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Good versus evil in literature
Importance of Symbolism in literature
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Theme Good Vs Evil in The Graveyard Book
In The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Jack was a killer who entered in a home in the middle of the night with a knife. He used the knife and kill three people in the house, the mother, the father, and the older sister. While the baby was woken up he heard his family being killed, so he jumped out of his crib, left the house and went up to the hill in the graveyard. When Jack went to the crib to kill the eighteen-month-old baby, he then realized that the baby was not there. To finish his job he got out of the house and followed the baby’s smell to the graveyard. Theme “The Theme of a book is a message that creates an understanding about life, human nature, or elements of society” (Lukens 57). The author
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and Mrs. Owens. The baby’s family who were now ghost asked the Owens couple to adopt and protect the baby from Jack, the murderer. Mrs. Owens name the baby Nobody Owens or Bod as a nickname. The ghosts that were living in the graveyard accept for the baby to leave in the graveyard with the Owens couple. The book referred to Silas as a guardian to the baby. The author mention that Silas was neither or a human. As a result, Silas had the ability to leave the graveyard to get supplies for the baby. Bod learned to read and write at four years old. According to the author, “Every day Bod would take his paper and crayons into the graveyard and he would copy names and words and numbers as best he could, and each night, before Silas would go off into the world, Bod would make Silas explain to him what he had written, and make him translate the snatches of Latin which had, for the most part baffled the Owenses” (Gaiman 39). Bod had a new friend named Scarlett Amber Perkins who was alive. She always come to the graveyard and play with him. Sadly the friendship did not last for too long because after Scarlett and Bod went to the oldest resident in the graveyard, she came back a few days later to say bye to him because her parents were moving to Scotland. She told him how much she believed in him and she thought that Bod was
Throughout The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, there are many different tactics used to show how intense and suspenseful the book really is. Neil Gaiman does an excellent job of creating a nail-biting mood during the duration of the book. Intense events and exquisite details contributed to Gaiman’s success of the doing this. The situations Nobody Owens finds himself in also helps, to make The Graveyard Book, a classic suspenseful fiction book.
Thomas Paine once said “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Conflict is an obstacle that many characters in books go through. It is what drives the reader to continue reading and make the book enjoyable. Additionally, authors use symbolism to connect their novels to real life, personal experience, or even a life lesson. In “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines, both take place during a time where colored people were being looked down upon and not treated with the same rights as white people. However, both novels portray the conflict and symbolism many ways that are similar and different. Additionally, both of these novels have many similarities and differences that connect as well as differentiate them to one
“As I Lay Dying, read as the dramatic confrontation of words and actions, presents Faulkner’s allegory of the limits of talent” (Jacobi). William Faulkner uses many different themes that make this novel a great book. Faulkner shows his talent by uses different scenarios, which makes the book not only comedic but informational on the human mind. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is a great book that illustrates great themes and examples. Faulkner illustrates different character and theme dynamics throughout the entire novel, which makes the book a humorous yet emotional roller coaster. Faulkner illustrates the sense of identity, alienation, and the results of physical and mental death to show what he thinks of the human mind.
Construction of Holmes’s World’s Fair Hotel, or better known as “The Murder Castle” in modern times, began in 1890. The building consisted of over 60 rooms and 51 oddly cut doors. By Holmes’s request, new construction workers were brought in each week so no one would know the exact layout besides him, and he refused to pay for any of the labor or materials used. Holmes used his intelligence and carefully contemplated every action to make sure it would be virtually impossible for anyone to catch him. In the top two floors of the 162 by 50 foot three story hotel there were trap doors, asphyxiation chambers, and blowtorches in the walls to torture and kill the people working in and staying at the hotel and a dissection table, crematory, and
The writing style of Edgar Allan Poe shows the writer to be of a dark nature. In this story, he focuses on his fascination of being buried alive. He quotes, “To be buried alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these [ghastly] extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” page 58 paragraph 3. The dark nature is reflected in this quote, showing the supernatural side of Poe which is reflected in his writing and is also a characteristic of Romanticism. Poe uses much detail, as shown in this passage, “The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lusterless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.” page 59 paragraph 2. The descriptive nature of this writing paints a vivid picture that intrigues the reader to use their imagination and visualize the scene presented in the text. This use of imagery ties with aspects of Romanticism because of the nature of the descriptions Poe uses. Describing the physical features of one who seems dead is a horrifying perspective as not many people thing about the aspects of death.
The second level was as a messenger of religion, a messenger of God. For the
“But it is not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which are great or sublime in feeling” (John Ruskin). Human beings never stop making efforts to explaining, understanding and exploring the meaning of the death, and death became an important topic in human’s literature. According to the scientific definition “death is the state of a thermodynamic bio-system in which that thermodynamic system cannot obtain non-spontaneously energy from the environment and organize non-spontaneously the energy obtained from the environment” (Nasif Nahle). Which means that all human beings fundamental biological systems are stop working after
Having a to bury a child is hard. Letting the killer run free is harder. “Killings” has different types of feelings and personalities mixed into it. It starts out deep and depressing the around the middle, gets dark the gets back to being depressing but more relaxed. It has hot tempered personalities mixed with jealousy. A man is in grief and early stages of depression over his son’s death. Someone just wants to be a friend and help out the family.
In Andre Dubus’ “Killings” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the theme of death is apparent throughout both of the short stories. Both have a plot that revolves around death and murder. They differ because in Dubus’ story the theme of death is obvious because the whole plot revolves around murder, but in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” there are numerous symbols of death as well as a major theme of death. Also, the endings of the stories are of an interesting comparison because they both end in the perspective of a murderer. In “Killings” the reader is left with a depressed feeling and an irresolvable ending, while in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is left feeling like the story was somewhat resolved even after all the gruesome fatality. The endings of these stories leave the reader with opposite feelings and Dubus and O’ Connor show their different outlooks on the world through these endings.
Let’s examine the short story of “Killings” by Andre Dubus. The story begins on a warm August day with the burial of Matt and Ruth Fowler’s youngest son Frank. Frank was only twenty-one: “twenty-one years, eight months, and four days” (Dubus, “Killings” 107). Attending the funeral were Matt, his wife Ruth, their eldest son Steve, his wife, their middle daughter Cathleen and her husband. Frank was buried in a cemetery on a hill in Massachusetts overlooking the Merrimack. Across from the cemetery is an “apple orchard with symmetrically planted trees going up a hill” (107), a symbol of how nice and serene the cemetery actually is and the peace Frank now has. Matt’s family is extremely distraught over the murder of their youngest son/brother, so much to make comments of wanting to kill the killer themselves, “I should kill him” (107), stated the oldest son Steve, while walking from the grave site along side his father Matt. This comment is considered a fore-shadow to what is to come in the thought process of the family members.
The author, James Joyce, anticipates death from the title, “The Dead”, he commits to using strong imagery to depict the fateful death. Gabriel lays there watching his wife sleep, knowing a fateful day is near. As Gabriel watches his wife
Death has long been a major theme in literature. Whether death literally, figuratively, or symbolically, death drives plots, destroys plans, and forces characters to see themselves in a completely different way. James Joyce’s story looks at death from both angles. The title can be misleading because it sounds like a horror novel, but it is actually a poignant look at the human condition and the lives that people lead. Death, both figurative and literal, is the central theme of James Joyce’s The Dead.
Dealing with the problem of learning difficulties in children's books, Theresa Breslin's excellent book “Whispers in the Graveyard (1994)” is chosen to represent children's dyslexia while “The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler (1977)” written by Gene Kemp is the other selection related to a late developer. Based on the research, there are some features often identified in children with learning difficulties: being teased or bullied, misbehaviours, and the lack of self-confidence (Prater, 2003: 58). These three elements can be found in both cases, indicating these features are general situations that happen in children’s school times.
In Beloved and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez discuss how the events that go on in each book fall under the category of magical realism, which is when and the supernatural coexists with ordinary events throughout the day, leading to people accepting the strangest things are just something normal, and how it shapes the conflicts of each story and how the people react to these unique occurrences.
Although a scene of a funeral home might come to mind when a reader first hears a short story aptly named “The Dead,” the tale actually takes place in the festive setting of a winter dance at the home of the two aunts of the main character, Gabriel Conroy. James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” has a literal title, because its main concept is death – both physical death and spiritual death.