The Power Of The Whiskey Priest

In the nineteenth century, growing industrialization led people to impersonal, greedy, and selfish lives. As a reaction against this situation, romanticism emerged; this artistic movement offered people the place away from the corrupted society. During this era, people favored untamed nature instead of unscrupulous society. Upon a people’s encounter with Romanticism, they enjoyed an enthusiastic burst of feelings. This era is characterized by not only an outpouring of emotions but also themes of imagination, fantasy, emotion, nature, superstition, individuality, mystery and the supernatural. Among them, nature, imagination, and superstition theme were the most beloved theme during this period, particularly demonstrated by give stories of The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth, Nature, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Devil and Tom Walker.

In the Chicana/o culture, religion is predominant, and in most low-income struggling communities, religion is the only hope people have to keep fighting and surviving. Father Boyle was able to enter this space because a) priests are held in high esteem b) he showed consistency in the community. Father Boyle provided love and kinship for many trying to find these common attributes in a gang. For Father Boyle, “gang members” as society has labelled certain populations, these people are just human beings that have been neglected, have experienced rough upbringings, have struggled economically and lastly they have had to assimilate in order to survive.

The first half of the nineteenth century was a time of emergence, change, and uncertainty in the American Southwest. Randolph B. Campbell celebrates this historical time period in his novel, Sam Houston and the American Southwest, as well as the life and times of the southwest’s hero himself, Sam Houston.

One of the most outstanding characteristics of humans is that we have a moral conscience- the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, as well as understand the consequences of actions beforehand. Nonetheless, religion remains important to society because it helps to refine and provide a deeper understanding of humans’ moral responsibility. There are instances where either people ignore religious practices in favor of reason and logic or follow only religious teachings that suit a particular situation. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella that typifies the failure of religion to unify people and provide a common course for understanding life. The story talks about Santiago’s fight against fate and the probability of escaping death that is foretold beforehand. The priest symbolizes religion in the novella and readers observe that his actions are similar to those of ordinary people. Ordinarily, we expect the priest to uphold religious practices and bring people together when society is divided on an issue.

“Religion in ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’.” Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature, 3-Volume Set, Facts On File, 2010.

The novel I chose to read for my summer book critique was called The Whiskey Rebels by an American author, David Liss. The Whiskey Rebels is an American fiction novel inspired by events in the early history of the United States. The setting of where the book took place was after the Revolutionary War and in the late 1700s. The book’s main characters are its two narrators, Joan Maycott and Ethan Saunders who live two separate lives but cross paths in time over the scandal of William Duer. Ethan Saunders was a spy during the Revolution for Colonel George Washington but after being charged with accusations of treason he is living in Philadelphia in disgrace. Joan Maycott and her husband Andrew Maycott who was a Revolutionary war veteran were moved to the west where they were promised land for Mr. Maycotts’ war debt. Soon after receiving land from their landlord they realize that their land is worthless and they won’t profit off of it. Later they make an accomplishment off of their whiskey distilling. After Tindall realizes they are the ones making the new whiskey he takes all of their land including killing Andrew. After the killing of her husband Joan sets out on revenge for William Duer in hopes of stopping his hopes for taking over the banking system of the United States and also Hamilton’s rise of power. Ethan Saunders the disgrace of the war hopes to finally figure out who framed him and his lost love Cynthia Pearson's father Fleet during the Revolutionary War. Throughout

The damnation of man has been a popular subject since the origination of Heaven and Hell; the question that remains yet consistently changes is how? One of the most popular poison of choice as in the recent era is drugs and alcohol, with an emphasis on alcohol. The effects of this specific poison can be heard in the rantings of Billy Sunday, in the Evangelist Condemns the Curse of Alcohol. According to Sunday, the use of alcohol leads to both social and individual engagements, including but not limited to horrors and condemning crimes, misery, inappropriate taxation, loss of hard earned money and corruption just to name a few.

“The moment I understood her hatred, my family had not been personally hurt by Trujillo just as before losing my baby. Jesus had not taken anything away from me. There was the Perozos, not a man left in that family and Martinez Reyna and his wife murdered in their bed and thousands of Haitians murdered at the border. Making the river they say still red. I had heard but not believed. How could our all loving father let us suffer? I looked up challenging him and the two faces merged” (Alvarez 53).

Rios describes different situations and plights that afflict the boys of his study. He did so in his book by organizing the ideas by chapter. The first part examines how the police abuse and accuse the boys in their everyday life. They do not need to be

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Jun Do shows unwavering loyalty to his despots, despite their cruel treatment of him and his awful living conditions. This draws parallels to the poem “Rye Whiskey” by an anonymous author which details the narrator’s “loyalty” and unwavering addiction to “rye whiskey,” even though it has only lead him to his “downfall” (273). Like rye whiskey, Jun Do

The unquiet death of Eli Creekmore is a documentary produced by KCTS in Seattle Washington. The film details the life and tragic death of Eli Creekmore, a three year old boy who was killed by his father on September, 26 1986. On that date, Eli was taken to the hospital emergency room by ambulance and was seen by Dr Tom Robbie. Dr Robbie stated that when Eli arrived in the emergency room he was completely unresponsive and his stomach was extremely distended. Eli was pronounced dead upon arrival, the cause of death was a ruptured bowel.

After being forced to succumb to the destiny of life absent the ranch, John Grady is faced with making a decision that will decide his fate, a decision greatly affected by the Post World War II Texas culture in which he was being raised. John Grady could seize the opportunity that presented itself after the loss of the ranch to start a new life somewhere in Texas. He could try to fight his mother’s decision. However, the stark realization, to John Grady as well as McCarthy’s readers, is that John Grady was “already gone” the minute the ranch was taken away from him (McCarthy 27). The separation of John Grady from his familiar ranch-life was a painful idea, especially during the late 1940’s, when little other but ranching was available to native West Texans. John Grady’s life revolved around the land of “painted ponies” and “wild horses”; a land of “red wind” and “coppering” sun (McCarthy 5). Yet he found himself as a boy in

Religion has had a profound effect on human culture; unfortunately, the trouble with it is faith, which creates skepticism in many individuals. In order to accommodate the issue of faith, religions have regulations, values, and ceremonies, making religion a belief system, hence creating clarity to support faith. Catholicism has become a belief system that feeds its follower with answers; however, these answers are only assumptions. There are no factual answers, and as a result, religious leaders have created an expectation in which religion is supposed to fit; nonetheless, its accuracy is unknown. In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” the values of religion are the center of

Religion also plays an important function in allowing the authors to comment on society and faith’s role in it. For example, both authors seem to be suggesting that our religion is only compatible in society as we know it, that is to say that it is not compatible with other situations. In The Children of Men a major disruption to the working of society, mass infertility, has led to a total destruction of the Christian faith. In Brave New World, an unstoppable surge of machinery and technology has led to the disregard of religious moral and the introduction of a new set of hedonist attitudes, both scenarios being deplored by the reader. This could also be seen as the authors’ asserting that a civilized society desperately needs stable religion and morals, given that the utter breakdown in The Children of Men is arguably as shocking as the superficial worship of machinery and pleasure in Brave New World.

In a postmodern world it is worth contemplating in what we can put our faith. Does culture, religion, or God merit our trust? Or is this a world of mechanical and biological evolutionary processes void of any meaning and purpose? The Sunset Limited, “a novel in dramatic form,” by Cormac McCarthy, is a dialogue between two persons who approach each other from opposite worlds to answer these questions. Black, a born-again believer and ex-con, and White, a nihilistic college professor, attempt to determine whether belief in God is viable in this world and if life is worth living. Despite Black’s efforts to convince him otherwise, White remains a Depressed Self who denies God’s existence, affirms his view of the world as deranged, and leaves to complete his suicide.