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Andrew Shirley Rapture Symbolism

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29 June 2015 - Political Meanings A book about politics can be very boring; that is why many authors use symbols to embed their political views within their texts. An example of this can be found within Bioshock: Rapture by John Shirley. In this book Andrew Ryan, a millionaire, wants to build a new place where he can escape the ‘parasite’ (he calls the current political leaders parasites) and create his own political system. Shirley stated his views very clearly with this quote, “The parasite hates three things: free markets, free will, and free men” (Shirley). This potentially shows that Shirley does not like the way our government is set up and he believes it restrains people and markets. In the place that Ryan creates, Rapture, a completely …show more content…

An obvious example of a Christ figure is in The Footprints of God by Greg Iles. First, the extremely obvious pointer to a Christ like figure is the title, which implies that maybe a character follows in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. The character that I believe is a Christ figure is David Tennant, the main character, for several reasons. First, David suffers from paranoia and narcolepsy and suffering is one of the Christ figure clues. David also goes into a coma, in which everyone thinks he is going to die, on his trip to Jerusalem, but without any signs of life, he wakes up. Therefore, David arose from the dead. He also saves the world from an artificial intelligence that has malicious intentions. Overall, the actions that David Tennant does in The Footprints of God qualify him to be a symbolic Christ …show more content…

The man replies that he doesn’t know and the boy says that the man said it to him a long time ago, both the man can’t remember. This commentary between the characters seems somewhat randomly placed in the book (though the boy does ask random things out of the blue) so it must be there for a reason. First, this is the second time that the boy repeated something that he said he heard the man say and the man didn’t remember saying it. This could indicate that the man is speaking out loud during his nightmares and the boy listens to what he is saying. This brings up the question: if the man is speaking in his sleep, could he have said something about losing hope or having to kill his son? Second, this commentary addresses the long term goals of the man; the man says that he does not know what his long term goals are. This means that the man does not know if going to the South will be any better for them and if they will even make it there. It could also be foreshadowing their deaths as death would make long term goals

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