Symbolistic Themes In My Mortal Enemy By Willa Cather

“Fine then! But I am better than you in EVERY WAY!” You shout at your former friend, the anger welling up inside of you. “ Don’t even try to act like you could ever be better than me. You never could. So you can stop trying.” As soon as you spit those words out, you finally realize what you’re getting into. “You ARROGANT beast!” Your opponent shouts at you, not hesitantly at all, like the insult was a bitter taste he had to get out of his mouth. Before you know it, your actions are fueled by the burning passion of rage. About five minutes later, you are still punching the air as you are pulled of him, still trying to swing at his head, trying to hit him just once, or maybe even as many times as he hit you. You think about the fight. You don’t want to admit it, but you WERE an arrogant beast, like he said. And look where it got you. Bruised, bloody, and beaten up. Arrogance can lead to violence, and the story, “The Fight”, by Adam Bagdasarian, can very clearly reflect this theme. In the beginning of the story, Adam was cocky and arrogant. All he thought about was how great and tough he was. In the middle of the story, another middle schooler, Mike, challenged him to a fight, and Adam was petrified. At the end of the story, Adam lost the fight and was not as cocky and pride-filled.

An illustration of this is when Helen describes Myra as having a “rotten-sweetish smell as of bad fruit.” Also, when Helen asks what she will become when she is older, she looks very confused and says, “I will help my mother, and work in the shop.” Helen replies to this by saying that she will become an airplane hostess. While Helen’s family does not have less money than Myra’s, she seems to have some issues when she says she is the only student in the classroom who, “carried a lunch pail and ate peanut-butter sandwiches in the high, bare, mustard-colored cloakroom…” She feels she is in danger because it could be somethings that separates her from the better off and popular children in the class. With this considered, if either of them had families with money like a classmate named Gladys Healey, they would not have differences they could bond

I feel that I can't beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it"(316). Her shallow mind in the beginning depicts the typical envious character that is shown in a variety of ways throughout the novel. However, "Our Mutual Friend is also a conversion story with social significance. It deals with class wealth, and social mobility" (Hardy 68). As the novel develops, Ms. Wilfer does also. After developing feelings for Mr. John Harmon in the form of John Rokesmith, she learns to no longer desire wealth, but rather happiness. It is at that point in which she discovers the poison that money holds. It is at that moment when she realizes that wealth means nothing and it brings nothing but trouble in society. Before she begs for wealth and prosperity, but all her complaints soon turn when she realizes the inconvenience that comes with wealth. "O Mr. Rokesmith before you go, if you could but make me poor again! O! Make me poor again, someone I beg and pray, or my heart will break if this goes on!"(583). She is able to see the corruption of the mind of Mr. Boffin when he is overwhelmed with money and abusing the power that is bestowed alongside the wealth.

Sally Thomas family is given an opportunity to make a name for herself by being given social and business opportunities. While the southernmost states have a different outtake on slavery, Sally and her family are treated with much more respect. Sally is able to own her own business as a laundress and comes to be popular in the town for her kindness and fairness.

Since the story uses a certain object, the Jacket, as the meaning of several issues, it primarily focuses on the narrator's poverty-stricken family. First of all, an example of the poverty is demonstrated when the narrator complains that the jacket "was so ugly and big that I knew I'd have to wear it a long time"(paragraph 3). It is clear that his lack of money was a problem in which he

In the article, "Stupid Rich Bastards", the author, Laurel Johnson Black, gives an insight on her life and upbringing in a "poor" family, the effects it had on her, her life goals, and dreams. Black’s article was published in the book This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class in 1995. Throughout the article, Black gives an explanation of the conditions in which she and her family lived in, which include her parents having to take on various jobs such as her father being a plumber, junk man, car salesman and her mother—a cook, school crossing-guard and a McDonald 's counter worker as well. With all these jobs, Black also mentioned that the income was still inadequate. Being that her family 's way of living was not the best, her parents decided that one of their children has to make it or go to college, and Black was the one who was going to be the one to do that. She did this with hopes that she would earn more money, be able to make a better life for her and her family, maneuver along with the "stupid rich bastards", talk like them, learn their ways but not be like them, and explain to her family about the lives of the same "stupid rich bastards", people who had or made more money and had better lives or felt better than others. Along with her telling her story, the main purpose of Black’s story is to bring to our attention that she is trying to “keep the language of the working class in academia” (Black 25).

Often throughout the book she mentions that it is said that "you're paid what you're worth", saying that little pay results in you not being to good of a person. With that label they were looked down on and viewed kind of as untouchables. They had low pay, long hours, no overtime pay, and no benefits which leads to low socio-economic-status a job that no one wants to pursue. She stressed that poverty wasn’t a sustainable condition, it's a state of emergency. Citizens in the lower classes are left to fend for themselves and the ten, eight, or six dollar jobs are all that's there for them. What she would encourage them to do is to demand to be paid what they're worth because in the end they will be better off.

The author uses a seemingly endless cycle of poverty to emphasize the cage in which the characters are trapped. As Lizabeth muses over her childhood, she recalls the daily cycle of how “each morning our mother and father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around the bend, she to her domestic job, he to his daily unsuccessful quest for work.” (1). Every morning began the same way, passed the same way, and ended the same way. Lizabeth feels trapped, forced to go through the same series of events for what seems to be the rest of her life, with the same people, in the same place. When the author pairs this with the “dusty” setting of the town and the time placement of the Great Depression, it creates an effect of hopelessness for the first part of the story. This is only furthered by Lizabeth continually returning to the idea that “Poverty was the cage in which we were all trapped.” (1). Lizabeth opens the story by first giving a description of her hometown as “dusty”, remembering the poverty and hopelessness. She then continues by referring to the cage of not having enough money, and the cycle that it put them through, and ends by alluding to her future being limited to her poverty.

Tom has been controlled by wealth ever since he was born into a rich family. Tom and Daisy’s negligence is what eradicates their morality. Their view of life is absurd which causes their foolish actions. Money is their leverage against society and the world. Tom also continues to show his licentiousness through his affair with Myrtle. When Tom and Myrtle first exchanged looks at the garage, Myrtle “walked through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye” (Fitzgerald 26). Tom then says, “I want to see you. Get on the next train” (Fitzgerald 26). Being already married to Daisy, Tom still decides to have relationships with other women, clearly indicating the his indecency. He acts as if what he is doing is acceptable because his possession of money provides him a sense of self-conceit. The upper class assumes that since they have money, they are able to do anything they want, whether it is ethical or not. Based on the events in East Egg, Fitzgerald is able to explicitly stress how wealth is one of the factors that intensifies moral decay in society.

During the time the novel was written, Carolina was a forty-one year old Brazilian woman who lived in the favelas of São Paulo, Brazil. The living conditions of the favelas are appalling. There is no plumbing and there is one

When a young author from New York City decides to take a trip to the southern city of Savannah, he finds himself falling in love with the town and ends up renting an apartment. He encounters many different characters, including Danny Hansford and Jim Williams, that gives the reader a good look into the aura of Savannah. The main conflict in the book occurs when a murder happens in an old mansion located in the town. The book follows the progression of the trial and the outcome following the court’s decision.

Money plays a huge part in this story. Hester, the mother, is obsessed with having more and more money. She lives the life of a woman with money, never allowing anyone to see past the family's small income, "The mother had a small income, and the father had a

When Carver mentioned “Marta no longer saw just groups of carefree people inside the apartments; at times there were even some businesses where the employees, in black or blue aprons, were sitting at desks in long rows” (Buzzati 2). During her fall, she observed the shift between the wealthy and those who are impoverished. The building as a whole depicted class division where the rich were dominant known at the top of the hierarchy and others working hard placed at the bottom.

Throughout this story the reader is encouraged to pull for the underdog. Mr. Haskins and his family represent a family met with hardship, an underdog, potentially pulling themselves up from the bottom and ascending towards success. This subject matter would be unknown to a middle class, well to do family, and as Dr. doCarmo explains: “Naturalist works often deal with subjects most comfortable middle-class readers wouldn’t consider part of their ordinary lives” (doCarmo). Most middle class readers have never faced losing everything such as livelihood, money, and home. This automatically captivates them in the beginning of the story. Garland holds the attention of the middle class by reminding the reader of this unknown throughout the story: “It was the memory of this homelessness, and the fear of its coming again, that spurred Timothy Haskins and Nettie, his wife, to such ferocious labor

However, when their mother came through the door and told them of a hungry family, the 4 women did not hesitate in giving away their luscious breakfast to those in need. The children delivered the food to the family and “a poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm”(24). The sisters realize what a harsh environment they live in, and because the setting is so pessimistic, they try to share the little wealth they have so that everyone may live long full lives. The setting in which they live, houses many people who have even less wealth than their own family. However, because of this dreadful place, they try and make sure that their community, or their family, is taken care of, even at the expense of their luxuries.