In the novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, by John Steinbeck, the reader gets a first person account of the story of Ethan Hawley, an heir of great ancestry. Ethan is described as an honest, content man with a modest life. He's happily married with two kids. Although traditionally destined for greatness, the Harvard graduate’s lifestyle is reduced to working as a grocery employee in a store that once belonged to his family, but now belongs to an immigrant man. Yet on Good Friday, his livelihood is challenged by his associates and family. They encourage him to reestablish the legendary glory behind his family name. He becomes discontent and insecure when they criticize him for being unsuccessful when his name carries greatness for he says, “He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?” (211) This pressures Ethan to desperately plan to regain the riches and superiority that his family held at once. This is where the moral dilemma confronts the American condition of corruption. This leads him into a plan that spirals out of dishonesty, corruption and malice behavior. The three part plan includes Ethan robbing the bank, reporting his immigrant boss over to the police so he can buy and inherit the wealth of the store and lastly manipulating a very important lot of the land away from the local alcoholic, Danny
Ethan is a victim of his social and physical environment, because in the book it says that Frome was poor, and that the saw-mill and the arid acres of his farm yielded scarcely
Ethan’s ignorance and hopefulness. He doesn’t fully comprehend his actions which also emphasizes his immaturity.
Ethan Frome was characterized as an isolated and poor lived character. He was very society based. In his younger years, he was a follower, he lived his life based on what everyone else was doing. After he graduated, he thought the correct thing to do was fall in love and get married, however, he found out the hard way that that is not how life should be and he realized that many years later after he suffered.
In 1887, historian John Dalberg-Acton asserted, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This theme has a prominent role in history, literature, and even current times. Certainly, many instances have occurred where once someone earns authority, they allow it to get to their head and do things they would not have done otherwise. Similarly, it is also seen that when one is inferior or beneath others, they receive a hunger for power. Specifically, a few prime examples of people who became corrupted because of their dominance include Marc Antony from Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Joseph Stalin, and Kim Jong-un. These rulers negatively impacted the places they ruled all because of their abusive tendencies that came with dominance.
In a society of people all in the same situations how can someone feel so alone. When lives fall apart and people have nothing to hold on to people need each other most, yet are pushed so far from others. The novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck, follows the storyline of two men who are displaced farm workers during the Great Depression; they travel around and stick by each other’s sides no matter the circumstance. After many jobs they end up on a farm,the farm they hope will be their last stop. The time spent on the farm is filled with blooming friendships and careless quarrels, yet with an abundance of characters and entertainment- many people on the farm feel alone and out of place. Characters such as Crooks and Curley’s wife often come to mind when the subject of loneliness is brought up. Throughout the book using characters such as Crooks and Curley's wife, John Steinbeck demonstrates that humans are immensely impacted by separation from society and it will change the way that people will act and show themselves to others.
The Progress movement or as many refer to as the Progressive era, was a time frame where Americans joined in varying groups to advocate reform across the United States. To elaborate, Progressives believed in widespread change for child labor, industrialization, government, racial reform, and women’s rights. Countless stories of corruption in these areas were brought to light in the Progressive era mostly due to the published writings of Muckrakers. Muckrakers, were journalists who wrote for popular magazines that attempted to expose corrupt political activities from their investigative journalism. Furthermore, I will discuss and compare these groups and their attempts for changes in the rights of child labor, women, acknowledgment of corrupt government practices, racial relations, and industrialization reform.
Though too intelligent for rural life, Ethan finds himself stuck in an average man's shoes. Leaving any opportunity he had to become someone in life, Ethan moves back to Starkfield to take care of his ailing mother and attend to their farm(Wharton 29). Rather than living a lonesome
Empathy is vital to trust- but what if that understanding is absent, or if sympathy is not given as needed? Such is the case of The Grapes of Wrath, where class differences rule over a turbulent and aggressive rivalry. The novel follows the struggling lower class, oppressed by the corrupt upper class, who cannot understand their hardships. This lack of understanding and willingness to sympathize with the lower class boosts tensions and further emphasizes differences between the classes, leading to the primary conflicts of the story. Through the use of juxtaposition and point of view in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck shows that the upper class lacks the empathy to relate to the struggles of the lower class.
Through the use of foreshadowing, the story has suspense to carry out the main message of importance of benevolence to the readers. In the novel, Ethan meets a man by the name of Link Hornsby, who has a bad reputation. He also meets Ike, a cook at the Chow Down diner warns Ethan about hanging out with Link, saying, “You wanna screw up your life hangin’ with the likes a’ Hornsby, you go right ahead.” (Aker, 253) This foreshadows how Ethan’s life was controlled largely by Mr. Hornsby, as he introduced gambling to Ethan and he became addicted to it. By the end of the book, his life was on the
‘..Guys like us that work on ranches are the loneliest guys in the world they got no family they don’t belong no place.’ This is what many felt during the ‘great depression’ in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck gives us the sense that many felt lonely ‘they got no family they don’t belong no place. The main theme of this novel is alienation; the three characters, Curley’s wife, candy, and crooks are all alienated, and felt it by another person at some point. They all have dreams... it’s the American dream... but not all dreams come true...
Although Frome can be held responsible for his moral inactivity, he can be considered a morally inadequate man in his present state. His inadequacy, however, was not a constant in life or a sudden occurrence-- it snowballed from his youth and finally solidified through the ‘smash-up’. His earlier experiences in a university and the joy it brought him was quickly interrupted after a year by his sickly parents. The unfortunate circumstance forces Ethan Frome to move back to the depressing Starkfield he had just escaped. His parents’ illnesses bring along Zenobia, who would be another future, unseen oppression along with Starkfield. For years, Ethan lives in depressing conditions that decline as time goes on. The chance to finally leave them behind, however, comes in Mattie, Zenobia’s cousin and maid. Ethan’s inability to act on this chance of escape finally seals his fate when Mattie is paralyzed and he is critically injured. Although jinxed with unfortunate circumstances, Ethan Frome’s life could have been bettered if one small step or action was taken by him for himself with the intention to create personal joy or pleasure.
In general terms, corruption is the act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle. In politics, corruption is the misuse of public power and image.Whether it is realized or not, no country is wholly free of the disease of corruption, and if it is allowed to develop and become significantly strong, it can obstruct the good processes of governing and deteriorate the fabric of society. It can become a barrier to continual development and make it so that essentially no room remains for justice to succeed. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the destructive force of corruption is clearly exemplified through the abundance of imagery concerning decay, death, disease, sickness, and infection as the play progresses. The first and
In many of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the playwright draws a connection between the moral health of the kingdom and the corruption of the ruler himself. In Hamlet, he explores the extent to which corruption influences characters. By utilising animal and nature imagery, Shakespeare exemplifies how sexual and political vices corrupt characters and ultimately lead to their demise.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet According to American novelist, John Irving, in his work The World According to Garp, is a life-redeeming work in which everybody dies. “Death is the pervading theme of the play.” (Sheys 2016) The play has many examples and imagery of corruption, disease, and decay.
Born 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom, William Shakespeare became one of the uttermost iconic poets, playwrights, and pre-eminent dramatists of his era, and also of all time, bringing great attention to the dramatic arts industry. His works consisted of umpteen comedies and tragedies written in a conventional style with intricate metaphors and rhetorical phrases. Furthermore, several of his characters and plots resemble genuine humans with their wide span of emotions and conflicts among one another. One of his more popular tragedies includes Hamlet. In his 14th to 15th century play, Hamlet, written in 1599 to 1601, the characters in and around the royal palace of Elsinore, Denmark, face ample conflicts, followed by different physical and mental methods of reacting and dealing with their inner and outer consciences. Early on in the play, Marcellus, an officer who first sees a ghost of Hamlet Sr. in the royal palace after his recent death, states “Something rotten in the state of Denmark,” (I, iv, 99) foreshadowing the expanding corruption within Elsinore, starting with selfish greed, evolving into manipulation of people, and resulting in unprincipled revenge.