The Chosen By Chaim Potok

Danny is angry and disappointed in what he has done. He stays in Sofia’s cot all day and digs his nails into his forearm because he is so nervous. “Because all he’s felt like doing for the past five days is hiding out in Sofia’s bedroom, on his cot, digging into the inside of his forearm with his nails to remind him he’s a real person.”(De la Pena, Ch.4). This is a pivotal moment in Danny’s development because he is at his lowest point in the book. He feels like he will never have any friends and his life is ruined. He traps himself in Sofia’s room to try and escape all of life’s problems. However this experience teaches him you can run away from your

What comes to mind when the word 'suffering' is mentioned? It usually brings up images of pain, hardship, and unpleasantness. However, C. S. Lewis brings new meaning to suffering in The Screwtape Letters. In one of the letters, Screwtape writes to Wormwood about the paradoxial use that God makes of our suffering. By the end of Chapter 8, the reader is left to see that suffering itself can be more powerful than times of ease and happiness in drawing someone closer to God.

Suffering is part of the human condition in which one undergoes pain, distress or hardships. When most people suffer from any sort of distress, they experience terrible agony. Depression, at times, is their end result. However, others attempt to escape suffering and become stronger individuals. They begin discovering inner strengths, which allows them to get past suffering rather than becoming weaker. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano and A Narrative of the Captivity by Mary Rowlandson are both narratives written by two individuals in which they are faced with the challenge of overcoming obstacles that refrain them from growing stronger and detaining from the affliction they are met with. These obstacles include of distress, struggles and difficulties.

Suffering. All of us have encountered suffering and many of us wish we never would have to again; however, what many people do not see is that since we have suffering, we have happiness. One can not exist without the other. Without this feeling of suffering or unhappiness, we would not be able to understand happiness or even know it as a pleasant feeling, since we would never have experienced a life of unhappiness. Journalist David Brooks in “What Suffering Does” and Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard in “The Alchemy of Suffering” gave their own input upon the relationship between suffering and happiness. They seem to mention how every person endures suffering, but what is important is not the suffering itself, but the way a person changes or reacts to the suffering. While one may hate suffering, we have to understand that one can not be happy without having suffered. The characterization of emotional suffering as “rewarding” to people fails to account for individuals who have undergone the death of their spouse and have come out of it a changed person. In fact, in the 21st century, pervasive media advertising through television advances western cultural expectations of “perfection”, that in part advance suffering.

We all have been in a bad situation yet very few of us would go as far as to label themselves as suffering. To suffer is to experience or be subjected to something bad or unpleasant. In the cases of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano they both had to endure watching those near them grasped by the cold hands of death. Unlike Equiano, Mary was subjected to a form of suffering that created conflicts within herself concerning her predicament and her god. Equiano on the other hand was placed in isolation with those around him choosing to commit suicide,thus leading him to the edge of depression.

There are many differing ways that people suffer. Some effects can be superior and some can be inferior. In the quote by H. Richard Niebuhr, suffering can make you stronger, have more character, along with respect.

In the Gospel of Mark and in the short story ¨Sonny's Blues¨ by James Baldwin there is a theme of the redemptive role of suffering. In these texts suffering is shown to allow the sufferer to be understood, while questioning if the suffering is worth being understood. In “Sonny’s

In the novel, he mentions how he “wasn’t alone” in his “fear anymore” because of the support of his family (Pyper 109). This idea shows how Danny- with the help of his family- becomes more courageous and hopeful to fight his fear of death, as he does not feel alone in his fear now. Ideally, Danny’s lack of courage causing fear of survival evaporates to make him more courageous/hopeful to survive because of his family’s

Suffering is something everyone has to deal with, but what we become from it changes us.The definition of suffering is the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. When undergoing pain, we might be hurting on the outside and the inside, but in the long run, we can put that suffering to some great use. In A Separate Peace written by John Knowles, some characters experience suffering throughout their lives. The act of suffering caused Phineas to be tough enough to do anything without fear standing in his way. Suffering can make a person stronger because it gives one strength, allows one to control the future, and prepares one for difficult situations.

Suffering is a characteristic that both Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano had in common throughout their lifetimes. Suffering is a powerful and cruel feeling that we have all received but some take their suffering and use it to become a better person or someone who is stronger and wiser. Mary and Olaudah both went through loss, torment, and then had religion/faith to help them during their lives,they reached a point in their lives where to could preserve throughout their lives and become stronger human beings.

Suffering is something that no one wants to go through. There are different types of suffering, emotionally, mentally, and physically, etcetera. In the novel, The Chrysalids, author John Wyndham, demonstrates the way characters suffer, and the characters that cause other characters to suffer. With all of the rules of Waknuk it is hard to fit in with how the government wants you to, look, think, and act. Joseph Strorm, is the ruler of Waknuk and is the one to insistence on the rules and for everyone to follow.

The concept of suffering plays an important role in Christianity, regarding such matters as moral conduct, spiritual advancement and ultimate destiny. Indeed an emphasis on suffering pervades the Gospel of Mark where, it can be argued, we are shown how to "journey through suffering" (Ditzel 2001) in the image of the "Suffering Son of Man" (Mark 8:32), Jesus Christ. Although theologians have suggested that Mark was written to strengthen the resolve of the early Christian community (Halpern 2002, Mayerfeld 2005), the underlying moral is not lost on a modern reader grappling with multifarious challenges regarding faith in the face of suffering. In his article "A Christian Response to Suffering", William Marravee (1987) describes suffering

As human beings everyone suffers but we all suffer differently. Some suffer emotionally, some suffer physically, some suffer mentally. And through suffering and pain we gain different experiences, we either overcome pain and sorrows or we break down waste our lives. Edwidge Danticat present the theme of suffering in each of her stories. In all the stories the characters have to go through pain, but they all over come it in different ways. This is true in real life too. in the children of the sea that characters suffer but the outcome is that, in 1937 the outcome is inner peace, and My outcome is discovering myself.

A very critical question that has been used as a method to form a challenge for Christianity is why is there suffering in the world? Why does God allow it happen if he loves us very much? Firstly we must comprehend that God doesn’t turn a blind eye to suffering due to the fact that it wasn’t God’s intention for suffering to exist. His justification was to give rise to a world that was established by free will To try to answer this, we must realize that there are many interpretations and forms to the term suffering. As a society, we witness the widespread effects of poverty, war and persecution as the main structure of suffering. However, there is a personal level to suffering that contributes to a more distinct interaction with God.

The suffering of man is a very complicated matter that is most likely impossible to understand completely. It is a subject that people have grappled with since the dawn of recorded history. In fact, suffering is evident in every form of art man has created. Suffering is in our paintings, our poetry, our music, our plays, and in anything else that is conceivable. But still, we as a whole still struggle with the idea of suffering. It is my opinion that some individuals may grasp the notion of suffering more than others, but that no one person will ever fully understand suffering in every form. A person may only understand his or her own personal suffering, not suffering as a whole. It is the next step to then say