Midnight's Children Essay

The idea about human to reconcile the uncertainties of the past with a new or present situation. Throughout the year I studied the texts about, novel 1984 by George Orwell, a film Good Will Hunting and Shakespeare's play Hamlet. In these texts because the characters' uncertainty about the past, they won’t succeed in future situations in their lives. I'm referring from the text of how these uncertainties can have an effect for these protagonists throughout the story until they reach tougher situations.

Over 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust, 1.1 million were children and 6 million were Jewish. In the novel titled Night by Elie Wiesel, it tells about a kid name Elie Wiesel and his experience during the Holocaust. This novel will will also explain his thoughts/feelings during this tragic event. During the tragic event, Elie Wiesel lost his mother when the Holocaust started and lost his father at the end of the Holocaust. Three qualities that contributed to Wiesel’s survival was his intelligence, when he hid his left arm, his bravery, when he refused to separate from his father during the selection, and his determination, when he decided to not stop running during the flee.

The various essays comprising Children in Colonial America look at different characteristics of childhood in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Children coming to the American colonies came from many different nations and through these essays, authors analyze children from every range of social class, race, and ability in order to present a broad picture of childhood in these times. While each essay deals with an individual topic pertaining to childhood, they all combine to provide a strong argument that children were extremely valued in society, were not tiny adults, and were active participants in society.

The star-studded romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen’s most recent films which he did both, wrote and directed. It is a film about a man named Gil (Owen Wilson) who travels to Paris with his fiancée’s parents in order to expand his imagination and he ends up embarking on a journey to the 1920s while walking the streets of Paris at night. Not only is this film engaging and witty, but it also manages to provide both, overt and covert examples of postmodernism in film. By analyzing Woody Allen’s 2011film Midnight in Paris, we can identify the presence of many underlying motifs in both the narrative and the characterization of the film when using some of Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard’s concepts on postmodernism.

One of the main themes throughout the book is the title of the book “Night”. There are references from Eliezer about night during the book, which are full of symbolism. The word “night” is used repeatedly, and Eliezer recounts every dusk, night and dawn through the entire book. For instance, Night could be a metaphor for the Holocaust—submerge the family and thousands of Jewish families in the darkness and misery of the concentration camps.

The first night's story in Arabian Nights is that of the Merchant and the Demon. Told by Shahrazad, the story offers a remarkable parallel to her own situation as she faces immanent death. Thus, the story of the Merchant and the Demon is told as a parable within the frame story, presenting a poignant analogy for Shahrazad's own situation. The Merchant and the Demon is a short tale but one filled with themes such as power, guilt, justice, and moral responsibility. Through the clever analogy with her own situation, Shahrazad also explores the theme of creative problem solving in tricky situations. Moreover, the story illustrates the core differences between pre-Islamic and Islamic values in Arabian society. Because the theme of gender roles and norms are not present within the Merchant and the Demon, the story shows how sexism is simply a form of general political and social oppression.

In There Are No Children Here, Kotlowitz describes the experiences of Pharoah and Lafayette to highlight the racist and classist undertones existing within the criminal justice system of Chicago in the late 1980s. This essay will utilize the theory of critical criminology to illustrate the structures of inequality within the criminal justice system and the subsequent marginalization of youth that exists within the Henry Horner community, leading to youth deviance and violent crime. Beginning with a brief outline of the major characteristics of critical theory, the essay will then address the increasing focus on gang involvement as an explanation for inner-city youth crime, using examples from the Disciples and Vice Lord gangs, and how that focus demonstrates the bias and inequality within the criminal justice system. Next, the necessity of the Henry Horner community creating a system of “self-help” will be analyzed, a result of the perceived inadequacy of the criminal justice system in addressing the problems that the community faces. The theory of critical criminology demonstrates how structures of inequality are represented in the criminal justice system: the incessant focus on gangs and inadequacy of the system to provide protection causes the marginalization of youth like Pharoah and Lafayette, reinforcing instances of youth deviance and crime.

There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, tells a story about the family of LaJoe and Paul Rivers. The book focuses on Lafayette and Pharaoh, two of the younger children in the family, and their interactions with each other, the neighborhood, their family, their friends, and the police. Following the family over three years shows the importance of neighborhood factors when it comes to crime. According to Sampson and Groves (1989), social disorganization refers to “the inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls”. Many aspects in the book exemplify how neighborhood factors, social controls, and community factors have impacts on crime. The book exemplifies how neighborhood disadvantage can lead to informal social controls, which in turn produces crime. Due to these factors, social disorganization is the best theory to explain the crime that occurs in There are No Children Here.

     Alex Kotlowitz’s book, There are No Children Here, is a story about two boys, Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers growing in the late 1980’s in Henry Horner, a housing project in Chicago. The boys try to retain their youth while they see constant gang violence, death of close friends, their brother in jail and their dad struggling with a drug addiction.

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black. (Larson

I chose to compare and contrast the two stories of Araby and Barn Burning for several reasons, many of which I will call upon later in the essay, but what predominately interested myself in these specific stories are the that they both touch upon specific tenants of growing up as a boy and the emergence into adulthood. In Araby, it is clear that the boy is entering adulthood as he is aflame with the insatiable desire for affection which takes form as a young girl he is infatuated with. Meanwhile in “Barn Burning”, the age of the boy is younger than the previous but is also riddled with the coming of age paradigm, notably in the awareness of the faults of our parents and the realization that although they may be family, not all people are inherently superior in morality, nor are

The Russian Revolution and the purges of Leninist and Stalinist Russia have spawned a literary output that is as diverse as it is voluminous. Darkness at Noon, a novel detailing the infamous Moscow Show Trials, conducted during the reign of Joseph Stalin is Arthur Koestler’s commentary upon the event that was yet another attempt by Stalin to silence his critics. In the novel, Koestler expounds upon Marxism, and the reason why a movement that had as its aim the “regeneration of mankind, should issue in its enslavement” and how, in spite of its drawbacks, it still held an appeal for intellectuals. It is for this reason that Koestler may have attempted “not to solve but to expose” the shortcomings of this political system and by doing so

Within the eleven chapters that comprise Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour lays a treasure chest of information for anyone interested in Black or African American history, particularly the civil rights movement that took place during the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am a self-professed scholar of African American history and I found an amazing amount of information that I was not aware of. Like most who claim to be Black History experts, I was aware of the roles of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. However,

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." (9)

Let children be children, is not only a popular phrase heard in education, but it is also my motto. Yes, it is true, today’s children are tomorrow’s future; but how we choose to raise our children determines the outcome of our future. Many believe academics should be stressed more in schools, taking away from children’s playtime. I feel that play is what molds a child. Play allows not only a child’s imagination to run freely, but builds and strengthens children’s motor, language, cognitive, and social emotional development skills. I believe that play; along with parental involvement forms a child’s identity. Play is what makes children: tomorrow’s future.