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Essay about jealousy and envy
Envy meaning in essay
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"Envy": Cynthiz Ozick Meets Melanie Klein
Cynthia Ozick’s story “Envy; or, Yiddish in America” shows the corrosive effects
of envy on the life of the lonely, aging Yiddish poet Edelshtein. Edelshtein is consumed
with envy of Ostrover, a famous Yiddish novelist known from English translations of his
stories. He feels that Ostrover has both cuckolded him and bested him in literary
success. Edelshtein believes he could become as famous as Ostover if he too had a
translator into English. Without the translator, he fears his poems will die along with
him and the dying Yiddish language. The story seems to illustrate the psychological
insights of Melanie Klein about the unconscious mechanisms behind envy: “I consider
that envy is an oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic expression of destructive impulses,
operative from the beginning of life. . .” (Klein, ix). So long as Edelshtein operates out
of envy, he will remain caught in a vicious cycle, in an infantile, self-destructive state,
thwarted in his attempts to love or to be creative. He will continue to feel persecuted by
Ostrover, which is really a form of internal persecution. As Klein says, “When this
occurs, the good object is felt to be lost, and with it inner security” ( 84).
“Envy,” which is included in Ozick’s 1969 collection, The Pagan Rabbi, is
reminiscent of Bellow’s Herzog (1965). Both are profound psychological anatomies,
detailed dissections of a single suffering character, a victim who is nevertheless in
many ways his own worst enemy. Both stories are delicately poised between the comic
and the tragic. Both protagonists are intellectuals who rail against the “Wasteland
outlook” and defend Jewish humanism. Herzog rejects “the commonplaces of the
Wastela...
... middle of paper ...
...at least two people”
(Klein 6). Tragedy occurs in the realm of oedipal conflict, but the envious person never
reaches that stage and thus never really grows up.
Works Cited
Bellow, Saul. Herzog. 1965; New York: Viking, 1976.
Cohen, Sarah Blacher. Cynthia Ozick’s Comic Art: From Levity to Liturgy.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Kauvar, Elaine M. Cynthia Ozick’s Fiction: Tradition and Invention. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1993.
Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude: A Study of Unconscious Sources. NY: Basic
Books, 1957.
Lowin, Joseph. Cynthia Ozick. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Ozick, Cynthia. “Envy; or, Yiddish in America.” Jewish American Stories. Ed. Irving
Howe. New York: New American Library, 1977: 129-77.
Strandberg, Victor. Greek Mind/Jewish Soul: The Conflicted Art of Cynthia Ozick.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
Could you imagine a cold breeze that just cuts you up left and right? Or perhaps long days of starvation, with the sight of grass pleasing your stomach. For Elie Wiesel this was no imagination, nor a dream, this was in fact reality. Such a horrifying experience in his life he felt he had to share in a book called Night. Gertrude Samuels, who wrote the review, "When Evil Closed In," tries to help you depict on what devastating situations Elie was put through.
will recover his bond with God. He will grieve. He will repent. He will walk away a
Envy is known to bring out the monster in everyone. It is an enmity that is buried deeply inside of us and causes us to do things we wouldn’t normally do.It even turns the people we love into people we hate. In the book A Separate Peace, Gene is filled with envy and it makes him act upon it blindly and injure his so called “best friend”, Finny. This envy endangers their friendship and one of their lives.
Sollod, R. N., Wilson, J. P., & Monte, C. F. (2009). Defending Against Envy: The Most Deadly of Sins. Beneath the Mask; an introduction to theories of personality (p. 233). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. (Original work published 2003).
...y reality and the truth of his miserable and lonely existence becomes too much for him to bear.
interfere with his relations with his family and community after he meets with the devil, which causes him to live the life of an exile in his own community.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
Night by Elie Wiesel is a very sad book. The struggle that Eliezer endured is similar to one that we all face. Eliezer’s was during the holocaust. Ours can be during any period of life. If we set our priorities in our hearts, nothing can change them except ourselves. Night is a prime example of this inner struggle and the backwards progress that is possible with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It teaches that the mind truly is “over all.” As Frankl wrote, “Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate,” no matter what the circumstance.
If an emotion such as jealousy takes hold of him, it will grow into an incontrollable flood.
... more in his life but in doing so, changes and becomes a worse person for it.
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once declared, “It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it.” In other words, when one is suffering, the desire to reap revenge without consideration as to who is being harmed in the process is innate. This is a common theme within the poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, Euripides tragic play, Medea, and Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedy of Hamlet. Characterization is used in these three works to exemplify the revenge seeker’s disregard for anyone but themselves in order to take vengeance on those who committed an act against them.
In careful amounts, identity can remain unharmed, or even be found anew, using material aid. However, the attention and time one spends on increasing his/her material value can very easily crowd out other more meaningful aspects of existence. Once an unfortunate soul is perverted in such a way, what remains of the identity can be altered to better satisfy the increasing need for material wealth. The line between safety and corruption in terms of ownership of earthly riches is maintained by the discipline to receive joy from these riches, while also keeping in mind the astronomical joy and tranquility that the simple, immaterial parts of existence can already
vanity, pride, and self - knowledge intervenes in the development of the virtue of the characters,
... way of thinking is wrong and he admits that he is wrong and reconciles himself with his friends and family.