In Raymond Carver’s short story “Cathedral” the narrator is faced with living a few days with someone he considers a stranger. This story is a fine example of how characters can and do change as the story progresses. Sometimes these changes occur through actual feelings, and sometimes they can occur through impairments that the character acquires as the story progresses. It is somewhat unclear in this story as to whether the narrator actually comes to like his blind guest, or if he is just drunk, high, and does not realize what exactly he is doing. In the beginning, the narrator does not want this blind guest visiting him and his wife.
She's only thirty-four! I think from the beginning I had the feeling that she was an unreachable genius- and very, very old." He had ever felt this way before, and it was a whole new feeling before that he had ever learned about. For him not to be able to talk to her the way that he had hoped made it hard for him. And speaking for Miss Kinnian, she couldn't understand Charlie with all of his weird talking.
The resolution to the big mystery of who is sending the cards reads as if Zusak just couldn't figure out how to get out of the hole he'd dug for himself, so he just slapped this on. But if you can ignore the last 10 pages, this is a terrific, at times moving, and thought-provoking story that can lead readers to look at their own worlds in a slightly different
Being a survivor of the Holocaust, and like many others in his situation, he came out from this experience finding himself at a loss for words for a period of ten years, where he refused to relive his previous daunting experiences. But when he spoke out, he spoke out strong through the book Night, recalling the relentless darkness that had plagued his child hood. In his autobiography, Wiesel plays on themes such as the power of faith and the menacing aptitude of apathy. He emphasizes the importance of awareness, of taking action, in other words: the importance of bearing witness. And his credence to this ideology is just, for bearing witness should be an endowment placed upon all human beings as their responsibility to never let the oppressed go unnoticed and to help the silenced find their voices.
The boy, nicknamed Ort, tells his story in the first person; readers will either find this charming or off-putting, depending on taste. Ort, whose parents are remnants of the hippie culture of the 1960’s, cannot cope with the town school and its slightly more sophisticated denizens. Though he lacks the toughness of his older sister Tegwyn, he reveals his strength of character by his mature reaction to his father’s death. Now lacking a paternal role model, Ort soon makes good the
Monet Jimenez Period 2 December 2, 2008 Optimism Vs. Reality Is Holden’s view of the world pessimistic but accurate, or is he completely detached from reality? The novel, Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, the main character of this story, experiences bumps in his road of life, and the question as to whether the outlook on life from his perspective is simply pessimistic, or a complete detachment from reality. Throughout the story, it is never clearly stated that Holden is going through any emotional strain, but Holden performs odd, anxious behavior that are indefinitely prominent he is.
Mrs. Jenkins English 10E 23 September 2012 Coming to Terms with Adult Life “The Catcher in The Rye” can strongly be considered a "coming of age" novel due to the main theme, which is about Holden, a young teenage boy who has to get used to adulthood and is struggling in many ways to accept it. Many situations and themes in the novel, such as different signs of immaturity at different levels, and having trouble with accepting society and struggling with many issues, many of which he does not realize, are reasons why the novel could be classified in this genre. Holden's struggle with school is an example of how he struggles to come to terms with the adult world. He sees all the flaws that adulthood has when being surrounded by the situations and people in school. He sees pure phoniness, cruelty, and lack of individuality in school life as everyone considers themselves part of a group or else they are worthless, which is the way he sees himself.
Clare Hoevenaars Mrs. Curran ENG 4U December 12, 2011 Fall from Innocence in The Catcher in the Rye The transformation from childhood to adult hood is inevitable. Some accept this change with more ease than others, but at some point all must come to terms with this conversion. In J.D Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caulfield demonstrates this conversion with great difficulty. He can not seem to accept that people are changing, though he slowly shows slight signs of reaching adulthood. He has close friends and family, such as Jane and Phoebe, whom he fears will also lose their innocence.
Dominique Allen Burriss AP English III October 17, 2012 Thomas Paine Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England on January 29, 1737. His father, Joseph Paine, had high hopes for what Thomas was to accomplish throughout his life but, despite the fact that he is commonly known for his successfully revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense (written with magnificent eloquence), Paine actually failed in numerous activities in his early ages (Biddle). Paine had failed out of school at the age of twelve. Still having a little hope, his father let Thomas be his apprentice in his trading business, but he wasn’t very successful in that occupation(Kreis). At the age of nineteen Paine went out to sea, but the expedition didn’t last as long as it was thought
Story Critique: Kindred I picked up Kindred by Octavia E. Butler because time travel fascinates me, but one thing that detracted from Kindred in my mind was the way it almost was as if Butler could not decide whether it was a science fiction or historical fiction novel. The time travel premise immediately attracts the science fiction title, but the carefully researched history was what made the novel excel. In fact, Dana's time travel was never justified or explained; no one, including Dana, questioned why she suddenly traveled a century into the past. However, it was interesting to see how modern Dana deals with living as a pseudo-slave for months at a time, carrying with her the 20th century knowledge and beliefs. One scene in the book