The Human Capacity to Tolerate Oppression “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities […] because it is the quality that guarantees all others” (Winston Churchill). This quote attests to the importance of the courage portrayed in The Help and Water for Elephants and emphasizes why courage is a defining trait of the characters. In both novels, the characters are confined and put through pain and suffering but in the end demonstrate tremendous amounts of courage in order to overcome their oppression. In The Help, the coloured help are confined to living life in an era full of racism, they are put through pain and suffering by the way they are treated by their employers and the members of their community. The characters demonstrate …show more content…
Indeed, the characters are left without a personality; they have been so barren with lifelessness because of the actions of other people. Overall, there is a strong sense of confinement in both novels, The Help, and Water for Elephants. The characters are confined through laws, bounds, expectations and silence. The authors state to the reader that, in order for humans to grow they must be free, and not confined. Subsequently, confinement leads to pain and suffering. In the novels, The Help, and Water for Elephants, the authors show the pain and suffering of characters throughout their journey. The characters in the novels suffer through oppression; they suffer through physical and emotional …show more content…
One of the main characters that suffers is Rosie, the circus’ elephant, her owner abuses her because he thinks she is a poorly trained animal. In reality Rosie doesn’t understand English. “August marches off, I turn back to Rosie. She stares at me, a look of unspeakable sadness on her face. Her amber eyes are filled with tears” (Gruen 268). Rosie is abused and has no method of escaping from her oppression. Emotional pain is shown in Water for Elephants through negative events in Jacob’s life. “I sink to the floor, overcome with grief and guilt. I throw a book at the wall” (Gruen 299). Jacob suffers as he tries to control his emotions. He suffers as he tries to overcome the loss of his companions, Walter and Camel. The two characters died as a result of being thrown off of the moving circus train because they could no longer afford to pay their wages. This also shows the pain involved in trying to earn a living during the Great Depression era. Furthermore, pain and suffering is tied into being confined, as one is suffering due to their confined
A characters courage is not measured by how an action will be accepted by others, but by how their actions stay true to themselves even in the face of a pressured surrounding. Colin McDougall’s The Firing Squad a story about a young soldiers attempt at redemption and George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant an essay about Orwell’s days in a British colony where he was called to handle the situation with an aggressive elephant are two pieces of literature that demonstrate the effects of courage. Courage takes many forms and in these two great pieces of literature it can be measured by looking at the characters and how they use courage and lack of courage as a driving factor in different ways throughout their story’s.
In a well-written short story, different literary elements and terms are incorporated into the story by the author. Ernest Hemingway frequently uses various literary elements in his writing to entice the reader and enhance each piece that he writes. In Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway uses symbols to teach the reader certain things that one may encounter during daily life. Symbolism may be defined as relating to, using, or proceeding by means of symbols (Princeton). The use of symbols in Hills Like White Elephants is utterly important to the plot line and to the fundamental meaning of the story. Through this use of symbolism, the reader can begin to reveal the hidden themes in this short story.
Being written with a third-person omniscient point of view, as reader it is easy to pick-up the thoughts and ideas of all characters. Originally it is thought that in the beginning of the book that Mud will be the only main/dynamic character, but upon reading further into the book, Tall-Time (closest thing to Mud’s love interest), Torrent (Tall-Time’s best friend), and Date Bed (Mud’s best friend), all will be discussed and their development into complex characters will be another focal point. The author is very creative in her way of developing characters. She almost tries to dedicate each chapter to one character, or another chapter to the relationship that certain elephants share with one another. The dictionary and family tree that she creates within the prologue also add a certain sense of knowledge for the reader; those tools make the reader feel as if they already know things about the characters and their situation. This makes the use of elephants as the main characters, not as farfetched as...
In the novel Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston and the novel Maus by Art Spiegelman the theme of suffering has a damaging effect on the human spirit. Suffering in both these stories come in different forms such as emotional, physical, and mental. No matter the form, it is still suffering.
Mark Twain best described courage when he said that, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear” (Twain). Both in The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Watership Down by Richard Adams, the authors deal with the topic of courage and each share a similar view on it as this quote. Indeed, both authors suggest that courage is not accumulated simply by acts of heroism, but rather by overcoming fears and speaking one’s mind as well. These books are very similar in the way that bravery is displayed through the characters in an uncommon way. Firstly, an example of bravery
...oducing the ideas of pain, suffering and sorrow, Starkweather would be asked to work on recognizing and respecting these concepts.
Throughout In the Time of the Butterflies Minerva not only displays an immense amount of courage but inspires courage in others. Ranging from her own acts of courage, such as slapping the president and pinching herself to prevent being scared, to moments where she inspires courage in others, such as being one of the leaders of the revolution , Minerva bold display of courage remains throughout the entirety of the story
In Water for Elephants, the story is told through Jacob Jankowski at two different parts in his life: twenty-three year old Jacob who is out there exploring the world and, ninety-three year old Jacob who feels like he is wasting away his life in a nursing home. Water for Elephants is Gruen’s third book, it became one of the New York Times best sellers, it’s also available in forty-four different languages and it’s now a motion picture (Sara Gruen). Throughout the novel the reader is brought through both Jacob’s happy memories and ones that he wishes he could forget which shows its impact on the reader, a sense of catharsis and its social significance.
Because the means to suffer is more than people know, such things give people the message to be thankful for society’s luxuries. The Road characters face the sights of horror. The Ukrainians face similar events of poverty such as cannibalism and starvation. McCarthy wanted to inform reader’s life is pretty dang good compared to roasting over a fire. Appreciating every minute of life without abusing or misjudging the evils of life will only send the human population further to empathy.
In Annie Dillard’s narrative, “The Deer at Providencia,” she reveals her awareness of and confusion regarding suffering by paralleling human and animal anguish and dignity. On a trip to Ecuador with a North American group in the village of Providencia, Dillard witnesses the suffering of a small deer. Her lack of reaction to the suffering deer stuns the travelers; however, Dillard intentionally conditions her awareness of suffering by encountering an article about a burn victim daily in America (M.S. 4) Posting the article on her mirror, Dillard strengthens her realistic perception regarding suffering and divulges her confusion regarding the ambiguity, inevitability, and vulnerability of agony for all beings. Recounting[SM2]
In his story “Village 113” Anthony Doerr argues that pain is inevitable over time. A couple of examples that over time pain becomes inevitable are: Teacher Ke and the relationship between Li Qing and the seed keeper. Teacher Ke notices what is becoming of their village by noting: “They spread a truckload of soil in the desert and call it farmland? They take our river and give us bus tickets” (126)? Teacher Ke has a background with “the winter of weeds” where he only could eat weeds for sustenance for that winter (126). Doerr implies that with the culmination of their “world” being destroyed becomes a reality; desperate measures need to be taken to sanctify relations and belongings. As the construction of the dam continues, there is a sense of painful emotion to the fact that they are making villages migrate out of their homes and into the city where they are thrown with the little money they are given for their land. From the accounts of teacher Ke,
In Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, he provides the reader with a fictional account of the Bhopal Disaster through the eyes of a deformed teenager in a fictional town named Khaufpor. This teenager calls himself ‘Animal’ because his deformity bent his spine to the point where he must walk on all fours, making him feel inhuman. With his mother and father dead, he accepts the name as his own and denies his own humanity. Although Animal tries to separate himself from his humanity because of the pain it causes him, he is forced to accept his humanity through his friends’ guidance and the inner and external conflicts that he faces meaning that humanity is unavoidable.
Suffering is apart of life, just like joy and love is. We can never choose how life treats us but we can always choose how we react and get back up again. Through Fever 1793 we see up close and personal how suffering can affect us, and how sometimes it can affect us in positive ways. How suffering can help turn the page to the next chapter in our lives. How suffering doesn’t always mean losing but also gaining.
Elephants'." Studies in Short Fiction. 17.1 (Winter 1980): 75-77. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 75-77. Literature Resource Center. Gale.
How would one feel and behave if every aspects of his or her life is controlled and never settled. The physical and emotional wrought of slavery has a great deal of lasting effect on peoples judgment, going to immense lengths to avoid enslavement. In the novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the characters adversity to expose the real struggles of slavery and the impact it has on oneself and relationships. Vicariously living through the life of Sethe, a former slave who murdered one of her kids to be liberated from the awful life of slavery.