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Greed in literature essay
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Greed vs. Annoyance On the one hand innocence is murdered due to greed, and on the other hand innocence is murdered due to annoyance. In E. L. Doctorow’s “A House on the Plains”, the lives of innocent people are taken by Dora and her son Earle due to greed and the need for money. In William Gay’s “The Paperhanger”, the paperhanger kills the child, Zeineb, because she was annoying him. In both stories innocent people are murdered for no reason. In Doctorow’s story Dora and Earle are both blinded by greed and money. They like to find rich people and murder them and then run away with their money. In “A House on the Plains”, Dora and Earle would murder all of Dora’s past husbands and then run away with the insurance money. They then run away and move to a …show more content…
He is annoyed by the doctor’s wife because ‘she had been quarreling with the paperhanger’ (343). The wife is fighting with the paperhanger because of the confusion between double-bolt rolls and single-bolt rolls. The cause of the paperhanger’s anger is partially due to Zenieb as well. Zenieb likes to play with the paperhanger’s ‘shoulder length hair. Zenieb is delighted when she runs her finger’s through his hair’ (343). The other reason that the paperhanger was annoyed at Zenieb was because she ‘stuck her tongue out at him’ (360) when she saw her mom was annoyed at the paperhanger. The paperhanger mentions in the story that he had killed his wife in the past because she was cheating on him with her supervisor. He says that it wasn’t an ‘impetuous spur-of-the-moment thing. He had thought it all out’ (358) beforehand. The paperhanger ‘snaked his hand out like a serpent and closed on her throat and snapped her neck’ (360). He killed an innocent child due to his anger at the quarrel between him and the doctor’s wife, and because of a childish act by a 4-year-old
What kind of stories have you read? Have you read of any that in a way have similarities and differences with one another? The two short stories in this essay are "the cask of amontillado" and "the killings". These short stories are ironically the same but with different perspectives. Both authors have a different meaning for why they wrote the stories. One of the similarities are that both stories have to do with killing someone. In "the cask of amontillado the narrator kills due to madness an the narrator in "the killings kills to avenge his sons death. Another difference is that after Montessor kills his "friend", he feels no remorse or guilt and Matt fowler from "the killings" feels empty and remorse after the killing.
Claudia Card begins by questioning the difference between wrong and evil. How do we know when something crosses the line between being just wrong, to being an evil act? How does hatred and motive play a part in this? How can people psychologically maintain a sense of who they are when they have been the victims of evil? Card attempts to explain these fundamental questions using her theory of evil; the Atrocity Paradigm (Card, pg.3).
Clearly, these two stories say some very profound things about the human condition. Given the right conditions, there is evil in all of us that is just waiting to surface. And we were all innocent once, but some event made us lose it. Finally, people are all manipulative given the opportunity. These conclusions aren’t just drawn about the characters in the novels. These are things that are true for each and every human who ever lived, and everyone who will live. We are flawed creatures, and through the aid of great writers like these, we begin to realize it. Really, we shouldn’t need them to tell us about ourselves though. Just look at the world around you, and you will know.
These two men, both coming from different backgrounds, joined together and carried out a terrible choice that rendered consequences far worse than they imagined. Living under abuse, Perry Smith never obtained the necessary integrity to be able to pause and consider how his actions might affect other people. He matured into a man who acts before he thinks, all due to the suffering he endured as a child. Exposed to a violent father who did not instill basic teachings of life, Smith knew nothing but anger and misconduct as a means of responding to the world. He knew no other life. Without exposure to proper behavior or responsible conduct, he turned into a monster capable of killing an entire family without a blink of remorse. In the heat of the moment, Perry Smith slaughtered the Clutter family and barely stopped to take a breath. What could drive a man to do this in such cold blood? The answer lies within his upbringing, and how his childhood experiences shaped him to become the murderer of a small family in Holcomb, Kansas. ¨The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression.¨ (Capote 191). ¨But it is Dr. Statten´s contention that only the first murder matters psychologically, and that when
story as the corruption of evil takes a prominent role in the story of the two children. The
... become the victims. In the case there was never any innocence present in an individual, the choices they make will shape how corrupt they become. The town of Holcomb was traumatized by the unexpected murder of a respected family, which turned the community into distrusting gossipers. This event can take place in childhood, as it did for Perry Smith, who grew up with no protection from corruption by his parents and killed an entire family. Dick Hickock, impulsive and shallow, formulated a plan to rob and kill any witnesses present at the Clutter household. He was corrupt enough to go ahead with the plan and persuade Perry to kill the witnesses. Innocence must be protected to ensure that others may be kept innocent. The virtuous quality that most people have is connected to their innocence, but if their innocence is lost, their future may be condemned to sinfulness.
One may have heard the simple saying that “Love can make you do crazy things.” Many adults can confirm that the saying proves true; one could even spend a few hours watching CSI type of shows that portray the stories of two love-struck people becoming cold-hearted killers just to be with their significant other. Why would they be so desperate to be together that they would kill anyone who got in between them? Desperation so serve that they would even kill a loved one? It could be that as children they were deprived of love and nourishment that children normally receive. This deprivation of love led them to cling to anyone that made them think they were being love. In A Rose for Emily and Tell-Tale Heart a character murders someone who they love. The two works, share similarities and differences when it comes to the characters, the narratives point of view and reason for killing a loved one.
...h murders and violence, we must regard aggression as a summated response to many factors. Individually, the factors probably are harmless, but when united, they can be unleashed as aggression in which case terrible crimes take the lives of so many innocent people.
In all humans, evil exists. At some point we have to release it, and want to release it. For example, on the island Jack and Robert showed their evil while beating Wilfred, or even Robert who was hurt while the boys received pleasure out of his beating. Roger states, "He's going to beat Wilfred, I don't know why, he didn't say," (pg.159) as he giggles. Another example is when Robert is beaten by the boys for no reason in frenzy where he is the pig. They chant in chapter seven, "Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!" (pg. 114). These examples clearly show that the kids are letting their true evil get the better of them. As these boys are also humans, this also means that even if they were girls, and were exposed to a place where there was no civilization, they would want to let their evil out as well. It was philosophized by Thomas Hobbes- the famous English Philosopher, "All humans are born selfish and only seek their own personal interest, leading to violence and war." This quote is true and summarizes the children ...
Maker, J., Brittain, J., Piraino, G., & Somtow, S. Children Who Kill. World Press Review. June 1993 v40 n6 p21-23.
The battle of good versus evil is present in all aspects of life. Actions taken by people can determine how others view them. Some choose to do what is right and good, while others choose what is wrong and evil. Many characters are forced to choose between the two, and some do not foresee the consequences of their actions. In the book Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, actions committed by the Davy, Jeremiah, and Jeremiah’s friends, both good and evil, always have consequences.
Violent acts in literature function as more than just physical action in that they often tell the audience something. For example, the motives and desires of the perpetrator are generally revealed during the fight. Truly great works use these violent acts to indicate a theme. One such example is “Sunshine” by Lynn Freed. In this short story, Julian de Jong, a man whose wealth allows him to evade punishment for raping children, finds a young girl in a pile of leaves. This man tames the girl with the help of his maids and earns her trust only to force himself on her at the end. De Jong and the child fight with the girl emerging as the victor. In this crucial scene, it is shown that Freed wishes to criticize the villagers’ morality in allowing
The Modernist movement took place in a time of happiness, a time of sadness, a time of objects, a time of saving, a time of prosperity, a time of poverty and in a time of greed. Two novels, written by Steinbeck and Fitzgerald, portray this underlying greed and envy better than most novels of that period. These novels, The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath, show that despite the difference between the 1920s and the 1930s, greed remained a part of human life, whether superficially or necessarily, and that many people used their greed to damage themselves and others.
One of the short stories is about a game called murder in the dark where out of a group a murderer and a detective are chosen. The role of the murderer is to kill (and lie when asked if they did it) in the dark without being caught by the detective when the lights go back on. A reader has no grounds to make a link between the game and Atwood’s life. It is impossible to know whether she really plays this game; it is more likely that she is using this fictitious account to relay a message. Near the end of the story Atwood sets a scenario where the murderer is the writer, the detective is the reader, and the victim is the book. In another scenario the author is the murderer, a critic is the detective, and the reader is the victim. Applying this directly to her life would mean she was a murderer, which wouldn't make sense because she would
There is an important time, though, during someone’s life where this innocence is stolen and leaves as different person. This event is the main function in “My Father’s Noose”, “Dothead”, and The Glass Castle. Each character has their own certain tick that their innocence blinds them from. Jeannette Walls’s ignorance blinds her from the abuse of her family and peers, while Totoy’s blinds him from his mother’s abuse. The speaker in “Dothead” is blind to the abuse of his peers. After going through each ordeal, the characters lose their innocence by gaining knowledge of the way people work. Discovering that not all people are good pressures the characters to take a deep look at the way they act and their code of