Throughout the novel the theme of blood is often mentioned. The blood has various meanings, but overall it signifies part of his identity. It is Bính’s blood that grounds him to his origins and I argue that it represents his life in Vietnam as something that he can never run away from. Vietnam will follow him wherever he goes and for that reason he will never quite fit in anywhere else. In this quote Bính is referring to Lattimore’s denial of his Black ancestry, “As for your mother’s blood, you are careful not to let it show” (Truong, 151). Lattimore only acknowledges his White side which is what gives him privilege. He tries to pretend his Black half does not exist and thus completely ignores part of his identity in order to appear more appealing to society. However, even though Bính is talking about Lattimore, it also relates to him even if he is not aware of it. In his own way Bính is also denying his blood when he wishes the old man is not his father. Throughout the book the thought of his father haunts him and even though he wishes to get away from him, he carries him around in his mind and in his blood. Despite …show more content…
He is alluding to the fact that Lattimore passes as White and has been able to separate his Black self from his physical appearance. This is a privilege that Bính is obviously not afforded. Anyone who sees him knows at least one of his identities. It seems to be a double edged sword. Perhaps Bính is saying that Lattimore has separated himself not just from his Black identity, but also from anyone else who might also be like him. Unlike Bính, who is able to acknowledge others that look like him and is able to find some comfort in seeing his fellow country men around Paris. Nonetheless, it is also a burden because most people make assumptions and cannot look past his race and his
With Every Drop Of Blood by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier is based on the Civil War. In this novel they talked about the white-black relationships during this time period. In the novel Johnny’s father went off to fight in the war, and was shot at Cedar Creek to be sent back home for a short amount of time before he passed due to his injuries. When Johnny’s father died Johnny promised him that he would not run off to fight, that he would stay and help his mother with the farm, the house, and Johnny’s little brother Sam and his little sister Sarah. Before Johnny’s father passed Johnny asked him what the reason for the war was, and his father told him it was for ‘states rights’.
In the beginning of Beah’s memoir, the tone was suspenseful. When Beah’s village was under attack by rebels, his family had to escape, while he was with his brother and friends in another city. During that time, he had to fend for himself and try to survive out in the open, without his parents, along with his brother and friends. Eventually, Beah was separated from his brother and friends and was all alone. “I walked for two days
In this chapter O’Brien talks about a young Vietnamese soldier who he had killed with a grenade. He mentions the weight of guilt he carried with him after the event that to took place the day he killed his first man. He opens the chapter with describing the dead corps by saying, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.” Throughout the text it is implied that O’Brien cannot stop staring at the dead body as he continues to think of how the dead Vietnamese soldier lay and what the young man’s life was like and what it could have been before he had become the soldier he was. He states, in one of the interpretation of the young Vietnamese man’s life, “He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics.” O’Brien Talks about the Vietnamese soldier as if he knew him and experienced the soldier’s life himself. It’s possible that O’Brien could have talked about the dead Vietnamese life as a reference or to fantasize about his own life, and how he wish his life could’ve been if he didn’t go into war himself. O’Brien could have also thought of the young soldier’s life because of the guilt and the regret he was feeling from killing him, and
In his memoir, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah deals with his loss of innocence as he is forced to join the children army of Sierra Leone in the country's civil war after being conscripted to the army that once destroyed his town in order for Ishmael to survive. His memoir acts as a voice to show the many difficulties that the members of Sierra Leone's child army had to suffer through and their day to day struggle to survive in the worst of conditions. In order to escape the perils and trials of war, Ishmael loses his innocence as he transitions from a child who liked to rap with his friends to a cold blooded solider in the army during the civil war in Sierra Leone. Through his transition, Ishmael is forced to resort to the addiction of drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, and “brown-brown” just so that he, along with the other members of the child army can have the courage to be able to kill their fellow countrymen and slaughter entire towns who stand in their paths. In order to portray his struggles in the army, Ishmael uses the dramatic elements of memories explained using flashback, dialogue, and first-person narration in order to establish the theme of the memoir being how war causes for a child to lose its innocence. The transition shown in the memoir illustrates how the title of the novel, A Long Way Gone, was chosen because it demonstrates how he is a long way gone psychologically, emotionally, and physically, from the child that he was when the memoir begins to the soldier that he is forced to become.
“The Vietnam War was arguably the most traumatic experience for the United States in the twentieth century. That is indeed a grim distinction in a span that included two world wars, the assassinations of two presidents and the resignation of another, the Great Depression, the Cold War, racial unrest, and the drug and crime waves.” (Goldstein 1). The Vietnam War is widely regarded as one of the most traumatic experiences in all of American History. Innocent boys trudged through the mud, the heat and the fear that came along with fighting in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien paints a picture of how difficult and traumatic Vietnam was for the soldiers who experienced it in his book, The Things They Carried. Throughout the course of the book the elements of fiction: plot, character and setting all act to serve the purpose in conveying O’Brien’s theme of his work which is revealed to be at the conclusion: a message of universal immortality. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried setting is the most crucial element in understanding theme, followed by character then lastly plot.
...Conrad removes Marlow’s bias, but through the inclusion of careful details he is able to establish his themes. The cruelty of white man to the natives, appearances being deceiving, the nobility of the Africans – all are clear messages of this text that come across not from Marlow’s opinion, but rather the careful inclusion of details and symbolism. No bigger symbol helps Conrad reinforce his theme than the continuous battle of light and dark, and his use of the two is the cornerstone from which he builds meaning from symbolism.
The author believes that if his nephew accepts and loves white America and the challenges that racial inequalities bring him, that the young man has the ability to make a difference in the way America perceives blacks. If Baldwin 's nephew falls into the clutches of racism, and accepts that he is just another black man lost to the streets, white America will simply go on living in a reality where blacks are inferior. But, if the young man can rise above and learn to love, he can begin to make a
In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the most blatant and powerful symbol is blood. He takes the blood that means so much to the believers of this legend and has it represent more than even they could imagine. Blood is the main object associated with vampires and vampirism. From a mythical standpoint, it is the basis of life for the vampires as they feed off of the blood of young, vibrant souls. From a more scientific standpoint blood is what would drip out of the corpse's mouth when family members would dig up their dead kin to check for the dreaded disease. Stoker takes the significance of this symbol and puts his own unique twist to the meaning of blood. He combines the traditional folklore of vampirism and the immense sexual undertones of the Victorian era to create a simply horrific tale which completely confuses the emotions of his readers. Stoker knew bloods importance in vampire history and used the overwhelming symbolism to convey his own personal lust and sexual obsessions. The scenes where Lucy is receiving transfusions; first from Holmwood, then from Seward, and the unforgettable vampire baptism between Dracula and Mina all have these very erotic, sexual feelings associated with them. What makes these so powerful is the combination of violence and sex. As a reader, you know that what Dracula is doing are horrific and wrong, but because they are so sexually described and associated you think you should enjoy them, but you can't. This is the confusion which stoker implements into his readers minds, especially ones of the Victorian era. This is why stoker used blood as the most important symbol in the novel; to create an intense horror that was not just in the words of the book, but in the minds of the reader.
This means that they had to suffer the consequences of actions they did not do just because they had colored skin. Black people wanted to have jobs so they could support their family back home. Every day they had to live in fear knowing that if they made one mistake they could lose their job, leaving them poor. It is mentioned in the novel that, “Around here once you have a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black” (pg.162). This quote explains that even if you have a slight bit of Negro blood in your background, it still makes you all Black meaning that if any of your ancestors were Black people, that made you completely Black. The amount of hate against Black people during the 1900s was very heartbreaking and the effects of the racism still
Writing 39B gave me an impressive impression when I got in the first class because my previous writing and academic English classes were full of Chinese but now there are few Chinese student so I felt pretty anxious because of the higher competitive. That really challenged me a lot, I had to focus on it to keep the step of the class.
Hurston, however, feels that her identity is not shaped through her guilt over slavery or segregation. Many black and white readers have read this as shame or denial of her race, but in actuality Hurston is simply denouncing that her race is a essential to how she views herself In her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” she states “I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep,” to reiterate that she does see herself as “tragically colored”. Her role in shaping her own identity does in some aspects, however, relate to her becoming aware of her ‘blackness’. This idea similarly relates to the speaker in Giovanni’s poem who asserts that she never saw herself this way until she was represented through dreadful renditions by
Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien illustrates the extreme changes that the soldiers went through. Tim O’Brien makes it apparent that although Vietnam stole the life of millions through the death, but also through the part of the person that died in the war. For Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Mary Anne and Norman Bowker, Vietnam altered their being and changed what the world knew them as, into what the world could not understand.
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, something is always contrasted against something else. Within the title itself, the contrast of light and dark is made. Throughout the book, the contrast is made between good and evil, between the pilgrims and the cannibals that Marlow encounters. Using the ironic opposition of the pilgrims and the cannibals will present a way into a post-colonial analysis of the book.
“...blood will have blood...”, Macbeth is a well known book written by Shakespeare. In it, a once loyal soldier to the king of Scotland starts to seek a way for him to get the crown for himself. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses the imagery of blood to represent the guilt of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, demonstrating the feeling of guilt has consequences of severe punishments.
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...