The Fantasy World of The Fixer
In Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, almost all of Yakov Bok's time is spent in prison. The Fixer is an examination of freedom and its compliment, commitment (Helterman 67 ). Though Bok has no physical freedom, the longer that he is imprisoned, the more true freedom he obtains. Bok is able to attain this freedom through his dreams and hallucinations. These sequences are important because they prevent the story from becoming static, but more important, they illustrate that true freedom lies within one's self.
Yakov Bok is tortured in the government's attempt to obtain his confession to the ritual murder of Zhenia Golov. He is poisoned, strip searched, chained, and nearly frozen to death:
The fixer was chained to the wall all day,and at night he lay on the bedplank, his legs locked in the stocks...the leg holes were tight and chafed his flesh if he tried to turn a little...the straw mattress had been removed from his cell...now in chains, he thought the searches of his body might end but they increased to six a day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon.( 236 )
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After Bibikov's death, Bok hallucinates a conversation with his old friend. In this hallucination Bibikov tells Bok that "the purpose of freedom is to create it for others" ( 336 ). This event again illustrates that Bok's hallucinations are important to his discovering an inner freedom. Bok holds this statement especially dear because of the fact that it comes, although in a dream, from someone he trusted and believed in. Bok now realizes that his freedom is not the important issue. It is the freedom of those who will come after him that really matters. Realizing that his freedom is not important strangely gives Bok a greater sense of freedom. He now knows what the purpose of his life must be: Bok must be a martyr for his people, the very people that he had tried to
Although prisons have the primary objective of rehabilitation, prisoners will likely go through many other troubling emotions before reaching a point of reformation. Being ostracized from society, it is not uncommon to experience despair, depression, and hopelessness. Be that as it may, through reading various prison writings, it can be seen that inmates can find hope in the smallest things. As represented in “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane”, the author, Etheridge Knight, as well as other black inmates look up to Hard Rock, an inmate who is all but dutiful in a world where white people are placed at the top of the totem pole. However, after Hard Rock goes through a lobotomy-esque procedure, the motif
The trial was slow and tedious. Chikatilo was placed in a cage, not to keep him from escaping, but to keep him safe from his victim’s family members. He was disruptive and maniacal for the entirety of the trial. He even had to be removed during the reading of the verdict because he continued to interrupt. He made absurd comments throughout the trial including that he was pregnant and the guards were hitting him in the stomach to make him lose the baby. On October 15, 1992, Andrei Chikatilo was found guilty of fifty-two counts of murder and was handed fifty-two separate death sentences. On February 14, 1994, he was executed by a single shot to the back of the neck.
During the time of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, more than twenty people died an innocent death. All of those innocent people were accused of one thing, witchcraft. During 1692, in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts many terrible events happened. A group of Puritans lived in Salem during this time. They had come from England, where they were prosecuted because of their religious beliefs. They chose to come live in America and choose their own way to live. They were very strict people, who did not like to act different from others. They were also very simple people who devoted most of their lives to God. Men hunted for food and were ministers. Women worked at home doing chores like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and making clothes. The Puritans were also very superstitious. They believed that the devil would cause people to do bad things on earth by using the people who worshiped him. Witches sent out their specters and harmed others. Puritans believed by putting heavy chains on a witch, that it would hold down their specter. Puritans also believed that by hanging a witch, all the people the witch cast a spell on would be healed. Hysteria took over the town and caused them to believe that their neighbors were practicing witchcraft. If there was a wind storm and a fence was knocked down, people believed that their neighbors used witchcraft to do it. Everyone from ordinary people to the governor’s wife was accused of witchcraft. Even a pregnant woman and the most perfect puritan woman were accused. No one in the small town was safe. As one can see, the chaotic Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were caused by superstition, the strict puritan lifestyle, religious beliefs, and hysteria.
If, someday, I committed a horrible crime and was going to be punished for it I would definitely lie to save myself. I might tell the truth if I was being eaten by guilt and didn’t care about anything anymore, but definitely if I didn’t care very much. If anybody says they would tell the truth, I’m sure if something really happened they would lie too. It’s human nature to want to survive and thrive, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to stay out of prison or not get the death penalty. In a real situation, where I would die if I were found guilty of your crime, I would definitely lie to save myself.
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King is both a wonderful film and a brilliantly written short story. There are many themes represented in each form of The Shawshank Redemption. The one major theme that interests me in both the film and the story is freedom. Freedom serves a large purpose for both the story's writer and the filmmaker. Both use similar examples to signify freedom, not only in the jail, but also in a larger context about life. There are many events and examples in both the film and the short story that signifies the theme of freedom. The one main difference is when the film uses the director’s technique to portray a feel of freedom for the inmates. The overall three issues used in this essay are all linked to the feeling of the inmates feeling the sense of freedom with the prison walls.
“If I only knew then, what I know now” is a quote often said by your elders. That quote is very meaningful to the incarcerated men in Letters To My Younger Self. The men in this anthology of writings all have their regrets and wishes. Powerlessness and empowerment/leadership are themes that we can strongly connect with those entries of the inmates. Throughout this anthology, a few entries that I found most intriguing were The Lost Boy, , and A Dark Hearts whisper. In these entries, I found that from behavioral standpoint the environment the inmates were brought up in are what help exemplify the themes of powerlessness and empowerment/leadership.
Bach got his name from his two godfathers, Sebastian Nagel and Johann Georg Koch. Nagel was the town piper of Gotha while Koch worked as a ducal forrester in Eisenach.
At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those experiences to the wider experiences of the nation and all society, exposing the corrupting nature of slavery to the entire nation.”[1] Although this book contributes a great amount of information on the subject of slavery and it is an extremely valuable book, its strengths are overpowered by its flaws. The book is loaded with unnecessary details, flowery metaphors and intense introductory information but this is what makes “My Bondage and My Freedom” unique.
In 1934, Sergey Kirov a rival to Stalin was murdered. Stalin is believed to have been behind the assassination, he used it as a pretext to arrest thousands of his other opponents who in his words might have been responsible for Kirov’s murder. These purges not only affected those who openly opposed Stalin but ordinary people too. During the rule of Stain o...
As a result of these events, Bukharin had been falsely tried by Stalin and thereafter executed by him and the government mainly because of the serious political rivalry between the two for leadership especially because of his moral viewpoint and accuracies in approach to it all.
The Rate of Reaction Between Calcium Carbonate and Hydrochloric Acid Planning. CaCO3 (s) + 2HCl (aq) ---- CaCl2 (aq) + H2O (l) + CO2 The rate of reaction depends on how hard and how often the reacting particles collide with each other. A rate of reaction is how fast a reaction takes place.
Rate of Reaction Between Calcium Carbonate and Hydrochloric Acid Plan: In my experiment I will measure the rate of reaction between calcium carbonate and hydrochloric acid. The rate of the reaction is the speed that the reaction takes place so by measuring the rate I will measure the amount of time the reaction takes. Hydrochloric acid is a strong acid that is found in digestive juices in the stomach, it is also used for cleaning metals before they are coated. Calcium carbonate has a few forms including chalk and limestone the main use of these two materials is in the making of concrete, which is used for many things such as buildings. When you put calcium carbonate and hydrochloric acid together they react to form calcium chloride, carbon dioxide and water.
Investigating How the Concentration of Hydrochloric Acid Affects the Rate of Reaction with Calcium Carbonate
“Before you can break out of prison, you must realize that you are locked up.” Growing up I have always been the more isolated, introverted type of child. I believe one’s mental stability is a prison that we are all caged in and it is up to us to be free; to set ourselves free! The whole idea of a prisoner being locked away and isolated from the outside world comes from the idea of a free person's perspective. I have always felt like a prisoner in the cage of my own mind, locked away for what seemed like forever. Never being able to fully express my thoughts or emotions, until I set myself free from my own personal prison! My life began to change once I started expressing who I am and being confident in my ability to be unregrettably me.
... overcome the obstacles that once held them back and had led them to prison in the first place The experiences of prison are enough to make a former inmate “do whatever it takes to avoid a second term” (“Rehabilitative Effects”) This being said, the many religious, therapeutic, and educational proceedings have also given prisoners an initiative to stay out of prison The religious aspect gives inmates hope and courage The therapeutic provides inmates with a safe environment to share their issues and to receive positive encouragement And finally, the educational offers a way to acquire a GED and or occupational skills that will enable the previously incarcerated with skills that will give them an advantage to obtaining a job. The negative side of prisons has become the face of prisons, blinding the public to all of the good that incarceration offers the incarcerated.