Nathan Kilpatrick summarizes Nathan Price as a bipolar behavior man who abuses religion and also speaks for the family. According to Adah, Nathan speaks for the family but his words are empty because he stays in his stubbornness and does not learn the culture. Kilpatrick also believes Nathan downgrades Christianity in this book because he does not know the language so he misuses the meaning. Kilpatrick acknowledges that Nathan is teachable about little things like the garden but the things that actually make an impact, he is unmoveable. Adah says, "It is a special kind of person who draws together a congregation, stand before them with a proud, clear voice, and say words wrong, week after week". Even his own kids see his flaws as a person.
The novel Makes Me Wanna Holler discuss the problems of the black Americans from an insider prospective. When I say black Americans, I mean from the cultural issues, fatherhood, family, and how blacks working class families are anything, but lazy. Nathan recalls his troubled childhood, rehabilitation while in prison, and his success with the Washington Post. The novel helped me understand the mindset of black males and why some choose to be affiliated with gangs. Additionally, I learned that bouncing back from a hardship time help you regain strength because Nathan went threw a lot. However, I did not relate to the novel, but I understood the concept of it. The title of this book speaks out loud about the inner struggle that he dealt. I did relate to the racial incidents and wanting to work early to have the best appearance. I actually did enjoy the
To begin with, the dual narratives of the text here present a unique mixture of chronology and perspective. Moreover, noteworthy is also McBride’s usage of the rhetorical strategy of alternate chapters and parallelism. This can be seen when McBride remarkably places related chapters together to juxtapose the life of his mother and that of himself. This allows one to observe the parallelism in the two lives; and perhaps more importantly, understand the significance Ruth’s life has had on McBride. For example, McBride places the chapters “Shul” and “School” next to each other. Here, both Ruth and James are struggling and are trying to fit in but are rejected due to racial and social conflicts. Another example is, “The New Testament” and “The Old Testament.” Both of these chapters revolve around the embarrassment Ruth and James feel for their circumstances. In “The Ne...
Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God describes the life of a black woman named Janie. Janie is raised by her grandmother and begins a close to life-long quest that can be viewed as a search for many things. Most scholars believe that this quest is for independence; on the contrary I believe that this quest is to find someone that she can be dependent on, the kind of dependency that "singing bees" have for pear blossoms.
I felt that we weren’t given enough information when we learned that Uncle Nathan didn’t save his fiancee. I wanted to know more from Nathan’s perspective rather than Maida’s mom; even though I knew what happened in the end, I needed to know why it ended that way. Nathan fed us information that pieced everything together very gradually to keep the suspense. It was the underlying reason why it made us hooked until the
To begin with, the dual narratives of the text here present a unique mixture of chronology and perspective. Moreover, noteworthy is also McBride’s usage of the rhetorical strategy of alternate chapters and parallelism. This can be seen when McBride remarkably places related chapters together to juxtapose the life of his mother and that of himself. This allows one to observe the parallelism in the two lives and to understand the significance Rachel's life had on McBride. For example, McBride places the chapter titled “Shul” and “School” next to each other with each giving a view of the problems they faced in school. Here both Ruth and James are struggling and are trying to fit in but are rejected due to racial and social conflicts. Another example is “The New Testament” and “The Old Testament.” Both of these chapters revolve around the embarrassm...
Christopher during the course of the text of the novel learns to disregard other people’s judgments.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
The book begins by describing the upbringing of Elijah Pierson, a soon to be member of the Kingdom of Matthias. Elijah Pierson was raised under the influence of a strict Yankee Calvinist community in rural Morristown, New Jersey. The Calvinist community in Morristown was patriarchal and family history and social rank was indispensible in the community’s core value. In this community, Pierson was raised to fear God. However he was constantly reminded that not even a “perfect outward adherence to God’ rules would assure him a place in heaven. For in the Calvinist community, one’s destiny is immutable. Although Morristown was not too far from New York, the world views that both communities were utterly different.
One example of Price’s cruelty happens when Adah informs the reader that they “had to endure Father’s escalating rage” (Kingsolver 219) and “rubbed their bruises when it “reached a certain point” (Kingsolver 219). These series of quotes focuses on the cruel physical abuse that the daughters have to encounter as well as underscoring the Reverend’s lack of patience and understanding. Also when Leah disobeys her father for the first time, his berserk character uncovers as he “thrashes the trees with his belt” (Kingsolver 340). Of course, the rest of the family was terrified to death of Nathan’s rage, as they “pushed the beds around so that the door was blocked” (Kingsolver 340). The frightened females even obtained “metal pot lids and knives and things from the kitchen to protect” (Kingsolver 340) themselves. This burst of cruel relentless implies to the reader that Nathan Price intends to inflict harm against anyone who opposes by the way his family barricaded themselves in the bed room with kitchen armor. This defensive reaction therefore suggests that Nathan Price has used his power to hurt and abuse his wife and children which conclusively reveals his violent, prideful, and arrogant nature.
In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Nathaniel goes through a very rough childhood in the care of his master, Mr. Underwood. When he first arrived, Mr. Underwood did not show any affection or thought of care for the boy. Instead, he treated him like an unimportant aspect of his life that was a waste of his time and had no interest in teaching Nathaniel anything. If anything, Nathaniel was a burden to him. After Nathaniel had lived in Mr. Underwood’s home for a while, Mr. Underwood began to show a slight bit of respect for the child and was pleased to show him off when he had other magicians come to a gathering at his house. One of them, Lovelace, challenged Nathaniel to a duel of smarts, and after Nathaniel had proven himself well trained in learning much about the origins and spells of magicians, Lovelace called him weak. Then Nathaniel spoke out of turn calling him a “sore loser”, and because he did that, Lovelace inflicted pain upon him with an invisible demon and made him look like a fool with no help from his master. That led to Nathaniel trying to get back at him again and ended up floating in mid air being whipped on his rump until he was unconscious. All of these events led Nathaniel to begin a trail of revenge on Lovelace and in return, stole the Amulet of Samarkand; an object more powerful and
When they’re first introduced to the narrator in person, Nathan and Sophie are in a fight over Nathan’s assumption that Sophie has been unfaithful. Nathan is very angry and shouts horrible accusations about Sophie then storms away after the fight, only to return in the morning and be once again in a happy relationship with Sophie. The intensities of Nathan’s outrages raises the confusion as to why someone as fragile as Sophie would ever be happy in a relationship with him. Even the narrator, Stingo, describes Nathan’s complex personality as puzzling. As the story continues, Nathan lashes out on Sophie and Stingo on multiple occasions, once he even abuses Sophie. Later in the novel, Nathan’s brother Larry informs Stingo of Nathan’s schizophrenia, providing me with a sense of resolution to my confusion upon Nathan and Sophie’s relationship. It is also upon the realization of the significance of Nathan’s aid towards the health of Sophie that Stingo begins to understand why Sophie would want to be with someone as unpredictable as Nathan. The fact that Stingo is able to develop an understanding of Sophie’s relationship with Nathan allows the reader to have a sense of
In The Swimmer, Ned swims in different pools to go to a different point in his life, but thinks it is all reality when his reality is actually much worse. Also, as Ned keeps on swimming to different people’s pools, his life keeps on gradually getting worse. Cheever shows how Ned is feeling by saying that, “It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered” (2050). His friends and family all seem to either disappear or despise him as he swims and his condition gets worse as he begins to get weak physically and mentally. But in The Lost World, Nathan knows what his reality truly is unlike Ned, and he regrets not doing things differently in the past and wishes he could be closer with Chaya. Nathan only reflects on only one past moment of his rather than multiple instances like Ned. When describing a day Nathan spent with Chaya when he was six, Chabon states, “from time to time Nathan still thought about one distant afternoon when he and Chaya had somehow ended up playing together, in the fields behind the Huxley Interfaith Plexus” (189). This one memory that Nathan has is one of his best childhood memories and tends to think about it from time to time as he grew up. Also, Nathan reflects on only one past relationship of his rather Ned, who goes and visits multiple friends from the past. The unique differences these two stories have about living a moment in the past make both stories interesting and enjoyable to
Many religious followers today would classify themselves of “Christian” theology and adherence. If there was a phenomenon that diminished Christian teachings to inaccuracy and abolished its presence from civilization there would be several alternative religions to consider. Of the other four major religions that we have covered this semester it would be a close race to decide which belief system would be the best substitute to prior knowledge taught about Christianity. It would be difficult to forget years of information that Jesus is the Son of God and choosing another religion would have to have some representation of Christianity. The decision has to compare the pros and cons of each alternative between Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. Doing so provides a template that proves there would be no definitive winner between the four. If another religion had to be chosen besides Christianity it would be a close decision but Islam would edge out the others slightly.
Paul Zimmer's poem "The Day Zimmer Lost Religion" tells of the narrator's respect and fear of Christ as a boy. He is now a man and dares to challenge Christ. The expected punishment does not occur, and Zimmer loses his faith in religion as he now perceives it.
In Sophie's Choice human nature and societal pressure are shown to come together in a fatal interaction. The expression of grief, and the consequences of bottling up emotions are displayed with both of these characters. Sophie's life had many stresses in it, from her experiences in Auschwitz to her relationship with Nathan. Nathan's life consisted of running away from a problem that was undeniably a part of him. These two unique people are examples of what happens when people allow societal pressures to overcome human nature. As depicted in this novel, society can be a powerful force, great enough to trump even the most instinctive qualities of human nature.