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EARLY LIFE: James Buchanan Barnes - known to everyone as simply Bucky - was born the same year as Steve Rogers was. Bucky's mother died when he was a died after a long illness, and his younger sister Rebecca was shipped off to boarding school after his father died in a parachuting accident. This left Bucky in the care of the same orphanage that Steve was in. Bucky, being a more outgoing and stronger kid, disliked the way the other kids picked on Steve. Bucky's already rebellious and rambunctious nature was exacerbated, and he saw it as a way to get out his frustrations with the world.
WAR! World War II was getting started when they finally came into their own. One day, while in art class, America got the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and the US entered World War II officially. Both boys longed to fight for their countries, and though Bucky knew that Steve would never make it into the army, he spent the next few weeks training him at Goldies' Boxing Gym. Where Bucky got in immediately, Steve kept trying, but his various illnesses prevented him from joining. Bucky was, not ...
The story takes place through the eyes of a German infantryman named Paul Baumer. He is nineteen and just joined up with the German army after high school with the persuasion of one of his schoolteachers, Mr. Kantorek. Paul recalls how he would use all class period lecturing the students, peering through his spectacles and saying: "Won't you join up comrades?"(10). Here was a man who loved war. He loved the "glory" of war. He loved it so much as to persuade every boy in his class to join up with the army. He must have thought how proud they would be marching out onto that field in their military attire.
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
For Finny and Gene, the summer session at Devon was a time of blissful happiness and a time where they allowed themselves to become utterly overtaken by their own illusions. The summer session was the complete embodiment of peace and freedom, and Gene saw Devon as a haven of peace. To them, the war was light years away and was almost like a dream than an actual event. At Devon, it was hard for them to imagine that war could even exist. Finny and Gene forged the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session and acted out in the most wild and boisterous ways. Missing dinner or being absent from school for days to go to the beach did not even earn them a reprimand. “I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen....We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to prese...
Some of the older boys from the nearby farms are joining up. I think if you want to fight you have to be at least fourteen, but my friend Tommy told me you could join as young as seven if you were a drummer boy. John and Timmy are seven and six, so I better not tell them that. Charlie and William and Tommy are all joining up together. Their fathers let them, since they’re all at least sixteen. I do hope they come home again. “You never know what could happen in a war,” Mother says. I believe her.
Damn. I wish I was in one of the bigger classes. At least in there there’s a lower probability of me being called on.
In the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, the characters all value some things specific to his character. Jim and Tom are peculiar characters because they have distinct ways of looking at things. In that Jim values family and friendship, Tom values following the rules, and Huck values the natural world.
Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843). Another of the principal themes in this novel is the theme of maturity.
Chris and Finny have the same drive to try something that they had never done before and breakaway, much like other young adults and that is “why [it] has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war” (Krakauer 182). Finny, an adventurous, daring boy at Devon wants to be a participant in the World War, like the other boys his age, but is not able to due to his leg injury. In most countries, the average age of people in the army is 18-20, usually young adults. It has always been easy to have people involved in the wars because many young adults want to prove that they are old enough to be independent and free from their parents and society’s expectations. Finny wrote to the army and the navy to try to be a part of the war, because he will “hate it everywhere if [he is] not in this war” as a result of the daring and confident side that he and many other boys of that time had (Knowles 103). Finny and Chris McCandless wanted to leave the simple life that they were leading and live a life of adventure. Many adventurers would agree that living a life full of unknown and adventure is the most exciting life that anybody could live, and that is what Chris and Finny wanted to achieve. Finny and Chris want to escape the horrid life that they lead and
Nick Carraway is the narrator of the entire novel, he is also the protagonist of his own plot. He is a practical and conservative man who turns thirty during the course of the story. Raised in a small town in the Midwest, in New York he is in the bond business. He rents a small bungalow out from the city on a fashionable island known as West Egg. His next door neighbor is Jay Gatsby, and his distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, lives across the bay with her husband, Tom. Nick plays an important role in the main plot of the novel, for he is responsible for reuniting Gatsby and Daisy.
According to the dictionary, the definition of dissatisfaction is the quality or state of being unhappy or discontent. Dissatisfaction is a disease that theoretically knows no prejudices, has no cure, and almost everyone has it. This is a global epidemic, that can destroy a man in the time it takes to snap your fingers. Physically most people will be alright but discontent will rot you to the core on the inside. Unfortunately, not being content seems to be a very common part of society today and in the past. The theme of not be satiated by life is especially seen in the famous novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. All the characters in this novel seemingly have achieved the american dream but they are all unhappy and never get what they really want in the end. Also, no character is satisfied with their marriage, with love, and with life in general. They are all unhappy with their lives and they destroy the lives of others in order to satisfy themselves. The Great Gatsby teaches us that even being wealthy and powerful, people can still be dissatisfied and will do anything in order to be happy. Therefore, despite believing that we have it all, dissatisfaction still plagues the human spirit.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers. Fitzgerald uses the Roaring Twenties as the setting of this novel. The twenties were a time of promiscuity, new money, and a significant amount of illegal alcohol. Fitzgerald was a master of his craft and there was often more to the story than just the basic plot. He could intertwine political messages and a gripping story flawlessly. In the case of The Great Gatsby, he not only chronicles a love story, but also uses the opportunity to express his opinion on topics such as moral decay, crass materialism, individual ethics, and the American dream.
The Roaring 20's was a time of celebration, but to many the 20's were instead
James, Henry. "The Beast in the Jungle." The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995.
During Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it is apparent to be an absurd time for the wealthy. The shallowness of money, riches, and a place in a higher social class were probably the most important components in most lives at that period of time. This is expressed clearly by Fitzgerald, especially through his characters, which include Myrtle Wilson, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and of course, Jay Gatsby. This novel was obviously written to criticize and condemn the ethics of the rich.
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN AUTHOR’S SKETCH Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. When Samuel Clemens was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he spent his childhood. Clemens first approach to literature was through typesetting for a newspaper in 1851. At the time Orion, his brother, was a newspaper publisher in Hannibal. From 1857 until 1861, he served as the pilot of a riverboat on the Mississippi River.