They are called “industrial statesmen” for the great economic power they helped America become. At the same time, they are regarded as “robber barons” because they built their great wealth by abusing the system, abusing employees, and destroying their competitors to satisfy their own needs. They grew America, but brought down many on their path. Document F is concentrated on John D. Rockefeller. A great man, really, in charge of having possibly the biggest oil refinery company in the world.
Owen’s poems are riddled with references to the loss of youth, innocence and life. In the poem ‘Anthem for Doomed youth” Owen uses juxtaposition between the terms ‘Youth’ and ‘Doomed’ to place emphasis on the dooming nature of war; that despite ‘youth’ meaning the opposite of doomed, through war and the callous lack of respect for human life, even the youth are doomed. In the poems Owen contrasts youth, incorporating terms such as “girls” and “boys”, with the horror and injustice of life on the ‘Western Front’ in World War I, with so many young men being killed, needlessly. Owen refers to the soldiers as “these who die as cattle” which alludes to the harshness of the British Military and the lack of respect towards human life, which is showcased in these particular soldiers not receiving proper burial rites. Through ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Owen is baled to infer his bitterness towards and rejection of the British Military that left so many men to die, so many young lives taken without the respect of having proper burial rites.
Hemingway mirrors brutal events in his novel, through the similar traits of brutality found between the Republican massacre in the unnamed town, and the Falangists’ (the Spanish Fascist party) rape of Maria. Pilar recalls a massacre in an unnamed town, where Pablo has twenty fascists “beaten to death with flails and thrown from the top of the cliff above the river.”1 The Fascists would each be beaten and driven through two lines of flail-armed men, until the crowd threw them off the cliff at the end of the lines. Pilar notes that this brutal, collective killing of the Fascists was intended to motivate the Republicans in taking greater action against the Fascists. Initially, the massacre is described as akin to passing “a holy image in a procession”2,
Other countries in Europe depicted the Spanish empire as being cruel, exploitative, and self-righteous for enslaving and killing the innocent Native Americans. This was brought to the attention by a Dominican priest named Bartolome de Las Casas who traveled to the Americas and witnessed the treatment of the Native Americans. He published “The Black Legend” and his protests drew attention to the Spanish Empire. This caused a debate in which Las Casas was to present his case in front of an audience including the king of Spain and the Spanish colonial officials presenting their case. I was assigned to affirm the side of the Spanish colonial officials.
This book documented the acts of torture and violence against protestants, and would therefor be highly critical of those in high positions, such as More. More evidence of More’s lack of compassing and cruelty is that during his chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake. This brutal and common method of executing heretics showed More’s lack of compassion, especially towards those who did not believe in his faith, such as protestant reformer, Martin Luther. In a letter to Luther, More said “throw back into your paternity’s sh*tty mouth, truly the sh*t pool of all sh*t, all the muck and sh*t..”.
This writing was so detailed in the horrible mistreatments of the slaves that, he began to be accused of treason of his own country. His brutal descriptions of the slave’s treatment seem to prove his motives positive. It seems that he wants others to be disgusted by these wrong doings, just as he was. It is said in his writing, The Very Relation of the Devastation of the Indies, “And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pike began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them into pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house”(37).
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the author, Harper Lee has used symbolism with emotive language, frequent use and symbolising people to help the reader understand the timeless idea of how infested with prejudice people and societies can be. The word ‘sin’ is used in “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” rather than a word like ‘wrong’ because of the strong negative connotations associated with it. These make the reader understand how unforgivable it is to ‘kill a mockingbird’ which is a symbol representing innocent people that are harmed undeservedly. Using a powerful word such as ‘sin’ conveys the extent of the evil shown by those who ‘kill mockingbirds’ with prejudice. An example of this are the rumours circulating around the “tired, old town” of Maycomb about the recluse ‘Boo’ Radley.
An example of this is when Romero states, “… I go about the country listening to the cries of the people, their pain from much violence” (Romero). This example shows and tells us that the unnecessary violence will not make the endless suffering stop. Romero uses the form of appeal of anecdotes, which are pathos, in order to appeal to the feeling and emotion of the people. Another example of this is when he says, “In La Laguna, the attackers killed a married couple… their little children…and 11 more peasants” (Romero).this example shows that they are not only killing innocent citizens, they are also killing children and families. Romero uses anecdotes to describe the scenes he lived through to help the listener understand that life in El Salvador has gotten very difficult to handle.
One of the soldiers fails to fit the gas mask in time, and Owen masterfully describes himself witnessing the soldier’s gruesome death. Owen ends the poem with the Latin proverb from Horace's Odes (III.2.13) ‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’, meaning 'It is sweet and proper to die for one's country' (Dr. Stuart Lee, 1997). With those last few lines, Owen expresses his deepest disapproval of the war. He is rejecting the traditional view that glorifies war, calling it ‘The old Lie’ (line 27). Owen is addressing the reader, who possibly doesn’t have the first hand experience of the war, and criticising the enthusiasm with which the war is described, particularly to vulnerable children (BBC, 2013).
Dickens’ intentions with Marquis Evremonde was to emblem the symbol of evil, not to create a character that is more in tune with human nature. One begins to contemplate that when he runs over a peasant child and selfishly wonders “what injury [they] have done [his] horses”, that obviously cannot be a real human character (Dickens 129). It is to be perceived by the reader that Marquis Evremonde represents calamity in the novel, yet after further analyzing one could claim that he reflects the corruption in France during the time of revolution. Marquis Evremonde’s want to “exterminate [peasants] from the earth” sums up the argument that he represents evil, and was not meant to have the ability to relate to human nature (Dickens 131). Lucie Manette’s “pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, [and] a pair of blue eyes” adds to the theme of her character representing good in A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens 25).