Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
An essay on the topic VIOLENCE
Now and then character analysis
An essay on the topic VIOLENCE
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: An essay on the topic VIOLENCE
This semester in American Literature I have read and analyzed various literary works. The reoccurring theme throughout the works is violence. I have came to the conclusion that the significance of violence throughout the various works is that the group or individual singled out throughout the works is the victim of violence because the enemy has something to gain from the victim. The literary works, Caged Bird, Giving Blood, Sand Creek, and An Episode of War demonstrate this.
For example, Caged Bird by Maya Angelou demonstrates how a personal struggle can become a form of violence. Angelou, an African American has a troubled childhood and as a result of her parents divorce she is sent to live with her grandmother at a young age. Angelou struggles with the reality of being rejected by her parents at a young age and as a result believes she is ugly and will never hold the same value as a white person. Throughout her life Angelou is confronted with racism. In Caged Bird, the bird represents Angelou who is a victim of her own situation. “The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom” (124). This quote reflects Angelou’s situation of being “caged” in her situation and demonstrates how the violence of racism and negative thinking of oneself results in self destruction and how people who discriminate against Angelou have self gain because they feed off of the negative reactions of Angelou. The free bird in the poem represents Angelou’s potential as well as hopes and dreams for the future.
Next, in Giving Blood, by Sherman Alexie, the protagonist is in need of money for a cab fare goes to a blood donation bank. Th...
... middle of paper ...
...ant makes his way to the hospital and comes upon men who are misplaced in the war due to various situations such as injuries or separation from their units. Once the lieutenant arrives at the hospital the surgeon tells the lieutenant that he will need surgery and assures him that he will be able to keep the arm stating, “come along, now. I won’t amputate it” (14). This quote is a lie told in order to get the lieutenants consent. The story concludes with the lieutenant’s right arm being amputated. The violence in the short story consists of the ongoing war and the act of the surgeon lying to the surgeon and amputating the lieutenant’s arm. The gain was as a result of the lieutenant’s consent the doctor was able to amputate the lieutenant’s arm.
The works studied this semester all share a common theme of violence. The theme is that one party gains in violence.
Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” does a marvelous job of highlighting the violent nature of mankind. The underlying cause of this violent nature can be analyzed from three perspectives, the first being where the occurrence of violence takes place, the second man’s need to be led and the way their leader leads them, and lastly whether violence is truly an innate and inherent characteristic in man.
My presentation will be about the depiction and meaning of violence and human nature, in C.M.’s novels.
There are many obstacles in which Maya Angelou had to overcome throughout her life. However, she was not the only person affected throughout the story, but as well as her family. Among all the challenges in their lives the author still manages to tell the rough and dramatic story of the life of African Americans during a racism period in the town of Stamps. In Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings she uses various types of language to illustrate the conflicts that arise in the novel. Among the different types of languages used throughout the book, she uses literary devices and various types of figurative language. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou the author uses literary devices and figurative language to illustrate to the reader how racism creates obstacles for her family and herself along with how they overcome them.
“‘Instrumental’ violence, however, murder for a purpose, - political power, rape, sadistic pleasure, robbery, or some other base gratification – remains the domain of the male. After all, every male is a potential killer in the form of a warrior – and he only becomes a murderer when he misuses his innate physical and socialized capacity to kill for ignoble, immoral, and impolitic reason. While the male is built and programmed to destroy, the female nests, creates, and nurtures. Or so the story goes”.
Maya Angelou's writing career began during the late 1950's, around the same period when the Civil Rights Movement began to take place. Maya's known for one f her most famous poems, I Know Why The Cage Birds Sing. This poem is basically talking about how the birds in the cage are the African Americans/Blacks, where they have no freedom. "The free bird leaps on the back of the wind/and floats downstream till the current ends/And dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky."(Angelou, 1-3) In the beginning , of this poem Maya Angelou is using the free bird to refer to the white people because they have all the rights and the blacks are stuck in "the cage" with no rights or freedom. Also, she could have a more positive aspect meaning that the free bird is the Black American dream coming to reality. After, being in ...
This paper will discuss the American society’s views on the ethics of violence from the eyes of a group of young black men and women whose observation of American ethics was questioned based on the interpretation of the people who are processing the violence. In the article Ethical Violence written by Dale Campbell, he questions Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian who was murdered during WWII, and his theory about flexibility in moral law:
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.
Firstly, violence is used as a tool to vent anger. One prime example of this is that in the very first conversation of the play,
Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Western genre is recognized for the place it gives to violence as one of the central points of the Western stories. In Western, violence is considered as a usual part of the life. Shooting and hanging are kind of violence commonly met in Western stories. For example, Rooster explains in a casual way that “[he] shots [Lucky Ned Pepper] in the lip last August down in the Winding Stair Mountains. He was plenty lucky that day"(p.63). He doesn’t describe this event with agony or guilt but rather as if it was happening regularly. Violence is also represented brutally: “With that, Quincy brought the bowie knife down on moons cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log” (148). The particularity in this quote is in the way Mattie is illustrating this scene without emotions and in a casual manner. In this novel, violence is shown as casual and brutal. Hence, in the western stories, violence is significantly present.
While some events justify and legitimize the use of violence, too many acts are overshadowed and overthrowing the idea that violence is legitimate.
Walker, Pierre A. Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Vol. 22. West Chester: Collage Literature, n.d. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
Passion is what causes violence in terms of human conflict; but often society overlooks the consequences violence has on the individuals in humanity. The United States wanted so desperately to fight communism that they put their own citizens in harm’s way multiple times. The complexity of conflict, such as the Cold War, lies within this dilemma: there’s no telling who is truly right. Perspective makes all the difference. So now I ask: why must humanity employ violence when more often than not the cost is much greater than the cause? The price of violence is a life, but one of the few priceless gifts humans have is a
First, war is universal due to its violent nature, violence in its application knows no bounds, and it is the common factor that identifies the war and without it the war is nothing more than a diplomatic effort to reach the end. However, wars blow out only when the diplomacy fails. Violence is the war engine. Although the application of violence evolved through time and its severity varies according to communities, cultures, and the means and methods used. Demonstrating the violence through the application of force to subjugate the enemy is the central idea of war. “War is a clash between major interests,