For my March book I read the book Speechless by Hannah Harrington. This book is about a girl who loves drama and tends to cause it. However, one night at a party, Chelsea witnesses something and ends up telling her friends. This causes a boy to be beaten in a gas station parking lot to the point of hospitalization. After she learns of this, she takes a vow of silence, vowing to never speak again due to the trouble she caused. Throughout this book we witness a theme much like chapter 11 of Thomas C. Foster's book How to Read Literature like a Professor. In this chapter, Foster talks about how violence can be symbolic and how it can effect characters for a long time. In Speechless, violence is symbolic for a rebirth, renewal and hatred. Rebirth is not just spritial, it can happen to anyone at anytime. This story shows the rebirth of a character due to actions.“Hate is easy, but love takes courage”(Harrington,267). This sentence is said by Noah, the boy who has been hospitalized, when Chelsea comes to visit him. At this point it has been almost a month since the incident, but Chelsea is still not completely sure of her knew life. She has endured bullying in school and online. She is still …show more content…
That is very true in this book. The boys that beat up Noah do it because Noah is different. They target him and make sure that he knows they think he is a freak. They are scared of him because of this. However, this gives them no excuse and Chelsea knows this. That is why she gets upset and goes to the police. However, this causes even more violent because they boys are arrested and people begin to bully Chelsea (Harrington,47). She tells on her “friends” because she knows what they did is wrong. She also knows that what she did is wrong so she corrects it. Violence is a symbol of hatred but Chelsea changes this by standing up and for herself and Noah. She shows people that they can do what is right even if it means losing all your
Violent scenes always have an important meaning in literary works. They could serve different purposes that either benefit or harm the characters. Often times it serves as both as it usually benefit the good ones and harms the enemy. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, shows various scenes of violence from McMurphy toward Nurse Ratched, depicting how McMurphy often breaks her control and gives the other inmates a sense of freedom.
The critics who perceived this book's central theme to be teen-age angst miss the deep underlying theme of grief and bereavement. Ambrosio asks the question, "Is silence for a writer tantamount to suicide? Why does the wr...
Silence was used in many different ways throughout this book. It was used to demonstrate and strengthen character emotions and reactions, and it helped to add depth to important or poignant moments in the story. It was used to show thought process or hard decisions and impeded thoughts. Though they were all different, they were the same in that they were all used to emphasize emotions and to amplify the messages in the story, as well as the imagery. Anguish, pain, and anger in particular were emotions that appeared many times in the story and were almost always accompanied by a silence that amplified their qualities. Chaim Potok’s use of silence in The Chosen deepens the meaning of the story, helps to clarify and outline its emotional structure, and makes the anecdote more thought provoking and inducing for the reader.
Somehow, everything about the whites appear to elicit a reigning beauty that raises hatred and envy the black girls have against the white girls. Packer argues that even small thing like hair contributes to hostility. The fourth grade says; “their long, shampoo-commercial hair, straight as spaghetti from the box” (Packer, 16). These reinforcements are ingredients of prejudice that brings about racial discrimination. The black girls get jealous of the white girls’ hair, and this leads to discrimination against them. It is worth noting that the prejudices are handed down by the environment and society that people are brought up in. Arnetta, remembers a mall experience when she and her mother were being seen as if they were from China. They were being discriminated because of their race. The various treatments given to black people has played a vital role in intensifying the issue of prejudice, magnifying people’s sense of inferiority, and shaping the views of the black people on the white people. Arnetta says; “Even though I didn’t fight to fight, was afraid of fight, I felt I was part of the rest of the troop; like I was defending something” (Packer, 12). This is a clear indication that society has the power to influence youths. It depicts how society joins hands to fight for what they think is their right. Owed to the fact that this is a society. Everything and everyone is interlinked in a given way, making racism and prejudice hard to do away
In the movie Ordinary People, Beth Jarrett is unable to cope with the loss of her eldest son, Buck who died in a boating accident. This situation creates a strain on her relationships with her husband, Calvin, and her youngest son, Conrad. Moreover, Beth is bitter towards Conrad because she believes he is the sole cause of Buck’s death. Meanwhile, Conrad begins meeting with a psychiatrist named Dr. Berger to help deal with his suicidal tendencies. Unlike Beth, Calvin Jarrett longs to connect with his son and give him the love that he needs. The Jarrett family could have avoided these problems if there had been stronger communication and conflict management skills. All the main characters deal with conflicts in one of two ways: silence or violence.
The Conflict Perspective, in itself, focuses on the ruling class and the ruled class. In the perspective, the ruling class defines what is deviant based on how it helps them. In this case, the ruling class would be defined as upper-class and white. The ruled class would be defined as lower-class and black. This is illustrated through the emphasis placed on the impact of the differences between the woman who was raped and the young men who were accused of raping her. The woman who was raped was a white and wealthy business woman who worked as an investment banker on Wall Street. The young men who raped her were lower class, black, and from Harlem. Due to these extreme differences, there was immense media attention. The media was often one sided and viewed the young men as criminals and animals in order to make them social pariahs. The media and upper-class wanted to make an example of them to reinforce the laws and separate the two groups even further. Also, the court system had the woman give a testimony despite the fact that she could not remember anything that happened that night. The documentary stated that her testimony was simply used to “pack an emotional punch,” and make the young men look even more inhuman. Finally, when the men were exonerated, the media barely covered it. The news was no longer about showing the lower-class where they belonged. Anything
We also see represntatino of violence within Marguertie Feitlowitz book, A Lexicon of Terror, although different than “The Offical Story,” in regards to how violence is presneted to the reader. Rather then having settle hints to the viewer and or the reader; violence is laid out through personal accounts of indvidudals who face such socital traumas. Within Feitlowitz book, she teels the story of a young women named Susan who on a normal day while riding the bus in broad daylight was abducted, Feitlowitz states: “ “Por el pelo, no” a women pleaded softly as Susana was dragged passed her, “not by the hair.” … What Susana members clearly is the silence: except for the women, no one said a word “ (173). It later states that Susana was being “stripped,
Violence is regularly used in novels because, “It can be symbolic, thematic, biblical, Shakespearean, Romantic, allegorical, transcendent. ...Violence in literature, though, while it is literal, is usually also something else. That...punch in the nose may be a metaphor,” (Foster 49). There are two types of violence found in literature: intentional violence and authorial violence. The first type of violence is typical violence such as shootings, stabbings, drownings, and hit-and-run accidents to name a few. In this category, characters will inflict this type of behavior on themselves or on another character. The second type of violence, however, is meant solely to further the plot without another character’s intention. An example of this “narrative violence” is a death resulting from natural causes or a tragic accident that did not involve another character. Violence created by a specific injury that authors cause characters to visit on one another or on themselves. Both types of violence have similarities and differences. In both, the characters are killed off with the same goals of furthering plot or creating stressful situations for the characters. A difference between the intentional violence and narrative violence is that narrative violence does not involve a guilty party like intentional violence does. To Kill a
One of the first themes that is experienced is the idea that violence will often take control and change people. For instance in “The black cat” by Edgar Allan Poe the quote “I suffered myself to intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her my personal violence”(Poe). This quote explains that the narrator experienced waves violent feelings and the need carry out these malevolent mannerisms gradually grew stronger. Eventually the narrator went corrupt and in turn hurt the people and family closest to him. Like wise in the quote “Hector takes the doves and swiftly twists its neck, ignoring his daughter’s cry of protest”(Morgenstern). His daughter is mortified at the fact that he snapped a bird’s neck without even thinking twice. As the book continues Hector purposefully breaks his daughter’s wrist without any pity or guilt for the act he committed. In both passages they commit an act of violence but do not care that it is wrong or unjust.
...ctly shown that Melinda’s thoughts gear readers to see many traits of people that suffered traumatic events and are able to return to their former personalities. All of the valuable lessons learned during the reading of SPEAK are encompassed by the main idea of resilience, which is the ability to bounce back from a terrifying event. Melinda showed the importance of participating in “flow” activities and maintaining healthy relationships with friends and family. Additionally, Melinda displays the horrors of rape to educate people about the terrible effects of rape and the book makes sure to deter people from engaging in crimes such as rape. The lessons that can be learned from SPEAK are priceless in that they can save lives and help everyone reach their utmost potential, making SPEAK a book that should be carried on the shelves of all middle school classrooms.
The theme of violence can be seen throughout the book and is a very important part of the story. The theme of violence can be see when Lennie said, “You jus’ let’em try to get the rabbits. I’ll break their God damn necks” (94). Another example of the theme violence can be seen from this quote in the book “He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again” (106). Most of the characters in this book show some sort of violence. All of these examples of violence from the book can be analyzed deeper
From civil wars, to world wars, to ethnic wars, catastrophes have defined the period of human history from the 1800s to the present day. The trauma that unavoidably results from such tragedies is evident in the literature of contemporary authors, as they explore their feelings of nostalgia, sadness and loss. Emily Dickinson, Bertolt Brecht and Kazuo Ishiguro each address such emotions in their works, and provide their audience with different methods to cope with trauma. While Dickinson offers seclusion and self-reflection as methods to deal with personal tragedy, Brecht suggests that stoicism and the repression of emotion are the means by which one can endure trauma. Finally, Ishiguro addresses collective trauma, and cautions against such repression
Throughout history writers have offered readers lessons through themes and often symbolized. In the story, “The Storm” by Kate Chopin is quite different from “The Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid; both have a different theme, symbol, throughout the stories. “The Storm” in Kate Chopin 's story can symbolize a number of different things: temporary, fleeting and quick action, and without consequences.
Moreover, I will argue that the use of violence acts to exclude women from the narrative of the revolution – instead of constructing inclusive change, women are often portrayed as victims or missing from texts. This will be examined in relation to not only Blake, but also Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake. Wordsworth’s use of violence within The Prelude represents his ambivalent and changing nature toward the French Revolution. Wordsworth, in the earlier years of the revolution, supported the French yet as violence began to surface, Wordsworth became more troubled and disillusioned by it (Dawson, 50). The episode in Book Nine of Vaundercour and Julia’s relationship reflect the French Revolution and Book Ten’s violent imagery relates both this episode to Wordsworth’s attitude toward the violence. Finally, Coleridge’s ‘Fears in Solitude’ deploys violence in relation to the threat of invasion. This mirrors the political anxieties of the period of a French invasion and threatens the peace within
Judith Wright's poem `The Killer' explores the relationship between Humans and Nature, and provides an insight into the primitive instincts which characterize both the speaker and the subject. These aspects of the poem find expression in the irony of the title and are also underlined by the various technical devices employed by the poet.