“An Angel in Disguise”: Burden to Purpose
“An Angel in Disguise” by T.S. Arthur is a sentimental story about discrimination and compassion. The story follows a lonely couple without any children and how they come across a young girl with a spinal injury that becomes an unwanted orphan after her mother passes. “The sad eyes and patient face of the little one touched many hearts, and even knocked at them for entrance. But none opened to take her in. Who wanted a bedridden child?” (Angel in Disguise 1). Faced with longing, Maggie and the Thompson’s opened their hearts and when sprung in the form of an angel, the young orphan brought nothing but purpose and joy.
Primarily, the short story follows Mr. and Mrs. Joe Thompson and Maggie through a
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Purpose, when Mrs. Thompson found happiness spending her days with Maggie. Compassion was shown by Mr. Thompson when he looked beyond why the orphan was seen as a burden and to realize that she needed him and unbeknownst to him, that he needed her. The story captured many moments of loneliness; when Maggie lost her mother and siblings, but also with Mrs. Thompson as she had no one to care for and spend her days with besides herself. Innocence surrounded Maggie’s character; she was seen as helpless, sad, tender, sweet, and blessed. It wasn’t her fault her mother died and she was handicapped, she was just a young girl that was given a rough life until the Thompson’s grateful appearance. Love is a major component in the story because we realize that was all Maggie and the Thompson’s needed. They captured each other’s hearts in mere moments. “As he held the sick child to his breast, a sphere of tenderness went out from her, and penetrated his feelings. A bond had already corded itself around them both, and love was springing to life,” (Angel in Disguise 2). Mr. Thompson felt that strongly in the beginning of the story and even when he told his wife that he would bring Maggie to the poorhouse; he knew he wouldn’t do so. It seems they were just words to prolong her stay until his wife could come to know to
“Fallen Angels”, written by Walter Dean Myers, is a novel that tells about the story of young boys going into battle during the Vietnam War. There are many themes in “Fallen Angels” but the main theme is the loss of innocence. The title makes reference to these themes. And the boys in the book have dreams of losing their virginity and drinking alcohol for the first time. They are thrown into a harsh reality when they are shown the trials of war. In the end, they understand that the movies that depict heroicness and honor are just images of a false idea; that war is full of chaos and horror.
The novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara depicts the story behind one of the bloodiest, and highly significant, battles of the American Civil War, the battle of Gettysburg. The battle consisted of 51,000-casualties between the Union and Confederate army forces. Mainly focused on letters, journal entries, and memoirs, Shaara tells the story of Gettysburg by using characters from both sides of the war. The characters chosen grasp the divergent views regarding the impending days of the war, and countless numbers of those views develop throughout the novel. Such views come from the Confederates own General Lee and General Longstreet, and the Unions own Colonel Chamberlain and soldiers from both sides. From those depicted
The Loss of Innocence- The title of the novel Fallen Angels immediately emphasizes the theme of youth and innocence. As Lieutenant Carroll explains in Chapter 4, all soldiers are “angel warriors,” because the soldiers are still young boys and still as innocent as angels. In calling the novel Fallen Angels, Myers implies that the soldiers’ youth and innocence are more important than any of their other aspects, such as their religion, ethnicity, class, or race. The novel is first and foremost a tale of the lost innocence of a squad of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Richie is only seventeen when he enters Vietnam, and Peewee and the other members of the squad are also teenagers—Peewee is unable even to grow a mustache. His three life goals, immaturely, are to drink wine from a corked bottle, to smoke a cigar, and to make love to a foreign woman. Richie and Lobel are both virgins, and they fantasize endlessly about their first sexual experiences. Though the soldiers enter the war as naïve youths, the war quickly changes them and forces them to develop into young men. Surrounded by death, they are forced to contemplate the fragility of their own lives and stripped of the carelessness and brazenness of youth. The unspeakable horrors around the boys force them to contemplate a world that does not conform to their childish and simplistic notions. Where they want to see only a separation between right and wrong, they instead find moral ambiguity. Where they want to see order and meaning, they find only chaos and senselessness. Where they want to find heroism, they find only the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroy the boys’ innocence, prematurely thrusting them into manhood.
everything she wanted and it was probably at Maggie’s expense. Mama and Maggie’s understanding of
A section in the novel which expresses their family’s suffering is when Franks sister, Margaret, his parents’ joy is taken ill. ‘But when Margaret cries, there is a high lonely feeling in the air and Dad is out of bed in a second, holding her to him.’ Frank goes on to say ‘When he passes the window where the streetlight shines in, you can see the tears on his cheeks and that’s strange because he never cries for anyone unless he has the drink taken from him’. This is illustrating a very emotional scene but as the child is watching, due to his age and immaturity, he fails to realise his father is grieving through Margaret’s pain. This is a original way to show a child’s suffering through a novel as the reader is seeing the misery through the child’s eyes, but the pain being felt is by his father.
Bullets whizzed by and, the anguished cries wounded men echoed across the battlefield, but Clara Barton pushed through the sea of bodies; determined to get to the wounded. Even though many might know her from her nickname “Angel of the Battlefield” or as the founder of the American Red Cross, but she started as just a very stubborn, patriotic, young woman who was determined to help. Even in a time of despair. She brought hope to soldiers and their families, both on and off the battlefield.
One of the most important theme in the forward of The Killer Angels is the differences in both armies from the Southern and Northern and the amount of faith or lack of faith they had in their leaders. The confederate army (South) were a group of similar soldiers who shared the same beliefs and that had faith in their leadership. The union army (North) consisted of mostly volunteers and that come from all different backgrounds. This group didn’t have much faith in their leaders and were driven to win the war just by believing in themselves. Another most important theme in the forward is how Shaara, the author, describes a new kind of commander named James Longstreet, a rebel commander who was very war minded. The first important theme from
Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent the past that they are repressing. In his article, “The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God and Migrant Souls”, Antonio C. Marquez’s implicitly asserts a true idea that The Rain God is a story about repression. Marquez’s idea can be supported from an analysis of secondary sources and a reading of the primary text.
If she was pregnant, Maggie felt sure that the plantation would be left to Brick; the favorite son. Brick was not the greedy type, but Maggie showed of bit of greed when she felt that she could secure their place as the family heir to the plantation if she was with a child.
In addition, the child’s jealousy of his father’s relationship with his mother is further highlighted in “Do be quiet, Larry!…Don’t you hear me talking to Daddy” He becomes frustrated at her impatient tone and grows jealous,”This was the first time I had heard those ominous words, ‘talking to Daddy.’ His envious and spiteful tone as well as the use of the word ‘ominous’ tells the reader that he seeks a need to protect as well as be desired by his mother, which ultimately leads to a perverted and distorted sense of love for her. His desire for her is further expressed in “It was clear that she genuinely liked talking to Father better than talking to me, or else that he had some terrible hold on her which made her afraid to admit the truth.” This exhibits his clear jealousy over his parents relationship and further emphasises the complexity of human nature between children and parents. His adoration for his mother increases rapidly as he retaliates against his fathers command “Shut up, you!” His angry tone indicates
Tragic Analysis of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, is an illustrative analysis of the AIDS epidemic in the United States during the 1980s. The play is split into two separate pieces entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, which initially focus on the gay couple of Prior Walter and Louis Ironson before panning out into several complex storylines that often intersect. Due to the nature of its plot, Angels in America does not focus on a single tragic protagonist, but rather shadows the separate individual relationships between people in the community through their destruction and eventual renaissance, similar to Elizabethan drama. Over the course of the work, the plot of Angels in America parallels the characteristics of modern tragedy, propelled by the drama of ordinary people’s day-to-day lives. As such, Angels in America would best be analyzed through the utilization of Arthur Miller’s essay, “Tragedy and the Common Man” based on its outline of the definition of tragedy.
The mother walks in sad, cold, and exited. She tells her children there is a woman with a newborn baby and 6 children all in one bed trying to keep warm, and they are starving. She asks her 4 girls if they would give them their breakfast for a new year's gift. “As pap spoke, in came mama looking very cold, rather sad and very excited” This shows the mother was sad, cold, and exited. “My little girls, will you give them your breakfast, as a New Year's gift” This shows that the mother wants to help the poor family. This paragraph is showing she wants to help the family and not being selfish. This is not the only example of unselfishness in this story.
As the story unfolds and we begin to see the depth of Louise’s thought processes, the imagery that expresses these feelings of new-found freedom, and the reactions, or lack thereof, to the loss of her husband. We start to realize that there are two meanings to this initial statement of “a heart trouble” (236). We may come to understand through these subtle inferences that her heart trouble can also mean that although she is loved by her spouse, she is a passive, intelligent, unhappy woman, who has not had the pleasure of
Her father loved to drink almost as much as her mother, but it was when they drank together that fighting and hitting really started to focus on just maggie. Maggie’s lies started when she was around ten. They were small ones here and there, but when her mother was caught cheating, Maggie’s lies grew. She would say she was staying at her grandmother’s house, but instead she would sleep in the park near her house. She prefered the cold silent air to the screaming that was sure to start at home. Maggie’s parents filed for divorce. Through the divorce, Maggie started to hang out with her older cousin’s friends and when she was around thirteen she started going to parties. As Maggie got older she built up quite the reputation at parties and tales of these dark escapades made their way back to Maggie’s father. Her father was an extremely religious man even though the wood alcohol he drank in large quantities suggested otherwise. He could not find forgiveness for his daughter and disowned
After being banished from the town of Poker Flat for her actions as a prostitute, Mother Shipton and the other outcasts embark on a journey to Sandy Bar. When the group stops to rest, one of the outcasts runs off with the mules, leaving everyone else stranded at the camp in the snow. With a low amount of supplies and no way to leave, the group is now faced with a difficult situation. Due to the adverse circumstances, Mother Shipton begins to show a change in behavior. This change is exemplified when she says, “I am going….But do not say anything about it. Do not waken the kids. Take the bundle and open it…..Give ‘em to the child” (Harte 6). In the difficult situation that Mother Shipton is faced with, she decides to starve herself to save food for a younger women living in the camp. This selfless act shows that when an undesirable plight occurs, people are able to break out of their previous behaviors and act in an altruistic