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Theme of death and loss in literature
Theme of death and loss in literature
The Williams thesis
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“Goose Pond”, written by Thomas Williams seemingly is a novel about the tranquil rural life but intricately portrays the mind and state of a fifty-eight year old man who has just lost his wife. Having natural and peaceful aspects, the story itself is not about the simple rural life in the woods. It depicts how Robert Hurley began to deal and come to terms with his sudden loneliness and realization of his eventual death. Including both the realistic cruelty of life alone and the expectation readers would have from a novel—such like a Norman Rockwell painting; he keeps the readers indulged in the mind and heart of the lonesome Robert Hurley. Throughout the story, Williams incorporates aspects of the blissful nature; however, he also insures …show more content…
Williams includes as a foreshadowing, the sound of the Canada geese flying over and Robert realizes many details of the rural life he had forgotten he experienced when he was young. When he hears the geese, “he ran to the window—remembering an old excitement” and begins to “remember and wondered at the easy memories of his youth” (1667). By putting in details and traditions of the countryside lifestyle, Williams makes sures to indulge readers in the atmosphere of a Rockwell painting but never fails to include incidents of realism. With Robert increasingly remembering his childhood lifestyle, he is beginning to reassure himself that there is meaning to his life after the death he experienced. At the house he finds a bow and arrow where he was “surprised at his won excitement when he fitted the nock” (1667). After he experienced shooting the arrow, he sets out to buy more and fix the bow where he again, remembers old memories about how he had fallen in love with the objects in the store as a …show more content…
With the overwhelming detail, the readers are able to imagine the perfect replication of what Robert is seeing in the story and this allows for the detachment from reality. At the verge of the climax of the story, Robert sees a doe: “he was alone with the [it] in a green world that seemed to cru for rich red, and he did not have time to think; it was enough that he sensed the doe’s quick decision to leave him” and at that moment, “the arrow sliced through the deer” (1670) The killing of the deer is symbolically the main point in this short story as it is Robert’s psychological outburst with him trying to face his wife’s death and finally becoming content with
Robert’s bond with the animals starts prior to the war with the coyote in the beginning of the novel as he first discovers the harmlessness of nature and animals. Robert ran outside one night and saw a coyote; he thought
Throughout the book, it is shown that Robert has a special connection with animals and the environment. The many animals he encounters throughout the story are symbols which reflect on him and his actions. After Robert accidentally kills the German sniper who spared the life of him and his men, he feels guilty for taking an innocent life. This is reflected in nature by the bird which “sang and sang and sang, till Robert rose and walked away. The sound of it would haunt him to the day he died.” (Findley 131) This scene uses the readers’ knowledge of Robert’s deep emotional connections with animals to emphasize the sadness and guilt that he felt after shooting the German. Robert is often shown as innocent and caring, traits he shares with animals. Rodwell realizes this and draws a picture of Robert in his sketchbook (otherwise full of animal sketches), although “the shading was not quite human” (Findley 138). In the sketch, Rodwell is able to show both the human and non-human side of Robert. Finally, Robert’s strong love for Rowena, his sister, is mainly because of her innocence. As a result of her disability, she is innocent and naïve like a child or animal; she relies on Robert to be “her guardian” (Findley 10)....
“Why? Why? The girl gasped, as they lunged down the old deer trail. Behind them they could hear shots, and glass breaking as the men came to the bogged car” (Hood 414). It is at this precise moment Hood’s writing shows the granddaughter’s depletion of her naïve nature, becoming aware of the brutality of the world around her and that it will influence her future. Continuing, Hood doesn’t stop with the men destroying the car; Hood elucidated the plight of the two women; describing how the man shot a fish and continued shooting the fish until it sank, outlining the malicious nature of the pair and their disregard for life and how the granddaughter was the fish had it not been for the grandmother’s past influencing how she lived her life. In that moment, the granddaughter becomes aware of the burden she will bear and how it has influenced her life.
E.B. White's way of letting the reader know that the father is in a way depressed, is through great detail and description. The story mentions how the lake has changes since the father had seen it last. How the once gravel roads have been paved over, and the sail boats are now replaced with boats with outboard motors. As the reader, one can sense a...
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
Throughout the book, Robert develops a bond with the animals as he lacks connections with the everyday people in his life. Robert’s natural instinct to save but failure to do so is portrayed with horses: “I’m going to break ranks and save ...
Throughout T. C. Boyle’s work, “Greasy Lake”, a young man’s intrepid night leads him to discover how close death is to life. This realization causes a sombre awakening for the narrator as he falls in the midst of fatality; and practically becomes a casualty himself. Following each traumatic event, the narrator’s innocence disappears and morality is called into question. When death fast approaches, and the grim reaper is breathing down his neck, the narrator subsequently realizes his mistakes, but not before it’s almost too late.
(M.S. 5) Dillard and the other tourists watch a feeble deer struggle to escape from a trap. In her narrative, Dillard depicts the deer’s suffering, “The rope twanged; the tree leaves clattered; the deer’s free foot beat the ground” (Dillard, 1982, p.99). Dillard precisely structures the sentence for a verb to follow each noun such as, ‘the rope’, ‘the tree’, and ‘the deer’. The verbs following each noun, separated by a semicolon, includes, ‘twanged;’ ‘clattered;’ and ‘beats.’ This sentence structure decelerates the flow of the passage; therefore, stressing the deer’s slow, long, and painful suffering. Dillard continues to emphasize the deer’s agony to portray her awareness of its suffering. Dillard recalls, “Its hip jerked; its spine shook. Its eyes rolled; ...” (Dillard, 1982, p.99). Dillard’s parallel sentence structure begins by referring to the subject as ‘its’ and ends each sentence predicate with a verb such as, ‘jerked’, ‘shook’, and ‘rolled’. Dillard’s repetition of the subject intensifies the misery the deer experiences. Dillard’s description of the deer also leads to her confusion regarding the unpredictably of suffering; because the deer’s anguish contrasts her comfortable, yet vulnerable
Whitney introduces the secondary theme, being that hunters usually have no empathy for their prey. This is one of the first uses of irony in the story. Metaphors and Similes are often used in this story, so the reader has a better image of the setting, this is something, and I find Connell did incredibly well, for instance when he refers to the darkness of the night as moist black velvet, the sea was as flat as a plate-glass and it was like trying to see through a blanket. Rainsford begins his epic struggle for survival after falling overboard when he recklessly stood on the guard rail, this is our first example of how Rainsford manages to conquer his panic and think analytically and there by ensuring his survival.
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.
Since its first appearance in the 1886 collection A White Heron and Other Stories, the short story A White Heron has become the most favorite and often anthologized of Sarah Orne Jewett. Like most of this regionalist writer's works, A White Heron was inspired by the people and landscapes in rural New England, where, as a little girl, she often accompanied her doctor father on his visiting patients. The story is about a nine-year-old girl who falls in love with a bird hunter but does not tell him the white heron's place because her love of nature is much greater. In this story, the author presents a conflict between femininity and masculinity by juxtaposing Sylvia, who has a peaceful life in country, to a hunter from town, which implies her discontent with the modernization?s threat to the nature. Unlike female and male, which can describe animals, femininity and masculinity are personal and human.
“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.
In A White Heron , the author, Sarah Orne Jewett, describes a young girl who interacts with a number of elements that cause her to discover who she is and what she stands for. Sylvia, being only nine years old and coming from a large family from the demanding city life , is moved to her grandmother’s remote farm where she finds herself to be comfortably isolated from the rest of the world. This, in fact, suits her lack of social ability, and so she finds herself becoming one with nature: both the plants and animals. When a young hunter, with whom she comes to admire greatly, comes along and tries to destroy apart of ‘her’, she finds herself in a conflicting position. Sarah Jewett’s writings had mainly avoided romantic topics by producing stories about people who use logic and independence over romantic inclinations. The author, Sarah Orne Jewett works to discern this sentimentality throughout this short story by using elements such as theme, internal conflict, and realism.
The death of a close relative, especially a new born child, is a very terrible life event that tragically affects parents. Grief and desperation preoccupies parent's souls and it takes a long time to recover from such a loss. However, communication between the couple is very important factor that stabilizes the relationship. If this factor is missing in a couple's relationship they will not be able to recover from this tragedy, and it will have further negative effects such as separation and stress. The poem, "Home Burial", is a clear example of how the couple could not recover from the loss of their child due to the lack of communication. In spite of the fact that the characters in the poem are imaginary people, Robert Frost portrayed his personal life events in those character's lives. The unexpected death of a child can lead to a brake up in the family, especially if there is miscommunication between the couple. "Home Burial" illustrates a husband and wife who are unable to talk to each other. It shows details about men's and women's points of view. The characters in the poem will get divorced due to conflicts and difficulties in their relationship.
In numerous pieces of literature in the world today, characters often experience times of loneliness which result in a variety of different scenarios such as insanity, intense self-development and burdensome times of hardship. The works Brave New World, The Life of Pi, Raise the Red Lantern and Gravity are prime examples of films and novels that portray the motif of solitude through a single character within each work. Character’s coping with isolation from others evidently serve to intensify conflict within each work and, also to enhance the overall meaning of the story as well; hence, each narrator portrays loneliness as a contributing factor to psychological issues in these characters.