Sorrow

In the personal essay “Modern Friendships,” essayist, editor, and novelist Phillip Lopate reflects on the fluid nature of the definition of friendship. Lopate uses chronology several times within the text to accurately convey on the constantly changing perception of friendship throughout history and throughout the span of his life with comparisons consistent comparisons to romantic and familial relationships. Throughout the text, there is a heavy reliance on both ethos, appealing to the relatively intelligent, intended audience, and pathos, to establish a connection to the audience. To refine the definition of friendship, Lopate uses comparison and contrast between family, romantic relationships, and friendships throughout the text. Paragraphs

Friendship is the strongest relationship two people can have. John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” for example, is about two men who go around California looking for jobs during the Great Depression. The camaraderie between the two main characters, George and Lennie, stands out particularly. Their friendship is similar to that of a parent and a child. George being the parent and taking care of Lennie by keeping him out of trouble; and Lennie being the child, ignorant of the world around him and simple-minded. In the case of John Steinbeck’s classic novella, the friendship of the two men produces risks for both; however, the emotional and physical benefits far outweigh the risks.

Friendship opens our minds to different views and perspectives and change our perceptions. It has the power to change people’s views on life in a positive way. True friends will do anything to keep their friendship alive, no matter the barriers. Potok proves through the friendship of Danny and Reuven that friendship can be achieved no matter the barriers. He proves that friendship is a key value to life through his motif

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, that is a last drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindness there is at last one which makes the heart run over” (Bradbury, 71)

A feeling that is associated with deep sorrow can be considered as grief. Many people have their own ways of dealing with grief. From being strong for the family to breaking down in tears, the main character in Gary Soto’s Father and David from Gary Paulsen's Voyage Of The Frog, both character’s thought and actions reveal aspects of his personality.

It is a challenge for many who have lost loved ones and must learn to overcome their loss by using different coping mechanisms and symbolizations. Sebold shows how coping with grief is heard because humans hold emotional bonds with each other and as a result of The Lovely

In the novel Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews the reader gets a wave of emotions casted over them. It can go from happiness to anger and then take a turn for being sad. When the main character’s mom makes him befriend a girl with cancer, Rachel Kushner, he is not thrilled. Greg Gaines is an introvert who is trying to get through highschool being noticed as little as possible. He really only has one friend, Earl Jackson, who he makes parodies of movies with. Greg soon realizes that Rachel is just the kind of friend he needed in life. Greg was at first reluctant to become friends with her, their friendship grew, and she stayed with him after her death. The theme I found in the story is: In order to make connections with people

When a loved when is gone it feels like a hole in the world. With much grief he says, “Never again will anyone inhabit the world the way he did. Questions I have can never now get answers. The world is emptier. My son is gone. Only a hole remains, Avoid, a gap, never to be filled”(33). This phrase describes his emotions and how he views the world without his son. The author gives advice on what to say to someone who is mourning. He says to never say its Ok because its never okay and death is awful. “ What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation” (34). When some passes away no one really knows what his or her loved ones are feeling because each death is unique and each person is different. The wisest of words don’t even make the pain go away, and all that can be done is lending an ear to listen, a shoulder to lean on.

Salinger and Elie Wiesel both associate the actions in their pieces of literature to sorrow. In the excerpt from The Catcher in the Rye it states, “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about… It’s funny. Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“We might say of friendships that they are a matter not of diversion or of return but of meaning,” a closing comment from an article titled “Friendship in the Age of Economics,” by Todd May. In the article, the author uses Aristotle’s thinking on the three types of friendship to discuss how friendships of today are affected by the constant need for productivity that accompanies the modern lifestyle. In Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, George and Lennie are two friends. As they travel to find work their friendship is tested by people at the ranch and the situation they find themselves in. As opposed to friends, The Scarlet Ibis, James Hurst, is the story of two brothers.

He seems to suggest here that grief is but an illusion, because man is incapable of touching the human soul. Emerson continued with, “Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.” Now, Emerson reveals his inspiration for writing Experience. With the death of his son, Emerson had suffered the fourth major loss in his family, which had been long plagued by tuberculosis. His first wife died of the disease and had claimed the lives of his two beloved brothers. Emerson was no stranger to grief, and the more he tried to psychoanalyze it, the emptier he felt. After sustaining so much loss, one must steel oneself from any further blows.

Throughout his writings Lewis makes examples of the everyday world in order to translate his feelings and experiences of his grief. He compares losing someone to losing a limb; at first there is continuous pain then eventually it will heal, however there will be recurrent pains in the stump for the rest of your life. He continues saying that everything that you do

thing to be sad over, living unhappily is something else.” shows the reader Morries opinion on why

In life there are many changes that can cause a true friendship to go wary such as marriage, divorce, birth of children, new careers, and sickness. However, through each of those events the two must remember to keep the intimacy, the letting down of emotional barriers and the expression of innermost thoughts and feelings, “that which makes friendships thrive must be an enjoyable one” and to “always interact” (Karbo 3). Although psychologists continue to research the formation of friendships the great philosopher Aristotle knew exactly how friendships formed and how the lasted.

The mother's road to finding closure over her son's death is much longer than her husband's. Her feelings throughout the poem are of