The Remains Of The Day

The men and women of The Hours view death as an escape from an ordinary lifestyle which lacks anything truly extraordinary or exhilarating. Laura Brown considers death as an alternative to the constraints of her role as a mother and a wife. Both Richard Brown and Virginia Woolf ultimately commit suicide in order to escape their illnesses and their failures to live up to society's expectations. Though Laura does not end her life, she does die symbolically to her family.

He focuses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and re-creating the past. Yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past.

A larger part of this book is written in the perspective of two characters named Steve and Maria. Maria is Steve’s spiritual mentor who is hired to help Steve, a manager in a very successful company, get in touch with who he is and what drives him spiritually to make the decisions he does in his career. In between their conversations there are very deep quotes and rhetoric that provoke thought to stimulate the readers to change their way of thinking. While Steve is very successful he is not fulfilled with his life, he has a void and Maria is attempting to transform what motivates him to be his soul and

Society often fail to understand and see the mental pain that individuals carry throughout their lives. Some people bear its burden, while others suffer greatly because of it, to the point of choosing self-destruction. The narrators from “The Gargoyle” (Davidson) and “Walk to Morning” (Boyden) both experience this pain that ultimately sets them on a course to a deep pit. They survive their near-deaths and later encounter unique life-changing people. As a result, they become better individuals.

It is easy to get caught up in one’s own world when life picks up the pace and everything seems hectic; along the way decisions are made unconsciously to let go of people who were once held dear. It is easy to be torn between what appears to be important and what is trivial. Amidst the mess that is life, various things contend for one’s attention, and what really matters might not be so clear. In “The Last Rung on the Ladder” the guilt that consumes the narrator over his sister’s suicide becomes an essential part of his identity even as he tries to adjust to her loss. In “Sanctuary” Jim Hammer is in the very first stages of realizing he is guilty of his friend’s death, and the responsibility has not yet taken its toll on him. The history and experiences of one’s identity affect the way an individual reacts to guilt, if one has never understood the impact that relationships have upon past and present selves then it is difficult to fully digest the impact of his/her actions.

Have you ever wondered if the ordeals you went through could become a “rite of passage?” These ordeals could be a big event that could change a person’s entire foundation, such as marriage, or it can be something small, like being inspired to cook because of feedback. The novella, “The Body” written by Gordie Lachance, elaborates about the author’s childhood where he and his friends went through an ordeal that is a rite of passage. This ordeal was considered a journey for the boys as they believed in the frame and glory once they found the corpse of Ray Browser, a young boy around the same age as the author and his friends. The journey started out as an easygoing adventure, a playful type that could be considered as an innocent boy running in the park playing tag with his buddies. However, the journey changes into a more “serious business” for the author and his friends have to face many circumstances where it becomes flight-or-fight situations. In the novella, Gordie reveals many insights into the characteristics of his friends and himself

An individual’s legacy, in many ways, is predetermined by the primordial “Fate.” A sort of judge and guide that some people have subscribed to for centuries. This guide develops a certain permutation for an individual’s life which is only influenced by one’s ability to compose judgements and decisions about obstacles which appear everyday. This decision making process is cyclical in that it always leads to another question to answer or problem to solve. One decision may edge the next until it yields to fate, the ultimate philosophical judge. Fate is a permanent path and one is stuck on its course. The same could be said for the Wes Moores’ of the work The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Throughout the work, the Wes Moores’ made complicated

Throughout literature, characters who live transcendentally share similarities. Their descriptions evoke clarity and purity, and their names often symbolize their beliefs. Mindful characters tend to stand out from the crowd, stepping away from the boundaries of society and choosing their own paths. As transcendentalism is difficult to develop alone, most of these characters have some sort of role model, someone to gain a message from. They then go on to spread that message to the people they meet. A transcendental character’s mission is to impact some un-transcendental character by bringing them clarity, and this can be seen in the characters studied this semester. The similar descriptions, messages, and impacts of conscious characters prove

The narrators’ approval is being held hostage by this personal internal conflict with his own beliefs which allow his “suffering” to

As I sat in the desk of my afternoon class, “Intro to Philosophy 1101,” I longed to be outside with my fellow colleagues enjoying the winter air as it turned to spring. Instead of sitting on the grassy lawn, I sat confined behind the jail-resembling cinder block walls of the classroom. My professor’s lesson contradicts the atmosphere of the classroom as she mumbles about, “Existentialism” and how it is “a philosophy emphasizing individual existence, freedom, and choice that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.” (Funk & Wagnalls 1.) At the time, I did not notice a significance to the lesson, but while reading pieces of literature in English, I understand the purpose of existentialism and how apparent it is in written works. Writings such as “Raj Bohemian,” “The Lottery,” and “Good Country People” all show evidence of an attitude of choice. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on the concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice. (Funk & Wagnalls 1.) The use of existentialism shapes the characters’ such as the Narrator in “Raj

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.

His book details many examples of his theory and how it has helped many people improve their life, survive tragedies, as well as documents how it kept him alive throughout three years of physical and mental suffering while imprisoned. He also discusses how to find the meaning in one’s life as well as the tribulations that he and others went through once liberated.

Said also describes another result of exile as an imaginative aspiration for transcendence.  In Said’s eyes much of an exile’s life is filled with the desire to “[create] a new world” (181) and this new world is, “unnatural and its unreality resembles fiction” (181). In this chapter, Said makes a thorough observation of the many aspects that exile has on the lives and mindsets of individuals as well as the outside world.  His comprehensive discussion provides a multilayered insight into the illusory and mutable world of an exile.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day is about the struggles one man, Mr. Stevens, has with relationships with his father, Miss Kenton and his employer, but the struggle he focuses on the most is to be a “great butler.” He pushes himself physically to work as hard as he can, as well as mentally to determine what makes a butler great. Stevens sacrifices all normal human encounters with those around him in order to be an emotionless person. “When one encounters them, one simply knows one is in the presence of greatness” (44). Stevens, through many trials, proves himself to be a “great butler.”

Experiences encompassed in times of struggle can lead to a new transformative perspective of one’s relationship with self and the world. William Shakespeare’s last play “The Tempest” (1610), canvasses loss catalysing rediscovering the importance of life resulting in a greater understanding of how our flaws compromise our humanity. Prospero, the usurped Duke of Milan, shows this to be true, moving from a mindset focused on vengeance to a profound discovery of self. Similarly, in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (1946), fulfillment with discovering how we choose to cope and find meaning/purpose in life through unrelenting struggle is illustrated. The three-part non-fiction told by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, depicts his ordeal inside of concentration camps during the Second World War, elaborating on finding true meaning in life even under the most horrific circumstances. Frankl shares his process of discovery demonstrating his ability to overcome the most overwhelming experience leading to doorway of meaning, purpose and happiness.