Literary Symbols Used In Shelter By Harlan Coben

What happens to a person who has no identity at a time when identity can be one’s last hope – their salvation or a mark for death. In his novel Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli invites readers to experience the Holocaust through the eye of a young boy who misunderstands everything except the love of family and the different forms it can take. Misha, an orphan boy is taken in by a young group of Jewish thieves. He is simple minded of his own identity because Misha adopts the identity of the people around him in his life, first as a gypsy, then as a Jew when he follows his friend’s family into the ghetto. Readers are forced to focus on the simple acts of caring that takes place in a time of suffering because Misha is unable to understand what is really going on around him. Hope and selfless acts of love still exists during a time of havoc in the Warsaw ghetto, is shown through the innocent eyes of Misha. By using techniques such as dramatic irony, revealing characters’ emotion, and a unique choice of a narrator, Spinelli successfully makes his readers to feel empathy.

Few movies control and contort the element of symbolism quite like Take Shelter, directed by Jeff Nichols. In short, the movie revolves around the life of Curtis, a middle-aged father who receives dreams of an upcoming, horrendous storm, and obsesses over renovating his shelter, all the while telling no one. It’s a simplistic storyline, but one can take a lot away from the unique styles of storytelling used to describe Curtis’s paranoia to the viewer.

Ray Bradbury, perhaps one of the best-known science fiction, wrote the amazing novel Fahrenheit 451. The novel is about Guy Montag, a ‘fireman’ who produces fires instead of eliminating them in order to burn books (Watt 2). One night while he is walking home from work he meets a young girl who stirs up his thoughts and curiosities like no one has before. She tells him of a world where fireman put out fires instead of starting them and where people read books and think for themselves (Allen 1).

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury is a futuristic novel, taking the reader to a time where books and thinking are outlawed. In a time so dreadful where those who want to better themselves by thinking, and by reading are outlaws as well. Books and ideas are burned, books are burned physically, where as ideas are burned from the mind. Bradbury uses literary devices, such as symbolism, but it is the idea he wants to convey that makes this novel so devastating. Bradbury warns us of what may happen if we stop expressing our ideas, and we let people take away our books, and thoughts. Bradbury notices what has been going on in the world, with regards to censorship, and book burning in Germany, and McCarthyism in America. That is what he is speaking

The fictional novels “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd and “The Chosen” by Chaim Potok are coming of age stories about young protagonists. “The Secret Life of Bees” depicts the life of Lily Owens as she runs away from her abusive father, T. Ray, with her black caregiver, Rosaleen. Lily is seeking a connection to her dead mother while establishing new relationships in a new town called Tiburon, SC. Similarly, ‘The Chosen” portrays the journey of Danny Saunders as he breaks away from the path paved for him while coping with the lack of a father-son relationship. Within both novels, “The Secret Life of Bees” and “The Chosen”, the lack of parental figures in both Lily and Danny’s lives causes both protagonists to seek others to fill in these positions as seen when Lily relies on Rosaleen, the Black Madonna, and the Boatwright sisters and Danny seeks support from Reuven’s family.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about a young girl named Liesel who goes through a series of emotional traumatizing experiences that involves in her losing those she really loves and cares for. An example of this was at the very beginning of the book when her brother dies from a fever and her mother leaves her to be adopted. The main character Liesel goes through a series of positive and negative events that molded her to becoming the character she becomes by the end of the novel. One of whose series of events that is relevant and also contributes towards molding Liesel’s character would be when she becomes an orphan in the beginning of the book, learns how to read, and her reunion with Max.

The novel Shelter by Harlan Coben is a book regarding a boy discovering a mystery that was hidden from him. The protagonist of this book is a kid named Mickey Bolitare. Mickey witnesses his father’s death so he is now living with his uncle Myron unwillingly. His life falls apart, but until he meets Ashley. Ashley is a newbie in school like him, and he soon from feelings for her. Ashley was the reason his life was livable; until she disappears without a trace. He won't let anyone else leave him, he's lost too much already. On his search for Ashley he meets the Bat Lady who tells him his father is in fact still alive. But Mickey watched his father die right in front of him. With this information he breaks into her house and finds nothing. Except for a symbol that he has now seen everywhere. A butterfly. Now his mind is storming with thoughts of if his father really is alive. He continues his search, and he won’t stop until he knows the truth. In the novel, Shelter by Harlan Coben the author uses multiple literary elements such as symbolism, conflict and foreshadowing.

Guy Montag is the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451, his job in the futuristic ( modern ? ) and dour United States is a fireman ; In this dystopian society ( which Montag earlier viewed as Utopian ) a fireman is in charge of burning books. The book begins with Montag briefly stating and describing the pleasure he feels watching books burn. On page one, Montag’s thoughts state “ It was a pleasure to burn.

“Even death has a heart” (Zusak 242). When death comes to mind it is thought of as a state, rather than being a character. In The Book Thief, Death was the narrator; Death explains that dying was not the worst thing that could happen to a person. Death uses symbols to help develop themes. Words have power, war goes further than the battlefield, and sometimes what should be done will cause the most regret are all themes taken from the book.

When a family lives in destitute conditions, they can barely take care of their selves, and when they take care of another person, it gets even harder to take care of everyone. That is exactly what happens when Liesel and her family hides a Jew, Max, in their basement in the book The Book Thief. Liesel’s family already has very few possessions, and when they hide a Jew in their basement, during the Holocaust, they risk losing what they have, each other. After Liesel and her family hide a Jew in their basement, Han’s accordion, paint, and the book The Grave Digger’s Handbook are shown as the three most important objects in The Book Thief.

A Look into Notions of Conformity and Consensus in the Material Abundance of 1950s America

Imagine. Just imagine being scrunched into a bowl where all that could be seen are simply screens that present images of what the people outside of the bowl want you to see. Fahrenheit 451 takes us to an environment where people think they are living their free lives, but really are actors who are given roles but are oblivious to the fact that they are being directed by others. However, what if some were different or maybe, just aware? What if someone decided to leave the stage and say what they want and think what they want?

Harper Lee includes multiples symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird, but the most prevalent includes the “mockingbird” and how it is really a metaphor for Tom Robinson, Tim Johnson, Scout, Boo Radley, Jem’s life. When Atticus tries to say it was Jem who has killed Mr. Ewell, Mr. Tate proves that Boo is the one who stabbed and killed Bob Ewell. However, Tate refuses to press charges against Boo. After this, Scout says it will be like “Killing a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee uses symbolism in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, to convey the cruelty and aggression in a community fighting racism. Also, the use of symbols throughout the book assists the reader in understanding the meaning of the title, To Kill a Mockingbird. One symbol in the novel is “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy…, That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” (103). The symbol, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, means that the innocence of someone has been taken away and that it’s a sin to do such a thing.

At the beginning of the book it started off with a little egg that popped into a caterpillar then the caterpillar eats for a complete week. Towards the end of the book the caterpillar builds himself a cocoon that he remains in for more than two weeks, “then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and… he was a beautiful butterfly.” This is showing the life cycle of a butterfly in a way that the children don’t feel like they are actually learning. The last page of the book shows a beautiful butterfly, this illustration also follows one of Molly Bang’s 10 principles. “The larger an object is in the picture, the stronger it feels,” which actually brings so much excitement to the children.