Go Tell It On The Mountain Rhetorical Analysis

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Desiree Harding January 17, 2012 Midterm Essay During the first half of the school year, I noticed a recurring theme or idea in the works we have studied. The idea of being honest and giving forgiveness, whether to one’s own self or to others, has occurred in multiple literary works within the last eighteen weeks. Honesty, a very important characteristic/trait, does not reside in everyone, and in my opinion, it goes hand-in-hand with forgiveness, but it seems to be a very difficult thing for some characters to practice. I first noticed this idea in the poem “Confessions” by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno. In this poem, Bonanno confessed to the things that she did not do for her daughter (now deceased). She exemplified how hard it can be…show more content…
Gabriel had a very sinful past, and he never forgave himself for the things he did wrong that he regrets. When Gabriel’s sister says, “I know you thinking at the bottom of your heart that if you just make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough for her sin, your son won’t have to pay for yours. But I ain’t going to let you do that. You done made enough folks pay for sin, it’s time you started paying,” she makes it known to the reader that Gabriel has sins that he has not “paid for”. Because of this, he embodies an angry character, which he then takes out on the people around him, including his loved ones. In the movie adaptation of the short story “In a Grove”, the wife of the samurai was unhappy in her marriage, unbeknownst to her husband, and felt oppressed, so she tried to use Tajomaru, a criminal, as a way out of it. Because she did not want to be honest with her husband about the way she felt, the wife lived an unhappy life, and endured a traumatic experience trying to get out of it. Unlike the wife, Tajomaru was very honest about the crimes he had committed and the things he wanted, and therefore lived a happier and more carefree
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