Poverty in the Rural South of America People in poverty aspire to live similar to a middle-class citizen or a person who lives a life with no stress. In the memoir, Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter Barbara Moss illustrates the difficult conditions of a common family living in poverty in rural Alabama. Moss suffers from an abusive father who is addicted to alcohol, a mother who tolerates the abusive relationship of her husband, and lack of the minimum essentials to maintain living. The lack of minimum essentials includes food, health, and housing. The hardships of being in poverty inspire Moss to change her future.
Throughout life, we all go through rough moments where we think all is lost. However, we as humans always grow from these experiences and turn into beings with a new awakening and understanding of the world. In a passage from The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, the narrator describes a striking ordeal, in which a man is coping with the death of a she-wolf. Despite the cause of death being left ambiguous, this dramatic experience has a vivid effect on the main character—causing him to change and grow into a new man by the end of the passage. McCarthy uses eloquent and expressive diction to create imagery which gives the reader an understanding of the narrator’s experience, supplemented by spiritual references as well as setting changes, elucidating the deep sadness and wonder felt by the protagonist.
In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the main character, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is a perfect example of a tragic hero. Throughout the novel McMurphy sets himself up to be the tragic hero by resenting Nurse Ratched’s power and defending the other patients. He can be classified as a contemporary tragic hero, but he also includes elements of Aristotle’s tragic hero. McMurphy’s rebellious nature and ultimate demise are what truly makes him as a tragic hero.
A few of the words she used were “frightened,” “disgusted,” “festered,” and “excrement.” All of the words used to express towards the child had a negative connotation. Comparatively, in the introduction of The Ones Who Walk Away for Omelas, there were words used such as “merry,” “bright,” ‘cheer,” “happiness,” and “decorous.” Accordingly, the words used at the beginning of the story had positive connotations, creating the thought of a fairy tale like town to the reader. Through the connotation of these words, it shows how LeGuin views the treatment of the child as something dark and sinister, almost evil.
The amount of suffering both of the families in these stories endudured could not be blamed entirely on the authorities in these stories. All of the characters in these stories had a mind of their own, a conscious of their own , they were able to make rational decision between right and wrong. Therefore, the most damage the characters in both stories endured was a product of their own weakness and inabilities to take a stand against authority. They made the ultimate choice to surrender and therefore causing great pain to each other . In conclusion, after many attempts to make it through their new journey the honest way they could, both families realize that good intentionally are useless in such a world that feast on the destruction of
The Effects of Suffering on a 12 year Old Boy “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars” - Khalil Gibran. Throughout Night, Elie Wiesel copes with the agony of the Holocaust first hand. Suffering by definition is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. In Wiesel’s Night, suffering forces people to make inhumane decisions, shatters hope, and destroys self identity. Suffering forces people to be put in bad places where they feel pressured to eventually make inhumane decisions.
Poe is often known for his dark, sometimes twisted short stories and poems. “The Masque of the Red Death” is no exception. In this short story, Poe creates and eerie and ominous mood by using a wide variety of literary techniques including imagery, diction, and syntax. Poe’s use of imagery contributes to the dark and mysterious mood of the short story, “The Masque of the Red Death.” In the first paragraph, a sense of darkness is conveyed in the sentence, “There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers.”
O’Connor’s use of satire and how morbid the characters give the reader to not sympathize with them because of their pettiness, ludicrous, and so irredeemably gauche character. “O’Connor creates hearty guffaws and cries of horror, then
She put her imperfect characters in often times disturbing conditions. Her writing delved into religion and the morality of her characters when such situations arose. O’Connor brilliantly uses dark twists and foreshadowing to give her stories an additional appeal. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the story opens with the grandmother not wanting to go to Florida on account of the fact that a murderer had escaped and was on the loose(361). This exemplifies O’Connor’s proficient use of foreshadowing.
Guilt can only eat at someone for so long. Through Patrick Shanley’s play, Doubt: A Parable, a school called St. Nicholas faces some questionable actions, and Sister Aloysius, the principal, attempts to set them right. The Father at the school, Father Flynn, is accused of getting the only black student, Donald Muller, drunk and then molesting him. I conclude that Father Flynn is guilty because of his “clean nails” and resignation.
In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Changeling”, the hardships of gender stereotypes are exposed. The contrast between a young girl’s imagination and the reality of her gender role is clear by her attempt to appease her parents. She is neither manly enough to gain the attention of her father nor womanly enough to attain the respect of her mother. Her dilemma of not being able to fit in is emphasized by Cofer’s use of imagery and repetition.
This paragraph employs robotic imagery most heavily and also uses loaded diction more than others. This section even goes so far as to call Worth’s body in intensive care as, “a nightmare of tubes and wires, dark machines silently measuring every internal event, a pump filling and emptying his useless lungs.” This section channels the intensity of an event like this and the fear one and one’s loved ones feel when the shade of fatality affects a person. Imagery also plays a large part in this section and places the reader in the situation John Jeremiah Sullivan was in through imagery like “The stench of dried spit”. This passage’s imagery challenges the reader to undergo the stale smell described and to witness the machine that Worth is connected to.
In the short story “The Flowers”, Alice Walker sufficiently prepares the reader for the texts surprise ending while also displaying the gradual loss of Myop’s innocence. The author uses literary devices like imagery, setting, and diction to convey her overall theme of coming of age because of the awareness of society's behavior. At the beguining of the story the author makes use of proper and necessary diction to create a euphoric and blissful aura. The character Myop “skipped lightly” while walker describes the harvests and how is causes “excited little tremors to run up her jaws.”. This is an introduction of the childlike innocence present in the main character.
An emotional appeal to an audience focuses on connecting with the reader by either emitting or receiving a feeling of sympathy. Such results can be achieved through many means, one for example, is sharing a personal story experienced by the author; an experience that left the author in a state of confusion or maybe even misery. Carr uses some words and phrases, such as “a predator would take us by surprise” or “crucial to our survival” (para. 12), that are meant to emotionally appeal to the audience. In this case, the author uses these phrases in a way to differentiate between two different times instead appealing to the audience emotionally. Carr also gives insufficient information about himself and his background.
Upon reading this poem one notices that the title ‘To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair’ is long. Most titles of poems are short and get straight to the point. The title itself is unusual in that it hooks the reader causing curiosity of a morbid title thus the reader reads the poem. ‘Raped baby’ is in all its sense a shock to the reader. It describes a horrific and monstrous crime.
