Writing is powerful. Donald Murray, the author of the Stranger in the Photo is Me, utilizes the strength words provide to make his past come alive vibrantly. Through selective language and image, he paints a picture so vivid, everything he expresses comes to life. Right from the start, Murray starts with diction that packs a punch. He strikes emotionally by mentioning that he finds himself looking more and more at photographs and wanting to “snatch a moment of time”, and by saying this, he’s expressing that time is limited and that he misses the past. Throughout the first page of his work, he repeats over and over how he hardly remembers what has happened, and how it is like a phantom to him. This diction sets the scene for his major point
of his essay: photographs only capture who we once were, not who we are now. Words such as “haunts” and “stranger self” show he is not the man staring back at him in the photo albums. The diction expresses his loss of innocence ,which he wants back. “I was so eager to experience the combat my father wanted so much for me.” “Was” is the essential word, it shows only in the past was he so enthusiastic about the war. Diction is only the foundation, though. Murray’s diction was used more as a mood setting for his past. Imagery is what he really utilizes to show what his past was. Murray favours imagery that appeals visually. He makes his story a painting. Throughout one can see what he means over anything else. “My overseas cap with its airborne insignia is tugged down over my right eye...I have my hand in my pocket in rakish disregard for the regulation…”
In “The Stranger”, the protagonist, Monsieur Meursault, is characterized as cold, uncaring, and emotionally detached. Throughout the novel, Meursault expresses no emotions toward the death of his very own mother, the proposed marriage between the woman, Marie Cardona, who became his lover, and to the actual murder of a man he didn’t know. While the jury at his trial sees him guilty because his uncommon and disassociated demeanor shows that he willfully intended to murder the Arab on the beach, a variety of psychologists would instead diagnose Meursault with Major Depressive Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome in order to characterize his indifferent thought patterns. If Meursault is suffering from Major Depressive Disorder, he is unable to function as a normal person would which ultimately leads the jury to believe that he is actually a cold blooded killer. Antisocial Personality disorder, like Major Depressive Disorder, causes Meursault to communicate a disregard for the lives of others and lacks remorse when he harms and even kills the Arab.
Peter Wollen begins his essay “Fire and Ice” by saying that “Photographs appear as devices for stopping time and preserving fragments of the past, like flies in amber.” This is true about the photographs described in Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. Photography becomes the protagonist, Geryon’s, world once his lover Herakles breaks up with him. The photographs he takes represents
The author was emphasizing that time is of the essence and how you can not repeat the past no matter what is said or done. Also, the book's main characters were very wealthy and sometimes took that for granted. I believe the novel was written to suggest that the aspiration to become wealthy in America was in reality, not as great as people imagined it to be. In this way, it is a novel of disillusionment.
As he begins to understand the people in his life and their actions, Jack learns that one can rarely make sense of an event until that event has become a part of the past, to be reconstructed and eventually understood in memory. T.S. Eliot expresses this idea in “The Dry Salvages”: “We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form, beyond any meaning / We can assign to happiness" (194). Only by deliberately recalling the past can one understand the metaphysical and spiritual significance of his experiences. For this reason, Jack cannot make sense of the fateful day of Willie Stark’s murder until “long after…when I had been able to gather the pieces of the puzzle up and put them together to see the pattern" (Warren 407). The pattern of the past reveals the pattern of fallen human nature, thus opening man’s eyes to his own folly and enabling him to grow in wisdom.
In some moments watching a few of the episodes included in the series, If You Really Knew Me was a little tear jerking. There are several themes present throughout. One of the themes present is forgiveness, a specific example of this was in episode “102: Anthony Wayne High School,” there were two best friends, Emily and Karlee. In the end of the episode they have forgiven each other. Bullying is a huge theme throughout each episode, in episode “102 Anthony Wayne High School” cyberbullying is a huge problem. There is even a motto, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it online.” It spreads fast like wild fire. There are even students who partook in Challenge Day at their school that were classified as Bullies. There was Aaron from Anthony Wayne High school and Stephanie from The Denver School
Williams’ begins the article “Here I Am Taking My Own Picture” with a description of a young female college student who is taking her own photo for her social media page. She tries out several poses in her pictures. Instead of taking the photos in front a mirror the woman takes the photos in front of a webcam. Williams leads out of the
The Stranger by Albert Camus is a story of a sequence of events in one man's life that cause him to question the nature of the universe and his position in it. The book is written in two parts and each part seems to reflect in large degree the actions occurring in the other. There are curious parallels throughout the two parts that seem to indicate the emotional state of Meursault, the protagonist, and his view of the world.
...rm the other’s story. This does not, however, mean that they are considered equal. Memory can be seen as slightly privileged over memory. When Art learns of the destruction of his mother’s diary he responds by calling his father a “murderer”. The use of exclamatory punctuation and spiked speech bubble conveys the anger and shock over the destruction of memories. The validity of memory is also never discussed as dates given for memories are never confirmed but assumed to be true. On the other hand, history is shown as unreliable. Valdek remarks that after the end of the war he “passed once a photo place what had a camp uniform – a new and clean one – to make souvenir photos.” The actual photo is used in the book as historical documentation. This show how history can be perverted as photos are seen as objective and historical but this photograph is clearly staged.
..., the broader feel of the scene. He wants us to take in the entirety of the painting but have a moment to catch the individual scenes within it, like the couple dancing, the man in the corner rolling his cigar, or the women in the front talking to the man. We do get places where our eyes can rest, but in general your eye takes in the swirl of modern life and pleasure.
'Why, of course you can!”(Fitzgerald 111). This shows that he has been completely disconnected from reality and lives in a mindset separate from his common peers. His thought of completely making everything like is was in the past shows the he doesn't recognize the past 5 years of memories as something that cannot be forgotten.
...r that past, when my face was perfect, and when the wind would lift my hair so that it looked like the soft under-feathers of a bird’s wings. I remember when women turned on the streets to smile at me, wondering what it might be like to own my beauty for even one shining moment.” (Davidson, 17) A very detailed description is used simply to describe how the man’s face used to look; giving the reader a perfect opportunity to depict a mental image in their mind of what he may actually have looked like. Davidson never ceases to use fine attention to details throughout the entirety of the novel, and through doing this gives the reader a beautiful mental image of every character mentioned. Creating characters through detailed characteristics and lifelike personalities make relating to the characters more plausible and makes the reader want to learn of their fate.
As we humans go through out life, we are forced to interact in a world full of people. We quite often speak and do business with complete strangers and don’t give a second thought about what they did or said in that exchange of pleasantries. There are many stories such as Merimee’s Mateo Falcone, Street’s Grains of Paradise, and Tunis’s His Enemy, His Friend that focus on these brief encounters and how it can affect one’s feelings, thoughts, and ultimately actions. I believe that short and concise interactions with complete strangers can affect how a person thinks and acts.
The essence of a stranger is a person who one has no direct connection with and is essentially strange for that person to induce any sort of personal interaction. Toni Morrison introduces a fisherwoman who she does not know by encountering her personally. This woman is a stranger to her and Morrison breaks down the boundaries of estranging people solely for not knowing who they are in this essay. Since no one else can recollect the existence of the Fisherwoman the actual existence of the fisherwoman is questioned. Despite the fact that this woman may look very similar looking to the individuals captured in Robert Bergman’s photos, Morrison is able to give the fisherwoman a personality and we can compare her to Bergman’s photos.
Within the Stranger, Albert Camus brought up many questions and a few answers. He created an outsider to society and showed us how he lived, Meursault.
Existentialism is defined as "a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will”. In other words, existentialism it emphasizes individual freedom. Throughout The Stranger, the amount of existentialism views is abundant. The use of Mersault’s experiences covey the idea that human life has no meaning except for simple existence. The idea of existentialism in Albert Camus' The Stranger reflects through Mersault's life experiences with his relationship with Marie, the death of his mother Maman, the murdering of the Arab, and Mersault's trial and execution, all these events show that Mersault’s life of no meaning.