Arthur Ashe once said, “From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however makes a life.” Such is the case in Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat. Gogol takes a man without a friend in the world and gives him a new overcoat. The new overcoat represents a new life and a new identity for the man and instantaneously he is much happier. The man, Akaky Akakievich, basis his “new life” upon the love that he gives to his overcoat, and what he feels it gives him in return. Before long, Akaky begins to care more about his beautiful coat and less about the people around him. Thus is the theme of the story. Often material things are more important in our lives than people, resulting in the emptiness of one’s heart and soul. One cannot be truly happy with his possessions alone. He needs more than that. He needs people his life, whom he can call friends.
Akaky Akakievich is a low class man and he works hard for his money, yet his materialistic co-workers torment him because of his shabby, worn-out overcoat. Consequently he goes out and purchases a new overcoat. Quickly people begin to respect him more as he wears the new coat, and it creates for him a new identity. Akaky no longer is the blunt of office jokes, for he is now dressed more fashionably in the eyes of his colleagues. As Akaky walks down the street, he begins to see things in a new light. From the women that pass him by, to what he sees inside the store windows. Things seem to have a new meaning in his world, all because of his new overcoat. Akaky cares so much about his coat because it cost him quite a lot of money, but more importantly it made him feel more confident, more accepted by those around him. The overcoat was friend to him because it was there for him. It gave him a sense of security and it protected him in the frigid Petersburg climate.
Darryl’s life is worth fighting for. “You can’t buy what I’ve got.” ‘The Castle’ directed by Rob Sitch, about one man, his family and neighbours on the verge of being homeless. Darryl Kerrigan, the “backbone of the family” won’t stand for that. Of course no one can buy what he has. He’s spent almost his entire lifetime building what he has, why should he give it up? Darryl’s way of life is simple yet filled with family values. 3 Highview Crescent is the home to Darryl, his wife Sal and their 3 children: Wayne, Steve, Tracy and Dale. (Wayne currently being in jail.) The house is made up of love, and simple family values. Darryl’s also added bits and pieces to it. He’s added on so much to the house, his own personal touch. His neighbours, also in the same bout are almost family to the Kerrigans. Jack and Farouk are another reason why Darryl’s ready to take matters into his own hands.
Personal experiences affect everybody. Just like in the stories “Abuela Invents The Zero” by Ortiz Cofer and “Home” by Anton Chekhov. Constancia and Yevgeny, from the stories, both have small problems that lead to dramatic changes in their values. Constancia values what her peers think of her and Yevgeny values work more than his son. The authors of “Abuela Invents The Zero” and “Home” have both shown how small moments can change a person’s values forever.
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a young Jewish boy, who tells of his experiences during the Holocaust. Elie is a deeply religious boy whose favorite activities are studying the Talmud and spending time at the Temple with his spiritual mentor, Moshe the Beadle. At an early age, Elie has a naive, yet strong faith in God. But this faith is tested when the Nazi's moves him from his small town.
The men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 were just ordinary men, from a variety of backgrounds, education, and age. It would appear that they were not selected by any force other than random chance. Their backgrounds and upbringing, however, did little to prepare these men for the horrors they were to witness and participate in.
What is madness? Is madness a brain disorder or a chemical imbalance? On the other hand, is it an expressed behavior that is far different from what society would believe is "normal"? Lawrence Durrell addresses these questions when he explores society's response to madness in his short story pair "Zero and Asylum in the Snow," which resembles the nearly incoherent ramblings of a madman. In these stories, Durrell portrays how sane, or lucid, people cannot grasp and understand the concept of madness. This inability to understand madness leads society to fear behavior that is different from "normal," and subsequently, this fear dictates how they deal with it. These responses include putting a name to what they fear and locking it up in an effort to control it. Underlying all, however, Durrell repeatedly raises the question: who should define what is mad?
How could one dieny that the mass murder of six million jews never happened? These revisionist, or deniers, like to believe that it never did. Even with the witnesses, photos, buildings and other artifacts left behind, they still believe that the Holocaust is a hoax. The Holocaust deniers are wrong because there are people who have survived that wrote books, there is proof that Jews were being killed, and other evidence and artifacts have been found.
“The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” along with Gogol’s other stories in the collection, are early representatives of comedic social commentary. Not only does Gogol engage the reader with components of Russian society, especially the major gap between the privileged people and the commoners, but he utilizes comedy to highlight the absurdity of this social polarization.
Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, took the time to inform the world about his experiences as a prisoner of Auschwitz during the Holocaust in order for it to never happen again. Wiesel uses a language so unbearably painful yet so powerful to depict his on memories of the Holocaust in order to convey the horrors he managed to survive through. When the memoir begins, Elie Wiesel, a jewish teenager living in the town of Sighet, Transylvania is forced out of his home. Despite warnings from Moshe the Beadle about German prosecutions of Jews, Wiesel’s family and the other townspeople fail to flee the country before the German’s invade. As a result, the entire Jewish population is sent to concentration camps. There, in the Auschwitz death camp, Wiesel is separated from his mother and younger sister but remains with his father. As he struggles to survive against starvation, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse he also looses faith in God. As weeks and months pass, Wiesel battles a conflict between fighting to live for his father or letting him die, giving himself the best chance of survival. Over the course of the memoir, Wiesel’s father dies and he is left with a guilty conscience but a relieved heart because now he can just fend for himself and only himself. A few months later, the Allied soldiers free the lucky prisoners that are left. Although Wiesel survives the concentration camps, he leaves behind his own innocence and is forever haunted by the death and violence he had witnessed. Wiesel and the rest of the prisoners lived in fear every minute of every hour of every day and had to live in a place where there was not one single place that there was no danger of death. After reading Night and Wiesel’s acceptance speech of the Nobe...
How has your character changed in the book? What main events those lead to this change? How does the author show this change in writing?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn carefully and tediously depicted what life is like in a prison. Ivans monotonous life prompts the reader initially to think that Ivans day is a living death of tedious details. Yet, in truth, Ivan i...
Vladek’s controlling ways leads him to invent a life that he never had. Vladek wields his reality by reinventing his past life. When Vladek tells Art about his marriage to Anja, he portrays his marriage like a fairy tale. Vladek says, “We were both very happy, and lived happy, happy ever after” (Spiegelman 2:136). He reinvents his past life after the end of the Holocaust as free of woe. Correspondingly, he loses himself...
Monsters under the bed, drowning, and property damage are topics many people have nightmares about; nightmares about a dystopian future, on the other hand, are less common. Despite this, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984 display a nightmarish vision about a dystopian society in the near future. Fahrenheit 451 tells of Guy Montag’s experience in a society where books have become illegal and the population has become addicted to television. Meanwhile, 1984 deals with Winston Smith’s affairs in Oceania, a state controlled by the totalitarian regime known as the Party. This regime is supposedly headed by a man named Big Brother. By examining the dehumanized settings, as well as the themes of individuality and manipulation, it becomes clear that novels successfully warn of a nightmarish future.
In the Spring of 1944, it was hard to imagine the horrendous acts of terror that would be bestowed on innocent people and the depth of Nazi evil. To Jews in a devout community with Orthodox beliefs and spiritual lifestyles, faith in God and faith in humanity would be shaken to the core as horrific, inhumane acts of torture and suffering were experienced by those in the concentration camps. Since the creation of the world, Jews have often associated darkness (or night) with the absence of God. Consequentially, Elie Wiesel struggled with this as the unimaginable atrocities took place in his life. Although a survivor, he has been haunted with guilt, questioned his faith and developed a lack of trust in humanity as a result of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel entitled his book about the Holocaust, “Night”, because darkness symbolized the evil death camps, and a permanent darkness on the souls of those who survived.
Golyadkin’s extreme preoccupation with his own identity in society turns the world and individuals into mirrors wherein he would perceive himself. He cares most dearly not for people but what impressions they have towards him. Evidenced by the way he acts and feels around other people. In Golyadkin’s conversation with his doctor, the narrator describes the protagonist as having “spoken throughout with the utmost clarity, precision and assurance, weighing his words and relying on those calculated to produce the best effect.” (13) This showcases how Golyadkin is anxious over the impression he gives and not over giving the truth to his doctor. This goes similarly in many of his bizarre behaviors in society. For instance, Golyadkin would “change(d) his big notes into notes of smaller denominations, losing o...
Search of identity in, the “Namesake”. In an interview, Lahiri acknowledged the influence of Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’: ‘The Overcoat’ is such a superb story. It really does haunt me the way it haunts the character of Ashoke in the novel… Of course, without the inspiration of Nikolai Gogo...