In his essay “The Battle for My Body” Richard Rhodes relives the two of the most difficult years of his childhood, the period during which he lived with his father and his stepmother, Anne. She was a selfish and sadistic woman and as Rhodes says, “we never did call her Mother…” (45). Anne made it her mission to abuse Rhodes and his brother and she employed a variety of methods to do so: she beat them, she fed them spoiled foods, and she refused to let them used the bathroom at night. The boys, too young fight back, had no choice but to suffer. The first method Anne used to abuse the boys was to beat them viciously if they broke a house rule.
From climbing up seven hundred foot cliffs to fighting off unusually large rodents, The Princess Bride is the story of an adventure that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. It is a romance narrative surrounding the cliché, the hero always gets the girl. We follow the protagonist Westley as he sets out on an action filled journey driven by his love for a woman named Buttercup. Certain characters such as princes, henchman, and witches are distinctively characterized during a romance narrative, but in The Princess Bride they inhabit alternative roles which contribute to this light hearted tale. The manipulation of tropes, commonly recurring literary devices, give a comedic feel to this intriguing and twist filled storyline.
In the same page, he also tells how a woman killed his wife’s cousin in the cruelest way. Afterwards, he talks about the horrible feeling this murder produced throughout the entire community. Douglass also recounts the experience of watching the slaveholder whip his aunt until she was covered in blood and the pleasure the slaveholder seemed to take in it. The graphic description of her abuse makes readers feel the same anger Douglass must have
Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.
The use of the phrase “lash up” and “blood streamed to the ground” in describing the violence inflicted on Douglass’s cousin creates a vivid
In the beginning of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (1845) Douglass applies various forms of rhetorical devices to portray the hardships that he suffered through as a child. Through Douglass’s utilization of imagery mixed with parallelism and anecdotes from his personal experiences in his life that paints gruesome and cruel images in the mind of his audience, such as when he goes into detail of the whippings and beatings that he witnessed his aunt undergo vividly describing her “heartrending shrieks” and depicting her as the “gory victim” that was “literally covered in blood”. (Douglass 20) Implementing such strong imagery Douglass strives to spark emotion in his audience in order to make them feel pity when
Growing up in an abusive household always filled with anger, Robert Hayden lived through a traumatic childhood. By reviewing the life of Robert Hayden the readers are able to more easily understand the imagery and setting, as well as the motivation behind his poem “The Whipping”. Robert Hayden, originally Asa Bundy Sheffey, was born August 4th, 1913 to Ruth and Asa Sheffey. The two separated before Hayden was even born, which led to his mother leaving him in the care of the foster family next door, Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden. “The Haydens’ perpetually contentious marriage, coupled with Ruth Sheffey’s competition for her son’s affection, made for a traumatic childhood” (Andrew O. Jones).
In Briar Rose, Gemma, one of the main characters repeatedly tells the fairy-tale “Briar Rose” with her own twist to her grandchildren. She does this because she is trying to teach her grandchildren about her past but can only teach them through the fairy-tale as it is all that she can remember. This is how Gemma deals with her past and the pain caused from it. Also in Gemma’s version of the fairy-tale, when the prince kisses her she is the only person who awakes however in the actual fairy-tale everyone awakes. This is a metaphor which represents the pain of the survivors who have to continue life by themselves.
Bram Stoker, describes one of the verbal taboos of the Victorian era, violence, through the representation of vampires as “monsters” through the point of view of their victims in his novel Dracula. Stoker portrays violence in three distinct categories- physical, visual and psychological. Each one of these categories is described by one of the antagonists in the Novel, with Count Dracula as the physical aspect of violence, his underlings, the female vampires as the visual and Renfield, the patient at Dr. Seward’s mental asylum, as the psychological aspect of violence. This essay looks at the portrayal of such Categorical violence as different renditions of a “monster” and considers why Stoker would segregate violence in such a manner.
For generations, fairy tales have served as a source of wonder and horror in equal measure. For each moment of magical fantasy or romantic bliss, there is a terrifying monster or gruesome act of violence, and there are few monsters more terrifying than Bluebeard. On the surface, Bluebeard is the story of one man's gruesome test and the young girl who escapes the punishment of failing it, with a simple message of being careful with your curiosity. However, like all fairy tales, Bluebeard is a symbolic parable of larger, real-world ideas, specifically those dealing with obedience and gender politics. Bluebeard and his bride serve as representations of both the predator and the innocent, akin to the Grimm's tale of Little Red Riding Hood decades
Not for herself, but for the holes assailants had made in their homes to throw their thickened theories of immorality. For the queen with an adulterous prince, who spouted pious prejudice and hypocrisies. As she wept, her fingers spun a rope from her sickened soul and knotted it ‘round her neck. With a final scrap of speech she let herself unravel, collapsing into a pile of thread-bare ribbons. Thus, our wisp of a girl was no longer.
The subject matter and message of the fairy tale “Bluebeard” and its variants are thought-provoking and have struck a chord with everyone that reads or sees it. It deals with issues such as victim-blaming, gender equality, and the relationship between power and violence remain important to people, these multifaceted fairy tales will surely continue to be discussed, rewritten and
How important are the characters other than Antigone and Creon in Sophocles' Antigone? Characters other than Antigone and Creon could be considered as minor due to their limited time on stage, throughout the play. However, their significance cannot be underestimated. Throughout Sophocles’ Antigone, written in 441 B.C. set in Thebes, characters other than Antigone and Creon hold a vital role as they help to emphasise Antigone’s
As mentioned before, trauma referred to physiological events as “a form of bodily or physical harm” in the eighteenth century while it had emotional and psychological references in the nineteenth century (Buelens, Durrant and Eaglestone xi). Therefore, in order to avoid anachronism in analyzing traumatic experiences in the eighteenth century through literary trauma theory, I intend to find similar terms used in the eighteenth century to refer to these traumatic experiences and their aftermath. Moreover, what makes this approach appropriate for investigating trauma in early English novel is the mutual relationship between medical discourse and literary discourse in the eighteenth and the late twentieth century. As a result, this section will
“The Bloody Chamber” is Angela Carter`s retelling of the classic grim fairy tale “Bluebeard”. The passage analyzed in this essay is used in the story to identify the strange dynamic between the Marquis and his soon-to-be bride. In it the young heroine recounts the Marquis`s visage, his past wives and their wedding night. In order to establish the heroine and the Marquis`s abnormal relationship, Carter uses key literary devise such as theme to establish the idea of the Marquis`s dominance over the heroine, imagery to show an owner versus object exchange and foreshadowing to allude to the tale`s bloody end. Theme is used to portray the Marquis`s complete control over the heroine akin to an adult child dynamic.
