In David Bergen’s short story Saved readers are enveloped in a tragic whirlwind of a young boy’s life. The boy, only fifteen, is constantly searching for any source of love he can attain. This heart-breaking search for love is simultaneously a search for a saviour. The desperate boy needs to be saved from himself and the life that surrounds him. In Saved, Bergen utilizes the final paragraph (55) to reveal the effects an absence of love can have on a child, and how the boy’s search to be saved and loved becomes destructive. The exceptionally crucial passage in Saved may be the final paragraph, however, it is not the last chronologically. Bergen employs a backwards structure to organize his short story. The out of order organization mirrors …show more content…
In the final paragraph, readers already know of the boy’s murderous act, yet because of the unchronological structure of the story the characters do not. Because readers are aware of the murder, the dramatic irony does not generate suspense as it usually accomplishes. Instead the dramatic irony creates ambiguity when the girl tells the boy that “he was saved” (55). With knowledge of previous scenes, such as the boy escaping punishment for the murder, one can assume that the boy is saved since he can continue his life without facing the consequences. However, being permitted to return to his life seems as though the boy is being punished, and not saved. According to Robert V Heckel and David M Shumaker’s novel Children Who Murder: A Psychological Perspective, the boy like most adolescent murders, “come from homes characterized by abuse, domestic violence, poor or absent parenting, and overall instability” (Heckel & Shumaker, 156). Any child who has to live within those heart-breaking conditions will have trouble psychologically with his or her own life, which is why the boy is in fact not saved. The boy may be saved from the consequences of murder, but he is not protected from his life. He will continue his destructive search for love, which will not only put him in danger, but may also hurt someone else
In “Out of the Dust,” a story told by 14-year-old Billie Jo, she describes her grief and feelings of lost hope including guilt from the accidental death of her mother and her mother’s unborn child. The accident crushed Billie Jo’s hope and her spirit, as well her father’s. It is a story of remarkable struggle where Billie Jo tries to find inner strength. She seeks the light through the Oklahoma “dust”. The “dust” is symbolic as it signifies a lack of life, dreams, and hope. Billie Jo takes the reader through her emotional of the journey that evokes compassion and empathy. The reader becomes part of the story and part of Billie Jo’s persona. Her journey embraces whom we are in the most profound sense of sadness and loss of her beloved mother. The story also guides us through the powerful enlightenment that defines the clearest explanation of the human spirit. In “Out of the Dust” Billie Jo demonstrates the power of forgiveness in herself and her father. These acts of forgiveness allowed her to move past the darkness and into the light. Her story gives the reader details on how the human spirit is philanthropic by nature and a lifelong process. “Out of the Dust” captures the essence of forgiveness including the transformations that occur during the process.
Rilke and Fromm, fascinating authors who are passionate about love in its various forms, both use their gifts of words to enlighten readers about the difference between immature and mature love. Immature love is one that lacks a genuine emotional connection and is likely shared out of convenience. Fromm argues they might as well “be called symbiotic union” (Fromm, 18). Mature love, however, holds a deeper value that is harder to attain and far more worth
Fink uses the emotional status of each character in this short story to get an emotional response from the reader. Just imagine your only hope of survival is to rely on your three-year-old child. It’s tough to think about right, what type of mindset did this family have to have to have their child be their savior in a time of danger? All they could do was tell him,
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, love proves to be a dangerous and destructive force. Upon learning that Sethe killed her daughter, Beloved, Paul D warns Sethe “Your love is too thick” (193). Morrison proved this statement to be true, as Sethe’s intense passion for her children lead to the loss of her grasp on reality. Each word Morrison chose is deliberate, and each sentence is structured with meaning, which is especially evident in Paul D’s warning to Sethe. Morrison’s use of the phrase “too thick”, along with her short yet powerful sentence structure make this sentence the most prevalent and important in her novel. This sentence supports Paul D’s side on the bitter debate between Sethe and he regarding the theme of love. While Sethe asserts that the only way to love is to do so passionately, Paul D cites the danger in slaves loving too much. Morrison uses a metaphor comparing Paul D’s capacity to love to a tobacco tin rusted shut. This metaphor demonstrates how Paul D views love in a descriptive manner, its imagery allowing the reader to visualize and thus understand Paul D’s point of view. In this debate, Paul D proves to be right in that Sethe’s strong love eventually hurts her, yet Paul D ends up unable to survive alone. Thus, Morrison argues that love is necessary to the human condition, yet it is destructive and consuming in nature. She does so through the powerful diction and short syntax in Paul D’s warning, her use of the theme love, and a metaphor for Paul D’s heart.
...it up to each reader to draw their own conclusions and search their own feelings. At the false climax, the reader was surprised to learn that the quite, well-liked, polite, little convent girl was colored. Now the reader had to evaluate how the forces within their society might have driven such an innocent to commit suicide.
Love is powerful and could change a person’s personality. In “The Book of Unknown Americans”, the author Christina Hernriquez tells us the definition of love. It is a book combined with different stories but each story is connected to others. It talks about the immigrants that moved to America with lots of hope, but didn’t end up with a happy ending. The story is about love, hope and guilt and different kinds of emotional feeling. In the book, Mayor has an internal change because of Maribel, and the power of love. He wants to be a strong man who can protect Maribel. He used to be someone who couldn’t defend himself and he changed because of Maribel.
Irony can often be found in many literary works. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is masterfully written full of irony. The characters of the short story, Mrs. Mallard, Josephine, Richards, Mr. Brently Mallard, and the doctors all find their way into Chopin’s ironic twists. Chopin embodies various ironies in “The Story of an Hour” through representations of verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony.
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...
The fictional life and death of a twelve year old little boy named Robert is vividly articulated in this moving tale by Thomas Wolfe. The reader learns of the boy’s life through four well developed points of view. The reader’s first glimpse into Robert’s character is expressed through a third person narrative. This section takes place on a particularly important afternoon in the boy’s life. The second and third views are memories of the child, through the eyes of his mother and sister. His mother paints the picture of an extraordinary child whom she loved dearly and his sister illustrates the love that the boy had for others. Finally, an account from the narrator is given in the ending. It is in the last section of this work that the narrator attempts to regain his own memories of his lost brother.
There are many different emotions that make people do many different things, yet love seems to be the strongest emotion of all. Love is the reason people fight for there country, or why a mother lion protects her young. In the short story “the Rocking-Horse” by D.H. Lawrence we see a little boy use his undeniable gift to help his materialistic mother with money issue. Yet in the book “The Stranger” by Albert Camus we see a man who seems to be lacking love or really any emotion at all to turn into a uncontrollable man with many different ideas about life. These two stories show how a innocent boy who only wants the best for his mother and a sociopath that doesn’t feel the repercussions of his actions spiral into a downward disaster.
In this essay I would like to emphasize different ideas of how love is understood and discussed in literature. This topic has been immortal. One can notice that throughout the whole history writers have always been returning to this subject no matter what century people lived in or what their nationality was.
Then he turns to love. The one last vice he doesn’t need. He seeks for it through poems, centerfolds and dimly lit streets, pursuing the scent of pheromones oozing from every corner of the sacrilegious part of a town soaked in moonlight.
In every walk of life, people come face to face with suffering and difficulties. A person might suffer quietly by themselves, while the other is surrounded by the loving support of family and friends. When faced with challenges, many people seek to prove their strength by concealing their suffering. However, one can only carry so much pain and suffering on their own shoulders. Throughout society, these situations often appear in a person’s own life, and the lives of their family and friends. While this theme is visible in society, it is also evident throughout many works of literature. Within Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, in the midst of difficult situations, gaining strength and support from family, friends, and religion, helps one to defeat challenges in life more efficiently than leaning on their own strength.
Victor Hugo once said, “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Whether in Shakespeare’s tragic play about lovers doomed by fate, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s sonnet describing love, “Sonnet 116”, or O. Henry’s age old The Gift of the Magi, love motivates the characters and authors to make decisions that have a weighty impact on their lives. Throughout these works of literature, authors use love’s power to drive the plot forward to create good events within the characters’ lives. Love is a force for good because it makes people willing to forgive each other, it brings the best out of people in bad situations, and it