Innocence - Original Writing

Nobody should go through what I have been through. I’m Dora Rivkina. I am 19 years old and am the second out of three girls to be born into a Jewish family. My sister Liesl is three years older than me. I look up to Liesl. She is my role modle. There is no movie star or pop star that can ever top her. My sister Elaine is two years younger than me. Sheis still learning to speak German because my parents tought her how to speak English first. She looks up to liesl also. We act like liesl and try to dress like her. Both of my sisters are really smart and are good at figuring things out.

My little sister Anita was born at the time and having a baby sibling around made me feel like a big kid or a parent. I loved holding her and feeding her with a bottle my mom taught me to do while she worked at a night shift (maturation). My fourth grade year is probably the time I went through the most out of my elementary school years. I found out things were getting hectic between my parents. I would see them fight almost every day about money, cheating, and where did they go in their free time. One night when my mom came home from grocery shopping they were verbally fighting and yelling at each other. I heard it from the living room and I went into the kitchen to see them. All of a sudden, I just saw my dad pushed her into the ground and started beating her. She eventually escaped from his grip and ran into my sister’s room. She called the police and they came and arrested him for assault. I couldn’t do much because I just stood there witnessing in shock. They divorced in October while it was the beginning of my fifth grade year. I started to go through depression since the whole thing happened. I grew bitter, unmotivated for school, and even crueler towards my family and animals. I had terrible grades in my report card and I tend to get embarrassed with my teacher yelling at me. I cried over the smallest things that would happen in class. People started giving me sympathy but then got tired of it because it happened often. Around the winter time my mom started to

D.H Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse Winner and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies view children as easily manipulated figures. D.H. Lawrence’s short story demonstrates how easily children, Paul, can be influenced into believing that money and luck indicate one’s level of happiness. William Golding’s novel tries to show that all children are evil and have savage impulses. A common theme in both of these works is that children create their own downfall and loss of innocence.

Growing up sucks, anybody who is currently a teenager or was understands that and will fully acknowledge it. There is just something about this age group that life changing events occur, whether or not the person is ready or not to experience them. Most of the time, it is something like learning what a curse word means or experiencing the act of sexual intercorse at a young age. But sometimes it can be as serious as losing a loved one, being the victim of sexual assault, or any other traumatic event that just like a punch to the gut, acting is a welcome call to what is about to come. In author J.D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye, it recalls the story by the narration of a

Innocence is what makes a child a child. Innocence is the reason for a joyous childhood for children. However, Innocence can be seized away just instantaneously. Ishmael Beah's Innocence was snatched away when he became a child soldier in the Sierra Leone war. In A long way gone, Beah embodies the loss of Innocence by sharing his inhumane actions.

To Kill A Mockingbird, a novel written by Harper Lee, has many themes in it, including the concept of innocence. This concept is very obvious as the main character, who you are also reading through the eyes of, ranges throughout the book in ages between 6 and 9. Everything described and explained to the reader, is from the perspective of a young girl named Scout, which causes the difficult themes and occurrences in the novel, to be overlooked slightly, as she does not understand the significance to its full extent.

In John Knowles’s novel “A Separate Peace” many characters lose their innocence and must face the realities of the war and the life they face. One such character is Finny, who’s injury and the war eventually lead to his innocence being shattered. Leper’s return from the war leads to Finny’s innocence being severely injured for the first time, as previously he was able to delude himself and say that the war wasn't real. He does this to avoid facing the fact that he would be unable to fight in it, which is shown when he says “I’ll hate it everywhere if I’m not in this war”.

Now there's one thing I haven't mentioned about this girl. This girl just happens to be my younger sister, and we haven't gotten along since pre-school. I became the bully of a big sister to her, and was blamed for most of her misfortunes. She is a member of the family, and I've known her forever.

Growing up is not easy Did you ever go looking for a dead body as a kid? Stephen King’s novella The Body: Fall from Innocence is about the right of passage of four young boys living in Castle Rock in the summer of 1965 and how they become men, their names are Geordie LaChance, Chris Chambers, Teddy DeChamp and Vern Tessio and how they lose their innocence. These four boys decide to go on a journey to find the body of a 12 year old boy named Ray Brower and the challenges they have to overcome that changes they live forever.

After examining a number of examples, it was evident that varieties of literature share a common theme: innocence is lost through experience. This theme is evident through fictional stories, movies, action novels, and articles.

The most important theme in this novel is innocence. Holden demonstrates this theme constantly throughout the novel. Holden wants to be the “the catcher in the rye” and save all the innocent children from losing their innocence and going into adulthood (Catcher). Holden believes in this because he thinks that he has fallen into adulthood too early and his main enemy is the adult world so he does not want kids to fall into the adult world and wants them to stay kids for as long as they can (Catcher). Towards the end of the novel, Holden slightly changes his view on this.

Maturity comes when you stop making excuses and start making changes. In, Stephen King’s “The Body: Fall from Innocence.” Four boys go on an adventure to find a missing boy their age. The protagonist, Gordie had three moments of character growth in the story, the death of his older brother Dennis, their life changing adventure and finding Ray Brower leads to the loss of Gordie innocence, his coming of age.

Everyday people face the hard decisions of what path to take and the consequences that may come after. On a daily basis people make these decisions, those decisions can dictate whether or not you keep your innocence. For some letting go of that innocence is hard and they can not cope with losing it and entering adulthood. Similarly, from the start of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger to the finish, innocence is questioned and tested. Holden is staying in New York trying to find a way to protect his innocence from adulthood that he feels is creeping up on him every so quickly. During his visit to New York Holden is faced with prostitutes, graffiti, and many adults. These factors tried to influence Holden's innocence,

Dean Koontz book Innocence is the book I buried myself into over winter break. This is a 465 page book filled with mystery, suspense, and romance that takes your way of thinking into a whole other world. This book is filled with flashbacks of what happened to the characters and they all seem to build up into a religious twist to the ending. If I had to rate this book 1-4 stars, I would give it a 3.5; I would prefer the ending to be a lot darker than it really was. The religious twist makes the book lose the “Beauty and the Beast” theme.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a book that gave the word “love” many other meanings, such as impossible, meaningless and incomplete. There were many unbearable obstacles that Countess Ellen Olenska, one of the main characters, had to face because of love. She was treated badly by many people and always longed for love but never obtained it. With everyone cursing her, betraying her and hurting her, there was one person who was always there for her. Newland Archer wasn’t only sympathetic towards her; he also began to fall in love with her. The love she always wanted. He was the man who truly cared for her and always helped her make decisions. Out of all the selfish people in New York who