Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The theme of death in literature
The theme of death in literature
The theme of death in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness has incorporated death in such a way that, it overwhelms the text and adds an upsetting sense to the story. Death is the hardest an upsetting time of life, but we all have to go through it one day. At the end of the story, Conor learns that he can not avoid death and loss, but he learns to cope with them, which is the real truth that the monster was searching for. Death is a constant theme and is on every page due to Conor's mother's cancer. One of the central aspects that Conor went through during the difficult times was isolation. An example of this is in the chapter, Invisible. His classmates were emotionally ignoring him due to his mother's illness. "His classmates kept their distance from him too, like
In a country like the United States of America, with a history of every individual having an equal opportunity to reach their dreams, it becomes harder and harder to grasp the reality that equal opportunity is diminishing as the years go on. The book Our Kids by Robert Putnam illustrates this reality and compares life during the 1950’s and today’s society and how it has gradually gotten to a point of inequality. In particular, he goes into two touching stories, one that shows the changes in the communities we live in and another that illustrates the change of family structure. In the end he shows how both stories contribute to the American dream slipping away from our hands.
The line between not guilty and innocent is not always clear. Sometimes the court system can be flawed. The question is: does acquitted mean innocent? This question is brought about in the book Monster by Walter Dean Myers, when Steve Harmon, the main character, is on trial. He is acquitted, however, is he really innocent? Steve Harmon is guilty of being the lookout but is not responsible for Mr.Nesbitt’s death, because he was in the store, he was identified by other participants, but he was out of the store before Nesbitt died.
Baruch Spinoza once said “Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” He compared free-will with destiny and ended up that what we live and what we think are all results of our destiny; and the concept of the free-will as humanity know is just the awareness of the situation. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five explores this struggle between free-will and destiny, and illustrates the idea of time in order to demonstrate that there is no free-will in war; it is just destiny. Vonnegut conveys this through irony, symbolism and satire.
Pain is one of the most complex words in the modern day language. It is perceived differently with every situation with varying definitions for all types of people. Pain for an infant who scraped their knee seems petty compared to a terminally ill mother who will leave behind three children. The feeling of discomfort or agony may never go away in some cases, especially mental pain. Author of In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien, writes a novel about war stress and how PTSD can change a person’s entire personality. John Wade suffers through tremendous pain that eventually leads to the disappearance of his wife Kathy. O’Brien portrays the effects of pain through John Wade’s post traumatic stress disorder throughout his lifetime during
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narrative entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” portrays a nameless wife who gradually descends into psychosis due to a prescribed treatment of the time known as the “rest cure.” Gilman’s work is an excellent example of feminine oppression so prominent in the late nineteenth century. Women of the period were considered the weaker sex. They were at the will of their husbands who made decisions concerning all aspects of life, including medical treatments, living arrangements and social activities. The intellectual stagnation and oppression of the narrator can be directly linked to her downward spiral into madness. The uses of literary elements in the story help demonstrate this theory.
No one can be trusted. In Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the ambivalent nature of the novella causes suspicion of the sanity of his narrator, the Governess. The characters of the Governess, the children, and the apparitions, as villains and victims, cannot be told apart. Henry James impeccably makes use of ambiguity to create mystery and suspense through the dubiety roles of his main characters and the liability of the narrator.
In the short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” by Richard Connell, the setting is necessary for the plot to work. For example, there are rocks surrounding the island. The huge boulders keep people off of the island and trap General Zaroff’s prey on the island. Rainsford sees that, “jagged crags appeared to jut up into the opaqueness” (p.3). As Rainsford swims towards the rocks, after he fell overboard, he can see himself on the boulders before he can even get to them. He is anxious to get to land, not knowing what is in the near future. The boulders usually keep intruders out, but Rainsford is one persistent man. If someone sees the island with boulders surrounding it, they will not want to want to climb them to reach the island. Another
In “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, the island is key for the plot because of the conflict in the story. For instance, General Zaroff has an island in which he uses to hunt. “‘A new animal? You’re joking.’ ‘Not at all,’ said the general. ‘I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island built this house and here I do my hunting”’ (7). General Zaroff has hunted “‘every kind of game in every land”’ (6). But there is one animal he has not hunted. He intends for the island to be a place where he has an endless hunt. But will this “endless” hunt carry on for as long as the general intended? Another reason is there are huge boulders (or crags) surrounding the island to prevent people from
Some people feel all alone in this world, with no direction to follow but their empty loneliness. The Catcher in the Rye written by J.D Salinger, follows a sixteen-year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, who despises society and calls everyone a “phony.” Holden can be seen as a delinquent who smokes tobacco, drinks alcohol, and gets expelled from a prestigious boarding school. This coming-of-age book follows the themes of isolation, innocence, and corrupted maturity which is influenced from the author's life and modernism, and is shown through the setting, symbolism, and diction.
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
...h can hold anybody back from living. Griefing is tough and there’s no clear “right” way to grief. Although my grieving for my dad's death wasn't as tough as my family thought, I couldn't tell anybody how to handle death. In conclusion death is the clearing of the old making way of the new and it should not be feared, but more energy should be put in now, while you’re alive and living your life to the fullest.
Monsters Inc. Review Monsters Inc is a movie for children that adapts the daily jobs of factory workers, instead of manufacturing goods, this factory implies the production of energy using children´s screams; this factory supplies energy to the whole city. The company uses its scariest monsters to go the human world and scare the children. The factory has a distinguished employee that has won awards for his work at the company, his name is Sully, the main character of the movie.
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Revenge is like an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. Most people have someone at a point in their life where they feel like they need to get revenge on someone for doing them wrong. The Count of Monte Cristo has a very strong revenge plot that everyone notices in the beginning of the novel. In The Count of Monte Cristo Caderousse, Danglars, and Fernand are trying to get revenge on Dantes and Dantes doesn't really like what they are doing because he did nothing wrong. People who want revenge will go to any extreme length to get revenge on the people they feel need to be put into place. Sometimes people turn around and decide to get back at the people who wronged them.
Gothic, suspense, and horror add an exciting and chilling type feeling to people’s lives. Weather it is reading a story, a poem, or watching a movie, these genres leave the audience or readers wanting more and will make them not want to stop reading or watching. In a book called Danse Macabre, an examination of the use of phycology in the horror genre, Stephen King writes “what’s behind the door… is never as frightening as the door… itself.” All of the build up until the door is actually opened makes the audience more scared and tense than what is actually behind the door. Behind the door can either be scary or not as scary, but all the details and extra effects leading up to the door opening cause the suspense and will not make the reader