In Kathleen Winter’s Canadian fiction, Lost in September, the main character and narrator, General James Wolfe of the eighteenth century, is reincarnated into a homeless man named Jimmy Blanchard. Blanchard has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and lives in a tent in modern-day Montreal. Throughout the novel, Jimmy Blanchard (General Wolfe) is obsessed with the loss of an eleven-day furlough in September during the war when the British nation accepted the Gregorian calendar. He then fought on September 13th, 1759 on the Plains of Abraham. This battle is what led General James Wolfe and the British to take over all of Quebec but also take General Wolfe’s life. Jimmy Blanchard calls these lost days of September “his dancing days”. Ultimately, …show more content…
Jimmy Blanchard is a very unsettling person because he regrets losing his eleven days of September and on top of that receives a second opportunity to live and still regrets it in his reincarnated self. After all the ideas Sophie has given him to conquer his trauma, he thought to himself and said, he should “try to make peace with what he has lost.” meaning he should travel to the places that frightened him in the past instead of visualizing it in his head, then making peace with it by letting it all go and moving on leaving everything behind. Even though Jimmy considers the eleven days of September an actual big part of his life, he could have recuperated everything by simply traveling to the places he wanted to go to in the past before he died, just now in his reincarnated self. The main purpose of going to the places he found traumatizing was really helpful, because in his head he was only picturing himself torturing and slaughtering people from the past, but when he actually was visiting the plains in real life, he did not see any blood or people in a harmful state and he looked like a different person realizing that everything was all gone and it was in the past knowing it will never happen
“Settling Upper Canada,” Class Notes, 8 February. Hennessy, Peter. The. “The Prison at Kingston, Canada West: 'So Irksome and so Terrible. ” The Beaver 1971, No 1, pp 12-20.
Within the novel Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, the character Billy Pilgrim claims to have come “unstuck” in time. Having survived through being a Prisoner of War and the destruction of Dresden during World War II, and having been a prisoner used to clear away debris of the destruction, there can be little doubt that Pilgrim’s mental state was unstable. Furthermore, it may be concluded that Pilgrim, due to the effects of having been a Prisoner of War, and having been witness to the full magnitude of destruction, suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which caused him to review the events over and over during the course of his life. In order to understand how these factors, the destruction of Dresden and ‘PTSD’, came to make Billy Pilgrim “unstuck” in time, one must review over the circumstances surrounding those events.
Tap dancing, an art grounded in African American culture, has moved from an upbeat style with its collection of steps that characterize the Jazz Age, such as the Charleston and the Stomp Time Step, to a style that better mirrors rap’s explosive rhythms and tendency towards synchronization. Much like African American music, tap- dancing’s evolution has been closely aligned with social progress and the slow breaking-down of stereotypes developed in the minstrel shows of the late 1800’s. The direct effects of racist stereotyping on tap-dancing are best observed in pre- 1960’s Hollywood films because these films reached a wide, mostly white, audience and were financed and directed by Whites. Tap legend, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, the star of Stormy Weather (1943), was forced to funnel his talent through a colander of social prejudices set to White Hollywood’s liking, and these social confines are visible in his dancing in this film. It was not until the 1980’s that modern tap emerged in Hollywood as an energetic battle cry from young African American dancers who demanded respect for their art form by refusing to conform to stereotypes. The film Bamboozled (2000), directed by Spike Lee, contrasts modern-day tap to the old-school style. In it, Savion Glover performs both the funky, urban style in street scenes and the smiley, traditional style in modern-day minstrel shows recreated for the film. In order to demonstrate how early conformity with and later break away from stereotypes have fueled the formation of two different generations of tap dancing, I will discuss historical context, and specifically the influence of minstrel shows on Stormy Weather and the 80’s tap revival on Bamboozled, before isolating and analyzing a scene from each film as representative of the two styles of tap-dancing.
Bret Harte is an amazing writer the reason I say that is because look at the stories he wrote like The Outcasts of Poker Flat. He did a great job on writing that story telling how one man became a outcast and how he sorted help the other’s. Then on how he tells us about the main character Mr. John Oakhurst who kicked out of Poker Flat because he is a outcast person. Then also how Mr. John Oakhurst starts his travel with two women who are prostitute and a guy who is a drunk. Then how Mr. John Oakhurst picks up more people that are riding on a horse so he decides to let them come along.
After a dramatic event happens in someone’s life such as war, some people cannot function the same way as they did previously. To make a reference to the novel, "Slaughterhouse five" written by Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim’s character experiences war during World War II. Some drastic changes happened in his way of dealing with the fact of surviving a war. He claims to travel in time and to meet Aliens, called the "Tralfamadorian’s". This essay will discuss Billy believing that he is meeting Aliens and traveling in time, but in fact he only has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after surviving the war.
Before the move to Coghill, Tom wanted his old life back. He sees the accident as the end of his life, though this he seems to have lost connection to his family and his sense of identity. Tom feels guilty and ashamed about the irrevocable consequences of Daniel’s irresponsibility and the impact this had on other people and their families. Retreats into a depressed state which feels empty and black. After the accident, Tom’s life was changed forever.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the main character Billy Pilgrim experiences few emotions during his time in World War II. His responses to people and events lack intensity or passion. Throughout the novel Billy describes his time travel to different moments in his life, including his experience with the creatures of Tralfamadore and the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to die during most of the novel and is unable to connect with almost anyone on Earth. The fictional planet Tralfamadore appears to be Billy’s only way of escaping the horrors of war, and acts as coping mechanism. Billy seems to be a soldier with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as he struggles to express feelings and live in his reality. At the beginning of the novel the narrator proposes his reason for writing the book is to explain what happened in the Dresden fire bombing, yet he focuses on Billy’s psyche more than the bombing itself. PTSD prevents Billy from living a healthy life, which shows readers that the war does not stop after the fighting is over and the aftermath is ongoing. Billy Pilgrim’s story portrays the bombing and war in a negative light to readers, as Vonnegut shows the damaging effects of war on an individual, such as misperception of time, disconnect from peers, and inability to feel strong emotions, to overall create a stronger message.
Quite notably, Jimmy or “The One”, died at the end of story when he tried to make a change in society and fight for equal rights for African Americans. Jane recalled that Jimmy was in Alabama and Mississippi with Martin Luther King Jr., who was also a martyr in the civil rights movement, and they both were arrested. At a church service, Jimmy tries to convince others, mostly elders, to come with him and protest, although Jane was the only one that was willing to participate. Jimmy then was killed because he wanted to protest that African Americans
Billy is used to showing that everything happens because of fate. As a prisoner, Billy has no control over his day to day life. While Billy is in Dresden, the city is bombed, because of luck, only Billy and a few others survive the bombing in a slaughterhouse. The people of Tralfamadore tell Billy that humans do not understand time because everything they do is in singular progression.
In Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut, the plot focuses on a man who tends to regress back to his childhood, and earlier life, using three important themes. These important themes are the destructiveness of war, the illusion of free will, and the importance of sight. In this novel, Kurt Vonnegut reflects on his experiences in the war in 1945 as a prisoner of war. This man is named Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim is a former prisoner of war who tends to be stuck in the same mindset as before.
After serving in World War Two, Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five about his experiences through Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist in the novel. Slaughterhouse-Five is a dark novel about war and death. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental disease that inflicts people who endured a traumatic event. Some of the common symptoms include flashbacks and creating alternate worlds which Billy Pilgrim experienced various times throughout Slaughterhouse-Five. Billy Pilgrim believes he has become “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 29) and travels to different moments throughout his life. Pilgrim is never in one event for long and his flashbacks are triggered by almost everything he does. While his “time-traveling” is sporadic and never to a relevant time, all of Billy Pilgrims flashbacks are connected through actions done in each of the visions. Perhaps the most important flashback occurred at ...
Lawrence Hill Books, c2009 Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
Interview footage of her colleagues, fellow musicians, and friends such as Annie Ross, Buck Clayton, Mal Waldron, and Harry “Sweets” Edison look back on their years of friendship and experiences with the woman they affectionately call “Lady”. Their anecdotes, fond memories, and descriptive way of describing Holiday’s unique talent and style, show the Lady that they knew and loved. The film also makes interesting use of photographs and orignal recordings of Holiday, along with movie footage of different eras. With the use of these devices, we get a feel for what Holiday’s music meant for the audience it reached. The black and white footage from the thirties of groups of people merrily swing dancing, paired with a bumptious, and swingin’ number Billie Holiday performed with Count Basie called “Swing Me Count”, makes one wonder what it might have been like to actually be there. To wildly swing dance to the live vocals of Billie Holiday must have been an amazing experience, as this film demonstrates.
All people are created equal. We come into this world born as “clean slates” that just wait for the world to make a mark on us. We have complete innocence. But as we grow, and learn, and experience different things, we begin to create our own thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas then decide who we want to be as people.
This independent reading assignment is dedicated to Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut experienced many hardships during and as a result of his time in the military, including World War II, which he portrays through the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim. Slaughterhouse-Five, however, not only introduces these military experiences and the internal conflicts that follow, but also alters the chronological sequence in which they occur. Billy is an optometry student that gets drafted into the military and sent to Luxembourg to fight in the Battle of Bulge against Germany. Though he remains unscathed, he is now mentally unstable and becomes “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 30). This means that he is able to perceive