In When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner, a Rabbi, provides the reader with multiple thought provoking stories. Although it is his own book, it has little to do with Kushner himself. He, like many others, has experienced loss and began to question his belief in God. If God is the almighty figure many make him out to be, why would he cause harm to his faithful followers? Kushner asks the questions many are afraid and refuse to ask, and he helps guide others who have experienced such trouble as well.
Kusher gets straight to the point in the first few pages of his book. We, as humans, assume that we deserve what we get. Somewhere along the way we have sinned and deserve what happens. We focus the attention on ourselves so we can keep viewing God as a righteous judge. God is simply being like a caring parent in hopes we can see he only means well, and hopes one way we can see why he would cause such pain. Kushner believes that maybe God is not the cause of our suffering, but that God is there to help.
Kusher tells the reader about The Book of Job. Job is a good man who...
Eric Rauchway’s Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America is an examination of the events, social conditions and dramatic political changes taking place in America immediately prior to and during the birth of the 20th century that led to the assassination of William McKinley and the rise of progressivism. It is furthermore an investigation of the motives behind the assassination, and an analysis of the events leading up to what made possible “Roosevelt’s America,” arguably the first recognizably modern period in American history from a 21st century perspective: the progressive era.
Killing Lincoln Book Review The mystery of how John Wilkes Booth pulled off the most influential and notorious assassination in history is revealed in Killing Lincoln. The author of this book, Bill O’Reilly, built up the plot of the story through vivid historical details and pieced them together like a thriller. He tries to explain all of what happened on one of the most interesting and sad days in American history. Many conspiracies and Civil War ideals are on full display in the book. I agree with most of O’Reilly’s ideas, but there are some that I am not really sure about because of his point of view, like many of the conspiracy theories.
Good Afternoon Ms. McCafferty, I made this appointment because I passionately believe that the book, Life is so good written by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman should be on the Carey booklist for Year 9 students. Life is so good is a magnificent part biography, part autobiography of a 103 year old black man named George Dawson who went to school to learn to read and write when he was 98 years old.
On an ordinary day, Leslie opens the main door of her house, when she walked inside she saw her mom and sister Islla sitting on the coach. Islla was crying, and Leslie ask her “What happened?’ Why you crying?’”. Islla told her that she is pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby even if her boyfriend will be against the baby, but she will need to drop out from her University. In a few minutes of thinking, Leslie decided and told her sister “You don’t need to drop out I will help you to babysit with my nephew.”
A true war story blurs the line between fact and fiction, where it is neither true nor false at the same time. What is true and what is not depends on how much you believe it to be. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” from the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author provides various definitions to how the validity of a war story can be judged. The entire chapter is a collection of definitions that describe the various truths to what a true war story is. Unlike O’Brien, who is a novelist and storyteller, David Finkel, the author of “The Good Soldiers”, is a journalist whose job is to report the facts. Yet in the selection that we read, chapter nine, Finkel uses the convention of storytelling, which relies heavily on the stories the combat troops tell each other or him personally. Finkel attempts to give an unbiased view of the Iraq war through the stories of the soldiers but in doing so, Finkel forfeits the use of his own experiences and his own opinions. From O’Brien’s views on what a true war story is combined with my own definitions, I believe that Finkel provides a certain truth to his war stories but not the entire truth.
...sterton, G. K.. "Introduction to The Book of Job." The Hebrew Bible In Literary Criticism. Ed. and Comp. Alex Preminger and Edward L. Greenstein. New York: Ungar, 1986. 449-50.
Topic/ Thesis Statement: Don’t judge a book by its cover, some people are not who they claim to be, or looks can be deceiving.
The American Dream has never been available to minority citizens as easily as it is to American-born citizens. Affirmative action was first implemented around the year 1972, however it was not widely accepted or practiced. During this time society was just getting used to including women in higher education institutions so the concept of including minorities in higher education was almost non-existent. My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor shows the challenges that a first generation, Puerto Rican, lower socioeconomic female had during this time. Through her autobiography she shows the struggles she faced throughout her life, focusing on her application to college, college experience and insight into her cultural background. My Beloved World present the ideology of White Supremacy and other phenomenon’s such as structural inequality, and socioeconomic inequality that interfere with Sonia’s inability to receive preparation for college and these things show the that America has not made good on its promise of equal opportunity for all.
In the book by Carl Rogers, A Way of Being, Rogers describes his life in the way he sees it as an older gentleman in his seventies. In the book Rogers discusses the changes he sees that he has made throughout the duration of his life. The book written by Rogers, as he describes it is not a set down written book in the likes of an autobiography, but is rather a series of papers which he has written and has linked together. Rogers breaks his book into four parts.
Some people feel justified for their actions, even though they know what they are doing is unethical. In Shirley Jackson’s Short story “The Possibility of Evil” the main character named Miss Adela Strangeworth is like this. Miss Strangeworth is indirectly characterized as being egocentric, sanctimonious, and for being self-indulgent.
David Foster Wallace’s “Good People,” is a very touching, powerful story about a young, unwed, Christian couple facing an extremely difficult decision and the moral and religious implications that may result. As the story begins, we are allowed into the head of Lane Dean, a college student, as he sits on a park bench with his girlfriend, Sheri. Lane and Sheri find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy, which causes them to battle with several moral and religious dilemmas. Both of them are devout Christians who have built their moral beliefs upon God and their religious upbringing. Although torn Sheri schedules an abortion, which weighs on Lane deeply. Lane, frozen in fear and not having the courage to freely talk to Sheri about the situation, has a conversation with her in his own head which leads him to question love, morals, religion and life. As they face this unwanted pregnancy, Lane, controlled by fear realizes that sometimes in life certain situations are too complicated to solely be answered within the rigidity of religion. People are human and regardless of how strong their faith in religion is, the battle between right and wrong will forever exist. Ultimately, Sheri decides to carry the child, which Lane assumes is a statement of Sheri’s faith in him. Inspired by her leap of faith, Lane decides to break free from the fear, muster up some courage and ultimately makes a leap of faith of his own and decides to give loving her a try. Lane’s epiphany leads to the central idea that sometimes it takes breaking the confines of fear and having faith in love or in another person to win the battle between right and wrong, which Wallace conveys beautifully.
At the early stage of novel, God is used as narrator’s scapegoat for failures that resulted from his actions. Narrator mentions God multiple times in the passage that usually talks about his failure. The views on God seem to be neutral as Narrator slightly mentions that “…God only knows if there’s any sense in my looking for a job any longer! All these refusals, these partial promises, simple noes, hopes built up and knocked down, new tries that ended each time in nothing” (Hamsun 5). Narrator believes that God is omnipresent and confess that only God understand what he is going through. But narrator’s view on God turns into anger as more misfortunes befall upon him and he states that “I came on the weightiest objections against the Lord’s arbitrariness in letting me suffer for everyone else’s sins” (Hamsun 20). The narrator suddenly changes his attitude toward God and goes into delusion like thought that God has chosen him to suffer and he thinks the God is the root of problem and that he is the problem for all his unfortunate ends regarding his living conditions and job status.
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
What should our goals be in life? Bill Strickland makes the point that no matter who you are you can do anything you put your mind too. In his book “Making the impossible possible” he explains his own struggle and how he made it through life to be able to help others. He explains his young childhood. He talks about how he had to live through riots and the racism. He talks about how he wanted to help people make their lives better. He explains his struggles with trying to maintain these buildings and how he made great connections. He tells about his love for pottery and his want to help others. His book was truly an inspiration and turned out to be more than I took his book for in the first few pages. His book made me think about my life and how I can relate to him.
In the article “What makes us moral” by Jeffrey Kluger, he describes how morality is defined and how the people follow rules. Kluger discusses about scientific research that has been done to point out the important reasons of morality. Kluger explains that a person’s decision to do something good or bad is based on empathy, that humans tend not to do bad to those they sympathize with. Kluger also compares humans with animals and thinks that morality is the only thing that separates us from animals. I do agree with Kluger that people are born with a sense of right and wrong, but we should be taught how to use it. We learned to be nicer to those around us because we already know the type of person they are, and the morality we learned as children