The Chaser' By John Collier

The Road, a post apocalyptic novel,written by Cormac McCarthy, tells the story of a father and son traveling along the cold, barren and ash ridden interstate highways of America. Pushing all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart, they struggle to survive. Faced with despair, suicide and cannibalism, the father and son show a deep loving and caring that keeps them going through unimaginable horrors. Through the setting of a post apocalyptic society, McCarthy demonstrates the psychological effects of isolation and the need to survive and how these effects affect the relationships of the last few people on Earth.

Thesis: In the short stories The Charmer, Love Must Not Be Forgotten, and The Address, one’s past experiences have a profound effect on their development as an individual.

1. “It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.” In this quote the author is referring to the rose bush by the prison as being a symbol of the sweet moral lesson offered by Anne Hutchinson, a woman who preached to the Puritans without the male-dominated permission of the Puritan church. Like Hester Prynne, Anne was punished. She was sent to the prison. No matter how small an action is, the culture of a society can respond in rage, loathing disgust, even fear. It is behavior that is learned and passed on through religion and community. In colonial Puritan society people were socialized to be very strict and religious and to punish anyone who behaved in a way that was considered improper. Any kind of sin had an exaggerated evil in the Puritan’s eyes, especially ones regarding marriage and sex. Hester Prynne and Anne Hutchinson are both character representations of women who stood up for the rights of women to live their own lives in a strict society.

"The Charmer" by Budge Wilson is a short story about a Canadian family that finds misfortune and conflict within their lives. Conflict being the predominant theme which directly affects all the participants in the family. The story is written in third person and narrated from the young girl Winifred's point of view. Budge Wilson uses Zack's smothered childhood, charming personality and irresponsible behaviour to create emotional conflict between members of the family.

Unlike animals, humans are able to observe past the mere monochromatic vision of survival. We have an impeccable ability to desire more than just living to breed, and breeding only to someday perish. Thus, we gradually brush this canvas with the colours of ethics, control, and knowledge. Whether the colours fade or become prominent through time, this canvas becomes our perception of normality and we allow it to justify our actions; favorable or harmful. We, as well as the narrator in the short story The Hunt by Josephine Donovan represent this. However, because of the narrator’s difference in perception, self-indulgence, and greed for power, the story introduces a feeling of infuriation to the reader.

A famous short story, “The Quiet Man,” by Maurice Walsh, tells the tale of the protagonist, Shawn Kelvin, who must come to a resolution both internally and externally throughout the story. Shawn experiences a rollercoaster of up and downs during the story, around the 1950’s in Ireland. Shawn finds the women of his dreams and he marries her, but her brother, Big Liam O’Grady, is the man of the town. Traditionally, dowry is given from the bride’s family to the groom's family. Shawn has no respect from Big Liam O’Grady, or the town. Shawn wants to receive his respect from Big Liam O’Grady and love from Ellen. Shawn is willing to do anything for her, even it comes down to a fight. Shawn fights himself and others, internally and externally, to

The documentary “Merchants of Doubt” directed by Robert Keener describes the unethical practices of manipulating scientific data to market unsafe products. It explains the use of public relations and media to divert the health risk involved in smoking in order to protect the industry. The documentary exposes how companies hire a third party, presented as credible scientific expert, to mislead people about the company’s unsafe products. Those people selling lies to cover for the company’s wrongdoing are called “merchants of doubt”. They create a sense of doubt in the veracity of the scientific data and results collected by the scientist. This strategy of creating doubt and confusion causes delay in government regulation. The documentary shows

Runner by Carl Deuker is a book written to describe the life of a boy named Chance Taylor and his dad. Chance is close to starvation and homelessness. He worries about paying the bills, having enough food to eat, and keeping his home, a small boat named the Tiny Dancer. While out on his usual run around the marina and beach, a man asks him if he would like a job. The man says all he has to do is run. Chance will have to pick up a package along the beach each day. The package will be hidden in the recesses of a rock buried at the foot of a maple tree. He then has to leave it in a locker. The man says the job pays a lot of money. Even though he suspects that he is smuggling drugs, he always completes the job and now has extra money in his pocket to spend at the café

Have you ever been forced to pick between right and wrong? Sometimes we are forced to choose between two hard choices, despite the consequences. In the book “Runner” by Carl Deuker, a boy named Chance is faced with a rough life, where his father drinks and his mother is no longer present. He lives on a boat with his father, in Seattle. Soon he is faced to with a offer to run packages around for men he doesn’t know, but get paid in the process. His small family needs the money, but who knows what is in those packages? He takes the opportunity for the money and goes through many adventures throughout this book, such as meeting a girl named Melissa, who lives the opposite life of his, privileged and nice.

The small city of Brownsville is small in both population and mind. Even though there are individuals who commute morning and night from country to country, there is no unity. Growing up, I had never experienced a “diverse” city. In the city of Brownsville, Hispanics are the majority. As a result, individuals who saw somebody of a different race or ethnicity would make negative and offensive comments towards them. At times, these offensive comments were accidental. Other times, the offensive comments were on purpose and intended to appear humorous to friends. Apart from discriminatory remarks to outsiders, this happened amongst people of my Hispanic community.

When Frances Cornford wrote “The Watch”, she must have been in an unbelievably dark place; the poem is downright depressing. However, regardless of the macabre nature of the poem, it is executed in supreme fashion, and creates a real sense of dread in the reader. Cornford, a granddaughter of Charles Darwin, was not a particularly popular poet. However, in “The Watch”, she manages to convey a powerful message to the reader, and demonstrates her poetic skill in stride. The theme of this intriguing poem appears to simply be ‘Memento mori’, a reminder to the reader that death is inevitable and inescapable. Cornford conveys this message to the reader using an arsenal of literary devices, most notably the mood, tone, symbolism, and epizeuxis.

Violence is defined as a behavior involving physical or mental force intending to hurt, damage, or kill someone. In the words of Zak Ibrahim, peace is defined as the proliferation or the increase in the existence of Justice. But where does love fit in to these conversations? Violence cannot necessarily transform into love, but the presence of it is surely important. Violence involving our most loved ones, helps us find love and compassion in the toughest of situations, and leads us toward paths of peace. In this essay, examples will be drawn from Zak Ibrahim 's keynote presentation, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Beautiful Boy; a film directed by Shawn Ku, and Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.

In On The Run, Alice Goffman focuses on a particular group of young Black men living in a poor neighborhood, struggling to live a “good” and “fair” life. These boys from 6th street are segregated from resources that would be found in more economically advanced neighborhoods. A “resource” that they do run into more than often is over policing in their neighborhood. As they are disproportionately targeted for arrest to fill quotas, this constant behavior and events deemed as a norm (even little children play a game about cops catching and being overly aggressive to Black boys), hinders their process at advancing within American society. Systematic oppression against a minority group slows and puts racial tension progress at a standstill, as they are continued victims of larger forces. What truly works against them once locked up and released, is that they were not given a chance based on race, now it becomes based on race plus their criminal history. People in such situations are left with one option, in order for them to survive and provide for their families, they must do it through illegal activity. Locking people up and returning then into the same environment which had limited resources does nothing to solve larger powers at play. Laws and documents may exist that describe an “equal” and “fair” society, but without action, words seem to hold less value. The Declaration of Independence, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are both documents meant to symbolize

Civilization is the basis of life, driving human interaction in everyday life. The texts, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, depict civilized and uncivilized situations, which reflect on and elaborate characterization. This can be seen explicitly with the creature (Frankenstein) and the boy (The Road). Both novels address the civilized and uncivilized in different approaches, however similarly emphasize the significance of the character’s traits and development. The ways that each character approaches civilized and uncivilized situations and behaviours, relate to the character’s experiences and emotions directly in the case of the creature, contrary to the inverse relationship in the case of the boy. The

The review "The Principle Figure in a Pageant of Massacre" by The Wingchair Critic on Amazon was mainly negative criticism of the book Portrait of a Killer Jack the Ripper Case Closed. The author of the review goes through the book discussing how Cornwell rushed the book to publication due to the lacked organization of her ideas, and the fact that the book itself seemed as though it was poorly edited. The Wingchair Critic even used the title as an example of how the book wasn't even correct in the form of the English grammar, "The awkward title alone suggests Cornwell's hesitations: 'Portrait of a Killer/ Jack the Ripper/ Case Closed.' Why not 'Walter Sickert: Portrait of a Killer' or 'Walter Sickert: Jack the Ripper?' Why the reservation about