Game shows are meant to be a fun way to test skills and earn money. In Steven King’s The Running Man, a science fiction book taking place in a dystopian society, the aspect of “it’s all fun and games,” completely diminishes. The protagonist, a poor man named Benjamin Richards, must run from a group of people trying to kill him for thirty days. If he succeeds, he wins an astonishing one billion dollars. Richards displays strong characteristics such as intelligence, arrogance, and dauntlessness. Benjamin Richards is well-liked in the story mainly due to his intelligence and ability to think outside of the box. When Richards’ is seemingly cornered in a YMCA by the group of hunters, he makes a quick escape by sneaking into the basement, exploding …show more content…
This attribute alone is what earned him a spot on “The Running Man” and not a smaller, lower stakes game. Throughout the entire story, he mouths off to people of high authority and makes remarks that could potentially hurt his chance in the game. During the interview process for the Games, Richards makes inappropriate remarks at police officers and workers that could get him kicked out of a chance at a game. When an officer confronted him about his attitude, he tells him he’s “about as smart as you talk without that gun on your leg and your pants down around your ankles” (King 13). The Games Federation believes that he’s dangerous due to his attitude and quick wit, so they place him in “The Running Man”. No one has ever survived the show, so Richards must do the impossible. This goes to show that the crew knows his arrogance makes him a deadly …show more content…
He uses a girl that he kidnapped as a hostage to force the crew to get him a jet plane. He also bluffs that he has a packet of highly explosive material that he could set off at anytime and explode everything within a sizable distance. Despite his knowledge that the crew could shoot him at anytime, he manages to pull off this emphatic stunt and show to the world how weak the crew really is. He refers to it as a game of poker, even though he doesn’t have the high hand, he can bluff his way to keep himself alive. He says “We’re playing with their cards and their chips in their casino. When I’m caught, I’m supposed to fold. But maybe I stacked the deck a bit” (King 234-235). Another example is his final act as a contestant. After being offered a spot on the hunting crew, he accepts, but then kills all of the crew members to be the last one left on the plane. What sets this apart from the rest of his acts of fearlessness is when he crashes the plane into the Games Federation building, ending his life and the career of the rigged Games. He is willing to take his own life to end the corrupt body of the Games and put an end to the death for viewers to
Benjamin Braddock is already starting at the top but does not know what he wants to do next. Benjamin, at the urging of his Mr. Robinson, wants him to sow some wild oats, and encourages him to have fun during the summer. Within a short period of time he is seduced by Mrs. Robinson and they begin an affair at the Taft Hotel. This is a destructive relationship because it’s only bound to become known since Mrs. Robinson has a drinking problem. When Benjamin is attracted to their daughter Elaine, a relationship that would seem appropriate, Mrs. Robinson does everything possible to undermine it. He breaks away from his parents mores but blows them up with his affair with Mrs. Robinson. Neil Klugman, on the other hand, sees the relationship as a chance to move upward. Neil is attracted to the rich life of Short Hill where Brenda and her family lives. At that time Newark New Jersey was undergoing some major changes as middle class families were leaving for the suburb and poorer families of color were taking their places. Neil wants to grab the “brass ring” and move up to a wealthier lifestyle and he see that the best way to accomplish this is to marry into Brenda’s family. Neil not fit well into Brenda’s family, and that mater, Brenda’s life. For him, he is more comfortable working at his low paid job in Newark and when Brenda realizes it, she ends the relationship. In Neil’s case, he wanted to strive upward but found that the price might be too high to
"Running for His Life" In the story "Running for His Life", Michael Hall explains the genocide that Gilbert Tuhabonye experienced when he was in high school in East Africa and how he managed to escape and begin a new life in Austin, Texas. Friends of theirs burned and beat to death the teachers and Tutsi teenagers. However, if students tried to evacuate the building they would be killed. The building was on fire, burning corpses, and burning to death many students.
Page 2 - “I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. I looked up at those twin kites.”
There are regions in parts of the globe that take part in normal activities that, here in the United States, would be considered completely abnormal, even inhumane. Yet, traditional ties sewn into a cultural realm deems certain events, such as “the lottery”, to be well within the bounds of socially acceptable. Old Man Warner epitomizes the relevance of the power of tradition in this short story, and the symbol that takes shape from it. A veteran of seventy-seven years in the lottery, he snorts at the idea of giving it up. “Nothing but trouble in that… Pack of young fools,” he says when it is mentioned that some towns have given it up. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore…” he spouts off, illogically. The lottery was so steeped in the town’s traditional makeup that even the barbaric physical act of killing someone with stones was not the least bit
Moral repair is a word of many meanings. One may say it's "restoring or creating trust and hope in a shared sense of value and responsibility". Others will say "Moral repair is the process of moving from the situation of loss and damage to a situation where some degree of stability in moral relations is regained." Others will have different perspectives on the true meaning of moral repair and whether someone has achieved it. In Haruki Murakami’s short story “The Seventh Man”, the narrator speaks of a tragic event that took the life of a close childhood friend leaving the narrator with a weight of guilt and need for moral repair. Murakami illustrates the narrator’s internal self battle and struggles throughout the story which gives the reader
In the article, “Running for His Life,” the journalist Michael Hall shares a dramatic story of Gilbert Tuhabonye, who was a runner and a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide. Michael Hall narrates Tuhabonye’s horrendous story about how as a kid, him and thousands of other students at Kibimba School in Burundi at three in the morning some of the students were either beaten or burned alive by friends or relatives that they knew. This was between the Hutu mob and Tutsi. In order for him to not suffer from the pain he wanted to kill himself. However, he heard a voice saying, “You don’t want to die. Don’t do that.” He escaped by breaking through windows because he wanted his friends and family to identify his body. He jumped in the darkness, but no one saw him. His health was
In the short story The 7th Man, the narrator's best friend dies. He is swept away by a typhoon wave. Although the 7th man could’ve saved him, he didn’t. This man shouldn’t feel guilty for not saving his friend. He was surviving and didn’t know exactly what to do in that instant.
“In the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”, by Richard Connell, a man named Sanger Rainsford goes on a trip, head for the Amazon. He later then jumped off the boat because he saw a large island that is said to be a mystery. He meets a man, known as General Zaroff. He later explains a game that Rainsford does not like, but he decides to play the game. Rainsford use his cleverness to defeat Zaroff and wins the game.
The second level was as a messenger of religion, a messenger of God. For the
Our mental wounds will cease to heal if we continually tear back into them. Haruki Murakami’s short story, “The Seventh Man” renders the feelings of grief and remorse through a man’s recollection of his past. The seventh man shares his narrative of the devastating typhoon which ended the life of his closest friend, K. In spite of his lack of success to save K., he should forgive himself for his actions as he is not morally responsible for the outcome of the event, fear is overwhelming, and time is linear.
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is a mystery that involves sixteen heirs, an eccentric millionaire, and an elusive game. Sam Westing brought the people together to find out who took his life, and the winner could gain millions. In the end, the players all benefited from Westing’s plan. However, since there is both a movie and a book version of the story, there are similarities and differences.
Set in 1948 and published in The New Yorker, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson describes a village ritual of sacrifice. Contrary to the positive feeling associated with the word “lottery,” the story strikes fear into the readers’ hearts as the winner is stoned to death. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” uses symbolism and genre conventions of a classic dystopian story to show the different ways in which human cruelty can occur.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a very interesting novel that has a very bold and challenging theme. This theme is seen early on in the novel, but becomes increasingly more and more intricate throughout the reading. The Kite Runner is a novel based on a man named Amir, who grew up in Afghanistan and lives his whole life dealing with betrayal and redemption. Throughout this book, Amir has a gigantic flashback describing his whole intoxicatingly sad life. Hosseini creeps into a dark emotional depth as he talks about all the struggles of an Afghani child during the 1970’s who’s father treated him like less of a child than his servant. He talks about the struggles of a boy that betrays his best friend, only later finding
With so much money at stake, the average gambler does not stand a chance. against this big business. The casinos go to every length to analyze what makes a gambler bet, stay longer, and lose as much money as possible. Gamblers who come to casinos with the intention of winning money are habitually disappointed in the snare. As casino crime lord, Meyer Lansky's universal.