Angela’s Ashes
In Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes, the connection between tone, syntax, and point of view combine to create an effective balance of humor and pathos. This is shown through the perspective of little Frank McCourt. Sometimes it is human nature to try to make a tragedy seem better than it is in order to go on with our lives. Frank’s struggle to make his situation as a poor, Catholic, Irish boy more bearable, is demonstrated through the positive tone, powerful syntax and childlike point of view.
Humor and pathos come together when Frank steals bananas from the Italian, but later the same Italian gives him a bag of fruit. Frank knows that he can’t buy the bananas and he knows also the Italian won’t give them away seen when Frank says; “ Italians are not known for giving away bananas” (p.35). We can see the humor in the theft as the “ twins slobber and chew and spread bananas over their faces, their hair, their clothes” (p.36). The tragedy is that the McCourt kids are poor and have to resort to begging and stealing to survive. When the author uses such words such as “slobber” (p.36), “little buddas” (p.36), he is trying to make an intolerable situation more bearable and enjoyable to the reader.
When the McCourts are at their new home, two weeks before Christmas, the children come home and find the whole downstairs flooded. They decide that they will stay up stairs, which they call “Italy” (p.118), and the downstairs “Ireland” (p.118). The humor in this tragedy is the house is so run down that water leaks in and floods the bottom. Instead of suffering and complaining about the house they move upstairs and make the best out of it and try to live normally. The reader should find this funny from the way the family talks about it, they try to make the situation more bearable by adding a sense of humor. They leave the “Pope” (p.118) downstairs because Angela doesn’t “ want him on the wall glaring at me in the bed” (p.118). The syntax used is to make the reader feel pity for the family when the whole downstairs is flooded but also the author wants to make the reader laugh when the family decides to lighten the situation by creating an adventurous illusion.
One of the funnier moments is the scene where Frank pukes up the host and his Grandmother says she “ has God in her backyard” (p.
is being eroded by the sea so that cliffs, up to 20 metres high rise
Suffering from the death of a close friend, the boy tries to ignore his feelings and jokes on his sister. His friend was a mental patient who threw himself off a building. Being really young and unable to cope with this tragedy, the boy jokes to his sister about the bridge collapsing. "The mention of the suicide and of the bridge collapsing set a depressing tone for the rest of the story" (Baker 170). Arguments about Raisinettes force the father to settle it by saying, "you will both spoil your lunch." As their day continues, their arguments become more serious and present concern for the father who is trying to understand his children better. In complete agreement with Justin Oeltzes’ paper, "A Sad Story," I also feel that this dark foreshadowing of time to come is an indication of the author’s direct intention to write a sad story.
A couple movies which stand out extraordinarily well would be Big Fish and Edward Scissorhands. Beautiful acting and wonderful costumes, perfect camera angles and divine expressions all fill those movies to the brim.
Genre is the French word for 'type'. Type is the kind of text it is.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable child hood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood Is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood", writes Frank McCourt of his early life. Although Frank McCourt's autobiography, Angela's Ashes, paints a picture of both terrible poverty and struggles, this text is appealing and up lifting because of its focus on both humor and hope. McCourt's text shows the determination people living in dreadful conditions must have in order to rise above their situations and make better lives for themselves and their families. The effect of the story, although often distressing and sad, is not depressing. Frank as the young narrator describes his life events without bitterness, anger, or blame. Poverty and hardship are treated simply as if they are a fact of life, and in spite of the hard circumstances, many episodes during the novel are hilarious.
The mother of Frank McCourt, Angela, is an antagonist. She blamed Malachy Sr. for all of their problems calling him “useless,” “sitting on your arse by the fire is no place for a man”(218). Angela constantly ridiculing Malachy Sr. could be the cause of his alcohol addiction. Angela never made him feel like a man throughout the book she was always putting him down, the assumption of alcohol was the only thing he was really happy about. Angelas constant nagging drove him away leaving his family without much. Also, Angela constantly abandons her children. Her sexual desires caused her to continue having children despite the hunger and poverty they were already facing. Every time one of her children died she abandoned the rest of them, not taking care of them. The children had to survive on their own during her time of grieving. After Frank’s fight with Laman, Angela never once made sure Frank was okay. Instead she goes to Laman,
The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Dir. Andrew Adamson. By
J.R.R Tolkien’s work of fiction The Lord of the Rings, have with the advent of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation brought the series to newfound heights of fame. As with many works of it’s kind, The Lord of the Rings depicts a battle between good and evil, with the main characters in the books striving to thwart evil’s plan. In many other works, the author’s personal belief system or worldview drives the narrative, with the message being paramount and the characters the vehicles of conveyance for the point of the story. C.S Lewis, a friend and contemporary of Tolkien’s, is a prime example of this. Lewis’ popular series The Chronicles of Narnia is an allegorical work, teaching Christian principles through the use of fiction. While raised as a Catholic himself, Tolkien does not explicitly promote his religious background, nor does he engage in allegory. However, Tolkien’s views of morality can be found throughout the work, specifically in the way in which evil is portrayed, the use of power and moral freedom of choice. Randel Helms writes in his book, Tolkien’s World, “Tolkien’s particular myth parallels his Christianity, … positioning a malevolent and corrupting outside influence, spiritual and probably eternal, against which man is doomed to fight, but which he has no hope of conquering” (67).
...or feels the right to be evil but no other person than oneself should believe it. To assume something is like making up a story. Destruction could also mean death, and death is the only way one ends evil. Grendel is destroyed because good and evil work together, Beowulf thinks he is doing his society well and Grendel was the evil person who all feared. Each and every person has an evil and good side in themselves.
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring is no doubt one of
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
As children, we hear many stories about the interactions between good and evil. Since each story or fable have different characters, the description of evil and good are different from one another. The good character will have different characteristic compared to evil one.
This quote suggests that Tennyson’s poem glorifies the war, celebrating the sacrifice they had made for their country. By glorifying the Brigade, Tennyson has ignored the obscurity and massacre of the war; this is shown by the loyalty that the soldiers have for their country. The commitment of war in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is only shown because Tennyson's looking at war from afar .We can see this because in the poem he has not used descriptive language to describe what war was like, and has not shown the real outcome of war.
In the early parts of the story, the narrator behaves in a way that would be expected of a young child. She, along with her younger brother, finds Henry Bailey (the family’s hired hand) to be quite amusing in his antics. She states that “we admired [Henry] for [his] performance and for his ability to make his stomach growl at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistling and gurgling and involved the whole faulty machinery of his chest”(101). Being afraid of the dark is another experience that she and her brother share, and they fabricate rules that “When the light was on, [they] were safe as long as [they] did not step off the square of worn carpet which defined [their] bedroom-space” (101). Children that are of a young age will often make up stories that reflect their s...
The Biological Importance of Water as a Solvent and as a Medium for Living Organisms