Nicole Hewitt English 102B June 4, 2018 Final Paper Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia depicts a young prince named Rasselas who lives a seemingly happy and gilded life in his Abyssinian birthplace Happy Valley. The Happy Valley is an imaginary place in Africa filled with a diverse range of flowers and numerous pastures with animals peacefully dwelling, that is “wide, fruitful, and supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life” (8). Though this paradise that is confined by mountains and a heavily protected gate, intended to keep those in within. The massive palace stands above a lake divided into different courts all with roofs that “turned into arches of massy stone joined with cement that grew stronger with …show more content…
Contained within this fortification are also secret subterranean passages and unsuspected cavities that enclose treasures. The priceless valuables and secrets are all contained within the enigmatic façade of the palace in which Rasselas has lived all his life. Samuel Johnson infiltrates the depiction of a pastoral utopia by conceptually illustrating it as a prison. Johnson emphasizes these qualities about the fortress to allegorically portray the prison that is contained within the author’s own unconscious mind. The imagery he provides is allegorical of the chronic depression that the author experienced throughout his life and particularly prior to the writing of this novel. Johnson wrote Rasselas following the death of his mother to help pay for her funeral expenses. Johnson injects his pessimistic view of life, and alludes to the whimsical …show more content…
Rasselas feels numbed by his unchanging life, and would rather witness miserable circumstances just so that he could feel something rather than muted emotions. It is the lack of stimulation, not grief that causes Rasselas to be unhappy. Rasselas for the first time takes control of his life and makes an executive decision, setting out on a quest. This primary act on behalf of the main character Rasselas highlights the archetype of a hero’s journey, a fable in which the protagonist learns a lesson by the end. Rasselas initially enters the novel dubious to the role he plays in his own path of life, but eventually his self-determination drives him to exercise his ‘choice of life’. He didn’t have something to strive for, or work towards which left him with no feeling of gratification. There were no obstacles that he had to overcome, which resulted in his self-identity lacking a person reward system. He was given everything he could have ever wanted and more, but it never felt deserved or earned in Happy
The protagonist has been given characteristics such as backwoods cluelessness and inner yearning that he finds difficult to understand and articulate. The story is centered around the theme of helplessness before the hand of fate and individuals restrained efforts to overcome the inability to defend themselves. In
The main theme in this book is that of individual experience, which is written as if the reader was looking through the eyes of the narrator, not knowing the context, but understanding how life is for those who have been through the experience.
The theme of this book is that the human capacity to adapt to and find happiness in the most difficult circumstances. Each character in the novel shows this in their way. For instance, their family is randomly taken from their home and forced to
This novel is a classic example of many people's lives, which includes fear, jealousy, pride and their insecurities to name a few. The transformation of the narrator from before his reincarnation until afterwards is filled with tragedy and grief, but it is through the sacrifice of his own life that he is permanently freed from his jealousy and egotism. His "punishment" or his purgatory seemed to prove how good of a person he was all
Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are
In stories, there is always a pattern that they all have in common. This certain pattern is known as the Hero’s Journey. There are varying descriptions of the Hero’s Journey steps but only the steps that are set by the teacher is used. These steps are the “The Call”, “Allies”, “Preparation”, “The Guardians of the Threshold”, “Crossing the Threshold”, “Road of Trials”, “Saving Experience”, “Transformation”, and ”Sharing the Gift”.This essay is explaining what the Hero’s Journey is in the book Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. The step that is coming up is the Call which is when the hero starts their journey.
Happiness is a person who experience positive emotions, share and received love, someone who is always laughs and has a smile on his face. Not all the people has the pleasure of having those feelings. Can be hard in life finding happiness when people around, are not happy either in life. In the book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer deals about Chris McCandless who had a long life to live but, dies in the wild pursuing his happiness. Christopher Johnson McCandless come from a wealthy family and a brilliant man with perfect grades. He had everything in life, but he was not happy at all so, he decides to leave everything behind and start on a journey. Even though he did not went into the right path to reach his happiness, at the end he died for consuming the wrong seeds to survive in the wild. Jon Krakauer identify a lot with Chris McCandless’s life that he decided to write a book about Chris’s life. Joh Krakauer applies into the book the rhetorical situation and rhetorical appeals.
Homer’s The Odyssey tells the story of young Telemachus with the task of finding his father, Odysseus while also finding himself. As the hero of this journey, Telemachus develops into a noble, brave, and strong man, through complications inflicted by others’ mental endurance. By overcoming these obstacles Telemachus develops into the universally known stereotypical hero. However, the same cannot be said for the heroes of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland. At the end of their journeys, Jewel and Alice become different kinds of heroes; instead of becoming a stereotypical plucky adventurer, they each develop different traits to benefit themselves along their journey.
The “hero’s journey”, coined by Joseph Campbell, is a pattern in the plot structure of literature, myths, and oral tradition in which the hero is consistently faced with similar obstacles and achieves many of the same goals. The first part of the hero’s journey is “The Call.” The hero is usually living a very comfortable and easy life, unaware of the journey ahead. The hero is then faced with a situation or dilemma which eventually causes them to seek change. The hero, at this point, tends to refuse the call to adventure in fear of the unknown. Once the hero has been given the strength to push past the unknown, they have entered the threshold. The hero will experience many challenges and temptations where the hero is tested, eventually reaching “The Abyss,” the most difficult challenge. The hero is then transformed by these trials and returns home to every-day life and begins to contribute to their society. The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist, Janie, experiences the hero’s journey first-hand through overcoming obstacles and transforming herself. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the heroine Janie overcomes many obstacles and is therefore transformed into a self reliant woman.
Duddy’ s character is not often sympathized. However, Richler somehow finds a way to incorporate compassion. Although the reader does not feel that he should be feeling for Duddy, the way Richler writes makes the reader feel heartless. Even when the reader does not want to be happy for Duddy, the written words indicate that a pride for Duddy should be present. For example, even after all the harm Duddy has caused, the last lines in the book still point toward happiness for the character.
Throughout Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo”, Edmond Dantes, also known as the Count of Monte Cristo, learns many lessons about the world, himself, and others around him. These lessons are learned through various adventures and mishaps that Edmond is involved in. He also changes a lot as he learns each thing. These changes and lessons help create many different themes throughout the book. One such theme and thing that Dantes learns as he changes is that happiness is relative, not absolute.
Discouraged posture comes naturally after finding inaccuracy to one’s storytelling. Not only it is distressing and disappointing, but one can also feel their life has shaped differently because their belief has changed as well. In “The Only Journey of his Life”, Georgios Vizyenos amusingly and thrillingly writes a twist of a grandfather’s life, also known as George. The suspense Vizyenos creates starting from the beginning of the story makes the reader draw interest in what will happen to the boy that admires his grandfather’s tales. Because of the boy’s admiration in his grandfather’s tales, his life is brightened and excited to achieve the same type of lifestyle like the one in his grandfather’s stories.
Samuel Johnson wrote Rasselas in only a week and incorporated a lot of his grievance in the story. Although the story is plotted mostly in the happy valley, Rasselas is a very unhappy with his life and seeks to escape. Samuel Johnson seems to have had a disconsolate feeling about most if not all of his characters. He had a disconsolate attitude because he was very poor, he had lost his wife, and he had lost his mother; He conveyed some of those feelings through Rasselas, Imlac, and Nekaya. Johnson showed creativity by expressing his feelings inside a
Crying and laughing, people experience many different emotions during different stages of their life. Sometimes they would find themselves dissatisfied almost every single moment when they assume that the world is not fulfilling their desire, in other words, their expectations on how the world supposes to be. Dan, an ordinary college student from the story Way of the Peaceful Warrior written by Dan Millman, faces the same obstacle as many others do. Although he has lived a pleased and content life, passion suddenly disappears from him. Such depression stops when he meets Socrates, an old man at the gas station, and learns inspirational lessons which connect to the Four Noble Truths from Socrates. The lessons promote great changes in Dan’s
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas is an adventure and historical fiction novel that encompasses forgiveness, power, and vengeance. The story follows the adventure of Edmond Dantès, who dedicated the rest of his life to getting vengeance on the men who crossed him. Critics Justin Kaplan and Bryan Aubrey both explain their views on Dumas’ work, in great detail. Kaplan, in Treasure and Vengeance, speaks of his own life, and connects it with Dumas’ work. Aubrey, in his critical essay, on the other hand analyzes Dumas’ piece strictly based upon Edmond’s morality.