The Futility of Atonement In the novel, Atonement, Ian McEwan expresses an unusual view on atonement. Although much of the novel is about Briony's journey towards atonement, she never reaches it. McEwan is saying that, although humans may strive to make up for the wrong they do, they never can. The best people can do is find some measure of relief from our guilt by forgiving themselves. Briony's tale shows the futility of atonement through her crime and initial indifference towards it, her later feelings of guilt, and her attempts to gain forgiveness from Robbie and Cecilia.
• Dramatic irony occurs when a character in a literary work fails to perceive what is obvious to the reader (or, in the case of a play, the audience). The most famous example of dramatic irony in literature occurs in Sophocles' play, Oedipus Rex, when he fails to realize what is clear to the audience: that a traveler he kills on a road is his own father and that a woman he marries is his own mother. In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Bailey's mother views herself as a proper southern lady—genteel, upright, wise. But to the reader, her actions reveal her as another person. She primps excessively, lies, uses racist language, begrudges America's goodwill contributions to postwar Europe, and foolishly blurts out that she recognizes The Misfit.
CHARACTER ANALYSIS Character Analysis The grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is selfish and manipulative. The very first thing that is learned about her is that she does not want to go to Florida because she has relatives in Tennessee that she would rather go visit. Then the second thing about her is that whenever something runs up against the grandmother's will, she still tries to have it her way. She never does this openly or bluntly, though. Her style is always a bit more indirect.
In this short story I think that Flannery O’Conner is trying is trying to “convert” people who have not found Christ over to Christianity. I believe that O’Conner was a strong believer in Christianity. In this story she has a grandmother trying to convert a criminal that escaped from the Federal Penitentiary over to Christ before she is killed. In the short story a family of six was preparing for a trip to Florida when the grandmother finds an article about an escaped convict headed to Florida. The grandmother is persistent on not going to Florida as they have been there before states, “’The children have been to Florida before,’ the old lady said.
She is a lair, manipulated her family, hypocritical and judgmental. In the end, the story suggests she died with divine grace but who can know that for sure? Did the Grandmother want forgiveness for her sins? The story does not lead us in that direction. Up until the very end the Grandmother appears to be trying to save her life any way she can.
Faith in God is easily converted into superstition amongst the ignorance of the uneducated. Juxtaposed to this, Mompellion adhered to religious belief and had to research and inquired thoroughly yet he still found God a “poor listener” . In the novel there is an obvious ambivalence in his ability to encourage the people to have faith in their time of crises but then not be able to deal with his own hardship. It is seen that the educated and observant are the best equipped to emancipate themselves from the confines of the societal
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the grandmother is the main character. She is a snobby old woman who only has faith is these words, “I’m a lady” (pg. 507). In her last moments of breath, she tries to plead with her murderer, the Misfit, by adding prayer and Jesus into the picture when she knows that Jesus and prayer are not the faith she is using to save her life when she says to the Misfit,
In any work of literature, the relationships between characters, those positive or negative, relate to a larger theme represented by the work. In John Gardner’s Grendel, the maternal interactions between Grendel and his mother serve to illuminate the main theme of the book; isolation causes one to feel a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. While it is apparent that his mother demonstrates maternal interactions, Grendel’s relationship with his mother is hindered by her inability to verbally communicate, her beastly nature, as well as Grendel’s misinterpretation of her love for him. Perhaps the most obvious reason for Grendel strained relationship with his mother is her lack of communication skills. According to Grendel, “She’d forgotten
Although religion gives a person meaning to life, it guides people into the right direction, comforts people in times of sadness, and connects people together. Many believe that religion is the cause of all wars, because of the large number of general encounter between opposing different worshipping of leaders. But the cause of a war can be very difficult to figure out. Others would argue that religion is the primary cause of war, because of the many wars that have been caused by it. Throughout history, religion has been named the number one source of creating the torment anguish of human wars.
They are too big of topics to have such an resolution, as everyone is constantly arguing over which one is truly correct. I also think that we need both to live lives as healthy human beings, conflict is something that fuels humans in everyday life and makes us who we are. Even if there was no conflict involved between them, I still agree that in order to live peaceful and healthy lives both, faith and reason must be talked about. Many Catholics or religious people in general, are opposed to reason or science because they think that it cannot coexist with God. According to Fides et Ratio reason and faith can coexist and they do in-fact help each other.