Similarities Between The Professor And The Madman

When faced with adversity, people become stronger, wiser, and are forced to discover abilities they didn’t know they had in order to survive. Horace’s quote on the subject is absolutely correct, because adversity is what prompts people to build character. In instances such as The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester and the United States during World War Two, Horace was proven to be accurate in his statement.

The Professor and the Madman is a brilliant non fiction novel that shows the life of Dr. William C. Minor as he faces charges of murder. Throughout the book, Minor is a man searching for his purpose in life. He joins the war, moves from country to country, but remains unfulfilled. This drives him to madness, resulting in him becoming delusional, murdering a man, and being charged as innocent due to insanity. Minor was placed in an asylum for the rest of his life. In these adverse times, while he found himself in captivity, Minor was in

By the middle of 1941, this war brought countries from all over the world in to fight, including Germany, France, Great Britain, and Japan. However, at this point the United States of America was uninvolved. The country had just gone through the Great Depression and morale was low, so the USA stayed out of the fight on both sides. However, in December 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, shocking millions of US citizens. The day after the bombing, President Roosevelt declared his nation would join the war. The people got themselves together, joined the allied powers, and fought a war they previously had thought impossible. Years later, those who had banded together to stand up for their nation had proven victorious in a war they were originally too cautious to join. The hardship and adversity created by the Pearl Harbor bombing allowed the United States to find a strength they didn’t know they