They killed us with land mines and booby traps; they disappeared in the night, or into the tunnels, or into the elephant grass and bamboo” (199n21). At the time the Vietnam war seemed unforgiving and mysterious, in ways that it made most soldiers naturally evil who in which portrayed enormous grief upon the enemy. It was a time where in every soldier's head they carried a motto, “kill or be killed.” In the novel, In The Lake Of The Woods, small and simple footnotes are attached at the end of important chapters and they give the reader clues concerning the story or they expresses symbolic twists that make the novel somewhat unpredictable. The Footnote I have chosen runs on the back of chapter 20. The small passage explains related truth on the Vietnam War, symbolizes what John Wade, the protagonists, has witnessed, and finally how it portrays the rest of the novel.
If this wasn't the case then he should be killed. The book says, “It’s a concentration camp. Here, you have to work. If not, you will go straight to the furnace. To the cemetery.
The essays “Why Soldier Won’t Talk,” by John Steinbeck, and “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien, are both about their own personal experiences in war. The authors explain the awful life or death choices the soldiers must decide and consequently deal with for the real of their lives. Although both of the authors have experienced war, their viewpoints and descriptions of war are incredibly different from each other. In the essay, “Why Soldier Won’t Talk,” Steinbeck directly avoids using the word “I,” and instead speaks in second person references. Steinbeck wants the reader to understand the harsh and difficult living conditions the soldiers are living in.
Saying the night is "dreadful, very dreadful" could be interpreted as Victor's homosexuality. This, at the time of being published, was still a crime punishable by death and these hidden desires we see Victor show could be seen as a 'darker' aspect to his psyche, even if a modern audience would see this as nothing out of the ordinary. We also see a broader view of this dark nature through the story of the DeLacey's. The DeLacey's who feel only dread at the sight of the monster, drive him out after he has helped them with their day to day occupations and leave him heartbroken. Saying that 'my protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to this world' the monster perhaps speaks of the link in human psyche, that because he is childlike he does not realise that there even is a
It shows that he is willing to go through lots of stuggle in order to achieve his goal. Once he found out the bad news of Rosa’s untimely death “he had a vision of anger spreading through him like a malignant tumor, sullying the best hours of his life” (Allende pg 36). Trueba decided to leave to the countryside after Rosa’s death. Heading south indicates that Trueba is “digging deep into his own subconscious,” (Foster pg 170) trying to escape the city and all the bad memories he has there. “Literary geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces that inhabit humans” (Foster pg 166).
Dante describes the dark wood: “Its very memory gives a shape to fear” (Alighieri, 194). Dante, like many others today, was forced to face his fears. Dante had to go through each level of hell in order to leave the dark wood safely. However, as relevant as Dante’s experience to facing horror is to society today, he had the help of Virgil to be his guide throughout. Many would find it irrelevant, as it is not easy to have a reliable companion such a Virgil through such a difficult and turbulent experience.
Although people use the word “hate” so freely in their everyday conversations, do they really know the true meaning of this word? “What’s So Bad About Hate” by Andrew Sullivan provides a detailed analysis of what defines hate, and in particular, hate crimes. They are distinct in that they focus on a particular characteristic, although they tell about the victims, as in sexism, racism, and homophobia. They tell little about the Offenders, and why they commit crimes. He says that in reality, an equal feeling of disloyalty, and that unfortunately accompanies every feeling of loyalty; one cannot exist without the other.
He subjects the poor characters of his novel to every imaginable evil that man has been wont to commit in order to prove that this could not be the best of all worlds. Secondarily, Voltaire also seems to have other bones to pick. Hardly a paragraph is written that does not contain a sarcastic comment about or outright mockery of some person, idea, or institution. It is a credit to the skill of the author that he is able to present his criticisms with a humor that is as intoxicating as it is relentless and controversial. The sheer number of insults and implications made by the author coupled with a healthy sprinkling of aristocratic inside jokes would indicate that he essentially wrote this book for himself and other like-minded intellectuals of the enlightenment that disapproved of the status quo or could at least appreciate his cheeky sense of humor.
Imagine walking down a dark alley at night, it is pitch black, you have no idea where you are going. It is scary, especially if you are a young boy. This is how John Grimes feels in the novel “Go Tell It On The Mountain”. James Baldwin, the author, paints a picture of the struggles African Americans face in America through John, the main character. Identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
The apocalypse is supposed to happen because of the sun burning up, so it would be very cold and lonely. “It was darkness over the city and I wept.” (411). This is showing how it was scary and lonely, and a deep dark place no one would want to