Inevitably, there comes a point in everybody’s life at which they have an experience that completely alters their view of the world. This moment is when one loses his or her innocence, or comes of age, and he or she realizes that they do not live in a utopian Golden Age. Parents are charged with the monumental duty of protecting their children’s innocence, but everybody inescapably grows up. This experience can be anything from an embarrassing situation at school to coming within seconds of death. In the short story “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien, the author tells the true story of his daughter confronting him and asked him if he had ever killed anyone. In an effort to be a good parent and protect the nine-year-old’s innocence, the author does not share with her the story he goes on to tell to the reader. He explains how many years ago, he was serving in the army and was taking a shift guarding his troop’s campsite when all of a sudden, a young man from the opposing army came walking up the trail. Without a second thought, O’Brien killed the boy with a grenade, and he lost his innocence after realizing he had killed a defenseless man without hesitation. Tim O’Brien develops Ambush as a coming of age story through the use of literary devices. The author uses a lengthy exposition to explain how he lost his innocence many years ago. When his daughter ambushes him with her statement, “…I guess you must’ve killed somebody,” he simply replies with, “Of course not” (131). However, he then details for the reader his experience of throwing a grenade and killing an enemy soldier from back when he was in the military. This story is Ambush’s exposition – when an author provides the reader with necessary background information. Tim O’Br... ... middle of paper ... ...eal world. The author is foiled with Kiowa, a member of his troop and this story’s everyman, to show the difference between one who still holds his innocence and one who has already lost his. Finally, the fact that the father is dynamic signifies how life-altering losing one’s innocence is – his conception of life was completely transformed after the unforgettable experience. Ambush is a story of the protection of innocence, and the author uses his actual memories to construct the thought-provoking piece. Loss of innocence is most likely such a commonly occurring literary archetype because everyone can relate to it – all people lose their innocence at some point. Maintaining one’s innocence is great throughout his or her childhood, but eventually, he or she is guaranteed to lose it. Such a pivotal moment in life is never easy to go through, but it must happen.
Exploring the minds of six-year-olds can be a very interesting experience. Gary Soto narrates this story as a young boy at a time when he seems to be young and foolish. Soto does a great job of showing the contrast between right and wrong through a child’s eyes. He successfully conveys the guilt of the boy through his use of imagery, repetition and contrast. He uses these tools to get the reader into the mind of the boy so that they can explore his guilt and thoughts.
Analyzing innocence has always been a difficult task, not only due to it’s rapid reevaluation in the face of changing societal values, but also due to the highly private and personal nature of the concept. The differences between how people prioritize different types of innocence - childhood desires, intellectual naivety, sexual purity, criminal guilt, etc. - continually obscures the definition of innocence. This can make it difficult for people to sympathize with others’ loss of purity, simply because their definition of that loss will always be dissimilar to the originally expressed idea. Innocence can never truly be adequately described, simply because another will never be able to precisely decipher the other’s words. It is this challenge, the challenge of verbally depicting the isolationism of the corruption of innocence, that Tim O’Brien attempts to endeavour in his fictionalized memoir, The
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
After hearing a brief description of the story you might think that there aren’t many good things about they story. However, this is false, there are many good things in this book that makes it a good read. First being that it is a very intriguing book. This is good for teenage readers because often times they don’t willingly want to read, and this story will force the teenage or any reader to continue the book and continue reading the series. Secondly, this is a “good” book because it has a good balance of violence. This is a good thing because it provides readers with an exciting read. We hear and even see violence in our everyday life and I believe that it is something teenagers should be exposed to. This book gives children an insig...
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
Conclusion: The author Evan Hunter, of the story, “On The Sidewalk Bleeding” successfully demonstrates the theme of Coming of Age as he shifted his main character from an adolescent, idealistic view of the world to a more mature and realistic view. The character matured from making ignorant and selfish decisions to a more knowledgeable and selfless decisions. Andy came of age from a boy to a man, as he lay on the street bleeding to death. All in all these newly developed characteristics all prove the genre of coming of
Growing up and becoming mature can be an intimidating experience; it is difficult to let go of one’s childhood and embrace the adult world. For some people, this transition from youthfulness to maturity can be much more difficult than for others. These people often try to hold on to their childhood as long as they can. Unfortunately, life is not so simple. One cannot spend their entire life running from the responsibilities and hardships of adulthood because they will eventually have to accept the fact that they have a role in society that they must fulfill as a responsible, mature individual. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger follows the endeavours of Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old teenage boy who faces a point in his life where he must make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In an attempt to retain his own childhood, he begins hoping to stop other young children from growing up and losing their innocence as well. As indicated by the title, “The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that explores a theme involving the preservation of innocence, especially of children. It is a story about a boy who is far too hesitant to grow up, and feels the need to ensure that no one else around him has to grow up either. His own fear of maturity and growing up is what leads to Holden’s desire to become a “catcher in the rye” so he can save innocent children from becoming part of the “phoniness” of the adult world.
In “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien, he leaves out very little detail in his retelling. The taste, feeling, and sense of the day he killed a young man at the ambush site outside of My Khe is entirely still there. This is in total contrast to John Steinbeck's ideas in “Why Soldiers Won’t Talk”. You see, John Steinbeck concludes that soldiers who come back from war don’t talk about their experiences because their minds and bodies are dulled by wartime situations are experiences. “Ambush” has a clear control when it comes to O’Brien’s narrative of the events he’s witnessed and a strong sense of what he saw. His memory is crystal clear. O’Brien remembered how he threw, it froze, and landed at the young man’s feet. He remembers the young man’s death very
Churchwell, Sarah. "The Death of Innocence." New York Times 18 Aug 2008, n. pag. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
In the story “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, the reader is enlightened about a boy who was mentally and emotionally drained from the horrifying experiences of war. The father in the story knows exactly what the boy is going through, but he cannot help him, because everyone encounters his or her own recollection of war. “When their faces are contorted from sucking the cigarette, there is an unmistakable shadow of vulnerability and fear of living. That gesture and stance are more eloquent than the blood and guts war stories men spew over their beers” (Zabytko 492). The father, as a young man, was forced to reenact some of the same obligations, yet the father has learne...
Innocence is something always expected to be lost sooner or later in life, an inevitable event that comes of growing up and realizing the world for what it truly is. Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” portrays an event in which a ten year old girl’s loss of innocence after unveiling a relatively shocking towards the end of the story. Set in post-Civil War America, the literary piece holds very particular fragments of imagery and symbolism that describe the ultimate maturing of Myop, the young female protagonist of the story. In “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, the literary elements of imagery, symbolism, and setting “The Flowers” help to set up a reasonably surprising unveiling of the gruesome ending, as well as to convey the theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing the harsh reality of this world.
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy. When Tim O’Brien kills a man during the Vietnam War, he is shocked that the man is not the buff, wicked, and terrifying enemy he was expecting. This realization overwhelms him in guilt. O’Brien’s guilt has him so fixated on the life of his victim that his own presence in the story—as protagonist and narrator—fades to the black. Since he doesn’t use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans. In The Man I Killed, Tim O’Brien explores the truth of The Vietnam War by vividly describing the dead body and the imagined life of the man he has killed to question the morality of killing in a war that seems to have no point to him.
Adam, a corporal officer, starts as man who works everyday to catch the ‘villains’ of society, but is not spending enough time with his family, especially his son. He favors his nine year old daughter over his fifteen year old son. Adam views his daughter as a sweet child, and his son as a stubborn teenager who is going through a rebellious stage. However, when his daughter is killed in an accident, his perspective of family changes. In his grief, he states that he wishes he had been a better father. His wife reminds him that he still is a father and he realizes that he still has a chance with his son, Dylan. After his Daughter’s death, he creates a resolution from scriptures that states how he will be a better father. Because of the resolution he creates, he opens up to and spends more time with his son. By th...
...cter of an American in order to show the imperceptiveness of Americans towards an unfamiliar culture on the opposite side of the planet and the senselessness of the intervention in general. The character of the young American Alden Pyle is naïve and convinced in the rightness of his deeds, even though he actually brings on a tragedy. His innocence poses a problem in that his good intentions informed by the simplistic belief that the world can be fixed and things set right only succeeds in killing people. On the war grounds, the only matter of significance is survival, not idealization. It is about fighting to live and being in control on the battlefield. Hence, in this story, innocence is simply a very dangerous thing to hold on to. In the end, Fowler blames innocence alone for the demise of Pyle, and he speaks of innocence as if it were a curse, and not a strength.