The Hitchhiking Game describes an internal combat that focuses on internal character and the discovery of new selves within. Kundera presents to the audience a story about a young man and a girl who lose themselves while trying to portray someone they customarily are not. Throughout their portrayal of “happy-go-lucky” and “irresponsible” strangers, the young man loses trust in the girl and is never able to view her the same way again. Although the girl did not want to advance the game once she recognized his aversion towards her actions, he was too invested in the role he was portraying to turn back. He became disgusted with the “alien whore” she had become and at once stopped treating her with the respect and love he had before, and began treating her as an object of desire. It is apparent that Kundera believes we are very complex creatures that do not have a static and stable character. Kundera wrote, “perhaps it was a part of her being which had formerly been locked up and which the pretext of the game had let out of its cage.”(pg.123) I think this quote successfully encapsulates the way Kundera perceives our character and how divergent it can be. At the beginning of the story, one can see that there was not a lot of trust on the girl’s end of the relationship. She always speculated where …show more content…
Although the girl went to the extreme to show the young man who she could be, I think that if he truly did love her he would have been able to revert back to the way he saw her before. She was not the only one playing the game, he changed the way he treated her too, and she was able to switch back to the way she saw him and longed for him to love her again. When she showed him her metamorphic character, he fell out of love with her completely. I did not think this was fair to the girl, she saw an disfigured side of him and embarrassed her when she tried to end the
face to face. And he asks her to dance with him. The fact that she didn't try to escape but
Utopian literature is characterized by being a place where you are free and everyone is free. Most people in a utopia are happy. However, in the story of “The Pedestrian” and “The Lottery,” the rebel rebels against the system and is punished as a result. In both stories, it seems there is a utopia but as the rebels speak out it, it is revealed that the society is, instead, a dystopia.
No matter how much he put her through, she kept fighting for her life. I was confused by this because, in my eyes her life was completely over. I did not see how she could ever live a functioning life after all of the things that she went through. I would have thought that this reality would have been a reason for her to give up and choose fiction. Fiction would have been the easy way out of the pain, loses, and suffering that she faces and would continue to face. Then I thought to myself that is what makes humans amazing. Being able to endure the challenges of life and keep going. Originally, I thought she was a fool to keep going then I realized that she was strong. If I was her I would have chosen my reality
“The Hitchhiker,” by Lucille Fletcher, narrates the unusual happenings Ronald Adams, the protagonist, experiences, while driving along the deserted and densely populated roads of the United States. Adams continually observes a hitchhiker, whom he first saw, having almost hit him, on the Brooklyn Bridge, and apprehends traveling on the highways, for fear this phantasmal man shall reappear. Struggling to grasp reality once receiving news of his mother’s breakdown after the death of her son, Ronald Adams, he reverts his attention to the hitchhiker, the realization of never having been who he thought he was, and being alone without protection from the traveler, both wrench his mind in two. Lucille Fletcher uses suspense to build the plot of, “The
In Catch-22, Heler presents the human spirit in conflict with a contradictory world. The institutions that form the basis of society—government, commerce, religion—fail to provide the support neded for the mental, physical, and spiritual health of the species. Nately’s whore’s kid sister can be sen as a personification of the wil to survive. In the kid sister, Heler presents an irepresible, eternal hope for the future of humankind. Despite the ravages of war, abuse, neglect, depravity, and unrestrained capitalism the human soul continues to search for inspiration, for the innocent kid sister, for a way to the imposible shores of Sweden.
yearned for the fantasy of finally being with her. His expectations could and would not be
...her. Although the plan did not go as expected, it was still secretive and off the radar. In particular, the characters worked very hard to secretly see each other and make plans to maintain their relationship.
...py may have turned out different. This was defiantly one most confusing and intricate stories I have read in Yalom’s book and that the overall take home message I took from this was that, love and obsessions are hard to intellectualize and understand objectively as much as we would like to. Although what may be logically the best decision, love is not based on logic and that the only loves executioner cannot come from the suggestions of another person or therapist, but more from themselves and within. I think this quote states the story best, “Love and Psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. A good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection” (Yalom, 2000 p. 17)
...n be seen as her overcoming his total control over her life. She was now taking control, almost taking over the role that he had previously occupied.
...a because she is longing for a romance that she feels she can only get from Paris.
She refuses to show him love. “When I move away and hold the sheet against myself he, sensing what this means, refuses, adamant yet polite, to traffic in the currency of rejection.” (Lopez) She met this new guy and he kisses her hand. “You see, a new boy just a last month had raised my shy hand to his warm mouth and kissed the inside of my palm.” (Lopez) She does not really know what she wants. The kiss has her mind think about worth her really love her lover. In the end she says, “Why should he give up? (Lopez). She doesn’t know why he is still with her after she rejects his
Ambiguity in literature after World War II reflects and explores issues of self and society. These two ideas often work against each other instead of coexisting to form a struggle-free existence. J. D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, and Richard Heller illustrate this struggle with their works. These authors explore ambiguity through different characters that experience the world in different ways. Identity, while it is an easy concept, can be difficult to attain. These authors seek out ambiguity with the human experience, coming to different conclusions. Ambiguity becomes a vehicle through which we can attempt to define humanity. J. D. Salinger’s novel, Catcher in the Rye, Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Ball Jar, and Richard Heller’s novel, Catch 22 explore ambiguity experienced through an attempt to find self. Each experience is unique, incapable of fitting a generic mold created by society.
...al mechanism, and desire only a function of reproduction. Yet, it is not so. Individual human destiny is much stronger than the force of history if only individuals grapple with who they are and the forces pressuring them, and have the courage to meet the mass wave head on. Perhaps no one in this play does so, but the desire is there and we can learn from their failure.
In Anatomy of Criticism, author Northrop Frye writes of the low mimetic tragic hero and the society in which this hero is a victim. He introduces the concept of pathos saying it “is the study of the isolated mind, the story of how someone recognizably like ourselves is broken by a conflict between the inner and outer world, between imaginative reality and the sort of reality that is established by a social consensus” (Frye 39). The hero of Hannah W. Foster’s novel, The Coquette undoubtedly suffers the fate of these afore mentioned opposing ideals. In her inability to confine her imagination to the acceptable definitions of early American female social behavior, Eliza Wharton falls victim to the ambiguity of her society’s sentiments of women’s roles. Because she attempts to claim the freedom her society superficially advocates, she is condemned as a coquette and suffers the consequences of exercising an independent mind. Yet, Eliza does not stand alone in her position as a pathetic figure. Her lover, Major Sanford -- who is often considered the villain of the novel -- also is constrained by societal expectations and definitions of American men and their ambition. Though Sanford conveys an honest desire to make Eliza his wife, society encourages marriage as a connection in order to advance socially and to secure a fortune. Sanford, in contrast to Eliza, suffers as a result of adhering to social expectations of a male’s role. While Eliza suffers because she lives her life outside of her social categorization and Sanford falls because he attempts to maneuver and manipulate the system in which he lives, both are victims of an imperfect, developing, American society.
Through her powerful words she is able to speak to both men and women on how feminism is not art all what society labels it to be. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks the puissant words, “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight if gender expectations (Adichie, 18:31).” These extremely powerful words are the basis for the beginning of the comprehension of why character’s resist the influence of conformity, yet the question as to how much one rejects societal norms and how this passion for nonconformity alters the minds of the authors and their characters conveyed. Unfortunately, this extreme drive we see can be altered into one’s own contorted ideals that in the end does not lead them in the right direction. Through the words of Dick Hickock, he evades conformity even to his very last breath. While on the gallows, he does the complete opposite of what you might expect a dead man to do. Instead, he shakes the hands of the men who captured him and says that he is going to a better world