In both the novel - The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the film - The Railway Man, the compositional feature of intertextuality is used in the scenes regarding the beating of Darky Gardiner, and the beating of Eric Lomax. During the description of Darky Gardiner’s beating, Flanagan writes, “Blow after blow – on the monster’s face, a monster’s mask” (297). This quote is derived from one of Basho’s poems, The Monkey’s Mask; “Year after year – on the monkey’s face, a monkey’s mask” (Ueda, 351). The POWs see the Goanna as a monster, which they know will punish them if they step out of line, but in truth, they actually see a monster’s mask, which the Goanna has put on. The Goanna may not actually be a monster, but he knows that he has to wear …show more content…
this mask so that the POWs will follow his orders. The Railway Man uses intertextuality to promote a different idea, one of hope and courage. While Eric Lomax is being beaten by a Japanese officer for building the radio, the POW doctor recites Psalm 23, from the Bible,
“though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me, thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” (Railway Man, 50:14-50:43). The POW doctor refers to the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ as the death railway. Even in the midst of extreme suffering, such as Eric being beaten right in front of him, the doctor does not fear the Japanese officer, for he knows that as long as they trust God, God will protect them and help them to survive the war. Intertextuality as a compositional feature brings forward the idea of the Goanna trying to imitate something he is not, which is successfully strengthened from pages 295-299, but does not appear later on, therefore not being successful in the context of the whole text. Where the idea of hope and courage, is all throughout The Railway Man, making is successful throughout the film. The idea of helplessness is prominent through the characterisation of the POWs in both The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and The Railway Man.
In Flanagan’s novel, the idea of helplessness is portrayed through Dorrigo Evans towards the end of Darky Gardiner’s beating scene. Dorrigo ran up through the already helplessly watching POWs, to the Japanese officers around Darky, “Stepping out of line, Dorrigo Evans pleaded with the Japanese officers to stop the punishment. Some men noticed how Nakamura bowed slightly, respectfully acknowledging the colonel’s superior rank […] They heard him say: This man is severely ill. He needs rest and medicine, not a beating. And, behind him, the beating went on” (Flanagan, 299). The POWs could now see that all hope of saving Darky was lost. Dorrigo was the prisoner with the most respect from the Japanese, as shown by Nakamura bowing to Dorrigo, but even Dorrigo could not persuade the Japanese to stop beating Darky. Dorrigo had only confirmed the POWs feeling of helplessness, making watching Darky’s beating even harder. Susan Lever describes it
as, “The brutality comes to a climax in the beating and death of Darky Gardiner, which takes place with each bystander and perpetrator locked into a sense of his own impotence against circumstance” (1). The Railway Man demonstrates the idea of helplessness in a different manner, through the faces and bodies of the by-standing POWs. This is shown firstly at 49:43 of the film. The camera switches to a close up shot of three POWs, watching Eric’s beating. Their faces show fear, as well as sadness. The POW on the left of the three looks down, his face showing helplessness, realising that there is nothing they can do to help Eric, who sacrificed himself so that no one else would get punished for the radio. The next scene of the POWs at 50:04 backs this idea of helplessness further, showing the weak and scrawny prisoners, watching on, knowing that there is nothing they can do since they are too weak to help themselves, let alone to fight a Japanese officer. The characterisation of the POWs brings the idea of helplessness successfully throughout the whole of the film and the novel, making it quite a prominent theme.
...ir eyes off of the naked women dancing. The outbursts towards the black men is farther evidence that during that time, blacks had little to no say and had not felt equal to their white counterparts. Perhaps the most conspicuous symbol of all is the battle itself. The white men pitted a group of black men against each other; the black men were in a no win situation. Instead of expressing their displeasure with the white men, the black men were forced to take their anger out on each other. The narrator also seems to seek approval by the white men; remembering his speech as he fights the other men. According to the protagonist: Should I try to win against the voice out there? Would not this go against my speech, and was not this a moment for humility, for nonresistance?” ( ). He’s worried about defying the white men; letting them down by not performing well enough.
In this passage of the novel “I am Legend’, by Richard Matheson is emphasizing Robert Neville’s feelings when he was being dragged out by a man. Matheson uses a variety of rhetorical devices to describe the fear of the main character Robert Neville For instance the first chunk of the passage Richard Matheson operates a series of rhetorical devices to emphasize Robert Neville’s feelings such as , visual imagery and simile in line 1-3 from (He-Eyes) and more visual imagery on lines 4-5 (Robert-arm).Richard Matheson employs simile and visual imagery in a discrete manner and emphasizes that man’s skin to that “clammy turkey skin” and the visual imagery “red-splotched checks, the feverish eyes, “to highlight that Robert Neville is scared of the
“The noise was so terrific, and the concussion so great that I was thrown to the ground and had no idea where the damage was. I flew through the chest and abdo wards and called out: ‘are you alright boys?’ ‘don’t bother about us’ was the general cry.”
In January 1965, Caputo, now an officer, is sent to Okinawa, Japan with men in the Third Marine Division. While waiting for the call to join the war, the young men start getting antsy and discouraged by the long delay of battle. Two months later, on March 7, 1965, Caputo’s company, along with many others, are assigned to a war location, D...
Throughout “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, Doodle is met with kindness and cruelty when interacting with his brother. The shifting attitude of Doodle’s brother is a wonderful example of the shifting emotions of the people around the world. Just like Doodle’s brother, people are happy, sad, jealous, prideful, angry, cruel, and kind. Although times and circumstances may change, people can’t live without their
On the night of March 5th, it is believed that a small group of boys began taunting a British soldier. Over the boys’ nonsense, the soldier battered one of his oppressors with his musket. Soon after the alleged incident a crowd of about fifty or sixty people surrounded the frightened solider. The enraged crowd of people sounded the soldier, encouraging him to call for backup. Soon after calling for help, seven soldiers along with Captain Preston...
In Night, he informs his reader of many examples on how a myriad of good people turn into brutes. They see horrific actions, therefore, they cannot help by becoming a brute. They experience their innocent family members being burned alive, innocent people dieing from starvation due to a minuscule proportion of food, and innocent people going to take a shower and not coming out because truly, it is a gas chamber and all f...
The readings “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving and The Monster by Stephen Crane are to amazing readings. However, these two texts represent violence and conflicts in different ways, which shows that although they have the same concept their tactic for this same concept is used in a different approach.
The second prisoner was a young boy who was being hanged for the fact that he stole weapons during a power failure. The significance of this particular hanging was the young boy’s lack of rebellion, his quiet fear and the unbearable duration of his torment. The boy had lost all hope and was one of the only victims who wept at the knowledge of their demise. What made this case different from the rest was not only his youth, but also his silence, and emotion and the fact that it took a half an hour for him to die, as a result of the lightness of his young body. Even though he was constantly tortured and provoked by the guards before he was hanged, he still said nothing, unlike the two people who joined him, who both shouted in defiance. His quiet courage really stood out as an unspoken and unannounced rebellion not only for the Jews, but it showed the doubts that some of the guards began to have. “This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner.” Although this quote is one sentence it still shows the effect the boy had on everyone in the camp. Even though the prisoners had been living with the constant presence of death, the execution of this young boy made them feel emotion they believed they had lost forever. This death was an unsaid act of rebellion in the sense that it showed the audience that there was indeed still some sensitivity left no matter how much both the prisoners and the guards were dehumanized: the prisoners as merely a number, and the guards as ruthless
William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can...
...h narrators see more horror than they could imagine was possible. Each day is quite likely to be their last and they are under no illusions what sort of horrific death could be lurking over the top of the next attack.
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. “Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan.” Taking Sides: Clashing View in United States History. Ed. Larry Madaras & James SoRelle. 15th ed. New York, NY. 2012. 289-298.
After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the war.
The detailed descriptions of the dead man’s body show the terrible costs of the war in a physical aspect. O’Brien’s guilt almost takes on its own rhythm in the repetition of ideas, phrases, and observations about the man’s body. Some of the ideas here, especially the notion of the victim being a “slim, young, dainty man,” help emphasize O’Brien’s fixation on the effects of his action—that he killed someone who was innocent and not meant to be fighting in the war. At the same time, his focus on these physical characteristics, rather than on his own feelings, betrays his attempt to keep some distance in order to dull the pain. The long, unending sentences force the reader to read the deta...
... the reader using the familiar and comforting phrase and then immediately hammering home the gruesome truths of the conflict. By creating this intentional disparity, Owen’s aim of shocking the reader into believing and accepting his viewpoint is very much closer to being achieved.