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Character analysis: Love in the Ruins
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Utopian Visions in Love in the Ruins Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins presents a society that is a direct satire of our 21st century American society. Percy takes what he considers the negative elements and situations from our society, and reproduces them, distorting them in order to point out the negativity of them. It seems, then, that the society presented in the novel would be distinctly distopian. However, the view that Percy gives us includes many different segments and views of the society, some of which are very utopian. Some of these mini-utopias are actually in the society, but many more are only dreams of the characters. This is an accurate reflection of our society; there are many situations that are utopian for certain people, and every one of us creates utopia in our minds from time to time. Paradise Estates, where Thomas More lives, is aptly named. Paradise is a place where everyone gets along well, the liberals and conservatives, the unbelievers and Christians, the Northerners and Southerners. The distribution is not even, there are minorities, but the majority groups are open to the customs of the minorities. Paradise Estates is community at its best. It is not an intentional community, but rather everyone is free to do what they want and there is love and respect and little argument. Intentional community does have its place, however. The Honey Island Swamp is home to a variety of people, including guerrillas, college dropouts, draft dodgers, radicals, and beats. Some of these people, such as Chuck, came from the town, and have given up city, home, family, career, and religion to live in an intentional community. Chuck's community is different from the community of Paradise estates in that there is common ground that holds the community in place, rather than respect for differences. Chuck's community holds ideals of free love, freedom, peace, and God expressed everywhere. This community is very similar to many of the contemporary utopias that can be found in America today. Normally hospitals are not utopian, but this was not the case for More. More considered his time in the hospital to be "the best months of my life" (p. 90). In his fellow patients, More found love that he was not finding in his life outside of the hospital. Also, while in the hospital, he had the time and resources to do the breakthrough work for his lapsometer, which was his passion at the time. The hospital for More was a place where he could do something he loved all the time, and receive love and acceptance from the people around him. More, however, had many, many different visions of Utopia throughout the novel. For example, on page 288: "What does a man live for but to have a girl, use his mind, practice his trade, drink a drink, read a book, and watch the martins wing it for the Amazon and the three-fingered sassafras turn red in October." Indeed, these ideals made up the basis of his more specific visions. Room 203 in the Howard Johnson motel became the setting in these visions, and More actually made significant progress with the room, attempting to turn his visions into reality. Many of More's visions focused around Lola, the cellist he was in love with. These visions include various elements, such as listening to Lola play her cello, drinking, working in the garden, working on his lapsometer day and night, and being a happy man. More also envisions a utopia including Moira, another woman he is in love with. This vision more directly relates to the motel room, since Moira was the woman he was originally planning to stay there with. This utopian vision includes all of the necessities needed to live for months with love, music, and reading. Whether or not these situations are actually utopias is debatable. They share key elements with the euthanasia of the Happy Isles: being happy all of the time, and never accomplishing anything aside from personal satisfaction. In the epilogue, we find that, five years later, More has indeed made a utopian life a reality. However, the utopia is unlike any of his visions. It includes Ellen, the third woman he loved, but he did not have any specific visions that included Ellen. He is married and has children, and still works at his medical profession. He is poor, but he has more time for thinking. He has quit drinking, and includes jogging in his daily regime. Earlier in the book, we found out that More would prefer fornication to a serious relationship, and that he does not feel any guilt for his sins. Here, he is devoted to his wife, and is finally forgiven from his sins when he feels guilt. More's utopia was completely unexpected by him as little as five years ago. He always had utopian visions, but the utopia that was reality was different. It is important to keep visions of utopia in our minds. They give us hope and something to work toward. Even if we never reach the utopia we dream of, it can put us in the right direction for improving our lives.
His favorite place during his childhood besides the basketball courts was the library. The library ended up being his favorite place because he couldn't believe that one of the things he enjoyed most to do, which was sit in a place and read all he wanted was free.
In high school, Disney took photography and drawing classes and at night he went to classes at The Chicago Art Institute. Disney quit high school when he was 16, joining the Red Cross and going to France to drive an ambulance. He stayed in France for a year and when he returned to the United States his brother, Roy, got him a job at an art studio. He left the art studio for a job at the Kansas City Film Ad Company where he learned to use cutout animation to make commercials. Considering all of his talents, Disney made the decision to open his own animation business (Biography.com)
When Walt was a child, drawing came very natural to him. As he grew up so did his ability to draw vivid pictures. When he w...
Born on December 5th, 1901, Walter Elias Disney, grew up in Chicago, Illinois with his parents and four other brothers and sister. His father, Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, whom he inherited his name from, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, who was of German-American descent. They raised him in Chicago until they day they moved to Marceline, Missouri. Walter Disney spent his younger years taking an interest in art classes and writing activities and also the scenery around him. His family farm was placed in the countryside, near the Santa Fe Railroad tracks. Walter enjoyed his time spent outside listening to the trains pass by. It allowed him to imagine new things. He had a large imagination, growing with every activity he performed his talents in. Walter Disney took on his main talent of drawing. He began to doodle and sketch regularly. It became his favorite past time and he began to focus more on his drawings and animations then he did school. Since his drawings were becoming his main priority, Walter Disney began to sell his better d...
Every little girl and boy at some point in their life, wanted to be a Disney character of some sort whether it be Cinderella, Aladdin, Mushu, or even the famous Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney Company has been worldwide, and has had a moving impact on both children and adults since it first started in 1924. “All your dreams can come true – If we have the courage to pursue them” (Disney) Throughout Walt Disney’s life he has been an inspiration to all through his never-ending imagination, his magical theme parks, and his charming cartoons.
There are few who have had as enormous an impact on our culture and entertainment as Walt Disney. As co-creator of Mickey Mouse he helped to create the most popular and well-known cartoon character in the world. As the founder of Walt Disney Studios, he was an artist who changed animation and film-making forever and has been delighting and inspiring audiences for nearly 100 years. And, of course, when he brought us Disneyland he created a place unlike any other, one that still thrills the imaginations of children and adults today.
1987: In the immediate crash and aftermath of October, Berkshire loses 25% of its value, dropping from $4,230 per share to around $3,170. The day of the crash, Buffett loses $342 million personally.
After a few years, Elias Disney moved his family to a farm near Marceline, Missouri. This was when Walt started taking an interest in drawing and developed a love for animals. He sold his first sketches to some of his neighbors when he was seven years old (Encarta Encyclopedia 2).
Utopia is a reflection of More’s thoughts, feelings and opinions on politics and society at the time. While it may appear that Utopia is a representation of More’s ideal society and world, only some aspects are supported and agreed upon by More. He generally opposes and objects to certain trends of the Utopian society which he feels are ‘ridiculous.’ Despite this More still provides a comment on the social standards, ethics, operations and functions of the time. In doing this he presents his passion of ideas and art.
I believe that this society, at least the economic aspect of it, would be possible to attain. However, I believe it cannot happen with our entire world. More made a point by putting Utopia on an island in the middle of the "real world": there is no way to apply Utopia to the "real word". In order to create a Utopia like this today, we must take very young children and raise them apart from society. If we do this and teach them about the society we are trying to create, I believe their reason will make the Utopia a lasting one. But if we try to create this Utopia over the whole Earth, we will fail miserably. The world is filled with billions of people who have been raised in our current society, and it is human nature to resist change. The economic situation of More's Utopia is possible, but only in a situation very close to the one in his book.
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago Illinois. Despite this, he lived in Marceline, Kansas for a majority of his childhood. He and his family worked and lived on a small farm and, during his free time, would use his imagination to doodle animals which he would sell to friends and neighbors. In 1911, Walt’s father fell ill and the Disney family moved to Kansas city. There, Walt and his brother Roy delivered newspapers for their father. They would wake up at ungodly hours, like three in the morning, and work seven days a week. Even with school and his job, Walt still found time for his drawings. After completing middle school, the Disney family moved back to Chicago, where Walt would then graduated from high school. During the tail end of World War I, he joined the Red Cross and served for nine months in France. He transported officers, transported supplies, and drove ambulances.
Throughout human history, Utopia is a word that have been eulogized as a community or society possessing highly desirable or perfect qualities. This idea has been promoted by Thomas More via his fiction work and political philosophy in 1516. Utopia, then, become a final goal of many people around the world. However, in the modern society, there are several problems, such as homelessness, domestic abuse, and poverty. Moreover, the gap between classes in the society is bigger, which have made More’s vision of perfection in society impossible to achieve.
In order to maintain a society free of social inequality both authors set up a civilization based on strict societal structure. In More’s Utopia, a system was set up so that all work was completed.
To understand the relationship, the two books must be contextualized. An important part of contextualization is to understand the role of Plato in both the period of Humanism and, within that, in the life of Thomas More. On the one hand, More, like many of his counterparts of the period, "had enjoyed good humanist [education] and retained a powerful love of classical literature" (Rice 141). To further complicate matters, though, although he was a politician, he was also a devout Christian who "secretly wore a hairshirt until the day before he died" (Turner/More 14). More specifically, More was a devout Catholic who was executed because he refused to take an oath swearing loyalty to Henry VIII, after the split of the Church of England, over the pope. His religiosity makes some of the differences between the Republic and Utopia more understandable.
In 1920, while working at an ad company called Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio in Kansas City, Walt discovered the great world of animation and submerged himself within it. While keeping his day job, he began making Laugh-O-Gram ad films and animation shorts with artist Ub Iwerks, whom he met working at the Art Studio. Laugh-O-grams Films soon went bankrupt, and Walt, moved to California with very little money in his pocket (Walter Elias Disney). Disney ran into a lot of road blocks and hard time, but that would not stop him. His dreams and imagination keep him