s attitude toward working. It also …show more content…
She constantly strived to achieve this to the best of her capabilities. When Reuven’s father was suddenly hospitalized, and when Reuven was in a state of utter shock, Manya stayed by his side. “Manya took care of me (Reuven) during the first nightmarish days of blind panic when my mind collapsed and would not function.” (192) During the pleasant times Manya stayed. During the trying seasons, all the more she remained. Her dedication to serve the family provided her with the motivational drive. Manya, with her steadfast devotion, displayed her faithfulness through both the thick and the
In the novel, The Chosen, Chaim Potok successfully captures the strange customs of a Jewish community through wit and satire. Potok's novel focuses on two Jewish boys, who live in a world where their families expect high standards of achievement of them. The wish to become an insightful leader in the Jewish community was an always-predominant custom of the two families. But with hard work and perseverance, the two boys (Rueven and Danny), find out that they really are, and what lives they will lead in the future. The novel concentrates on the desire to conceive a person's personal wants while conforming to tradition.
In The Chosen, Potok describes the Jewish culture during the period of World War I. Beginning with the affluence of Polish Jews before the war, Potok established a circle of relationships. In the book, there are three main relationships. The first one is father-son, between Danny and his father, Reb Saunders and between Reuven and his father, David Malter. The relationship between Reuven and Danny is the second main relationship in The Chosen. The third main relationship is Hasidism verses Zionism.
Chaim Potok’s The Chosen shows how people with traditional ideas view the world differently than those with modern ideas. For example, David Malter has modern views of his faith, whereas Reb Saunders cannot let go of traditional practices. Also, Reb Saunders and David Malter have different methods of raising their children. Finally, David Malter believes in Zionism, whereas Reb Saunders wants to wait for the coming of the Messiah to preserve his religion. Such differences can cause similar faiths to seem very different.
The heart of the story is the experience of Marie Polatkin. Unlike the somewhat stock characters that make up much of the mystery element of the novel, Marie is a fully real...
By developing a relationship between two people who come from completely distinct worlds, Chaim Potok was able to instigate and investigate a profound and deeply moving story of true friendship and the importance of father-son interconnection through self-realization in the work of The Chosen by explicitly introducing a series of challenges that question the morality and judgment of each protagonist. Through his masterpiece and by inserting complex situations, Chaim Potok took to his benefit to display the comparison between his characters and normal people their similarities and differences.
Courage is not simply about how well you deal with fear, how many noble deeds you accomplish, or how you overcome life threatening situations. Courage is the practice of determination and perseverance. Something like, an unwillingness to abandon a dream even when the pressures of society weigh down on your shoulders; society will make you feel tired, humiliated, broken, and confused. Actually, it can be effortlessly said that daily courage is more significant than bouts of great deeds. Since everybody undergoes demanding circumstances on a daily basis, and most of us will not be called to perform a great deed, courage comes from those daily struggles and successes. However, Kate Bornstein is one person who has been able to transform her everyday life into a brilliant deed of courage. She threw herself into an unknown abyss to discover truth that many others would never dare tread. Ingeniously combining criticism of socially defined boundaries, an intense sense of language, and a candid autobiography, Bornstein is able to change cultural attitudes about gender, insisting that it is a social construct rather than a regular occurrence, through here courageous writing.
Silence was used in many different ways throughout this book. It was used to demonstrate and strengthen character emotions and reactions, and it helped to add depth to important or poignant moments in the story. It was used to show thought process or hard decisions and impeded thoughts. Though they were all different, they were the same in that they were all used to emphasize emotions and to amplify the messages in the story, as well as the imagery. Anguish, pain, and anger in particular were emotions that appeared many times in the story and were almost always accompanied by a silence that amplified their qualities. Chaim Potok’s use of silence in The Chosen deepens the meaning of the story, helps to clarify and outline its emotional structure, and makes the anecdote more thought provoking and inducing for the reader.
2. The book says that it is important to listen to the lower-class, the oppressed, the discontent. Virginia Ramirez lived in a destitute community, next to an old woman who was dying because she couldn’t afford to fix her home. Her outrage at this woman’s suffering inspired her to take action. If we listen to what she has to say, we too can be inspired. I had no idea that there were people in situations like that. Now that I know, it angers me.
This creates a despair, of hopelessness and of downheartedness. The woman, on multiple occasions, wrote down, “And what can one do?” This lets the reader know that women as a whole were very oppressed in ...
Pan Tadeusz and Gone With the Wind are both works that display affection of country. Neither openly glorifies their homelands; they just express the deep seeded love and respect felt by its inhabitants. They display the total irrelevance of foreign lands and foreign people, for in these territories people's lives revolve around each other and their personal affairs involved within the small confines of Poland and the south. What is so capturing to the reader in the works is the ability of both Margaret Mitchell and Adam Mickiewicz to show such immense nationalistic feelings while giving the reader a romantic storyline along with a historic recollection of the past.
The author, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the famous novelists in Russian literature and best known for two novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” Tolstoy’s realism of his fictions focus “chiefly on the outward physical aspects of human life” (Radley, 2013, p. 4). He is a master of the “psychophysical- that is the depiction of the inner selves of his characters through carefully honed descriptions of their physical being” (Radley, 2013, p. 4). His literature works vacillate between the “war and peace, moralism and neutrality” (Radley, 2013, p. 4). Even more than 180 years after his birth, Tolstoy remains “a vital force in world literature” (Radley, 2010, p. 4).
From Greek origins, storge can be defined as a natural affection between family, friends, and the community. This innate bond allows for understanding, compassion, and attachment between people. This concept of storge can be seen in Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness, as the teenage protagonist, Nomi Nickel, undertakes the responsibility of restoring her family and friend’s happiness and hopefulness through small acts of kindness. Ultimately, the force of storge influences Nomi and her family to rekindle the happiness of the citizens in the Mennonite community, which suggests the transition of the citizens’ characters from static to dynamic.
Using diary entries as his literary vehicle, Dostoyevsky takes us inside the minds of his characters in a way that makes us voyeurs because of his realistic portrayal and honest disclosure of human emotion and sentiments. The story revolves around Roulettenberg, a German spa town where the rich gamble. We get the inner life of Alexei as it is portrayed in his diaries. He is poor but educated, and he is very aware of his class in society. He is conflicted, however, because he both covets and ridicules the lifestyle of the aristocracy with all its pretensi...
The theme of wealth is much like a veil for A Doll's House and The Cherry Orchard. Although the audience may be inclined to believe that the lack of wealth is the main conflict, both plays refute this with their resolutions. Nora escapes from gender inequality, and Lopakhin destroys the only link to his serf heritage. Indeed, both Ibsen and Chekhov initially provided evidence that wealth is the dominant theme, but freedom was only achieved for Nora and Lopakhin by escaping from their respective social roles, a psychological freedom. This complies with the authors' original purposes - not to comment on wealth, but to promote feminism and examine Russia's class structure.
Vladimir and Estragon are the pinnacle of human indecisiveness - while vowing several times to leave their barren and lifeless surroundings, they dare not flinch or move a muscle lest they offend Godot or miss a promised appointment. Mired by vows and politeness, they take no action with deep meaning, nor do they change their surroundings with the clarion call of thier e...