Good Vs. Evil. A Similar Theme Can Be Traced Throughout

The overall message in this poem is a drill sergeant educating young soldiers and preparing them for the harsh reality of war. He is not playing ‘Mr. nice guy’, he is being tough and strict to give the soldiers no easy way out.

Good v. Evil, it’s way more than just a concept, it’s more of a lifelong struggle inside of you. What more could you do when evil is shown all around you? Many of us may see the struggle between good and evil in the people we come across everyday. Flawed individuals may be perceived as good but are bad in the eyes of someone else; it all comes down to how you see it. The exposure to things and memories you make help impact the good in you. In order to further evaluate the argument of how good can come out of evil and good can show up even when it’s not right in front of you, can be shown in both William Golding’s novel Lord of the flies and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. This essay asserts that,

The aftermath o the gas attacks is addressed in the last stanza. The reader is now apart of the poem by the use of the possessive pronoun "you too" that imposes the reader to empathise with the injured victim. The victim is then described by the gruesome alliteration and assonance of "watch the white eyes writhing in his face" that together enhance the vivid sight. The continuing imagery of "gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs" uses onomatopoeia to lead the reader to believe that war is incorrectly glorified. The last lines "My friend, you would not tell with such a high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

‘Weapons Training’ is a monologue about the harsh and dehumanising conditions of the training session for the soldiers. During the poem, Dawe uses a variety of crude words, insults and Australian slang to show the dehumanisation and attitude the soldiers had to endure. Dawe uses both crude words and insult to humiliate both Australian and Vietnamese soldiers. He uses phrases such as “unsightly fat” and “are you queer “to insult Australian soldiers and “little yellows” and “rotten fish sauce breath” to insult the Vietnamese. The slang that Dawe uses is able to show a representation of Australian culture, the slang is “old crown jewels,” “tripe’s” and “copped the bloody lot.” Using these words, the poet is able to show that the culture is strong even during war. All the words that Dawe uses is a way of degrading the soldiers.

“Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.” - Eric Burdon. The theme of good versus evil can be applied to almost every novel but in different aspects. In the novel, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, plays a good and evil side at the same time. This book is in the time period of WWII in Paris, France following a blind girl and an intellectual boy. The girl, Marie-Laure, is our good side of the story, for instance, always wanting to help her father with what she can, listening and knowing what the right thing to do is, and taking action when needed, adding to her blindness to not let that stop her. The German boy we follow, Werner, he is wanting to help others as well, but not for the right reasons, he lets the evil, in this case, the Nazis, take control of him and use him for his brain.

The two stories both pit the idea of good against evil to explain the contrasting mechanisms of

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

The poem describes the life of a man during the Vietnam War, a conflict involving the United States and local Vietnamese who supported a communist regime, and how unexplainable sporadic events saved his life. He gives thanks to an unknown force that saves his life multiple times throughout his tour in Vietnam because the instances are what some people consider luck and others and act of a higher being or deity. Throughout the poem he expresses his gratitude towards the entity that watches over him but later he questions the existence of a god because why would one allow there to be a war in the first place and then send

Good versus Evil is an important concept. Evil sometimes overcomes our good but never exceeds good. The difference between evil and good is that good is an ability to have empathy and compassion towards other people. Evil is people who are selfish, self-absorbed and don’t have empathy towards others. Literature plays a vital role in developing concepts of good and evil and effectively portrays the morals of its time period. In the novels Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the authors explore the human nature of good and evil in men from different perspectives of Dracula, Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.

The importance of the theme of good and evil is an important part of the story or in this case an epic poem. The hero is facing a big threat and needs to save the world. In this case it would be Beowulf vs. Grendel."I had a fixed purpose when I put to sea. As I sat in the boat with my band of men, I meant to perform to the uttermost what your people wanted or perish in the attempt,in

The poem was written to show that war is a waste of human life as the soldier knows he will die one day as well as the men around him, just some quicker than others. This can be evident in stanza four of the poem: “I know I’ll join them somewhere, one day.” The language used is more casual than formative, this is effective as it shows the personal feelings and thoughts of the soldier during the time

Although Duffy narrows into the rape at first with a subtle manor by saying “One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt.” The enjambment between ‘loosened’ and ‘belt’ draws the attention to the horrific fact that this woman is actually about to be raped. Duffy goes about it in a very subtle way, but the graphic description we get next is enough to make anyone feel the sheer impact of what has just occurred. The horror of what is happening to the poor innocent Jew continues as Duffy says “My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear” I believe this is one of the lines in the poem which has most impact toward the reader. The long vowel sounds and the graphic imagery of the event is etched into your mind. The single word ‘gape’ mirrors the word rape which leaves the horrific image in the readers head of what is happening to the Jewish girl and it makes you empathise with her situation. “I could see a child” the soldiers had no morals, the meaning of right and wrong had been torn away from the soldiers and acts of brutality were happening to women and children. “I shot her in the eye” Duffy says this so carelessly within the poem to highlight just how carelessly the soldiers shot the innocent child in the eye. In addition links with the clear horrific imagery Duffy is using whilst building up toward the main event of the poem which is the murdering of the persona. The unashamed soldiers continue their horrific acts and take no notice of

In this passage O’brien demonstrates his own character traits. As a writer, he has a strong ability to understand what others are feeling and sympathize. When he kills the young soldier, he creates a story around him, imaging the soldier as having similar struggles to his own. He deeply regrets the soldier's death because he feels that neither of them really wanted to be fighting in this war and relates his own life story to the fictional one he creates for the soldier.

Was he happy?”. He follows this up with a satirical answer, “The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard”. This is a joke on the state. Auden is showing that the state knew nothing about this man. All they know is that he did not complain. Auden is showing that modern life is all about just going through the motions and conformity. People can be heroes if they just follow the mold that the government has set forth. This is what Auden is upset about. This man that just went along with everything, he followed and conformed to what the state desired. He was not free; he was “normal in every way”. The only way that the state can judge this man is by statistics, they have no idea if he was happy or believed in what he was doing. They know that he was very normal, he was conventional. The poem satirizes how the government is using statistics to judge weather someone is a hero or not. Everything he did was morally acceptable, and that is why he is a hero.

Beowulf is a great example of the theme of good versus evil because Beowulf was a hero and a great leader who came across many battles against evil. Beowulf’s journey starts out when he is brought to King Hrothgar’s hall. An evil monster by the name of Grendel had been terrorizing his hall and Beowulf went to offer his aid. Not only did Beowulf come, but he brought some of his most loyal companions to accompany him on the journey. Upon arriving he and his soldiers were taken to see King Hrothgar who gladly accepted his help. Beowulf had great faith in God. To battle Grendel, he decided that he was not going to use any weapons or armor and he believed that God would grant victory to whoever deserved it. “And may the Divine Lord / in His wisdom grant the glory of victory / to whichever side He