In the novel Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow, a 15 year old city boy explores what life is like in a gang, and how to gain a plethora of money through illegal means. The adventures and events Billy, the city boy, experiences throughout the novel change his identity and behaviors forever.
Sacrifice and the American Dream in the Works of E.L Doctorow Throughout the works of E.L. Doctorow, many facets of American society are explored, ranging from the plight of the homeless to the idiosyncrasies of the rich. A persistent theme prevalent in all of his novels is the existence of the American dream. He seems fascinated by upward social mobility, especially when it involves the impoverished and underprivileged. Yet Doctorow also points out that with the success or attempted success
Unspoken Laws in Billy Bathgate With the introduction into gang life comes opportunities for wealth, women, status and power all with the convenient diffusion of any criminal or moral responsibility. Like any society, the secret world of criminal gangs has its own set of stringent expectations and rules that must be followed. In E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate, the secret world of Schultz’s New York gang empire is revealed through the eyes of the young protagonist, Billy Bathgate. During a time when
failure, they can either learn from it and move on or it will haunt them for the rest of their days. In Billy Bathgate, a story written by E.L. Doctorow, his characters have defining weaknesses, though some more obvious than others. To have a weakness shows that you are human, and that critical flaw will make for a more interesting story, so let's show off Dutch Schultz, Abbadabba Berman, and Billy Bathgate's weaknesses.
Billy Budd as Allegorical Figure An allegory is a symbolic story. Herman Melville's Billy Budd is an example of an allegory. The author uses the protagonist Billy Budd to symbolize a superior being who has a perfect appearance and represents goodness. Melville shows the reader that a superior being can be an innocent victim of evil and eventually destroyed. In, Melville's Billy Budd, the main character is an allegorical figure who symbolizes all goodness in men. Billy Budd's image
The Case of Billy Frank Vickers According to the article, Prosecutors Doubt Inmate Confession True, by Angela K. Brown, Billy Frank Vickers, condemned inmate, received a lethal injection on Wednesday night January 28, 2004 for a 1993 murder after confessing that he was involved in about a dozen other crimes, including the shootings that placed a cloud of suspicion over Davis for three decades (Brown). Jack Strickland, a former prosecutor in the Davis case, said he had never heard of Vickers and
The Minds of Billy Milligan Out of all the classes that I have taken here at Westfield State College, I can honestly say that Abnormal Psychology has been by far the most interesting. Since this course has had such a major influence on me this semester, I am strongly considering continuing my education in this field of psychology. Throughout the semester, we studied a number of intriguing disorders. The disorder that really seemed to catch my attention was the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
Billy Pilgrim as a Christ Figure in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five After reading the novel, Slaughterhouse Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., I found my self in a sense of blankness. The question I had to ask myself was, "Poo-tee-weet?"(Vonnegut p. 215). Yet, the answer to my question, according to Vonnegut was, "So it goes"(Vonnegut p.214). This in fact would be the root of my problems in trying to grasp the character of Billy Pilgrim and the life, in which he leads throughout the
Women and Sport in Girlfight, Billy Elliott and Dare to Compete When a woman or man joins a non-traditional sport for their gender or sex, it can have drastic social and cultural costs. These impact not just the individual but also the entire community. When a person challenges the gender roles of society, then they change the perceptions of what men or women are capable of doing, they further androgynize cultural norms, and they open up sports for others. First of all, it is important to
The Life of Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade Marked by two world wars and the anxiety that accompanies humanity's knowledge of the ability to destroy itself, the Twentieth Century has produced literature that attempts to depict the plight of the modern man living in a modern waste land. If this sounds dismal and bleak, it is. And that is precisely why the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. shines through our post-modern age. The devastating bombing
The Perception of Violence in Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid A question that arises in almost any medium of art, be it music, film or literature, is whether or not the depiction of violence is merely gratuitous or whether it is a legitimate artistic expression. There can be no doubt that Michael Ondaatje's long poem The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a violent work, but certain factors should be kept in mind before passing it off as an attempt to shock and titillate;
“How nice- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive” (Vonnegut 181). In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five the main character Billy Pilgrim experiences few emotions during his time in World War II. His responses to people and events lack intensity or passion. Throughout the novel Billy describes his time travel to different moments in his life, including his experience with the creatures of Tralfamadore and the bombing of Dresden. He wishes to die during most of the novel and
Captain Mack and Billy Mack’s War by James Roy are both "heart warming and thought provoking" (Reading Time) insights into the tangles of childhood and early adolescence. Published by University of Queensland Press (UQP) in 1999 and 2004 respectively, both explore the theme of how choices define who we are and what we become. Both of these books explore unlikely friendships, with two central characters in completely different settings, they are intriguingly written in a mixture of narrative methods
Billy Collins Billy Collins was born on March 22, 1941 in New York, NY and is married to Diane Collins. He is the son of Katherine M. Collins and William S. Collins. Collins received a Bachelors Degree at the College of the Holy Cross in 1963 and also received a Ph.D. in romantic poetry in 1971. He has been a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and also was a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He is an English Professor at Lehman College for CUNY, where he has been teaching
New Historicism is heavily indebted to deconstruction. One of the most brilliant readings of Billy Budd along these lines is Brook Thomas's reading in Cross Examination of Law and Literature. As its name implies, New Historicism combines an analysis of literary works with whatever historical backdrop is deemed relevant or important to our understanding. The "new" in this historicism has to do, among other things, with the recognition that history (or reality) is itself a kind of construct (or fiction
the romantic era is associated and a man whose works have become a standard by which modern literature is judged. One of his most well-known and widely studied short pieces of fiction is a story entitled, simply, Billy Budd. In this short story, Melville tells the tale of Billy Budd, a somewhat out-of-place stuttering sailor who is too innocent for his own good. This enchanting tale, while inevitably entertaining, holds beneath it many layers of interpretive depth and among these layers
Jack Spicer writes affectionately about “ the Kid”. Maybe his hero, definitely not a role model by any moral standards, but just the same he meant something to a good number of people. Billy was almost of Robin Hood status, although I doubt any money taken from anywhere by his hand had ever ended up in the house of the poor. Rather the kid became an icon of the rebel in every man and the heart of every child. Spicer writes about the kid as I myself might write of a beloved fallen ancestor or fellow
Religious Archetypes in Moby Dick, Billy Budd, and Bartleby the Scrivener Herman Melville's use of Biblical overtones gives extra dimensions to his works. Themes in his stories parallel those in the Bible to teach about good and evil. Melville emphasizes his characters' qualities by drawing allusions, and in doing so makes them appear larger than life. In the same way that the Bible teaches lessons about life, Herman Melville's stories teach lessons about the light and dark sides of human
The Life of Billy Joel Billy Joel was born on May 9, 1949 in Bronx, New York. He moved at the age of four to a small town on Long Island. This is where at the ripe age of four he discovered the art of music. Originally a classical music fan, Billy Joel honed his skills with classical piano training. This undoubtedly has had a major influence on his life and certainly his music. Growing up Joel was a big fan of such greats as Ray Charles, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Otis Reading. He was
Sublime Style in Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Billy Budd "Sublime refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time"(Internet Encyclopedia). This essay will explore different levels of Romanticism's sublime style in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. The essay will particularly focus on how the writers