These dangers are produced by our history. They rest on the fact that in order to conquer this continent, the particular aloneness of which I speak—the aloneness in which one discovers that life is tragic, and therefore unutterably beautiful—could not be permitted. And that this prohibition is typical of all emergent nations will be proved, I have no doubt, in many ways during the next fifty years. This continent now is conquered, but our habits and our fears remain. And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.
I don’t care. So long as I can be alone.’” (243) John feels used by Bernard as his tool to get the girls, and he has had enough of the fingers pointed at him and words said behind his back. After all he has been through John is still unable to get away from the mindset that he has to be alone, and chooses to leave the new world in favor of a solitary lighthouse. There, like the “men” on the reservation, John whips himself daily as people watch him like some sort of spectacle. Eventually John cracks and goes insane for a moment resulting in a blackout; “He lay awake for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered—everything” (258).
It’s impossible.” (222). The reader recognizes that Holden is confined within walls of phoniness and corruption. The profanity written on the walls becomes too much for Holden. In a sense, he desires to eradicate all profanity, therefore protecting the innocence of children, but as Holden indicates, it’s nearly impossible. Unlike Holden in Catcher in the Rye, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath concentrates society’s corruption on self-interested people.
Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind's essential illness." (Golding 89) Eventually, Jack prevails as the leader of an anarchic type society where rules and laws are not required except where the leader irrationally directs. The symbol of authority, the conch, is fittingly destroyed at this point in the novel and Ralph discovers what Simon was trying to say. The beast did not exist in the beginning but was created by the boys in their acts of savagery and
The narrator viewed the shrouded bodies in their solemn slumbers with the worms. The significance is he saw a vast number changed to an uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed. 7. The narrator’s mental state becomes unstrung and he falls in a prey to perpetual horror. His actions are rational, because he hesitated to ride, walk, or to participate in any exercise that would carry him home.
The easy way is often referred to as the wrong way and in some cases this is true, such as when Victor ignored his creation. By not facing his fears he was granted the absence of the monster, but only contributed to emanate problem just on the horizon. Victor’s tone of boastful arrogance soon turned to forlorn warning when he “Had finished and saw, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled his heart” (Shelley, 42). A fantastic example of the “easy way out” could be found in The Importance of Being Earnest. As Jack quickly finds out, lying about your true name to win the girl of your dreams can be successful, but also have consequences.
Imagine a hopeless society where everyone was brainwashed with meaningless technology, books were strictly forbidden, and the true meaning of life was long forgotten. For Montag, that is society was very real. The central idea of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, conveyed by the themes of the sections — awakening, seeking knowledge and truth, and rebirth— is that independent thought can help to overcome great obstacles, which is what leads Montag to step away from the wasteland of modern society to where he truly wanted to be. The first section, “The Hearth and the Salamander”, is where Montag begins to break away from being like an average person in society. The hearth has long been a comforting symbol of home.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” Fear is always present in one’s longevity if he or she lacks knowledge of the word itself, which means if you lack knowledge of something, you will always be intimidated until an action is taken to triumph over your anxiety. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Crucible by Arthur Miller recognized this quote as a true statement and I agree to the contribution made by these authors in validating the quote. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee symbolized Jem and Scout as character with fear and innocence . Jem and Scout were always intimidated by Boo Radley because of the stories they heard about him, they believed he is a malevolent phantom who eat squirrels and
But men generally abandon the care of their most important concerns to the uncertain prudence and discretion of those, whose interest it is to reject the best and wisest institutions; and it is not till they have been led into a thousand mistakes, in matters the most essential to their lives and liberties, and are weary of suffering, that they can be induced to apply a remedy to the evils with which they are oppressed. It is then they begin to conceive, and acknowledge the most palpable truths, which, from their very simplicity, commonly escape vulgar minds, incapable of analysing objects, accustomed to receive impressions without distinction, and to be determined rather by the opinions of others, than by the result of their own examination. If we look into history we shall find that laws which are, or ought to be, conventions between men in a state of freedom, have been, for the most part, the work of the passions of a few, or the consequences of a fortuitous or temporary necessity; not dictated by a cool examiner of human nature, who knew how to collect in one point the actions of a multitude, and had this only end in view, the greatest happiness of
Sometimes the tragic hero suffers from hubris, like know-it-all Oedipus. The goddess Nemesis waits until just the proper moment to tap his arrogance, blind him to the reality around him, and thereby lead him to his own destruction. But note: What separates the tragic hero from the arrogant fool who suffers the same fate is the sheer magnitude of his gifts, and thus the depth of the abyss into which he falls, and the spirit with which he