True Love in A Farewell to Arms
At first look, Catherine Barkley, the woman from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, appears to be an example of a dream girl. She emerges as a mindless character who asks nothing of her man and exists only to satisfy his needs. Therefore, it has been propounded that Catherine's character is demeaning to women. By analyzing the actions of only one of the characters, however, the special relationship that exists between Frederic and Catherine is overlooked. If Catherine is Hemingway's manner of demeaning women then one must also examine the manner in which Frederic is described, for he too is very dependent and dedicated to Catherine as she is to him. The mutual love between Frederic and Catherine degrades neither of the two; rather, it shows them together in a good light.
Catherine Barkley's basic approach to her relationship with Frederic is one of a subordinate. She appears to gladly accept a subservient role in relation to Frederic. "I'll do what you want and say what you want," she tells him, "and then I'll be a great success, won't I"(105). Her idea of a successful relationship, and thus of happiness, is based on making Frederic happy no matter what she has to do. She changes her personality and way of life until she is not longer a person in her own right. "I want what you want," she tells Frederic, "there isn't any me any more. Just what you want"(106). She no longer views herself as an individual but rather as an extension of Frederic; her sole purpose is to accommodate him. "Is there anything I do you don't like?" she inquires of Frederic in her quest to be perfect for him: "Can I do anything to please you?"(116). Catherine even goes so far as to declare that she and Fr...
... middle of paper ...
...on one another allows them to be happy but they can no longer be happy alone.
The relationship between Frederic and Catherine has been criticized as being too romantic and too immature. It has been argued that through the extreme selflessness shown by Catherine, Hemingway aims to demean women. However, Frederic exhibits the same immaturity and selflessness as Catherine and the combination of the two in the story provides to build a special relationship. Their interdependency forms a strong bond through which both are able to be happy. The commitment to each other is mutual, causing each to lose their individual identities and become one with one-another. Instead of a degradation of women, the relationship between Catherine and Frederic represents an ideal for women and for men, one in which both are blissful and dependent on one another.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery" is all about how an old tradition as the lottery exceeds our expectations. First by giving us the readers the believe that the price of the lottery would be something great. Making us questioning the results and why to do this with no explanation at the end. Teaching us how traditions are that don’t make sense are killing because Society is clinging to this traditions and practices.
Shirley Jackson's, The Lottery, has raised questions in the back of every reader's mind towards the destructive yet blind rituals of mankind. A reflection of ourselves is what we see when looking through the pond of Jackson's mind. The Lottery clearly expressed Jackson's feelings concerning traditional rituals through her story, opened the eyes of its readers to properly classify and question some of today's traditions as cruel, and allowed room to foretell the outcome of these unusual traditions. Jackson's feelings towards the misuse of tradition as an excuse to cause harm have triggered her creativity for the creation of The Lottery. Jackson obviously saw examples of this misuse of tradition and ingeniously placed it into an exaggerated situation to let us see how barbaric our actions are. The townspeople, in the story, all come together for the annual lottery; however, in an interesting twist, those participating stone the winner to death. Everyone in the story seems horribly uncivilized yet they can easily be compared to today's society. Perhaps Jackson was suggesting the coldness and lack of compassion the human race can exhibit in situations regarding tradition and values. The People who were stoned to death represented values and good being as the townspeople, who represented society, cold-heartedly destroyed them ( Jackson 79 ). Immediately after reading The Lottery, one can compare the ritual, in the story, to some of today's barbaric traditions in a new point of v...
...popular. Shirley Jackson succeeded in writing a story that shocked the readers and gave them a new outlook on preserving traditions and imperfections of society. The human sacrifices that occur every year with the lottery show that some traditions are brutal and need to be reconsidered. Some of the symbolism such as the lottery, the black box, and the characters help bring about the theme of the short story. Ultimately, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery shows just how individuals follow traditions and people in front of them by conforming to society.
In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there are certain traditions that are upheld by the characters in the story. These characters that Jackson created are not even sure why they are following the traditions. This story shows the reader how mankind will react to different situations that they are put into. Even when something is going bad or is wrong, people will not be a leader and stop it. The characters in this story should not have tolerated with the inhumane tradition that was held every year.
Shirley Jackson wrote many books in her life, but she was well known by people for her story “The Lottery” (Hicks). “The Lottery” was published on June 28, 1948, in the New Yorker magazine (Schilb). The story sets in the morning of June 27th in a small town. The townspeople gather in the square to conduct their annual tradition, the Lottery. The winner of the lottery will stoned to death by the society. Although there is no main character in the story, the story develops within other important elements. There are some important elements of the story that develop the theme of the story: narrator and its point of view, symbolism, and main conflict. The story “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, argues practicing a tradition without understanding the meaning of the practice is meaningless and dangerous.
“The Lottery” has many elements involved in it, and all of them shape the story into what it truly is. Without the heavy symbolism of the black box, the three-legged stool, and the stones, the short story would lack depth. Without the many themes of society and class, tradition and customs, hypocrisy, and family, the story would lack all of its deeper meanings. Within “The Lottery”, the two most important elements of fiction are theme and symbolism, and it is hard to imagine the story any other way.
Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery” in 1948, not long after the second World War. The horror of the Holocaust was still fresh in everyone’s mind’s. Jackson wrote this story to remind everyone that we are not so far from this world of sadistic human sacrifice. She created a town, very much like any American town, with the gathering of the towns people to celebrate some annual event. She wanted to shine a mirror on contemporary society, a reflection of humanity, or rather, inhumanity. One would think that she was protesting against the shallow hypocrites that rule the world.
Over the years many critics have wrote articles on Shirley Jackson's numerous works. Many critics had much to say about Jackson's most famous short story, "The Lottery". Her insights and observations about man and society are disturbing; and in the case of "The Lottery," they are shocking. "The themes themselves are not new, evil cloaked in seeming good, prejudice and hypocrisy, loneliness and frustration, psychological studies of minds that have slipped the bonds of reality" (Friedman). Literary critic, Elizabeth Janeway wrote that, " 'The Lottery' makes its effect without having to state a moral about humanity's need to deflect the knowledge of its own death on a victim. That uneasy consciousness is waked in the reader himself by the impact of the story. Miss Jackson's great gift is not to create a world of fantasy and terror, but rather to discover the existence of the grotesque in the ordinary world. (Janeway).
Catherine is very pleased to meet Isabella after being disappointed in not seeing Mr Tilney again. The narrator informs the reader that Catherine is fortunate in finding a friend as ‘Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.’ (p.18 NA). Isabella being the elder of the two has much more knowledge of fashionable society than Catherine and is, therefore, able to teach her a great deal about the expectations of society at that time.
The lottery is a drawing that takes place on June 27th of every year, right before the crop season. Everyone who lives in the village, even the children, draws a piece of paper from the black box and doesn’t look at it until everyone draws theirs. When everyone finishes drawing, you turn your piece of paper over and the one with the mark on in, which is marked with coal, is the one who wins the lottery. But if you this lottery it isn’t a good thing. The person who wins the lottery, the one with the marked sheet of paper, gets stoned to death. The villagers believe that if they have a lottery before cropping season they will have a good season. This is one of those beliefs, or superstitions, they have that makes everyone think that everything is going to become good.
When one thinks of a lottery, they imagine winning a large sum of money. Shirley Jackson uses the setting in The Lottery to foreshadow an ironic ending. The peaceful and tranquil town described in this story has an annual lottery, and you can’t possibly guess what the “prize” is…
The lottery has been a tradition in the village since its earlier days. Certain aspects of the lottery are rooted in tradition and superstition. For example, the black box “grew shabbier each year” (4); The box is barely even black anymore after of the years of use. Their attachment stands solely on the fact that this box may have been constructed from an older black box used for the lottery. The stoning and ticket issuing style are a part of the ongoing tradition. However, they have forgotten most of the rituals since the old days. They now write on slip of paper instead of wood chips as a result of the village growing in size population wise. So many other rituals have also been forgotten though which begs the question If you can’t remain consistent with the rituals year after year, why keep such a bizarre and horrific game going? The attachment to tradition in this short story can be found in modern society today. Many people hold on to religions such as Christianity because their mother went to church and their ancestors went to church. In the story, Old Man Warner is so set in his ways that the thought of villages around his own giving up the lottery seemed ludicrous and somewhat devolving. Most blindly follow what is perceived to be normal not because it is the way it has always been done; It is because this is the way they interpret and/or remember it being
Many female writers write about women's struggle for equality and how they are looked upon as inferior. Kate Chopin exhibits her views about women in her stories. The relationship between men and women in Kate Chopin's stories imply the attitudes that men and women portray. In many of Chopin's works, the idea that women's actions are driven by the men in the story reveals that men are oppressive and dominant and women are vulnerable, gullable and sensitive. Chopin also shows that females, like Desiree and Eleanor, undergo a transformation from dependent and weak to stronger women free from their husbands by the end of the story. In the short story 'Desiree's Baby,' Kate Chopin reveals her idea of the relationship between men and women by showing instances of inferiority and superiority throughout the story. In 'A Point at Issue,' there are many instances where the idea of hypocrisy and the attitudes that the main characters display and how their actions affect each other's lives, show the impact that men have on women's lives.
“There is no perfect relationship. The idea that there is gets us into so much trouble.”-Maggie Reyes. Kate Chopin reacts to this certain idea that relationships in a marriage during the late 1800’s were a prison for women. Through the main protagonist of her story, Mrs. Mallard, the audience clearly exemplifies with what feelings she had during the process of her husbands assumed death. Chopin demonstrates in “The Story of an Hour” the oppression that women faced in marriage through the understandings of: forbidden joy of independence, the inherent burdens of marriage between men and women and how these two points help the audience to further understand the norms of this time.
Through the use of a concise plot, symbolism, descriptive setting, point of view, and dramatic irony, readers are left with a strong feeling of empathy for the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard. Through each paragraph of the story, readers continue to feel empathetic for the woman who grieves the loss of her husband, gains a new feeling of freedom outside of the restrictions of marriage, then loses that freedom when she discovers that her husband is not dead, all within an hour’s time. While women’s independence and freedom within marriage could still be a topic reflected in today’s literature, it would be a much different story than that of Chopin’s time. At the time this story was written, women were expected to do whatever it took to please and cater to their husbands. This story seems to draw from the changes of that time as women were beginning to gain more independence in their lives as in the suffrage movement, marriage, and employment outside the home. Much has changed in women’s rights since the end of the nineteenth century, which is a result of the work of women like Kate