Ephany In The Destructors

In the short story "The Destructors" we are introduced to a group of young men that seem to be surrounded by destruction. The setting of this story takes place after the World War. It depicts an atmosphere of dilapidated buildings destroyed by bombs. As the story unfolds one can see that the boy’s surroundings have caused them, to have a pretty negative outlook.

When British and American forces raided the city with firebombs, Vonnegut and his fellow captives were saved due to their underground imprisonment. The bombing killed more than 135,000 people, most of whom were innocent civilians, more than the deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. After the bombing, Vonnegut was given the morbid task of carrying the corpses from Air-Raid shelters, including women, children, and the elderly; dead from concussions, fire, or suffocation. In a letter to his father, Vonnegut described his job and the reaction of the locals, “Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge pyres in the city,” (Boomhower). His distressing internment in Dresden not only furthered his anti-war sentiments, but also established a reoccurring theme in his books: the irrationality of government and the senselessness of war. Vonnegut saw the bombing of Dresden and the slaughter of innocents as wasteful and meaningless. He could not comprehend the purpose of destroying a “beautiful” and fully functional civilization (Wiswell 5). The annihilation of the city and lives of the innocent affirmed his views of war as a waste, and even lead to his feeling that, “civilization ended in World War I” (Vitale). This view indicated Vonnegut believed World War II was a meaningless act committed by the uncivilized.

In comparison the Curtis boy home is what you would call a pig sty, for the gang members would often crash the night there and they didn’t have the parents to nag them about their unkempt rooms. Additionally the families differentiate by their statistics. “Since Mom and Dad were killed in an auto wreck, the three of us get to stay together only as long as we behave.”, is stated by Ponyboy who is explaining his family’s situation, while he is walking home from the movie theatre (Hinton 3). This quote shows that Ponyboy and his brothers are dependent on each other, because they are all that they have. Also, their family relationship and relationship with their fellow gang members prove that all they need in life is each other, and not the newest TV or a ford mustang convertible. Unlike the Hoodhoods who find joy in success and wealth and sometimes feel that they do not need their family. Obviously, the Hoodhoods and the Curtiss have different views on life, which makes seem like polar opposites, but behind all of their differences are similarities.

Both sides to Tim are bad in both ways. Finally, when Mr. Meeker did not allow Sam to take the Brown Bess to fight with, Sam stole the gun. Sam disobeyed his father and Tim tries to take it back. Tim kept on trying to persuade Sam to give the gun back to Mr. Meeker, but he keeps ignoring Tim’s request. When Tim tries to steal the gun from Sam, Sam immediately found out and chased after Tim. When Sam caught up to Tim, Tim started to blackmail and said that he would shoot the gun at Sam if he got closer. “Don’t come any closer, Sam, or I’ll shoot you” (Collier and Collier 55). This shows that even war can tear the two brothers that love each other apart. Families can still be teared apart from any type of war.

Have you ever read a very hard hitting and the phenomenal story about rival gangs and the effect it has on the lives of the people and the society. In The Outsiders, is a story of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis and his two older brothers, Soda and Darry. The boys are orphans and struggle to stick together in their lower-class neighborhood, known as the East Side. They and their friends are part of a gang of tough street boys called the Greasers. Even though other people might think you're unimportant and below them. You will always have your friends and family. In The Outsiders, we see the idea of the difference in the society based on the economic level of the characters, honor among the lawless and violence among the youth.

Everyone is tempted by sex, drugs, easy money and the power generated from violence and vengeance. The film “Boyz N the Hood” follows Tre, who moves to a neighborhood in the socioeconomically disadvantaged South Central with his father and becomes involved with new friends. The movie best portrays how being of low socioeconomic status during that time had a devastating effect on an adolescents development. For many young people during that era, the future is a day that never came.

Spring comes; school lets out for the cotton season. Rumor says that T.J. is spending more time with Melvin and R. W. and that they are just using him. One night in early summer, some nearby farmers come by and tell Papa not to buy anything for them on his next trip to Vickburg. Granger amongst other plantation owners are threatening to decrease pay and even kick the tenants off their land then put the men on a chain gang if they do not begin shopping at the Wallace store. All but seven families stop ordering goods from Vicksburg. Mama feels this is not enough to hurt the Wallaces but Papa will not give up. On the next trip to Vicksburg they are ambushed. While Papa is repairing a sabotaged wagon wheel, a truck pulls up and fires--a bullet grazes his head. Then the horse rears up and pulls the wagon wheel over Papa's leg. L. T. makes short work of the men however, who turn out to be the Wallaces, breaking Dewberry Wallace's back.

World War II is an important key point in history that addresses to young adolescents. The novel, T4 is based on a true story, in which the author, Ann Clare LeZotte is portraying a novel that is based on the theme of survival. It appears to be that the author’s argument in writing this novel is to simply maintain awareness of the past. Generally speaking, a story about survival is a difficult genre for young readers, “The majority of war stories for children are about World War II and the Holocaust.” (Huck 482) The reason war stories are mainly about World War II and the Holocaust is because it was the most recent, largest, and horrifying war during the twentieth century in Europe. Our textbook also states that these historical novels help children experience the past. Meaning, that it is important for a child to learn about the past including all the wars, conflicts, sufferings, and great happiness that had occurred so they can apply that to the present and to the future.

      Marked by two world wars and the anxiety that accompanies humanity's knowledge of the ability to destroy itself, the Twentieth Century has produced literature that attempts to depict the plight of the modern man living in a modern waste land. If this sounds dismal and bleak, it is. And that is precisely why the dark humor of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. shines through our post-modern age. The devastating bombing of Dresden, Germany at the close of World War II is the subject of Vonnegut's most highly acclaimed work, Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. Vonnegut's experience as an American POW in Dresden

Imagine you lived in a place where you always had to watch your back and there was always another brutal enemy. The only way to survive was through violence, as if you were born with a knife. S.E. Hinton depicted this world in her novel The Outsiders. She wrote about two feuding teenage gangs; the Socs, who were “the West-side rich kids” (page 2), and the Greasers, who were poor. The rivalry between the two groups ran deep and the question surfaces: who is to blame for the conflict? Although the book is written from the perspective of the Greasers, and the Socs are shown as the bad guys, there is a case to be made that the conflicts in the book started with the Greasers.

The book “The Outsiders” is full of exciting events. It first starts off with a nice introduction for the first half of the characters that we meet. We get to know more about the members of the greasers, Ponyboy, the main character, Johnny, Dally, Two Bit, Steve, and the two brothers of Ponyboy; Sodapop and Darry. In this novel, rivalry plays a big roll between two gangs, the greasers and the socs, short for socials. The two gangs have bad experiences with each other, they get in fights a lot and sometimes beat each other to the point where they can barely move.They are different in many ways, the socs have a lot more money and the greasers have not as much to live with. In the first chapter, Pony gets jumped, four socs manage to catch him and almost cut his hair,

Desecrate: To treat a sacred place or thing with violent disrespect. The society in the novel Fahrenheit 451 is a society ruled over by technology. Books in this society are outlawed and anyone found owning a book will have firemen upon them whose job is to burn books and houses instead of putting out fires. The theme that can be followed throughout most of the novel is that all books, even such books like the Bible, are viewed to only bring unpleasantness to those who read them because technology has a hold over everyone though some still do believe that reading is a very important and wondrous thing. The symbols and characters that support this theme would be the main protagonist, Guy Montag, antagonist Captain Beatty, and the support character,

You see I'm far from empty. I'm back to what I live for.There's no need to justify the meaningless destruction.

In Lord of the Flies, Jack creates a “gang” of the young boys. To solidify their place in Jack’s

This is important in relation to the time period the story takes place. The Destructors is set after World War ll in London, England, also known as “Blitzed London”, when homes were ravaged from the bombings of the war. Knowing this information, it is apparent that Greene attempts to show how the gang’s actions were determined by their surroundings, their need to damage things decided by the blitzed homes that they saw everyday. The plan to deface Old Misery’s home was an example of literary fiction because it contributes a better understanding of how the world was affected post war and allows readers to emphasize with the characters in the story. Another example of literary fiction in The Destructors is at the end of the story, when it takes an unexpected turn.