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The evolution of heroes in literature
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Riel A Summary of Man
Author: J. A. W.
The Canadian hero Louis Riel shows mankind that life is fraught with controversies and battle with establishment. Moreover, establishment is the very ruin of Mankind. Riel's live was in more ways parallel to the human life cycle than one would guess. From the birth to the death of the notorious Riel, we can see how little control an individual really has over life.
Louis Riel started out life living in the sticks far from 'civilization,' caring parents, who taught him the basics of life, raised him. His early home was simple, uncomplicated, his family farmed and hunted on the side to make a living. Like the hunter/gatherer people in prehistoric times, as these people lived mainly of the Wooly Mammoth1, so lived Riel's people of the giant buffalo herds, both people depending with their very life on these beasts. Just as the sudden extinction of the Wooly Mammoth complicated things for early mans' hunting habits, politics complicated Riel's outlook on life. Life got swiftly more complicated as Riel grew up. As the country came into the hands of "civilized people", it's people were forced into a lifestyle which was more complicated than the hunting and gathering lifestyle the Riels and other Metis families were used to. Establishment is the biggest complication in life, Riel fought this all his life, in the end it won. What advances did civilization make in this killing? It benefited them little other than the satisfaction of routing their enemy. Are people satisfied; was that the end? That remains to be proven; people are still fighting to gain amnesty for Riel.
Life did not stay simple for people, problems started. As people established customs and started to stray from the hunter-gatherer society things got more complicated. Slave labor was one of the prominent drawbacks of people establishing new cultures. People needed slaves to build the huge monuments that they used to show their power and their allegiance to their Gods. The huge prehistoric stone calendar called Stonehenge2 may be the first example of slave work ever built. Canadians built up the West using methods that were essentially the same; they actualized it at the cost of the Metis' and Natives' lives and their livelihood. Riel's people, because they learned to depend the staples they could get in trade for hides and pemmican, were slaves of buffalo hunt and fur trade, thus slaves of the whites.
The use of labor came in two forms; indenture servitude and Slavery used on plantations in the south particularly in Virginia. The southern colonies such as Virginia were based on a plantation economy due to factors such as fertile soil and arable land that can be used to grow important crops, the plantations in the south demanded rigorous amounts of labor and required large amounts of time, the plantation owners had to employ laborers in order to grow crops and sell them to make a profit. Labor had become needed on the plantation system and in order to extract cheap labor slaves were brought to the south in order to work on the plantations. The shift from indentured servitude to slavery was an important time as well as the factors that contributed to that shift, this shift affected the future generations of African American descent. The history of colonial settlements involved altercations and many compromises, such as Bacons Rebellion, and slavery one of the most debated topics in the history of the United States of America. The different problems that occurred in the past has molded into what is the United States of America, the reflection in the past provides the vast amount of effort made by the settlers to make a place that was worth living on and worth exploring.
stage in their lives. These rites of passages are given special titles that have an
...conclusion that Louis Riel is indeed a legacy who should be regarded as one who is innocent. He has left us questioning whether or whether not his movements were plausible, but then again, he has nevertheless managed to carry honor and pride, while contributing many things towards Canada through his objectives. He preserved the Métis home territory and rights through many obstacles, which gradually led to the formation of Manitoba. He went through plenty of danger, while he knew they were coming. Louis Riel’s noble actions are too worthy to be burdened with charges of high treason and felony. “No matter what happens now,” he stated, “the rights of the Métis are assured by the Manitoba Act; that is what I wanted. My mission is finished.” Louis Riel, a hero, a saint, a prophet, is not the only one that is facing injustice and discrimination today in the 19th century.
In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl shares his perspective on the human mind. He uses his experiences in Nazi Concentration camps to discuss his ideas and share what he learned from his life as a prisoner in Nazi Germany. He uses particular events to show just how the human mind reacts to certain things, such death and fear. Frankl also introduces his theory of Logotherapy, which is his way of therapy. In his book, Frankl observed many things about the human mind and how it reacts to particular situations. He used his observation to teach us about his perspective on human psychology.
...he reader that Rieux is Camus' hero. It is precisely this sense of "common decency" which sets him apart, renders him uncommon in a town of men exiled from eachother by selfishness. Rieux is not searching for anything, he is merely doing what has to be done to fight the plague. His will to see man healed has freed him from his own search, and thus from exile; no longer in exile, Rieux has found eternal kingdom.
“Until the seventeenth century, Japanese Literature was privileged property. …The diffusion of literacy …(and) the printed word… created for the first time in Japan the conditions necessary for that peculiarly modern phenomenon, celebrity” (Robert Lyons Danly, editor of The Narrow Road of the Interior written by Matsuo Basho; found in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition, Volume D). Celebrity is a loose term at times; it connotes fortune, flattery, and fleeting fame. The term, in this modern era especially, possesses an aura of inevitable transience and glamorized superficiality. Ironically, Matsuo Basho, (while writing in a period of his own newfound celebrity as a poet) places an obvious emphasis on the transience of life within his travel journal The Narrow Road of the Interior. This journal is wholly the recounting of expedition and ethos spanning a fifteen hundred mile feat, expressed in the form of a poetic memoir. It has been said that Basho’s emphasis on the Transient is directly related to his and much of his culture’s worldview of Zen Buddhism, which is renowned for its acknowledgement of the Transient as a tool for a more accurate picture of life and a higher achievement of enlightenment. Of course, in the realization that Basho does not appear to be unwaveringly religious, perhaps this reflection is not only correlative to Zen Buddhism, but also to his perspective on his newfound celebrity. Either way, Matsuo Basho is a profound lyricist who eloquently seeks to objectify and relay the concept of transience even in his own name.
Louis Riel was born on October, 22, 1944 in Saint-Boniface. Louis Riel’s father was a political leader, and many believe that his actions affected Louis Riel’s decision to stand up for Métis rights. Riel was recognized as a brilliant student, and therefore he left Red River, Manitoba at a young age to study in Quebec under a scholarship for priesthood.
This shows you that Louis Riel has the support of a lot of Metis people.
During Macdonald’s terms as Prime Minister, Louis Riel was one individual who continuously opposed the government in defense of Métis and First Nation rights. Riel’s actions aided in preserving Métis rights and establishing Manitoba, but that is not the sum of Riel’s involvement in Canadian history. In 1885 Riel returned to Canada from exile in the United States to again prevent Métis territory in Saskatchewan, and this time First Nations land as well, from being claimed by European settlers. However, Riel’s rebellion was in vain, and he eventually submitted himself to the North West Mounted Police and was sentenced to death for treason. At the time, the Métis hailed him as an advocator of Metis rights, while the English viewed him as a traitor
...d in a way prose is unable. The juxtaposition of poetry and prose marks the transition into another era of Japanese literature that focuses more on prose, but the importance of poetry is not forgotten. Poetry in Japan is still very prevalent and although it does not carry the same connotation it once did, it still maintains its place within tradition.
Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. In other words, he portrays them habituated to a recurring lifestyle, mocking, and disdaining them for their triviality. They were simply lifeless before the plague struck; death was never problematic for them as they would not ever confront and antagonize this absurdity within their daily lives. The plague’s arrival denotes a physical manifestation of the absurd. Nevertheless, everyone in town is forced to respond and unable to continue their daily mundane lives when faced with death. Rieux is an exemplifying notion of Camus’s novel when confronting the absurd conditions of Oran. His journey to overcome this absurdity leads him to keep going and strives
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
LaFleur, William R. The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. 1983: University of California Press, Berkeley.
Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His style combined elements of classic Japanese prose with modern psychological narrative and exploration of human sexuality. Deeply influenced by the culture of his homeland, his writings capture the vivid and melancholy beauty and spirituality of Japan, while his own experiences and studies contributed to his assay into emotion.
Written six hundred and fifty years apart from each other, Matsuo Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi and Ki no Tsurayuki’s Tosa Nikki are both examples of nikki bungaku or “diary literature.” Both of these travel diaries reflect the ideas and values of their respective time periods.