Violent acts in literature function as more than just physical action in that they often tell the audience something. For example, the motives and desires of the perpetrator are generally revealed during the fight. Truly great works use these violent acts to indicate a theme. One such example is “Sunshine” by Lynn Freed. In this short story, Julian de Jong, a man whose wealth allows him to evade punishment for raping children, finds a young girl in a pile of leaves. This man tames the girl with the help of his maids and earns her trust only to force himself on her at the end. De Jong and the child fight with the girl emerging as the victor. In this crucial scene, it is shown that Freed wishes to criticize the villagers’ morality in allowing …show more content…
Of course, the latter’s self-centeredness and depravity are already well-established when it becomes known that he rapes young girls, but other villagers are also guilty when they allow him to continue. In many cases, it is greed that prevents them from standing up since some know “that when he [is] finished with them, the girls would fetch a decent bride price” because of how scared and docile they become because of these incidents (296). Even if this brings money to a poor family, Freed uses the nameless girl’s story of her rape to demonstrate that no amount of trauma given to any victim is worth any material comforts. In a similarly selfish case, Grace, de Jong’s maid, is delighted to hand captured girls over to her master because “then she’d have her two weeks off” (300). Although she begins to feel a special bond with this girl in particular, the fear of de Jong and the desire to be free for two weeks outweigh that attachment, and she acquiesces to his demands. However, during the fight, Freed shows how wrong Grace is and how horrible it is that an innocent girl has to suffer from this society because people are more willing to save their own skins than to stand up, leaving the child no choice but to resort to violent means
Celie is a victim of mistreatment and isolation in a world that considers women inferior to men. To instill fear and obedience in women, men conduct themselves in a hostile manner towards women. They manage women similar to slaves and sexually dominate them. When Celie is barely fourteen her stepfather, causing her to become pregnant twice, violates her multiple times. In a letter to God, Celie writes “I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it” (Walker 11). Intended merely to satisfy Pa, Celie...
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear, contempt, and affection toward Rufus that she does.
Justine, too, is an ‘idealised figure’, described during the trial as having a countenance which, ‘always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful.’ She is the archetypal innocent, being beautiful, weak and entirely accepting of her fate to the point of martyrdom.
During 1910 and 1970, over six million blacks departed the oppression of the South and relocated to western and northern cities in the United States, an event identified as the Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns is a powerful non-fiction book that illustrates this movement and introduces the world to one of the most prominent events in African American history. Wilkerson conveys a sense of authenticity as she not only articulates the accounts of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, but also intertwines the tales of some 1,200 travelers who made a single decision that would later change the world. Wilkerson utilizes a variety of disciplines including sociology, psychology, and economics in order to document and praise the separate struggles but shared courage of three individuals and their families during the Great Migration.
She is sorely bruised, but cannot talk about it, which typifies the domestic abuse that women, and the girl child suffer. Some women are forced into silence because they want to keep their family together, while others are silence because the society blames them in the end. Turtle’s silence mirrors the author’s experience in her younger years as a rape victim. She could not talk openly on it because she was blamed for the rape which was labelled ‘acquaintance rape’ (Critical Companion 6). Lamenting what Turtle had gone through as a child, Kingsolver wrote, “The Indian girl was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine” (The Bean Trees 25). Here, the author shows that being a girl usually herald an uneasy life, and this theme is explicated throughout the rest of the
While reading the poem “Daystar,” written by Rita Dove, its readers most likely do not ask thought-provoking questions like “Why did Dove write this?” or “What is the true meaning behind this poem?” but the poem has deeper meaning than what its outside layer portrays. Dove, an African American woman born in 1952, has not only viewed the racism of the United States society, but she has also seen how gender can or cannot play a role in the advancement of a person’s life (Rita Dove: The Poetry Foundation). The poem “Daystar” not only takes an outside perspective on the everyday life of a woman, but it closely relates to Dove’s family history. Dove uses the experiences of her life as a woman, and the knowledge gained from living in countries other than the United States, to depict the pressure and desire felt by mothers and/or wives on a daily basis.
Suffering and its role in Crime and Punishment are centered on Raskolnikov, his “infinite love” for Sonia, and the “repay[ment for] all her sufferings” (542). Sonia, the eighteen-year-old stepdaughter of Katerina Ivanovna, does not want to be sucked into prostitution but is forced to because of the living conditions her family is faced with (17). The situation that Raskolnikov believes Sonia to be in fosters the misconception that she is just as bad as he, thus he confronts her about it. Raskolnikov does not realize that his shallow thoughts add to her suffering and he takes her for granted until she becomes ill (540). Sonia’s suffering is final pivot that turns Raskolnikov’s perception of an ubermensch. Now, it is Raskolnikov turn to pay for his new life, the life that will only come after “great striving, [and] great suffering” (542).
This seemed to follow a pattern. Rain, who was recruited into sex trafficking at age 11, claimed her pimp only had minors in his “stable”. To keep control of his victims he threatened them by threatening their families. Finally yet importantly is Cindy who, along with other women, were intimidated and trapped within a home to insure their obedience. Their stories depict a world dominated by shame, regret, and fear.
What do you picture when you are told to imagine a perfect world? A world with no crime, hate, and rules, where order is always kept and everyone is content. Keep that in mind, now imagine just below the surface of that perfect community is a terrible ghastly secret. A secret the whole town knows about and decides to turn a blind eye on. Now what do you think of that town? This is the plot in the story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, and the secret they hide is that beneath the city they imprison a small child and make him live his life in fear and misery in exchange for their happiness. The citizens of Omelas are all aware of this deal from a young age and are even allowed to visit the child in his soiled dungeon, yet no kind words or actions are to be shown to him or the deal is terminated. Consequently, the inhabitants of Omelas see the cruel treatment of the boy and must face the internal conflict of knowing what their ‘Utopian’ living brings. Ultimately, they must decide on the lesser of the two evils, to stay, or to leave, but with each option carrying negative side effects, the people of Omelas must make their decision wisely and consult their own inner morals to decide what is right and wrong, a conflict everyone must face in their life at some point, even in today’s society.
Our environment shapes our personalities and decisions in all aspects, one way or the other. This is also true for fictional characters in books. The author of A Raisin in the Sun described the play to be set in southside Chicago during the 1950s. This setting in A Raisin in the Sun created by Lorraine Hansberry creates an outline of characteristics for Walter, Beneatha, and Mama to exhibit throughout the play.
This book is full of extraordinary courage, determination and will. Kien was subjected to many injustices, most of which were inflicted by the males in his life and community. Kien’s mother’s boyfriend, Lam, was a cruel man who took advantage of people around him. He raped the family maid, Loan, and he raped Kien as he slept alone at night. Lam was a sociopath and very manipulative, he took advantage of Kien’s family. Kien’s cousins were also cruel to him and his brother. They were poor, and took great joy in tormenting Kien and Jimmy. His cousins were glad to have others around who were considered “lower” then they were. Tormenting Kien’s family made the cousins feel better about themselves. When the boys were given a dog, the cousins kicked it to death while laughing. It was mostly males, but there were also female figures who took part in the violence surrounding him. His aunt was a person who had the power to stop the violence, but she only encouraged it. She got a sense of power by having Kien’s family being so destitute and dependant on her.
And readers are thus exposed to the exploitation and extortion that goes on in this cycle of sympathizers. While the gathering of the women is supposed to be a period of preparing the widows for their confinement, it turns to a period of financial exploitation of the widows. Ramatoulaye succinctly expresses her displeasure,
Dickens notes that in the midst of a revolution, heavy bloodshed must be made in order to achieve the vengeance that the peasants desire. Though the peasants were originally people of good faith, they were forced by the aristocratic government to take drastic actions. Poverty, the mother of all crimes, along with the aristocrats “crushing humanity out of shape once more” gave the peasants no choice.” Dickens conveys here that because of the negligence of the government, the people were forced to sacrifice their good nature and engage in the violent acts that caused a time of great animosity and dejection. Sacrifices are often made to strengthen bonds, and no other bond in the novel is stronger than the one that Lucie Mannette shares with her father, Dr. Manette.
The image of the pure girl who sacrifices herself for the sake of another seems very positive at first glance. However, this figure perpetuates the notion that girls should be selfless; rather than portray selflessness as a desirable characteristic for any morally upright human being, it is portrayed as a suitable characteristic for women. The female is supposedly the moral center of society, so she is the character who sacrifices herself for others. The martyr figure is a role model for all good girls to follow, while boys have brave heroes to look up to.