In Joyce Carol Oates’s short story, “Heat”, the author is showing the reality of violence through the time period of the story. The story is two girls, Rhea and Rhoda, who torment the other children in their county in various ways and eventually end up getting hurt. I will look at the theme of power, the theme of revenge, and the theme of fate to prove that the author is showing the reality of violence.
The theme of power plays a significant role throughout the short story. In the case with Rhea and Rhoda, power is shown through the ways that the twins had power over everybody around them, as in the quote “They were eleven years old; they were identical twins; they basked in their power” (Oates 213). Rhea and Rhoda were inseparable, and together,
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they were almost invincible. The twins had power and they knew it; they took advantage of other people and made them do things that they knew were wrong. Still, their exhibitions of power made others jealous of them and the way that they could control all of the people around them just by laughing and having fun. Even when they were doing normal, everyday activities, such as riding their bikes and standing in line, the twins were always the center of attention. Though they seemed to be one person, they still had the power of two, as is shown in the quote: “Once they made me strip off my clothes where we’d crawled under the Kunkels’ veranda. …. Rhea said all of a sudden, Strip! And Rhoda said at once, Strip! Come on! So it happened” (Oates, 217). This is significant because all they have to do is say the same thing and can make anybody do anything that they want. They also only made her strip because they again knew they had power over her; “This is to show our power over you, they said” (Oates 217). They love showing their power because they both like having that feeling that they know they can control people no matter what the circumstance is. Even though the twins were very powerful over their friends and their community they eventually had that power taken away by another person who gained power.
“…then Roger Whipple was saying he had some secret things that belonged to his brother… Roger Whipple said he could only take one of them upstairs to his room at a time…” (Oates 220). They loved having power and they could not be separated at all until one person got them alone and separated them, which is when they lost their power and paid a deadly consequence. “If one didn’t know exactly where the other was that one could die. Or the other could die. Or both” (Oates 219). This is significant to the author’s main point throughout the story because the reality of violence is that powerful things must come to an end.
The theme of revenge also plays a very important role throughout the short story because many times people want to get back at the ones who hurt them. Revenge was an ongoing subject within the story for many reasons, one being that they stole from their grandmother and it may not necessarily be their grandmother getting revenge on them, but it could be the world around them getting its revenge. “Death was coming for them, but they didn’t know” (Oates 214). Even though nobody knew that their deaths were going to happen, they eventually were going to die because of how mean and powerful they
were. When the twins died, they were both buried in a cemetery behind the First Methodist church. “He died there,…and was brought back home to be buried – the body of him,…Rhea and Rhoda Kunkel were buried in the same cemetery, the First Methodist” (Oates 214). Having their own killer buried in the same cemetery as them is the ultimate revenge because their bodies will forever be together and many people will not be able to escape the reality of what had happened to them. Rhea and Rhoda’s father also wanted revenge on his daughters’ killer because he thought it wasn’t fair that his babies had gotten taken away from him so soon. “… saying he would kill anybody he could get his hands on: the old man, the brothers. They were all responsible, he said; his little girls were dead” (Oates 218). This type of revenge just shows how the world around the author truly was when she was writing this novel. When violence occurs people are more likely to create just as much violence because of what had been taken from them. The third theme that is evident throughout the short story is the theme of fate. In today’s world, people want to believe that it is fate that determines their direction in life. In this story, however, it was fate that got to Rhea and Rhoda in the end. “Because death was coming for them; it had to happen one way or another. If you believe in God you believe that. And if you don’t believe in God it’s obvious” (Oates 218). Whether it is the fate of god or not, the twins were going to die and someone was going to pay for their death. Perhaps their fate could have been in their own hands for a while, but on this particular day, they decided to steal from their grandmother. “Did it mean anything special, or was it just an accident Rhea and Rhoda had taken six dollars from their grandmother an hour before?” (Oates 218). By raising this question, the author shows the belief that your fate follows the steps that you take in life, and that when you choose to do something bad, it is the negative powers of fate that are headed toward them. Through this, the author leads the reader to believe that because of all of the bad things that they had done, the twins were going to die, no matter how it happened. Oates also states: “When death comes for you, you sometimes know and sometimes don’t” (Oates, 216). Although the narrator never directly says that the girls were going to die in a violent way, statements throughout the short story, and stories that they told seemed to point toward some sort of violent death for the girls. In one account, the narrator says: “And there was a dead dog there, a collie with beautiful fur, but his eyes were gone from the sockets and the maggots had got him where somebody tried to lift him with their foot, and when Rhea and Rhoda saw they screamed a single scream and hid their eyes” (Oates, 217). This tale shows that the girls were afraid of death itself, and maybe even knew that they would be facing it sometime soon, from their terrified reactions. Fate is also a theme in the story when it comes to Roger Whipple. To describe the way that Mr. Whipple had raised Roger, the narrator states: “Not letting the creature know he has any power to be himself exactly. Not giving him the opportunity to test his will” (Oates, 216). From this statement, one can assume that Roger had little opportunity to do anything but work, and so it was practically inevitable that he would rebel and act out in some way. In fact, it seems to be almost fate that he chose to kill the girls, as they liked to tease him and never took him seriously. Roger also reached his own violent fate in the end, when he seemed to wither away and eventually die in the mental institution that he had been placed in. Even though many times fate played a huge role in how the girls and Roger’s lives had ended, fate is very relevant in the time that the author was writing this story. This is shown because many people had to die in the most violent of ways whether it be there fate of not. Violence played a huge part in the author’s life while writing this short story and it shows within the work. The theme of power plays a role within the entire story because when people have to much power many others get upset with what those people have and they want so they decide to get violent to get what they want or think they deserve. The theme of revenge also plays a huge role in the way violence is portrayed in this story because if people did not want revenge then there would not be this much violence in the world but no matter what happens to someone people will always want revenge. And finally, the theme of fate has a huge role in the portrayal of violence throughout the story because some people think it is their fate to have the power that they do not have and do not need and they decide to take what is their right.
The short stories the Veldt and All Summer in a Day both introduce the idea that letting hatred and desire take over can lead people to do terrible things. This theme is true to both stories but the way that the characters are affected varies in each. Not only are they affected in a different way, but they also play different roles in the stories. The Veldt puts more of a focus on the antagonists of the story. On the other hand, All summer in a Day targets the protagonist. But despite this difference, a familiar theme can be found all throughout the storis when looking deep enough.
Ugur, Neslihan Guler. "Self-destructive forces in Oates' women." Studies in Literature and Language 4.3 (2012): 35+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Violent scenes always have an important meaning in literary works. They could serve different purposes that either benefit or harm the characters. Often times it serves as both as it usually benefit the good ones and harms the enemy. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, shows various scenes of violence from McMurphy toward Nurse Ratched, depicting how McMurphy often breaks her control and gives the other inmates a sense of freedom.
Through vivid yet subtle symbols, the author weaves a complex web with which to showcase the narrator's oppressive upbringing. Two literary
The story “Royal Beatings” is a beautiful representation of a young girl’s view of the world around her. Munro uses vivid details to create a story and characters that feel real. She draws the reader in and allows the reader to understand Rose through her poignant words about her life. Then, in the end, enables the reader to make the connections that Rose perhaps misses. “Royal Beatings” is not about any particular moment in Rose’s life or any certain action related to the reader. The story is, in fact, not about plot at all. It is instead about creating characters with a sense of verisimilitude and humanity while revealing “all their helplessness and rage and rancor.”
be a young woman. Most importantly Oates shows the human tendency to be independent at times and at others dependent. Each character won and lost a battle, expressing the human complexity of sometimes being able to be strong but then at other times weak. This shows that in a mother and daughter relationship each is needed for the other person because each person needs someone to be strong.
Revenge is a reoccurring theme throughout the Odyssey. Nearly every motivation for conflict within the Odyssey is because one of the characters is craving revenge. The three main areas of revenge in the first twelve books are as follows. Initially, Zeus prevents Odysseus and his men from returning home. Poseidon also continually chastises Odysseus throughout the entire story. Finally, the key account of revenge the reader sees in the story is from Telemachus in that he feels the need to make the suitors compensate for their impudence to his house as well as his mother. Therefore, each of the characters in the story is put through many hardships which pushes them to seek revenge.
The author I choose for my first journal entry is Joyce Carol Oates. After the several short stories and poems I have read over the last couple of weeks, Oates’s work has stood out and stuck with me. Oates biography connects to her work in several ways. She has published more than one hundred works, and her stories cover a multitude of topics such as domestic violence and daily life. ( 792-793; vol 2) After numerous inquiries as to why Oates’s work is so violent, Oates’s published an article in The New York Times in 1981 stating, “When I point out that, in fact, my writing isn’t usually explicitly violent but deals, most of the time, with the phenomenon of violence and its aftermath, in ways not unlike those of the Greek Dramatists; when I point out that, in any case, writing is language and, in a very important sense, is more “about” language than “about” a subject- the interviewer will not nod, and take notes, and inquire about my childhood: Was it tragic? Have you been frightened by life?” (Oates, “Why Is Your Writing So Violent).
Traditions demonstrate a set of social norms that have been followed and adapted to for an elongated amount of time. In each of the plots, Medea, The Piano, and The Age of Innocence, the standard set by society was broken and the consequences imposed took form in varying degrees and shapes of violence. Whether it was outright murder as in Medea, or a more subtle but intense struggle as in The Age of Innocence, these consequences serve as the community's opinion of this breach of its expectations for its members.
While reading and analyzing the play of Hamlet it is very clear all of the different themes and lessons Shakespeare is trying to develop. Throughout the story many themes stand out but the biggest one is that revengeful actions never have the best outcome. Shakespeare builds and works on that theme for the duration of the play and that makes this play a revenge tragedy. It is a revenge tragedy because revenge is the most established theme in Hamlet and most of the characters are involved with some type of revenge. Shakespeare enforces this idea by having Hamlet deal with three different revenge stories, all having to do with a son avenging his father. First there is hamlet wanting revenge on Claudius, then Laertes wants revenge on hamlet and last Fortinbras wants revenge on all of Denmark. These three stories all develop and produce the major theme of revengeful actions never having the best outcomes.
Oates surprised many readers when she wrote from a man’s perspective, but she still wrote a great story. In What I Lived For her main focus was conflict. The reader was hooked from the beginning and kept interest as the scandalous story developed. These conflicts contributed to, not only the reader’s interest, but also the novel’s plot and theme.
Revenge is such an enormous part of a being human. It is something that no matter how much you try to avoid part of you will persistently lust for it. When you are hurt in any way your natural instinct will always tell you to make the one who hurt you feel just as bad if not worse as how you felt. It is such a natural and powerful feeling, that when revenge is incorporated into a story it makes it so much stronger. Revenge will make you see so many more sides of characters and make them seem much more complex. Revenge can give fictional characters a more human quality. That is why so many writers use it as their theme.
The theme of revenge is found in both the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. Abigail Williams is seeking revenge on Elizabeth Proctor, and Roger Chillingworth wants the blood of the person that has been with Hester Prynne. These Characters do evil things to people in order to get what they want. Both characters end up losing and neither of them get what they want.
Enmity towards one another often results in brutality and, conclusively, homicide. This issue is depicted several times in literature and in real life. The brutality in fiction and reality demonstrates that violence and bloodshed never culminate into virtuous outcomes. This recurring theme is prominent within the works of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and To Kill a Mockingbird; it is even prevalent in real life circumstances, under the recent Charlottesville flash mob. These situations, fictitious or not, all contain violent acts that do not end in morally good results.
Vengeance is considered to be an eye for an eye. One man takes another man’s father’s life, and then it only seems in reason that they should repay them back by killing their father’s murderer. Each son had killed in anger and emotion that was left unsolved and leaving all but one character Prince of Norway dead. The characters acted out blindly throughout the play and it ended in tragedy. After the death of multiple characters the readers will have a lesson learned that vengeance does not end in triumph.