Perception Of Innocence In 'Games Of Twilight' By Anita Desai

In the short story "The Tiger's Bride" by Angela Carter, the narrator, Beauty, and her father leave St. Petersburg, Russia and head to Tuscany, Italy in the middle of winter. Beauty chose this remote location because it had no casinos for her father was addicted to gambling, but little did she know everyone who settles here must play cards with the Beast. During Beauty’s father card-playing tenure he loses all his money to the Beast, consequently losing his own daughter to a last-hopes bet. Allowing her father’s gambling addiction to take the reins, Beauty remains calm and collected when her father loses her in a bet to the Beast, but as the story progresses there’s an evident transformation from the once innocent Beauty in the beginning of the novel to a loss of innocence at the

Innocence is something that can only be lost once. Within both The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley there are various characters that lose their innocence in very dramatic ways. A character can lose their innocence due to the death of someone else. They can also lose their innocence by just being looked at from a different perspective by others, this can be seen through the characters Bernard and Rachel. ADD ANOTHER TOPIC Someone who has lost their innocence changes their personality and perspective on life, which results in them acting in situations differently than they would before.

In any situation, it is human nature to seek a source of happiness. The children in the village demonstrate this during the communal gathering. They are inclined to “… gather together quietly for a while before they [break] into boisterous play,” (Jackson) before the lottery begins and oftentimes their parents need to “…[call them] four or five times” (Jackson) before their children “[come] reluctantly” (Jackson). They get lost in their play and have a tendency to forget what they are gathering for. The idea of being surrounded by school friends fills them to the brim with joy which leads

In The Catcher in The Rye, by J.D, the main character, Holden, can be seen as a troubled teenager growing up in a less than perfect society. Throughout the novel Holden struggles with the fact that many young and innocent kids will grow up and see the world from a different perspective. He naturally becomes worried for all future generations who will one day grow, as he did, and loose their innocence. The fixation of youth and innocence can be seen in the title of the book, as well as throughout the novel.

A child holds innocence from a young age and does not understand the importance of having compassion. As a child's innocence gradually fade away due to maturity, he or she transforms into a compassionate person. In a coming of age short story, “Marigolds,” Eugenia Collier writes about a series of events where a young girl, named Lizabeth, develops into a compassionate person. Lizabeth narrates these events in a flashback that involve the marigolds of her neighbor, Miss Lottie. Miss Lottie's marigolds were the essence of hope in the midst of the town filled with dust and dirt. The effect of economic struggles that the townspeople go through causes Lizabeth to destroy Miss Lottie's marigolds. Throughout the short story, “Marigolds,” the characterization

Within the novel innocence is progressively lost through the boys. The boys were placed in a situation where they had no other choice but to grow up, and grow up fast. These boys were put in a very traumatic situation and they had to learn on their own and from each other how to survive and almost create a thriving society all on their own. Slowly they learn that their needs to be a leader, but there are no adults to precede the role of authority. Therefore the children resume power and take the role of authority. All these things make the boys lose their innocence and become very violent. No one is completely innocent and everyone has the ability to turn violent, this is demonstrated in William

This shows that overtime hope was lost,though not all had lost hope with the passing of time but once hope was lost either from the beginning or towards the end it lead each and every one of them into a state of mind which made them think and act as their desires will, they thought their savage behaviour was fine because in the end, no one was going to save them. The lost of hope within the boys was one of the reasons the boys were lead to chaos.

In A Separate Peace, John Knowles carries the theme of the inevitable loss of innocence throughout the entire novel. Several characters in the novel sustain both positive and negative changes, resulting from the change of the peaceful summer sessions at Devon to the reality of World War II. While some characters embrace their development through their loss of innocence, others are at war with themselves trying to preserve that innocence.

?The people had done it so many times that they only half-listened to the directions?? The villager?s passiveness towards the lottery shows, not only that they don?t want to be there, but that the lottery is just another task they need to mark off of their to-do lists. In actuality, the lottery is a tuned-way of choosing someone to die, but the villagers are so desensitized to it, that they fancy the lottery as nothing more than an errand that they must complete.

Over time, the severity of inconceivable actions is desensitized to members of the community as the traditions continue to be practiced throughout generations. In “The Lottery”, the story opens with children “selecting the smoothest and roundest stones” (43) in preparation for the stoning, as if it was part of an ordinary routine. At a young age, children tend to learn and mimic the actions of those around them. They listen to voices of authority like Old Man Warner’s as he ridicules the idea of other villages abolishing the lottery, calling them, “Pack of crazy fools” (48), and saying how, “they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves … there’s always been a lottery” (48). Following the influence of the elders, the children fail to question the

When the narrator was six years old, his little brother Doodle was born, but to the disappointment of the narrator (who subconsciously selfishly wants a capable brother to play with), Doodle is invalid and doctors think he will not survive. As he is born, the narrator describes that, “He was born… from the outset, a disappointment… Everybody thought he was going to die” (1). Everybody sees no hope in the “disappointment” of the narrator’s baby brother. The narrator also realizes himself that he will not have a brother that can play mutually with him.

They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone (5)

The above excerpt demonstrates "that one function of the lottery is to change the relationship between community and victim" (Magill 1673). At one instant all of the villagers are equal, but after the person is chosen to die, the rest of the village are predators hunting their prey. This change in feelings portrays a barbaric instinct towards the loser.

Finally, in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility the idea of Innocence is embodied in the figure of Marianne, as we can see in several passages of the text:

His idealized expectations disillusioned him and thus left him feeling great loss. It wasn’t the fact that he couldn’t triumph in his quest to impress the girl who lives in his neighborhood that made him feel this way, however, it was the fact that he had invested so much expectation and hope into this one pursuit that it destroyed his ability to ever look back at things the same way, it destroyed the innocent lens he had. Reality is a hard road to take and once it sets in, it can’t be ignored. To go back to childish beliefs of adventure and magic is only teasing and a waste of time wrapping up in the unreal.