Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel about an African American woman named Janie and her struggle to find true love and meaning in her life. While Janie is the main character, her Grandmother Nanny is the person who sets Janie on her life’s journey to find happiness. However, Nanny’s decisions were based on her slave ideals and were not what Janie desired for her own life. As a former slave, Nanny had been raped by her white master and gave birth to her daughter who became Janie’s mom. When the white master is sent off to war, his jealous wife threatens to whip Nanny and to sell off her baby.
She realizes her talent in needlework and begins to support herself by sewing. Even though her artsy embroidering defies the Puritan dress code, it was requested for christening gowns, burial shrouds, and officials’ robes. As years elapse the town’s respect for Hester flourished. Hester became less alienated from the society and began to use her kindness to feed the poor and care for the sick. The townspeople’s view of the scarlet “A” upon Hester’s breast had changed as well, “Many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification.
The initial wrong committed in The Scarlet Letter was adultery, a sin very easily condemned by the Puritans in the mid 1600’s. It is agreeable that Hester should not have cheated on her husband. Even though, he had been missing for two years and was thought dead, it was still a crime and against their religious beliefs. Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin was a sin based off of pure love for each other. Why else would a preacher long to be with a married woman?
Such as when “Roger Chillingworth” found out that Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale had an affair with his wife. As a result of the lust that Hester Prynne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale had for each other, Hester Prynne ended up pregnant and had a girl named Pearl. Not to mention Reverend Arthurs’s decision of announcing the truth about being the father of Pearl. These actions most definitely changed the course of the book. An illuminating moment changed the meaning of the work as a whole.
It is impossible to go through life without trust..." This quote doesn't apply to All Quiet on the Western Front because the main character Paul Baumer and his friends trusted their teacher Kantorek and went to fight in the World War. They all eventually died in this war and the war also shortened their lives greatly. They trusted Kantorek thinking the war would be amazing and they would be doing a great service for their country. However the complete opposite happened. They hated the war and lost their lives.
“I just got here too late this time. He just doesn’t understand that he can’t do things like this. He just loves to climb, and he loves it when people are looking for him. I think last week was just lucky, when I got him down by singing his favourite song, ‘match in the gas tank’. It was a close call though, when his shoe dropped off, I thought we had lost him forever.” After the statement, Gilbert broke down in tears, so we let him go.
While she is married she find out she is pregnant with some else’s child. Puritans looked down upon this greatly. For her punishment, she was convicted of adultery, and forced to wear a scarlet letter, “A” on her dress for the rest of her life. When she was let out of prison, she had to stand on the scaffold for three hours and endure the stares of the townspeople. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many ways to characterize Hester Prynne, and to show her importance in the development of the plot.
While Hester’s “sins” are out in public where all could see, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth hide their debaucheries from public view. The persecution of Hester strengthens her faith and conviction in the difference between right and wrong. The solitary life Hester is forced to live results in a determined drive to raise Pearl to the best of her ability: “Lonely was Hester’s situation, without a friend on Earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want” (75). Focused only on bettering her life for Pearl, the townspeople see and benefit from the very
Sophie Lindenberg Turner AP English 12, Period 3 3 February 2015 Short Story Response Six: “Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist”, focuses primarily on a Hunger Artist obsessed with fame. Earlier in his career, the Hunger Artist had thousands of people watch and admire his fasting profession. To the Hunger Artist’s disliking, his impresario, or manager, would not let him fast past forty days in fear of losing the audience’s attention. The audience always praised the Hunger Artist for his martyrdom in fasting. However, the Hunger Artist was not fasting for religious reasons, but instead the Hunger Artist fasted for the attention and glory he received from the audience.
This made the villagers lose a lot of their hope and lower their self-esteem. The writer show many things about the villagers. The writer shows how the villagers are very religious when the he says ‘Next day, Las Lomas had a big feast, and prayers to the rain god’. This shows their dedication to their gods and that they rely on them in very hard times and situations. The writer also shows that the villagers cannot stand for themselves when he says ‘In Las Lomas, the villagers exhausted their savings in buying Rampersad’s water to keep alive’ this shows that they cannot revolt against him because they are not brave enough.