In fact, the reader is very nearly in the position of a spy listening to Holy Willie’s prayer, i.e. a very personal moment. The criticism does not come from Burns, so to speak, but from the absurdity of Willie Fisher’s speech. Despite the fact that this poem is clearly an attack, one cannot ignore the humour underlying the poem, v.46
(D.H. Lawrence, "Morality and the Novel") Aesthetically, the fiction which reveals a truth by explicit sermonising rather than as a natural conclusion drawn from the relationships and events it presents, is displeasing, even "immoral." Indeed, Martel's statement is likely to have the opposite effect on his reader, provoking a determined counter-reaction not to succumb to a didactic religious agenda. Surely enough, Life of Pi fails to meet its ambition. As he travels through its pages, apparently on the Damascun road to enlightenment, the reader will not, atheist or already committed follower, experience some major revelation to the spirit, coming to, or restoring, a belief in God. Nor, despite Martel's explicit but deceptive statement, is he intended to.
In order to prevent another Tribulation, the people of Waknuk go to extreme lengths to preserve normality, going as far as killing or banishing ‘deviations’ to the uninhabitable Fringes. Their ritualistic fear of a second Tribulation and of the Devil seems to outweigh their innate ability to show compassion and love, dooming ‘blasphemies’ to lives of deprivation. Although the treatment and harsh judgements of ‘deviations’ are contrary to what the Bible teaches, the Waknuk society ignores this. Their religious bigotry overshadows any
Although his rebellious nature isolated him from his concurrent society, he was often regarded by his contemporaries as mad; however this isolation aided him in his censure of society’s faults. Central to Blake’s poetry was the concept of the Divine , as a true dissenter Blake was opposed to all forms of institutional religion seeing it as evil and debilitating, robbing man of his natural and spiritual energies. And so he formed his, progressively complex, poetry to engage the imagination in order to bring about a more personal and intimate experience with The Divine. The Songs of Innocence & Experience are generally regarded as Blake’s greatest poetic achievements, however majority of his work were his prophetic books. Blake’s Prophetic Books are a series of lengthy, interrelated poetic works which elaborate Blake’s own personal mythopoeia.
His need for revenge was so great that he would do and did the unthinkable; Arthur Dimmesdale was trapped inside a prison of guilt, and Roger Chillingworth mentally tortured him. Chillingworth was not interested in justice because he sought the deliberate destruction of others rather than addressing the wrong doings of their actions. His desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale's sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. Another way and the most common way that The Scarlet Letter is interpreted can be through sin, because sin plays one of the biggest roles in the novel. It was due to the sin of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale that Pearl was consummated, but it was a sin that came out of love for each other.
The turning point of this chapter would be that Dimmesdale confesses to being Pearls father. But the congregation does not believe him; they think he is just portraying his holiness. As a punishment for his sin Dimmesdale whips himself. What are the chapters ruling images? The ruling images in this chapter are the sorrow and hatred that Dimmesdale has for himself and beating himself with a whip.
If abstractness, projection of people’s emotions, and uselessness of art create morality in art, then the art itself cannot be moral or immoral, thus proving Wilde’s theory true. There are different examples in the book The Picture of Dorian Gray that shows Dorian’s projection of his own feelings onto art rather than just letting the art be a form of pleasure. Dorian constantly projects meaning and pulls out morals from art, which leaves Dorian feeling poisoned. At one point he even tells Lord Henry that he was never going to forgive him for being poisoned with a book (Wilde 180). Lord Henry responds to this by noting that Dorian was beginning to moralize, and this was a negative thing because he believed that the books and art themselves did not make morals, therefore art could not be poison.
Pope thinks that war was good and it was Ok to die during it but Owen strongly disagreed with that. Sassoon uses the title Attack to describe what the poem is about. The poem is about the attack on no-man’s land so he just simply decides not to confuse he reader with what he is talking about. Although in the poem he confuses the reader in a way that they don’t understand the horrors of the war. Owen portrays the horrors of the war by focusing on one person and aspect within the war, the gas attacks.
Although not necessarily influential upon his principles, his priestly status causes him to regret his actions. From this, the message that I received was that his occupation was more of a burden that overlapped with his desires; being faithful to God is difficult when you're a drunkard. Another theme that was presented in the book was how treason was viewed as a crime comparable to murder and thievery. The fact that one of the ideas focused on in the book is the hunt for the priest shows how heinous his crime actually was. It's a strange contrast to the life that I'm used to, seeing as we are protected by liberties that allow us to practice any religion we want without worry.
Augustine is quick to clarify that God did not make sin. If God is good and all things he created are good then sin can not be created by God, for sin is evil. Augustine believes that sin is humanity's responsibility. Augustine’s view of the original sin is very complex and does not discuss it completely in Confessions, for his point of writing the book is more of a personal reflection on his view of evil in his own life. Simply stated, original sin is the condition that inclines human beings to selfishness and disobedience, even when they may want to act otherwise.