This scene takes place in Katherine Hilbery’s house. It is situated at the moment when neither Ralph nor Katharine were sure of what they felt for each other. In this extract, it is clearly seen that Ralph is lost in his thoughts mostly because of the different feelings he has for Katharine. He cannot make the difference between reality and what he believes is reality. Therefore, by proceeding to a deep analysis of what is happening in Ralph’s head, Virginia Woolf, being the omniscient narrator, shows us the trouble and lost Katharine Hilbery has created into Denham’s mind. To express her ideas, she uses multiple stylistic features which contribute in adding a certain consistence to the themes she wants to highlight. Subsequently, two themes may be identified in that extract which are the inability to distinguish the real from the intangible and Ralph’s unconscious infatuation with Katharine.
First, on the second to third line, Virginia Woolf describes the first symptoms which show Denham’s incapability to separate reality from imagination. “His eyes were bright…he scarcely knew whether they beheld dreams or reality”. This personification of the eyes, as if it was the eyes only were the observers of the reality and dreams and not the human, shows Ralph confusion about the world he is living in. It seems like he is trapped at the frontier of two different dimensions where the realities in each of them are mixed together to create the absurdity he was seeing at that moment. His imagination and his world being the same entity in his head, he could not think nor act at that precise moment. We can also detect a lexical field of hallucination with the words “dreams”, “phantom”, “unreal” and “depth of mind” which enforce the idea tha...
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...page 150 “he…thought her more beautiful and strange than his dream of her” and line 7 “ she overflowed the edges of the dream; he remarked that her softness was like that of some vast snowy owl”. This succession of praising similes towards Katharine proves that his fascination for her knows no limit. Virginia Woolf thus shows here the evolution of Ralph’s feelings toward Katharine, from despise to infatuation and maybe at the end to love.
So after the analysis of this text, we can deduce first that Ralph Denham is a very difficult character to define as he represents complexity by himself with his emotions mixed up together. The author maybe presented him like this to preserve a kind of mysterious atmosphere in the book. What is sure now is that he somewhat developed a kind of craze for Katharine and the romance between those two can certainly end in their favor.
The book Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is a horrifying, historic account of Wiesel’s time in multiple German concentration camps. His work gained him a Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech and further lectures enlightened many other readers. Elie Wiesel’s eye-opening Night is very relevant for real life. This stunning book is applicable because of its education about World War II for the Jewish, inspiration to the human race in their day-to-day lives, and because genocide still goes on today in places such as Darfur.
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see…” When analyzed literally, this quote appears to contradict itself. After all, doesn’t darkness impair vision? However, when applied to Elie Wiesel’s Night, this paradox certainly rings true. It implies that in times of despair, humans often view life in a different light. Sheathed in darkness, the truth becomes illuminated. In Night, the Jews’ “dark time” entails being stripped of their freedom, rights, family, food, shelter, religion, and identity. With the loss of each of these precious possessions, the Jews begin to recognize the worth of such elements. Wistfully, they realize that these belongings should not be taken for granted, that they are truly priceless. As stated by Elie on page 23,“Our eyes were opened. Too late.”
In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesal presents the readers with many theme’s throughout the long journey of Elie, and his miraculous survival of one of the toughest experiences known to man. The major theme throughout the whole story is Elie’s struggle to maintain any sort of faith in god or a god like figure. As we meet Elie in the beginning, we see that God is a constant in this young boys life. He even stated “Why did I pray? . . . Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesal) Here we see that there is no second guessing his faith in god and how strong it was. But after few experiences during the Holocaust it becomes apparent that his “faith” in god seems to be lessoning day after day. After his first days in the camps, Elie wonders how God could make life this terrible for people. The cruelty he witnessed and the hardships he fought made an impact on his faith and beliefs. Questioning is fundamental to the idea of faith and belief in God. The Holocaust forced Elie to ask terrible questions about good and evil and about whether God really does exists. But just him asking these questions shows his true belief in God. So Elie questioned whether he really was faithful to God, but as he did this, he soon realized questioning belief makes him know God is really there.
Many people don’t care about something or an issue until it happens directly to them or to their loved ones. Even if it were nations becoming alienated, they wouldn’t want to go near the problem or the unfairness and instead, they choose to runaway. Elie Wiesel addresses this problem in a short paragraph by saying: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere…. Action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.” Elie Wiesel asserts that the world community is responsible to interfere when acts such as mass murder or genocide occur. He says that “silence encourages the tormentor” and “indifference is the most insidious danger of all”. One must speak out against oppression so there can be a difference. When one remains silent and doesn’t act, they are encouraging the person responsible for the genocide, not the victim. Thus, at times when one thinks that they are just being neutral, this neutrality invites more oppression, and even worse, if one were to have a whole nation with this type of mindset. That is why I agree to Elie Wiesel’s contention about standing up against oppression.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
Night is a horrible tale of murder and man’s inhumanity to man. Wiesel saw his family, friends, and fellow Jews degraded and murdered. Wiesel also states in his book that his God, to whom he was so devoted, was also "murdered" by the Nazis. In the novel Wiesel changed from a devout Jew to a broken young man who doubted his belief in God.
“Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death” (Conrad 1). From the beginning of the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist Eliezer is portrayed as a very religious person, and his belief in God is absolute, but as the novels proceeds this sense of faith ends because of the circumstances Eliezer has to go through. One can infer that the changes in Eliezer’s belief were due to several reasons. This essay will be focusing on how Eliezer’s journey of the holocaust causes drastic changes of his views and beliefs in the benevolent God. Some of the reasons why Eliezer loses faith and belief in God include: the cruelty and evil that Eliezer has to witness at the German concentration camps, the selfishness that he sees from people on his journey, and the loses faces due to the war. Therefore, Elie Wiesel has attempted to portray the holocaust as the driving force for the protagonist’s disbelief in God, and has also pointed out how cruelty and evil affects Eliezer’s faith and his belief in the Benevolent.
The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir written to describe the events in Elie’s life that were drastic and important for everyone to learn about. It was 1944 in Germany, all Jews were evacuated to concentration camps where they would be abused and tortured incessantly by Nazi soldiers who were trying to efface all Jews out of Germany. Throughout Elie’s life in these concentration camps, he experienced moments where his humanity, faith, and beliefs were ripped apart. Two moments in Night that were pivotal in Elie’s progression from the boy he was at the beginning to the "corpse" he sees staring back at him in the mirror are when he sees the boy hanging on the gallows and when he realizes he is left alone when his father dies.
Night by Elie Wiesel Nobody wants to read such a morbid book as Night. There isn’t anybody (other than the Nazis and Neo-Nazis) who enjoys reading about things like the tortures, the starvation, and the beatings that people went through in the concentration camps. Night is a horrible tale of murder and of man’s inhumanity towards man. We must, however, read these kinds of books, regardless.
...llusion and faced the reality. George sings, “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Martha responds, “I am.” What George meant was “Who’s afraid of facing the reality?” Martha reveals that she is afraid of facing reality. Martha then become more fearful, because now she knows that she has to protect her own reality. Therefore, in order to understand and face reality, one must experience fear and madness.
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, humanity is a theme seen throughout. Humanity can be defined in many ways. It can be the disposition to do good, or it can be the human race. In the Night, the theme of humanity is the disposition to do good. In the book, Elie loses and finds his humanity. At the end, he holds on to his humanity, but loses some of it after events like his father’s death. Elie succeeds in retaining his humanity because he holds on to his father, he feels sympathy for people at the camps, and he keeps faith. Elie retains his humanity in the end even though he loses it in the middle of the book.
Nine patriarchs found a town. Four women flee a life. Only one paradise is attained. Toni Morrison's novel Paradise revolves around the concept of "paradise," and those who believe they have it and those who actually do. Morrison uses a town and a former convent, each with its own religious center, to tell her tale about finding solace in an oppressive world. Whether fleeing inter- and intra-racial conflict or emotional hurt, the characters travel a path of self-isolation and eventual redemption. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison uses the town of Ruby and four broken women to demonstrate how "paradise" can not be achieved through isolation, but rather only through understanding and acceptance.
Woolf’s pathos to begin the story paints a picture in readers minds of what the
Ralph’s power at the beginning is secure but as the group succumbs to their savage instincts, Ralph’s influence declines as Jack’s rises. This is due mainly to the cruelty and violence that goes on in the story. This cruelty reveals that Ralph’s commitment to civilization and being rescued is so strong that he will not allow himself to change his morals and become cruel like the others. The cruelty in this novel also shows that Ralph is a very intelligent character. His intelligence can be proven because there was a point in the novel when he hunts a boar for the first time and he experiences the thrill of bloodlust. He also attends one of Jack’s feast where he is swept away by the frenzy and participates in the killing of Simon. This is a very tragic moment for Ralph because this is when he realizes the evil that lives within himself and every human being. It is the cruel acts that happen in this novel that reveals Ralph’s character of being intelligent and being able to think deeply about human experiences. He even weeps when getting saved because of his knowledge about the human capacity for
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is a story that centers around the the value of memory to self. The story does this by centering around the characters that Woolf writes about, and their thoughts pertaining to their memories of one another. Woolf’s writing in To the Lighthouse is rich in her characters, Mrs. and Mr. Ramsay, their kids, and their friends’ thoughts and feelings towards everything they are going through, and more importantly, their thoughts and memories of one another. The reader learns about the characters’ through the complex thoughts Woolf’s characters’ have.