Analysis Of The Book ' Youth ' And ' Ghost ' By Adam Hochschild

Kids tend to not fully grasp the seriousness of certain situations due to their immaturity; This was the case of the four young boys in Stephen King’s novella: The Body. The story describes the journey these boys partake in, a journey in which they were determined to find the dead body of a 13 year old boy. But the journey ended up being a bigger adventure than they originally set out on, and even proved to be life changing for them; Especially for one of the boys in particular, Gordy, who learns the true gravity of death, along with other valuable life lessons. Gordy is the focus in this novella because he is the stand-in for a young Stephen King. Most of the events in this story are true and have actually happened to King, which forever

The Wars, written by Timothy Findley, is a story about World War I, and consists of many shocking images passed over to the reader. Findley accomplishes to pull the reader into the narrative itself, so that the reader manages to feel an impact upon him/her-self about what is read. If it was not for this specific skill, or can also be seen as a specific genre, the novel would not have been as successful as it is now. Also, something that helps the book be so triumphant, there is the fact that Findley never overwhelms the reader with too many gruesome details about the World War I. Instead, he breaks the book down to help the reader calm down from everything that is happening. Throughout the essay, there is going to be some commenting on a

During the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, life was very difficult. The people who lived within the countries controlled by the Soviet government experienced levels of oppression akin to slavery. They could not express themselves through any means and had to conform both body and soul to the views of the Communist Party. People could be arrested, imprisoned, shipped off to exile or executed often without trial. Some twenty million people died while Joseph Stalin led the USSR and for many years after his death it was still dangerous to dare criticize his regime, although some scholars put that number closer to forty million people who died. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is its own country there is more freedom, but the people still live under the yoke of an oppressive leader who does not tolerate political or social challenges. The people do nothing to stand up to this government because they have all been scarred by the decades they lived under Stalin.

“The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn’t get a f-----g job, we had the presidency … That’s what the n-----s don’t realize … no one gives it to you. You have to take it.” (Scorsese)

In the two books we read in class, All Quiet on the Western Front and Night we see that the two world wars of the twentieth century produced unprecedented destruction to human life. We see this because in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, he says that after witnessing bodies getting blown up, people getting shot, things burning down and loud noises every day, he was forced to realize that he no longer belonged to the society that he came from. He realized that he now belonged to the world of war and that even if he tried to go back to his home, there would be nothing left for him to go back to. Throughout the books he makes references that his family becomes the people he was fighting with, even the people he was fighting against because they were the only ones who understood what he was going through (Remarque, 1929). He and his family no longer kept in contact and so he was basically in the world alone with no practically no loved one to lean on. The same goes for the Ellie Wiesel’s Night. Ellie gets taken away from his family and forcibly put into a concentration camp in which he never knew existed. The camp life was harsh and brutal. He saw sons killing their fathers for food and people dying every day simply for the lack of water. He was forced to do hard work and take long journey’s in which had the intention of killing him and his counter parts because they were Jewish. He no longer spoke to his mother or sister and his father had just died.

World War I (1914-1918) was a war that changed world history forever. The technological, industrial, social and political advances that took place at beginning of the 20th century paved the way for today 's world. And the parties involved in World War I used those advances to create one of the first modern wars. For those reasons World War I is referred to as many things including, an industrial war, a war of attrition, and as a total war. These aspects is what makes the war so revolutionary and groundbreaking and equally as devastating. A novel that helps illustrate each of these categories is All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), by Erich Maria Remarque. The author tells a German soldiers experiences through the war. The book does not

In Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, she writes about her experiences during the first World War. The story gives an in-depth perception of the hardships that she encountered and how they led to her strong ambition as well as views on war. Many of these hardships, especially the losses of her loved ones drove her ambition and contributed greatly to her success. Another important aspect of Testament of Youth is how strongly against war Brittain became due to the tremendous injustice and high mortality rates that stemmed from the war. The effects of the war itself was a direct cause of the ambition and pacifist view that Brittain had which she then used to move forward and find success in her days to come.

I read is in multiple portions since my time was taken for other tasks. Each time I halt the reading, my thoughts were about ‘what will happen next’ and this repeated the more I was into the story.

The novel Ghost Girl by Torey Hayden tells the story of a special education teacher who helps to save her student, Jadie, and Jadie’s two sisters from an abusive situation. Torey uses her experience working with elective mutes as well as troubled children in order to determine that Jadie is being abused. Although the stories this hunched over, closed up girl seem unbelievable, Torey refuses to believe that Jadie is making the stories up or imagining the actions that she talks about. Torey puts both her job and her reputation on the line when she pursues Jadie’s case. In the end, Torey’s instinct proved correct as Jadie and her sisters are permanently removed from their parents’ home.

Vera Brittain’s, Testament of Youth, is a harrowing autobiographical account of the years 1900-1925. Combining personal reflections, letters, and poems, Brittain beautifully constructs a realistic, and searing portrayal of her life and the live of the lost generation. Utterly honest and revealing, Britain’s memoir recollects her life, from provincial youth, to a V.A.D nurse grappling with the ghosts of the war. Told through the lens of Britain as she both directly experiences, and re-experiences the war, the memoir is a torrent of emotions, as she struggles with the war, and the decimation it caused. With the loss of everyone she has ever loved, her brother, her fiancé, and her friends, Testament of Youth, not only serves as an examination of World War One and the changing landscape of Great Britain, but also as a heart-breaking elegy to the lives lost during the Great War.

World War I, along with World War II and the rise of Marxist-Leninist states in Russia and China, is one of the defining moments of the 20th century. Parts of Europe lay in devastation and the United States found itself in an increasingly prominent place on the world stage. The United States’ decision to intervene in World War I meant that American soldiers would be fighting in foreign lands under brutal conditions. All aspects of society were rapidly changing as developments in technology and changing economic conditions redefined every part of everyday life. These developments along with World War I allow for the birth of Modernism. Modernism represents the uncertainty drudgery of contemporary life and the desire to achieve a new social order capable of overcoming the failures of the past. Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald present readers with two different accounts of modern life rooted in the same context of “American life.”

Albert Camus once said “Forever I shall be a stranger to myself” (Camus, 1942/2004, p 453). In his classic novel, The Stranger, the main character is the archetypal absurd man who lives only in the realm of his own aesthetic until being faced with his own death (Camus, 1942). The themes of absurdity, the Existentialist term for anything that contradicts reason (Wartenberg, 2008), and the greater themes of Existentialism as a whole are apparent in countless other philosophical works. The Stranger’s common thread appears not only in existential philosophy, but can be traced back to classical thought and built upon from there.

Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms covers a romance that takes place during World War I. The novel itself came out shortly after the war, and was the first of Hemingway’s books to become a best-seller. Essentially, the novel contrasts the horrors of war with the romance of Henry and Catherine. Throughout the plot, Hemingway, a World War I veteran himself, uses the events of the book to make a statement about his thoughts on war. The core message of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is that war damages the soldiers who fight in it both physically and emotionally, which is primarily illustrated by the number of deaths caused directly and indirectly by the war, the actions Henry is forced to take over the course of the book, and Henry’s growing cynicism towards war.

Chinese ghost stories, unlike American Horror Story and Japanese Sadako, never fail to fascinate us. It gives people a mysterious feeling, accompanied with a slight sense of horror, yet romantic and touching. In the eyes of westerns, ghost is always associated with the word “haunted” or “demon”, nothing but clichés about spirit making fun of people and exorcist help people out. However, Liao Zhai Zhi Yi, the greatest ghost story compilation in Chinese history, is far from exorcism and scary scenes, on the contrary, it largely describes beautiful bitter-sweet love stories between scholars and female ghosts, which they played very important roles in this book. Therefore, this paper will mainly discuss the development of the ghost literature genre, the roles of scholars and female ghosts and their importance in the example of the Magic Sword and the Magic Bag, and some common themes in Liao Zhai.

A key belief within our society is that there are many sides to any story, and to gain full understanding, one more confront and engage with all aspects. There are instances, however, when the scope of the story makes the full truth unattainable. This is the case of World War I. The Great War was nearly impossible to understand while it was taking place, and although nearly one hundred years have passed, little concrete clarity has been achieved regarding the overall truths and experiences of this war. Claire Tylee, a historian who focuses on the woman's role in World War I, highlights the ineffable aspect of the war even for the most skilled authors, saying that: "reviewing a novel in 1917, Virginia Woolf suggested that the War was