Yearling Essay “Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.” -Robert Penn Warren. As a previous Pulitzer Prize winner, Warren knows what it takes to win this prestigious award: effective writing skills to get the message to their intended audience. Since 1918, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction has recognized excellence in American writing. When Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings won this award in 1939 for her work in The Yearling, she did a remarkable job of telling the journey of a boy and a fawn.
Most well written and descriptive stories use many disparate tools to make it better. The author of the story The Veldt used figurative language, imagery, and diction to foreshadow the tragic ending of the story. In the end the children use the lions from Africa to slaughter their parents ,and you can kind of guess that the children are planning something evil because of the descriptions and figurative language in the story. The children give off a very negative aura throughout the whole story that leads you to believe that something cynical is occuring.
Walking down the street, there are always certain individuals that stand out from the crowd. Whether it be their bizarre hairstyle, their goofy teeth, or their impeccable style, humans will always critique and judge one another. Alden Nowlan’s story, The Fall of the City, introduces the main character, Teddy, as an imaginative and crafty individual— only for his self-confidence to be shattered by the defiling words of his uncle and aunt in mere seconds. Truthfully, all humans have an unwavering desire to be accepted and in turn, choose to fit in. Throughout the short story, Nowlan criticizes societal norms through the use of conflict and symbolism; ultimately proving that conformity is destructive towards society.
After reading The Outsiders, The All American Slurp, and Cardboard, I recognized that being an individual is more important than following the crowd. These three stories support this idea through the characters and events. My position is right because the events, characters, and themes from these three books, support this idea. In the book, “All American Slurp”k by Lensey Namioka, the main character felt the need to fit in with the rest of the Americans.
In life, people face the pressures of conformity in their everyday lives from school, to just going shopping for clothing. Throughout literature, protagonists face the pressures of conformity in their lives no matter the age of the character. Both The Giver by Lois Lowry and Number Twelve looks just like You by John Tomerlin deal with pressures of conformity, but they do so in different ways. Both texts are similar because both protagonists want or try to escape the conformity that is within their communities. “In Number Twelve looks just like You”, Marilyn knows that conformity in her community is wrong.
The science fiction works of “Harrison Bergeron”, by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Pedestrian”, by Ray Bradbury are sarcastic portrayals of futuristic societies that are controlled by authoritative governments that have completely made their communities equal. Each of these stories take a look at the prospect of promoting sameness and conformity among all people, and questions the effects of the forced elimination of citizens’ individuality in order to maintain equality. In “The Pedestrian” Mr. Leonard Mead faces extreme consequences for his nightly stroll in the city. In the year 2053, Mead’s society has become completely taken over by televisions and the media.
How could one possibly overcome temptations of fitting in with society or following the crowd? Some people have little willpower and will conform to whatever everyone else around them is doing, even if the crowd contradicts a basis for right and wrong. However, the Harlequin is able to resist and act upon his beliefs and values in a positive way. In “Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison, some of the elements of fiction contribute to the achievement of theme.
Concrete Details/Imagery Gallien starts to notice the settings around him while he is on his way to drop Alex off. “For the first few miles the stampede trail was well graded and led past cabins scattered among weedy stands of spruce and aspen. Beyond the last of the log shacks, however, the road rapidly deteriorated” (Kraukaur 2). This quote creates of visual of the quick change from rural civilization to deep and dense forest.
Throughout the book, Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, the characters resist the urge to normalize their peculiar behavior. This particular idea of nonconformity is . The ultimate source of uniformity, to which Japhy Ryder and Ray Smith are definitely opposed, is the middle class. The majority of the American population, who are trapped in the "rat race" of money-making and social climbing rely on these social norms to . Kerouac, delivers the overall theme that obedience of societal norms is aberrant.
Often when the power to enforce a perspective is placed into the hands of the majority, it quickly develops into a widespread moral issue amid the public. It effortlessly becomes a regular part of life and engraved itself into the implications of society. Technology pulls strings within society to create an environment where it is prevalent and heavily dictates how said environment functions. Isolation has no choice but to subject itself to those who are unique and who don’t fit the government's criteria of a standard person. In Ray Bradbury's utopian and dystopian fiction, Fahrenheit 451, he creates an eccentric world in which books are banned and technology is a prominent aspect of everyone's everyday lives.
The nature of conformity and individualism in Fahrenheit 451 is different compared to each other. Conformity is how everyone is in the novel while individualism is only shown outside of society. The true nature of conformity is that everyone is created equally while individualism shows what a real person is. In the novel, Montag was a character that was affected by conformity and individualism since he was once conformed in society, but then soon became an individual himself. Conformity and Individualism are polar opposites and that everyone should be unique in their own way.
In “The Pedestrian” Ray Bradbury uses personification, simile, and imagery to develop the mood of loneliness so that the reader can understand the dark and lonely world the character is living in. This matters because it changes how the reader reads the story and it makes you better understand the character and the life the character is living. By using the quotes that the author did, it not only changed the mood of the story but it also changes the mood of the reader and how he/she
The Pedestrian Thesis: In a short story titled “The Pedestrian”, written by Ray Bradbury, Bradbury uses the setting to display a lonely, sad mood and person vs society conflict as he battles the lonely streets. Bradbury shows the lonely mood by having the character walk alone in the empty streets. Bradbury wasted no time describing the streets as silent and misty making for a very lonely mood. Mead, the main character, walks along the streets alone with no sign of life, saying “he would see cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where the faintest light is a flicker of a firefly” Bradbury’s quote shows how empty and lonely the streets are by referring to them as a
Individuality is unaccepted and isolated from our society that embraces conformed values. The Copy Shop and L’homme sans tete are examples of short films that reflect this ironic problem of society where individuals are not identified with their individual morals, but conformed morals enforced by society. The 2001 short film, Copy Shop by Virgil Widrich conveys the idea of conformity. This is done foremost through the metaphor of 'copies' that fill up the film's world that represent conformity, where the composer satirises our society which is filled up by 'copies' of individuals sharing conformed ideals.
Conformity is something that humans have been doing for a long time. Such conformity has lead to negative outcomes. This idea is explored through “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut and “The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden. In these two texts conformity eliminates individuality and causes the society to be weakened.