Violence in Wuthering Heights and We Need to Talk About Kevin

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Compare and contrast the significance of the construction of violence in Wuthering Heights and We Need to talk about Kevin. Violence is built into human nature and yet it is generally restrained within civilised society. Both Wuthering Heights and We need to talk about Kevin are very violent books and yet the construction of violence in each of them is very different. Violence is often seen as wrong within civilised societies and we often claim that 'violence is not the answer', but what happens when it is, does violence not occasionally have its place? Both of these books seem to explore what is the correct place of violence and when does that go too far, however, one seems to laud violence generally and the other really looks at what happens when we overstep the boundary and the aftermath of this overstepping. When Wuthering Heights begins there is one astounding example of violence which occurs when Lockwood in his dream tries to get rid of the ghost of Catherine Linton by rubbing her wrists across a broken window until the 'blood ran down and soaked the bed clothes'. However this atrocity is committed during a dream and by an outsider so it is not typical of the violence of the novel in general due to this 'we don't take to outsiders'. As the novel progresses we enter into Nelly's narrative and realise that she is very prone to underplaying the violence which she encounters. So much so that initially many readers don't even think of Wuthering Heights as a violent book, in fact people have been surprised at this essay title because of this. For example when Nelly is accosted by Hindley and he places a carving knife in her mouth with the intention of killing her, her response is to exclaim that it tastes 'detestable' many don't even notice that he also claims to have put Kenneth 'head down-most' in the marsh and that he is clearly out for blood no matter whose
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