In The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour the character Mathurin Kerbouchard is in search of his father. In the beginning Mathurin has an abundance of gold coins and tries to figure out where his father is. He goes on a boat and asks if they knew him. He didn’t have luck and is brought onto the boat as a slave. He convinces Walther, the captain, to let him be the pilot. He wants to go to Cadiz and finally persuades Walther to let him drive the boat there. In Cadiz he sells the boat while everyone is gone to a merchant named Ben Salom. He goes to Cordoba and meets Aziza. Aziza is royalty and they run away together. They go to the castle of Othman and guards find them and throw Kerbouchard in prison. He escapes and Eric wants to kill him. He meets a woman named Safia who is going to help him. Safia and Kerbouchard depart a couple times, but she is always there to help him. Kerbouchard finds Suzanne the Hansgraf who leads him on his journey around Europe. Suzanne departs at Constantinople when Kerbouchard has to go to Alamut. He finds his dad there and they stay together until he leaves to find his lover. Some of the most important characters in the book are Safia, Suzanne, and Jean Kerbouchard. The most important one of all is his dad, Jean, because they make enemies along the way and always keep going, Mathurin is searching for his father his whole journey, and his dad is his educator.
Both Mathurin and Jean Kerbouchard create enemies throughout their journeys. Their enemies were some of the same people. Tournemine became Mathurin’s because he was responsible for the death of his beloved mother. Since Tournemine was the murderer, Mathurin felt remorse for Tournemine and he attacked him and if Tournemine had not moved he would be d...
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...equences of battle and losing and can do better in the next one. The Kerbouchard men learned this way but always have their women to fall back on at the end of the day.
Jean Kerbouchard is the one person who is as important or more than Mathurin for his wit of teaching to his son and being a father by teaching him everything. Mathurin wouldn’t have had the determination to find his father and go through everything he did if his father didn’t mean something to him. He taught him everything he knew and what he needed to know. He made him determined to see him again and it was also good for Jean. He got to see him again when he wasn’t able to see him because of Mahmoud. Parents are taken from their children every day and their kids mostly always find their way back to them. It is an instinct for children to find their parents and Mathurin took it to the next level.
What are the major wars in which the U.S. fought? A typical American might mention the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and most recently, the war in Iraq. However, one war absent from this list proved to be one of the most casualty-laden but least recognized by the American public as a significant war: the Korean War. In his book No Bugles, No Drums: An Oral History of the Korean War, Vietnam veteran Rudy Tomedi offers the personal memories of dozens of soldiers who participated in “the forgotten war.”
The Broken Spears is a book written by Miguel Leon-Portilla that gives accounts of the fall of the Aztec Empire to the Spanish in the early 16th century. The book is much different from others written about the defeat of the empire because it was written from the vantage point of the Aztecs rather then the Spanish. Portilla describes in-depth many different reasons why the Spanish were successful in the defeat of such a strong Empire.
Maxine Kumin?s, Woodchucks provides an interesting and creative perspective into the mind state of those influenced by nazi warfare. What begins as a seemingly humorous cat and mouse hunt, reminiscent of such movie classics as Caddyshack, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. Kumin?s descriptive language provides the reader with the insight necessary to understand to the speaker?s psychology as they are driven beyond the boundaries of pacifism.
Do you think it’s possible to have a positive outcome after accidentally killing someone? It can happen, and this book shows you how. The message that the author sends is important, and the story is laid out in a unique way that makes it interesting to read.
Robert Laurence Moore has written a delightful, enlightening, and provocative survey of American church history centered around the theme of "mixing" the "sacred" with the "secular" and vice versa. The major points of conversation covered include the polarization caused by the public display of religious symbols, the important contribution that women and Africans have made to the American religious mosaic, the harmony and friction that has existed between science and religion, the impact of immigration on religious pluralism, and the twin push toward the union and separation of religion and politics.
Lafayette uses signs, which are motives, throughout her novel La Princesse de Clèves. She uses the dialogue between the husband and the Princess Mme. de Clèves to show the motive of passion. She also uses Mme. de Clèves to show her way of expressing toward the situation that the Princess has. Fabricated letter is also used in her novel to represent the signs of taking over the Princess’s feelings. In her novel, she utilizes characters For this essay, I would like to explore the structure of her novel through signs, as shown in Dalia Judovitz’s article The Aesthetics of Implausibility: La Princesse de Cléves.
In her novel The Daughter of Time Josephine Tey looks at how history can be misconstrued through the more convenient reinterpretation of the person in power, and as such, can become part of our common understanding, not being true knowledge at all, but simply hearsay. In The Daughter of Time Josephine claims that 40 million school books can’t be wrong but then goes on to argue that the traditional view of Richard III as a power obsessed, blood thirsty monster is fiction made credible by Thomas More and given authenticity by William Shakespeare. Inspector Alan Grant looks into the murder of the princes in the tower out of boredom. Tey uses Grant to critique the way history is delivered to the public and the ability of historians to shape facts to present the argument they believe.
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development does not get beyond the setting. …” The poem starts: “Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound” (Hollander 1). The reader learns the time of the poem’s story is dawn. The last line of the first stanza provides place: “That was when I was living by the sound” (3). It establishes time and place in the first stanza, but like the circular motion of a villanelle, each stanza never moves beyond morning time at the sound but only conveys a little more about “dawn.” The first stanza comments on the sound of dawn with “…gulls shrieked violently…” (2). The second stanza explains the ref...
In the short story “Cornet at night” by Sinclair Ross, Tom Dickson is a young farm boy who lives on a farm with his parents. He is very naive and has not had a chance to experience the outside world for his own. He knows only what he learns from the farm and school, but now that he gets to go on a small adventure on his on, he grows up in a variety of ways. One way in which Tom grows up is when he goes to town by himself. He has gone before, but with the security of his parents with him, and for a young boy to go to another town “eight miles north of here” is a large task for such a young boy, thus showing one way that he matures. To illustrate this, as Tom rolls into town with Rock he says, “I remember nothing but a smug satisfaction with myself, an exhilarating conviction of importance and
In the novel Ragtime, many aspects of the American society are explored. The reader gets an understanding of the history and hardships of different social classes, races, and cultures during the last century. A persistent theme established is the existence of the American dream. Doctorow expresses his fascination of the social mobility since it includes the impoverished and underprivileged. However, he highlights that when attempting to reach success, one is required to make sacrifices, negotiating his morality and identity. Tateh and Coalhouse are crucial examples of how the demands, prejudices, and opportunities of the American society can change a man’s mentality.
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These appalling memories are an account of the impact of colonization on the Haisla territory which continues to haunt the Aboriginal community throughout generations.
... could not help themselves, they were not going to be helped. If struggle were encountered, men had personalized ways to reconnect with the real world, and if a tragedy were encountered which affected the entire company, they also found a combined way to cope with this pressure. The priorities of men during the war shifted greatly toward emotional connections to people and events other than the war, and it was these connections that helped them survive and return home. Coping with the stress and burden of war is not an easy task for anyone, yet in The Things they Carried, O'Brien depicts men dealing and coping as much as they can, using only their primeval resources. They learn how to cope with the barest necessities in life, and they learn how to make use of the smallest opportunities to obtain the most relief and joy from every moment in life.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
Meursault is distant from set plans, ambitions, desires, love, and emotions in general. He has a difficult time with emotions such as regret and compassion. The reader sees the nature of his personality in the first few lines of the novel: "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." When he hears of the death of his mother through a telegram, he is unattached, and can be considered uncaring.