Outside Reading Project - Essay Former British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” In Deborah Ellis’s book, The Breadwinner, 11-year-old Parvana is a girl who pretends she is a boy in order to earn money for her family while her father was captured by the Taliban. In Edgar Guest’s inspirational poem, It Couldn’t Be Done, a man proves society wrong by doing the impossible. Despite being written 81 years apart, the two writings have a very similar theme. Through the use of literary devices like repetition, hyperbole, and metaphor, both authors reveal their theme of courage. Nothing is impossible. That’s the theme Deborah Ellis and Edgar Guest displayed by using repetition. In It Couldn’t Be Done, Guest repeats the phrase, “That couldn’t be done, and he did it!” (Guest 8), to emphasize that it is possible to accomplish the unimaginable. While in The Breadwinner, Ellis repeats the comparison of Parvana to Malali to indicate that Parvana is very heroic. For example, Parvana says, “‘I'm Malali, leading the troops through enemy territory,’ she murmured to herself.” (Ellis, Pg. 132). This idea is approached in different ways throughout the book, and it really brings out the perception of bravery in Parvana. The literary device of repetition supported the moral …show more content…
This optimistic poem exaggerates that people will try to challenge your actions. For instance, Guest states that “There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,” (Guest, 17). Obviously, there are not thousands of people waiting to tell you that something is impossible, Guest is just trying saying that society is going to question something that they can’t do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Edgar Guest’s message of ‘Don’t let people limit you’ is portrayed through the use of