In 1 Corinthians 10:14 Paul was using the historic teaching to the Israelite people when he said “to flee from Idolatry.” Man must never take the focus away from God and place it on himself or anything else. All throughout the Old Testament there are numerous examples of social injustices between the elite classes and the poor. The rich would use their power and resources to enslave the poor. They would steal their land and force them into slavery. As a result of living in areas surrounded by pagan people, Israel’s first generation to be born in the promise land suffered temptations of the combining their own religious practices with idolaters.
The Arabs claim descent from Ishmael; the Jews claim descent from Jacob. *A famine in Canaan drives Jacob and his sons to Egypt. *In about 1200 BCE tribes claiming to be descendants of Abraham arrive in Canaan from Egypt. They said they'd been liberated from slavery in Egypt by YHWH, the god of their leader Moses. They allied with the Hebrews in Canaan and became known as the people of Israel.
Another theme Barker looks at is ‘Silence,’ which could link to her grandfather who refused to talk to her about his experiences in the war. And finally, the theme of emasculation is a strong theme throughout the novel, it is particularly interesting as the novel is written by a female author and from a woman’s perspective, but is mainly based around the experiences of men and their lives and any woman that do feature in the novel are usually inconsequential characters that do not understand Rivers or other characters. Silence is a symptom of ‘Shellshock.’ The term shell shock is a disorder found on the battlefield in soldiers who had been exposed to an exploding shell. The symptoms of shell shock were numerous and varied from soldier to soldier. Physical effects ranged from trembling, sweating, insomnia, diarrhoea, and minor twitches to paralysis, blindness, and muteness.
Steinbeck creates an allegory for stories from the bible. Many events in the book involving Charles and Adam or Cal and Aron, relate to those in the story of Cain and Abel. For example, Charles gets a scar and feels as if he were ‘marked.’ Exactly like in the story of Cain and Abel, God marks Cain so no one encounters him. Cathy represents Eve in the story of Adam and Eve because she is associated with SIN. She also relates to the snake because she uses
The collection of books that make up the novel is about Willa Cather’s idea of what and to what extent Jim Burden remembers. The novel is also said to be one that “lacks focus and abounds in irrelevancies” (Wells 1). This is a direct result from Cather’s inability to provide a consistent character portrayal throughout her novel. On the same note, My Antonia is said to have many “variations from a theme” (Wells 1). An example of that would be when Peter and Pavel, two lonesome Russian settlers, tell Jim and Antonia a tragic tale that horrifies the children.
Adah is crippled emotionally and physically, Rachel is crippled emotionally and grows into a woman constantly seeking approval from low-life men. Orleanna is crippled emotionally and it scars her and affects her relationships with her children. The women are also spiritual captives to Nathan's version of religion, which is presented as fundamental extremism in this novel. None of them experience any of the freedom that true faith allows, which is disturbing, since they are a family of missionaries supposed to be bringing the "good news" to the natives. They are also physically captive.
Reality and Religion Ada begins to contemplate her own views of the world and rejects Monroe’s belief that the objects on earth are gifts from another world, in Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain. She finds comfort in the predictable elements of life, such as nature’s cycles, after she sees how useless intangible items are to her, such as reading and learning languages. Thus, she denies the importance of invisible items. However, Inman, disgusted by the images of war burned into his mind, seeks refuge in the spiritual world he cannot necessarily see, much to the contrast of Ada, who now only finds comfort in concrete items. Forced to separate because of the war, Inman and Ada can no longer rely on each other to fill their voids.
Misled Faith It is not hard to see how there is a connection between O’Connor’s fictional characters and O’Connor herself. Wood has shown through her biography that O’Connor is a devout Christian but her racial attitudes root deep down, contradicting her image as revealed through her personal letters. Wood reveals that in O’Connor’s letter, she was deeply out of sympathy for the Civil rights crusade and she uses the word “nigger”. Wood also shows that in O’Connor’s lifetime, she never gave a public voice to her racial opinions: discloses that she must have doubt about them. The grandmother in A Good Man Is Hard to find and Mrs. Turpin in Revelation shares some common characteristics.
She always obeys the laws, never reads books, and suffocates on the inside. When Montag reads a poem to their guests Mrs. Bowles and Mildred are furious. Mrs. Bowles says, “that’s not right! We can’t do that!”(98). In this society people get very disturbed when the law is broken.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book, On Death and Dying described five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Our protagonist refrains from bargaining, but takes one further step in his process—action! Denial crops up immediately as the narrator considers the fate of his missing wife. With death all around him, especially for those involved in the liberation front, the narrator refuses to stop looking for her or asking about her, even though he fears finding out the truth. “Not to know where she is, what they have done to her is a torment (17).” He notices that the women who care for his house and children do not refer to her, and he realizes they believe she won’t come back.