The Dice Man

God would not have created humans if they were not meant to make mistakes. Everyone is prone to making mistakes, but they only become valuable when you take a lesson out of them. The main character, Duddy Kravitz, goes through a tough upbringing, in a family that continuously discriminates him. Throughout the story, he makes grave life mistakes which allow him to see the world more clearly. The discriminatory attitude of his family makes him go through a process of self-awareness and an understanding of his identity.

For ten years my parents sheltered me from the truth about my Grandfather’s suicide. The day he died is a blur, but I remember our afternoons together in his garden reading books he brought home from the library he worked at, and evenings eating Chinese food and watching ice skating—two of his favorite things. Finding out he committed suicide left me with myriad questions. As I matured my desire for understanding intensified. Drawn to human behavior and the mechanisms that affect it, I applied to the University of California at Berkeley as a Psychology major. In the summer prior to beginning my studies Anthony killed himself.

Although the circumstances nature thrust at the man were immortaly dangerous, the man’s deficit of imagination and negligence innately led to his death. Psycologically, the man was no match for the treacherous conditions around

Manhood is the defining aspect of a man’s reputation and identity, especially in the life of men who have nothing else left to lose. Toni Morrison illuminates manhood in the manner in which a man upholds or crediblizes his manhood; she enlightens this reality by thoroughly mentioning that manhood is not only credible by the gruesome physical experience a man endures, but their sustainability and mettle. Beloved centers around the life of former slaves, and the traumatic experiences as well as the resiliency they must cope with. In the novel Beloved, Morrison uses Paul D’s strong mindset and horrifying experiences to subconsciously shape his heartening and empathetic

Our Life is a matter of choices. Live well and have faith and it will never go wrong. Our lives can be full of crazy ups and downs that shape our views on how life should be lived. With a similar ideology, author Flannery O’Connor’s depicts her own life struggles using different aspects and details throughout her novels and short stories. O’Connor lived by the basis that life must go on no matter the hardships. In her novels she represented various characters who made wrong choices and due to those choices suffered extreme negative consequences. Despite her struggles, O’Connor made the choice to continue on in her life yet many of her novels contradicted that same idea by having characters in her novels and short stories suffer consequences for making the wrong choices. Because the

According to Marian Erickson, “Most of life is choices, and the rest is pure dumb luck.” Real people’s lives depend on this quote everyday, which leads to the outcome of each problem individuals face. In the passages, characterization of the main personas helps one understand the theme. Conflict and symbolism also help lead to the overall idea that life is not always guaranteed to be full of success. The book The Other Wes Moore, the poem “If,” and the informational text “The Art of Resilience” all share a common theme of how choices and luck contribute to the success of life.

Automatically, the reader knows that serious issues are about to be discussed and that the outcome may not be positive. This novel challenges the material ideology discussed above. It does this by bringing the issues to the forefront and reporting on them in a fictitious yet realistic manner. The reader is not led to believe that the ending will be happy, he is supposed to expect the consider the harsh realities of the world throughout the piece.

It does not matter how many times life knocks someone down, it matters whether or not they recover. As Winston Churchill once announced, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Life may cause numerous troubles, although, overcoming inadequate decisions can correct your fate. The Other Wes Moore, written by Wes Moore, is an exquisite example of how one poor decision does not need to determine one’s fate, and an individual has the power to metamorphose their fate. In addition, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a superior illustration of how confronting one’s mistakes and choosing to rectify them. The Other Wes Moore and The Scarlet Letter both portray the theme rising above challenges with the use of literary devices.

The theme of this novel is to look at the good you do in life and how it carries over after your death. The moral of the book is; "People can make changes in their lives whenever they really want to, even right up to the end."

In today’s world, we have come to see that trial, error, pain, and the striving for living a glamorous life are common; we all know it’s an exhausting task. Everybody seems to “go through the motions” at one point or another; we all seem to have this point in life where everything seems like a black hole that’s going nowhere. In the book, Of Mice and Men, and play Death of a Salesman, we see this is common, among many other similarities. However, no story is ever the same between two people’s lives, and this is also shown in these two works of literature.

“I do not expect any benefit from drinking the poison a little later, except to become ridiculous in my own eyes for clinging to life, and be sparing of it when there is none left” (152). He feels it is a waste of time “clinging on to life.” Instead, one should embrace death.

As a registered emergency physician, he has the credibility to educate young and old minds alike about “drugs, alcohol, and sex.” Evidence of said ethos can be found in statements such as “You’ve got an ER doc who practices in a level I trauma center and who is on the board of directors of a major metropolitan city crime lab standing right in front of you” and “You asked me here because you want to do the right thing; make the right choices.” The language of the text is also very plain and precise in a way that tells the audience what’s really happening without sugar coating it. Profeta repeatedly uses words that directly relate to death so the audience can see that he’s talking about serious subjects and can easily understand the point he’s trying to make. Profeta’s use of diction ties into his syntax as well. Since he was invited to speak at this university by the students he spends most of the time answering their questions. Profeta uses a mix of both short and long sentences due to the fact that the article was based upon his dialogue with the students. He often utilizes rhetorical questions to further emphasize his point and to get the audience thinking. We see this skill being used with inquiries like “They will blame you for their child’s death until the day you die. Are you ready for that?” and “Do you honestly think you would ever know or find out if one of your ‘brothers’ had

Bierce plays a mind game with the reader that explores an impossible reality. Although it is not conceivable to be inside someone's head to experience his or her thoughts, Bierce's narrator does a commendable job of creating a fictional, yet believable example of this impossibility. Bierce's method allows the reader to become deeply intimate with the details of the profound occurrence of Farquhar's death. He creates a

     Perhaps, the character most responsive to death is Jack Gladney. In fact, he is so consumed by his fear of death that his ordinary thought processes are often interrupted by the question: “Who will die first” (DeLillo 15)? In Jack’s mind: “This question comes up from

After further and cumulative study of the story, one may come to the conclusion that the man in the story has totally influenced reality both in his refusal to allow perceptions persuade him from his mission as he set out to it and also in his utter confidence in his own perceptions of his unique and higher judgment maintaining an overly optimistic outset in regards to his own abilities. One particularly dire incident began, “The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death” (London 130). One can see by the word “shocked” that he clearly assumed nothing would go wrong, until it actually is done already.