The Mayor of Casterbridge: Social Standards

Betraying and lying have become the root of all evil today. People have made it an everyday thing to lie and betray people just because they like to see people broken in misery. People also lie and betray people because of jealousy they may have towards them. The tragedy of Othello explains why some people are not trustworthy. Just because some people feel like they are miserable, they try everything in their power to make the other individual miserable as well.

The husband went out and looked for work, while the wife stayed home and kept the children out of trouble. In Letha Scanzoni’s book Men, Women, and Change: A Sociology of Marriage and Family she observes that a wife’s duty was “to please her husband...to train the children so that they would reflect credit on her husband”(205). Alongside the wife’s duties Scanzoni provides the husband’s duty to “provide economic resources”(207).These expectations have long been changed, since then these have become common courtesies. Today, we see less and less of the providing father, homemaking wife and respectable children family structure. We are now seeing what sociologists call the senior-partner/junior-partner structure.

He illustrates this by showing how selfish desires cause Parris to develop a dysfunctional relationship with his children. He also shows how Parris’ lack of compassion leads to him sacrificing innocent people to save his own reputation as a reverend. These weaknesses of Parris, not only destroy the society, but also cause him to lose everything he desired. Only when people start viewing compassion as a strength will they be able to build a successful

As the wretch searched for these gratifications all he gained was death and revenge. He longed for friendship but was left without acceptance of beloved friends, he was ugly so people identify him with evil, and he was created by man so he was always an outcast to the world. This creature was tortured and deprived of human affection because of appearance. The prejudicial against him prevented him from being able to show his true identity. Work Cited Shelley, Mary.

In a sense, Swift’s mother sold him in order to benefit herself. Being left by a young boy’s mother, whom he was strongly attached might have been damaging. Swift’s uncle sent him to very good schools in Ireland and Swift graduated fr... ... middle of paper ... ...ing some actual proposals that would work to ease the pain for the poor. Swift writes that the rich could quit being so proud and selfish and have “at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants” (Swift). Swift feels despair and rejection from every caregiver or leader in his own life, just as the poor are rejected by society so they resort to begging.

Marx never really had feeling for his wife Jenny he only liked her for the moment in time. He never believed in a solid family and marriage. Later Marx totally fell out of love for his w... ... middle of paper ... ...ride the lower classes. They believed since their business has a better chance of going somewhere or have a better chance lasting, that they deserve the better upper hand. The ones who own the control of producing refuses to share that power of wealth and privilege; causing other to become fury and to kill to get what they want.

In the story The Death of Ivan Llych, the interesting pattern of materialism rises. Ivan questions how he had lived his life in the past, doubting whether his decisions swayed him to take the right route in life or not. Reflecting on his social expectations near death Ivan finds no comfort, realizing that he focused on the wrong aspects of life. At the announcement of Ivan’s death his loved ones focus first on money and work, as Ivan was a well-liked colleague they realized that his death may change and affect them in a negative way. This is significant to the rest of the story, potentially showing that Ivan lived a very materialistic life.

... ... middle of paper ... ...nown who his real parents were, and as a result would have avoided this tragic ending. To refer back to Oedipus’s blindness, for him it was the only way to pay off for the sufferance people around him had to endure. For Oedipus, moral dilemma did not have much impact and he was in need of a physical handicap, which would be visible to all people who had to suffer because of his errors. His blindness is also partly due to his shame of having brothers and sisters which are in fact his daughters and sons out of incest. To conclude, fate played a minor role in his downfall, yet Oedipus’s acts were the major factors.

He became an anguished man whose certainty went down the drain. His realization that he was wrong about witchcraft turned him into a man who directly spoke against witchcraft. However, his sorrow disparaged him. He was not the confident man he once was, and his remorse led him to believe that the least he could do was try to save the lives of those who were falsely accused. Yet, his attempts to stop the witch trials were ineffective.

In this case the narrator must suffer the marriage that he doesn't want in order to be reunited with the lost love that he so desperately missed. It is possible that this is a reflection of the isolation that Poe felt when he was forced to be among the people that did not accept him or appreciate him. The people in his life that he should have looked up to according to the societies standards were the ones that he usually was hurt by. In his life, he was abandoned by his father, he was disinherited from the family that raised him, he struggled with authority, and he was seen by many as nothing but a drunkard. Rowena would be an interesting visual for the overall cold, withdrawn feeling that he received while being isolated, either by means of the death of his loved ones or by the necessity to be a part of a society that he did not fit in to.