Morgan Scott Peck was an American psychiatrist, and also a best-selling author. He was best known for his first book, The Road Less Traveled. The book, published in 1978, sold over six million copies in North America alone, and has been translated into over 20 languages. Famously beginning with the words ‘Life is difficult’, the Road Less Traveled focuses on four concepts: Discipline, Love, Growth and Religion and Grace. Discipline, he says, “is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems” (15). Life, without a doubt, is unavoidably difficult; embracing this difficulty takes discipline, courage and strength. The process of meeting and solving problems gives life its meaning. Man is a problem solving being, but when we procrastinate, …show more content…
This understanding is our religion. Everyone has a religion. Religion goes beyond belief in God. It is a set of strongly-held beliefs, values, and attitudes that somebody lives by. We make these beliefs and values the gods of our lives and we struggle to grow in godhood. The road to love and discipline requires an expansion but religion goes the opposite direction, as we begin to question what we already believe in. Actively seeking the threatening and unfamiliar and deliberately challenging the validity of what we have previously been taught and hold dear. We begin to wonder whether we can truly become like God. The idea that God is actively nurturing us so that we might grow up to be like Him brings us face to face with our own laziness. Peck says that, we must however; accept His discipline as our own without the possibility of becoming like Him. If mortal existence truly held out the promise that we could become God then our laziness would be harder to explain. In fact, our lack of will is quite understandable in light of the limitations, we labor under as humans. He still requires discipline of us. Such is the human dilemma. Our faith, which is to say our faith in God and in His plan for us, has to be its own …show more content…
We say the first developed more resistance to the disease or his immune system was stronger than the others or we account it all to luck. It isn’t luck or resistance. We know very well why people become mentally ill. What we don’t understand is why people survive the traumas of their lives as well as they do. We know exactly why certain people commit suicide. We don’t know, within the ordinary concepts of causality, why certain others don’t commit suicide. All we can say is that there is a force. What is this force that has nothing to do with sheer luck? It is ‘grace.’ Grace is unmerited favor. It isn’t something that can be earned out easily explained. There are a lot of theories about how people obtain this grace. One is that of Jung’s theory of the “collective unconscious,” in which we inherit the wisdom of the experience of our ancestors without ourselves having personal experience. Grace, whether a divine intervention from God or some inherited wisdom, is very essential in our
In the short story "A Worn Path," the message that Eudora Welty sends to the readers is one of love, endurance, persistence, and perseverance. Old Phoenix Jackson walks a long way to town, through obstacles of every sort, but no obstacle is bad enough to stop her from her main goal. She may be old and almost blind, but she knows what she has to do and won't give up on it. Her grandson has swallowed lye, and she has a holy duty of making her way to town in order to get medicine for him. The wilderness of the path does not scare her off. She stumbles over and over, but she talks herself through every obstacle. Undoubtedly, the theme of perseverance is what Eudora Welty wants to point out to her readers. Just like the name Phoenix suggests
Schall describes ‘self discipline’ to be a fundamental principal that will ultimately enrich the ‘self.’ Hence, to posses qualities of dedication through a set of self-discipline habits are virtues that will enable to comprehend the truth in our reality. Indeed, the author makes a key-point by explaining that one must be able to achieve order in our mundane lives, from what “deviates from what it is we know we ought to be or do.” Therefore, one must be able to overcome any obstacle that may impede from reaching our goal of seeking knowledge and understanding. However, self-discipline is only the “beginning of wisdom, not its end.” Hence, wisdom may be achieve through a personal library, by studying the greatest minds that had existed in the past and perhaps, in the our present time, in which they have come close and/or achieve the goal one purposely
Grace is freely given favor or pardon, unmerited, unconditional god-like love. This grace has been shown in the many instances of unmerited love and forgiveness freely given in the book, The Grace That Keeps This World. In the beginning of the story, Kevin and his Dad, Gary Hazen, were at odds with one another. After the tragic accident where Gary Hazen accidentally shot his son, and Officer Roy’s fiancé, Gary David, Kevin, and his father, Gary Hazen, and Officer Roy, all extended grace toward one another. Then Gary extended grace toward himself. This grace helped to emotionally and physically sustain them, hence the title The Grace That Keeps This World.
The Hero Sojourner in A Worn Path by Eudora Welty In A Worn Path by: Eudora Welty, the main character emulates the necessary nuts and bolts of the archetypal journey as it's hero; answers a call to an adventure, has to go through trials of fear, and ending with the retrieval of two prizes. Eudora Welty's short story "A Worn Path" takes place on a "bright, frozen day" in December. Representing a struggle, but most of all represents determination. Her name is Phoenix Jackson.
These are the words with which M. Scott Peck begins The Road Less Traveled. In his opinion, realizing that life is difficult is the first important step on the way to solving life's problems. The second, and perhaps most important, step to solving life's problems is realizing the need for discipline and understanding what discipline is. According to Peck (1978), "without discipline we can solve nothing. With total discipline we can solve all problems" (16-17). The relationships of various characters within the film "Dead Poets Society" shows that even total discipline is unable to solve all problems if its application does not involve love as well.
The character of Phoenix is the protagonist in the “A Worn Path,” written by Eudora Welty. She is proud, loving, and determined. You see Phoenix Jackson on her long and difficult journey to get medicine for her sick grandson. The story is told from the third-person point of view. Though she was faced with many obstacles on her journey to the city, through the devotion and love she had for her grandson we see what type of person she really is.
For Young Goodman Brown, he allowed for the devil to get in the way between himself and his faith, corrupting his remaining life and eliminating the ability for him to see any good in the world around. For Mrs. Turpin, the saving grace helped her realize the way she had been treating others and viewing society was not the path to follow along, saving her from a world of loneliness and sorrow. It is the simple ability to know where or not to accept or deny the temptation to overtake one’s life, including his or her faith, to either make or break one’s life forever. A person can only ask themselves, which way they would honestly allow an onlooker’s temptation to sway or strengthen their
The Road, a post-apocalyptic, survival skills fiction book written by Cormac McCarthy and published in 2006 is part of the Oprah Winfrey book club. During an interview with Oprah, McCarthy answered questions about The Road that he had never been asked before because pervious to the interview he had never been interviewed. Oprah asked what inspired the heart breaking book; it turns out that McCarthy wrote the book after taking a vacation with his son John. While on the vacation he imagined the world fifty years later and seen fire in the distant hills. After the book was finished, McCarthy dedicated it to his son, John. Throughout the book McCarthy included things that he knows he and his son would do and conversations that he thinks they may have had. (Cormac). Some question if the book is worth reading for college course writing classes because of the amount of common writing “rule breaks”. After reading and doing assignments to go along with The Road, I strongly believe that the novel should be required for more college courses such as Writing and Rhetoric II. McCarthy wrote the book in a way to force readers to get out of their comfort zones; the book has a great storyline; so doing the assignments are fairly easy, and embedded in the book are several brilliant survival tactics.
May (1988) writes that “grace is the active expression of God’s love” (p. 120), which is the ultimate desire of all humans. Grace is a difficult concept to understand because there is nothing a person can do to receive it; rather, it is freely given as a gift from God. Grace is given to all who believe in Him, regardless of their sins. Guilt is almost always attached to addiction. The Christian counselor can use the concept of spiritual grace and the supporting theology to help the client change his or her feelings of guilt into feelings of hope for personal change and forgiveness through
Merriam-webster.com defines grace as “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.” While this is true, the scriptures have no set definition of grace. In the Old Testament, it was mostly used in the way of expressing God’s favor to humans; however, in the New Testament is used in several different ways. Paul intentionally uses the term “grace” in many of his greetings in order to demonstrate the seriousness of his letter (Trotter). He also uses the term in Romans 15:15-16 to write about God giving him the gift of ministry to the Gentiles: “…because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.” While there is no set biblical definition, a clear picture of what grace looks like ca...
Phoenix’s journey is a little long just by walking alone in the middle of the
In the novel, The Road, Cormac McCarthy illustrates the expressions, settings and the actions by various literary devices and the protagonist’s struggle to survive in the civilization full of darkness and inhumanity. The theme between a father and a son is appearing, giving both the characters the role of protagonist. Survival, hope, humanity, the power of the good and bad, the power of religion can be seen throughout the novel in different writing techniques. He symbolizes the end of the civilization or what the world had turned out to be as “The Cannibals”. The novel presents the readers with events that exemplify the events that make unexpected catastrophe so dangerous and violent. The novel reduces all human and natural life to the condition of savagery and temporary survival. McCarthy uses colour imagery to describe how grey, pale and miserable everything was. He uses “carrying the fire “which represents people who have a flame of humanity left alive in their hearts. The metaphor explains the readers about how most of the people were dishearten in the journey of horrid remnants of humanity. In the novel, The Road by Cormac McCarthy elaborates not only the settings and the actions but also the love between a father and a son which is present even around the time of ultimate inhumanity and the stubborn desire to struggle to stay alive in the apocalyptic world and manipulate different writing techniques such as literary devices and characterization to explain the negative aspects of humanity.
In The Road, Cormac McCarthy doesn’t give us a total lot about the ending of the world. He usually focuses on the previous world due to he man’s dreams and memories. In the beginning of the book it tells us how his wife had killed herself after she had a baby, who is the man’s son, because she knew what the world was going to come to and that baby boy knows no other world than this one. As of this dangerous world the man and the boy, who were both unnamed in this novel went through houses, dried streets, no food, coldness, farms and even trying to get through this horrible world and life. Death is unavoidable. We do not know when we are going to die and for them can be so much worse not knowing if they even have tomorrow. When reading the
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, follows the journey of a father and a son who are faced with the struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. The two main characters are faced with endeavors that test a core characteristic of their beings: their responsibilities to themselves and to the world around them. This responsibility drives every action between the characters of the novel and manifests in many different ways. Responsibility is shown through three key interactions: the man to the boy, the boy to the man, and the boy to the rest of the world. It is this responsibility that separates McCarthy’s book from those of the same genre.
A religion is a system of beliefs usually involving the worship of supernatural forces or beings. Religious beliefs provide shape and meaning to one's perception of the universe. In other words, they provide a sense of order in what might otherwise be seen as a chaotic existence. Religions also provide understanding and meaning for inexplicable events such as a loved one being killed in an earthquake or some other unpredictable force of nature. For most religious people, their beliefs about the supernatural are at the very core of their world views.