Of Friendship and Betrayal

Patricia Bray uses several different writing techniques to convey a mood of suspense in the story The First Betrayal. She uses diction or other word choices in order to create the mood. She also uses imagery to see inside of the story. Lastly, Bray uses appropriate details to help create the mood. By using these techniques she creates that darkening mood.

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

Individuals are not born with the conception of vicious intentions. They are simply taught that the concept of betrayal is acceptable throughout the course of their lifetime. Many novels, movies, and tv shows focus on the concept of betrayal because it adds depth and drama to the plot. William Faulkner manipulates this idea in his fictional novel As I Lay Dying by using different perspectives of characters to display acts of betrayal and the outcomes that they develop. Dewey Dell, the daughter of Anse and Addie Bundren, double crosses multiple people throughout the novel, including her own father and brothers Darl and Vardaman. Over the duration of the novel, characters tend to utilize betrayal to promote oneself

Not only does the novel use the Party’s intolerance of betrayal to its ideologies as a method to facilitate the feeling of alienation and loneliness, but also that of the individual characters’ betrayal of one another. There are several examples of this throughout the novel. Some of these examples are when Charrington betrays Winston and Julia, when Parsons is betrayed by his children, when Winston and Julia betray one another, and when Winston finally betrays himself. George Orwell used these examples to demonstrate how the party was able to sever any type of loyalties between people and even one’s self. This betrayal only perpetuates the fear of relationships causing people to welcome isolation.

Having knocked at door of the youth’s room, the girl was waiting for a response for quite a long time and eventually it sounded, when Timothy opened the door slowly, standing with a towel wrapped around his waist, and was mopping his wet head with another towel. His hair was still not dry after a shower, and he looked awesome. The young man’s belly was flat and muscled and Veronica noticed a scar which apparently remained after the rally just below his

“He was always a good friend of mind. He would always be there to talk to. He was someone you could have a deep conversation with,” she said.

Lennie and George, the inseparable pair, are always travelling together. Some people living in 1930’s California find this fact a little bit odd, but to George and Lennie, it is second nature. In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the traditional views of friendship are challenged when the reader meets the main characters, one of whom is suffering from a disability that prohibits him from being able to learn and comprehend basic concepts such as remembering facts or following directions. The other friend, George Milton, grows increasingly frustrated with having to deal with the disability, and continually complains about it; regardless of that, Lennie Small and his lifelong friend George

She put her lunch tray on the table, plopped her backpack on the floor, and sat down across from me. She started to eat the mac and cheese on her plate (51).” When Auggie was hurt he clung to the only people he knew were true friends to him. He is lucky to have Summer, having a Summer in high school would have meant everything to me, as it does to Auggie. Summer saw Auggie for who he truly was, she did not see just his difference she saw him. She saw how smart he was, how nice he was to her. She saw his humor and his pain, she just wanted to be the best person she could be for him and that was a friend. A friend is something you should never take for granted. Someone to lean on, to confess to, and to be silly with. I never had friends like that. My friends talked behind my back to my sister about me, telling her how annoying I was or they couldn’t understand why I thought the way I did. They told my sister not to let me go to a certain college so they didn’t have to “take care” of me for four more years. I didn’t have friends in high school, I had acquaintances, because I was different. The people in my life never even said bye to me when I left for college that is when I started to truly see how I was treated. It took me until I went away to college to find someone like Summer. To find someone who would constantly be there for me whenever I need them and to laugh

In “Recitatif,” a short story by Toni Morrison, Twyla and Roberta have their ups and downs. First meeting in a shelter where they were both dropped off, the two develop a friendship. As they grow older, the two will occasionally run into each other, sometimes things would go well and other times they would not. And almost every time they do meet up, there is something mentioned about Maggie. No matter how upsetting the encounter was with Roberta, Twyla was always able to hold her ground. This goes to show that Twyla is independent, clever, and stubborn which made her a stronger person.

“I want to live.” She said. She lifted her feet off the small coffee table and set them gently on the floor as she continued to look through me, too interested on the inner workings of her own mind.

According to the BTT (Betrayal Trauma Theory), a sexual or domestic abuse victim can exhibit a deeper trauma if the betrayal originates from a person the victim shared a close relationship with. This comes to show deception from a close individual will have a greater impact than hate from a foe. There are multiple components that come into play when explaining the reasons why an injustice from a friend can cause such distress. There are two reasons that tend to stand out the most, which could possibly be the most influential.

How would someone feel if they have known someone their entire life and all of a sudden they turn their back on them? Tally Youngblood managed to hurt Shay, Corey, and Paris’s feelings in the book, Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. Tally struggles to decide what to do when faced with difficult decisions and this causes her to have a weaker relationship with her friends. Being betrayed is what many characters experience throughout Uglies.

“Maybe I just want to move on from it?” she said, looking around herself meticulously. The silence was charged as a product of Danny’s annoyance.

Disillusioned by the betrayal of the Brotherhood, the narrator unmask every authority figure he encountered in his life. “It’s a risk which we all must take. All of us must sacrifice for the whole… Discipline not machinery” (501). He now discovers that everyone that influenced him were suffocating individuality, and reducing people to mere machinery. “Brother you were not hired to think… you were hired to talk” (470). Despite being taken advantage of, the narrator breaks away from himself and becomes a more assertive person. He possess a mind of his own, defends his fellow brothers and becomes a subject in subject. He contradicts the ideology of the Brotherhood in his speeches and stood his ground when he was talking to its leader, Brother

Some people go to the theater for the story. Others go for the actors. In the case of the 2013 Broadway production of "Betrayal" I, along with countless of other individuals, are guilty of the latter. Having not seen the play prior to the performance, I was intrigued knowing that Daniel Craig and Rachel Weiz, who are married in real life, were to play an on-stage married couple. Such a casting decision does wonders for publicity, but now having read the text, I question if it does any justice for the play and how it affects the way that the audience views Emma and Robert's relationship. In what Ben Brantley of the New York Times calls a "sexed-up" version of Pinter's play, the 2013 Broadway revival reveled in presenting alternative views of the text which ultimately left little room for personal interpretation.