Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Innocence in american literature
Literary analysis on loss of innocence
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Innocence in american literature
“Goodbye To all that” by Robert Graves. The book begins with Robert Von Ranke Graves giving you a flashback to his childhood and his way of upbringing. Robert Graves was born on July 24, 1895 in Wimbledon, England. In the earlier stages of the book he depicts his description “My height is given as six feet two inches, my eyes as gray, and my hair as black” (Graves 3). Calls it his “biographical convention,” with that out of the way, Graves goes into a very detailed backdrop of his family on both his Mother, and Father’s side of the Family. His Mother is German, and his Father is Irish. He briefly describes both side’s qualities that they have, and what they have passed on to him. His Mother being very strict Christian always enforced on him the beauty of life. She kept him and all of the rest of the children very innocent about the true view of the world. She censored mostly everything. “My mother brought us up to be serious and to benefit humanity in some particularly way, but allowed us no hint of its dirtiest, intrigue and lustfulness, believing that innocence would be the surest protection against them” (Graves 29). His mother told him that was destined to be “if not a great man, at least a good man” (Graves 29). He credits his Mother’s German family a great deal in the early stages of the book. Here he states “I admire my German relatives; they have high principles, and are easy, generous, and serious” (Graves 5). His Mother moved to England at age eighteen as a companion to Miss Britain, he describes her as lonely old woman who had befriended his grandmother as an orphan, and waited hand and foot for her seventeen years. His mother inherited 100,000 pounds for the death of Miss Britain. He adds on that “My Mother charact... ... middle of paper ... ...r of English Literature at the Egyptian University, Cairo. After some years of working there he decides to go back to England. Troubles with Nancy start to occur at home and they frequently get into agreements. After sometime of agreement they decide to leave each other, and Nancy taking the kids along with her. This was the final straw for Robert. He finally renounces his to never call England his home again, which explains the title for the book. In conclusion, Robert was finally saying goodbye to all the things that he knew. He was becoming unrest with his life after the war. He didn’t see the simplistic view that he grew up with. Goodbye to all that not only says goodbye to his birthplace, but to everything that world has become. Robert did not want to be part of the change that society was embarking, and he decides to say goodbye to England, and all that.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is a non-fiction novel written by an American author. The book mostly follows the three main characters, Oskar, his grandmother, and his grandfather, Thomas Schell, Sr. Oskar is a nine-year-old boy from New York whose father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. He is exceptionally intelligent and curious and goes on a quest through New York City’s five boroughs to find the lock which belongs to a key his father had in his closet. Between chapters, a separate story is told of his grandparents marriage and life in Dresden, Germany. His grandfather, Thomas Schell Sr. is mute and collects stacks of daybooks in which he writes what he needs to say. His first love, Anna, died in a bombing while pregnant with his child. Shortly after starting his new life in the United States, he runs into Anna’s sister, they get married, and he leaves her after he found out his wife was pregnant. His wife, Oskar’s grandmother, lives across the street from Oskar and his mother and helped raise him.
...interracial relationships. However because of the way he acts when he hears about the two of them, it is obvious that he has led a sheltered life. But even after his entire life of not understanding what was going on in the world around him, one night with Robert enlightened him and changed his view on people and his surrounding environment.
The book starts off as telling of mans destiny in the future. It is so far into the future that it isn’t even on the time scale of BC or AD, it is AF. There are no parents, no relatives, and no family history. Children are test tube babies in which they are grown and “born” in a building and live there and learn until they are old enough to leave and live their own lives. The babies are categorized as Alpha’s, Beta’s, Gamma’s, Delta’s and Epsilons. Alpha’s and Beta’s are high class while Gamma’s Delta’s and Epsilon’s are low class and work at factory like places. The people work to make the babies and to make the society a happy place to live in. The only culture that lives on is English; dead languages are everything else like French and Polish. The only society that still lived on was the Indians.
I believe that if it weren’t for Robert’s visit and presence, the narrator more than likely wouldn’t have had this kind of experience. Maybe, the narrator wouldn’t have changed his mind of thinking and feeling at that moment. Who knows if he did change for the long run, but maybe it was a much-needed moment that he was eager to have, for himself, for his relationship sake. To realize that there is much more to seeing then what he just sees in front of him, because Robert taught him that even though you have your vision, some can still be blind to
Robert tells the narrator to find some heavy paper and pencils so they can draw a cathedral together. As they drew Robert tells the narrator to close his eyes. There was a connection made between Robert and the narrator and he says, "it was like nothing else in my life up to now." Robert tells him to open his eyes, but he doesn?t because he doesn?t want the experience to end.
Not only does the husband not know how to communicate with Robert, he does not how to act around him either. A good example of this, shown after dinner, is when all three of them go into the living room. This is how the husband portrays what happens when they first enter the room: "Robert and my wife sat on the sofa.
Robert Ross cannot recognise his hometown and even the world he lives in. How can someone not recognise his home? I can recognise my hometown every time I go back, no matter how many years I have left there. It possible only when someone’s hometown has dramatically changed (or ruined). The World War ruins every single place. Robert Ross cannot recognise his home not only because the place is destroyed, his connection to his hometown is cut off as well. Timothy Findley discusses the tremendous impact on the world of the horrible World War. I always feel thankful that I do not live in an era where my home would be destroyed. Everyone lives in the World War would be a victim.
“He killed it! My father killed it!” Imagine a world where babies are killed because they don't weigh as much as their twin. In the book, The Giver by Lois Lowry, the protagonist, Jonas feels trapped in this numb, heartless world and feels he needs to escape. He undergoes a journey where he figures out how life was before him. While Jonas’ society is emotionless with no love, experiences Sameness, and does not have the freedom to choose, modern day society is free to love, celebrates individuality and has the freedom to choose.
The two pictures, both mentioned together at the end of the novel, but taken at different points of Robert's life, display the extreme transformation that has taken place in his life. It makes you look back over all that has happened to Robert and determine what took place for him to have gone through such a change.
...ks with Robert throughout the whole book is his sister and her care and love for animals.
“Goodbye to all that” is a captivating story of young women and the journey she takes to identify who she is. Through the expressive writing by Joan Didion, the emotions in this text are truly tangible. Didion writes from her own experience as a young writer living her dream of being in New York City. Throughout her story there is miscommunication and through each obstacle, she grows as a person, learns what priorities are important, and overall she finds herself. I find this very appealing because everyone can relate to a life changing experience and reflect on how it changed you.
Her tone is so happy through out the whole story because she is so happy to go to China to meet her new family members and also rekindle with old family members. “And I can’t help myself. I also have misty eyes, as if I had seen this a long, long time ago, and had almost forgotten.” (264) She said that as she was arriving to China, showing how happy she was. On the other hand, the main character who is nameless in Cathedral is so bitter through out the whole story. His wife even mentions that he doesn’t have any friends. The only time he didn’t seem like he was in a bad mood was at the end of the story, when drew a cathedral with the blind man, so that the blind man could “see” what a cathedral looked like. Robert tells the man to draw with his eyes closed, then when he was done, he told him to open his eyes and tell him out the picture looked, but he didn’t. “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything” (42) He was different now and had a better attitude towards blind
The husband describes the moment by saying, "I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything" (357). The previous information of how he saw the world to be and how he sees it now gives him a feeling of a connection with a higher being, more than just Robert. Yet he describes himself being separated (unconnected) from his body, free from this cage that has him materialistic and prejudice to the not-normal. The husband finally sees the world in a more liberal way than what he thought it to be, than what the stereotypes of society told him it was.
Growing Up by Russell Baker, a story about a boy becoming a man in the United states starting in the 1920’s during the World Wars. This book takes us through what life is like growing up in that time period and what it takes for Baker to be successful starting at a young age. The book was interesting and actually made me put myself in Baker’s position throughout the book as he grows us and molds into a man. He faces adversity and gets pushed by his Mother to make something of himself because she doesn’t want him to end up like his Father. Multiple times in the book it talks about the qualities of a “good man”. People that Baker encounter in his life meet the expectations of a good man and others are far from it.
But perhaps Robert’s most enduring quality is his artful pillory of those about him. When on form, his wisecracks at the expense of others can be as withering to the subject as they are amusing to everyone else. Take the incident earlier today when he asked the vicar (preacher), ‘Do you charge for taking a church service?’ ‘Not a penny’ he replied. ‘From what I saw this morning, you’ve got it spot on!’ I am convinced Robert’s personality and sense of fun resulted from the games his dad played with him as a kid. He used to throw him in the air – and walk away. Needless to say, another good thing about Robert is that he can take a joke as well as. Mind you, so can Pamela, because she's taken Robert.