Themes In If,The Art Of Resilience?

“If the human race didn’t remember anything it would be perfectly happy" (44). Thus runs one of the early musings of Jack Burden, the protagonist of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Throughout the story, however, as Jack gradually opens his eyes to the realities of his own nature and his world, he realizes that the human race cannot forget the past and survive. Man must not only remember, but also embrace the past, because it teaches him the truth about himself and enables him to face the future.

Knowledge is a powerful thing. Additionally, knowledge can give a person an advantage in many aspects of life. Knowledge can help an individual get a job, it can help one get ahead in a class and it can help an individual understand what happens around them and why. Moreover, the wiser one is the more successful they can be. In the excerpt from the novel Under the Feet of Jesus, Helena Maria Viramontes describes how and why Estrella began to read and what provoked this change in her development. In order to convey Estrella’s development, Viramontes uses literary devices such as selection of detail, figurative language and tone to describe Estrella’s development from being puzzled and vitriolic to being educated and astute.

Knowledge can be the key to freedom or to one’s demise, depending on how one choses to act, but no matter what, gaining knowledge is rarely an easy task. Even for students who have information readily available to them, like Victor Frankenstein at the University of Ingolstadt, are constantly under the arduous task of learning. When learning has to be done by any means necessary or in secret, like Frankenstein’s monster or Fredrick Douglass, the acquisition of knowledge becomes even more daunting and makes the learner even more ardent in their pursuit. Once a person obtains knowledge, they see their surroundings for what they are and become discontent; they realize their potential and take action to change their life, which can be seen through the eyes of Victor Frankenstein, his monster, and Fredrick Douglass.

"But my hope is to write a book that will be useful . . . and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not preserve himself."

Over decades, the research of resilience has developed from understanding individual’s resilience qualities and protective factors, to the process of resilience and the interventions that promote resilience (Richardson, 2002; Wright et al., 2013). Recently, the focus of resilience shift to the neurobiological process because of the development of science and technology (Wright et al., 2013). While these literatures emerging, there are two noteworthy issues. First, the outcome of the studies were mainly emphasized on main-stream population (Ungar, 2006). Second, little attention was given to resilience across cultures (Ungar, 2006; Ungar et al., 2005). Hence, it is important to investigate how resilience is being defined and understand in different cultures; what are the challenges when conducting a cross cultural research; and what are the key elements when implementing intervention in different cultures.

Despite the bitter realities, we always search for the silver lining or light at the end of the tunnel. There's always that one key aspect that keeps one motivated to continue on. The value of Hope is proven in Elie Wiesel's memoir Knight as well as throughout The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy. Although the key to survival is maintaining hope, while simultaneously the delusions can be one's Achilles Heal.

Introducing the aspect of knowledge through the letters, the book shows the dangerous side of knowledge through a journey.

The Foundational Documents of the United States are the basis of American government and culture. The documents are used in to keep order in the government and show the beginning of America as a free country. Between The Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, Marbury vs. Madison, Common Sense, and The Federalists Papers, there is a mixture of themes throughout all of the documents. The authors of all of these essays and documents use their words to portray the themes of Unity, Equality, Freedom, Democracy, and Independence.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates brings many great and powerful messages to the forefront of the reader’s mind. The greatest of which, is the idea of sharing knowledge to ensure that the next generation is more prepared than those that have come before them. Coates, through his collection of letter to his son, passes on valuable knowledge, both of self and the world in which we live, to prepare his son for the world. A world in which his father cannot protect him from. Through sharing this knowledge, this is the best protection Coates can provide. This idea of sharing knowledge and ensuring that the next generation is well equipped to face the troubles this world will present is a fundamental idea, an idea which in my opinion

Fact makes knowledge, but exercise makes brilliance. Just as a dancer must employ extreme effort and time in order to ever acquire the measure of perfection demanded, so must a thinker practice his method in order to truly rise to the culmination of his facility. Therefore, utilizing and stimulating the mind in study proves the brightness of a man, for by deciphering the different puzzles of life, he has made theory into reality. In Chaim Potok’s masterful narrative, The Chosen, he contemplates the genius of man through three different individuals, perspectives, and personalities: the remarkable yet restless mind of Danny, the cold intellect of Reb Saunders, and the astuteness of Reuven. In each character, Potok discusses the joys and also the difficulties of possessing so great a mind, for though it can make the most complex of things simple, it can also make the simplest of things, such as conversation, complex. Notwithstanding, the three persons, Danny, Reb Saunders, and Reuven, each

On a superficial level, Inherit the Wind is an attack on the constraints of religion, but upon closer inspection it communicates individual thought and intellectual growth as being mankind’s greatest miracles. By contrasting an idea with a cathedral, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee draw attention to the sanctity of human thought (Lawrence Lee 59). Thought, despite its fragility, must be protected, for if humanity loses the freedom to think, humanity loses the ability to grow and wallows in the muck of ignorance.

What he seems to be saying in this extraordinary novel is not only that the 1911 revolution has come to a dead end, but also (and more important) that, given man’s nature, Marxist solutions are facing the same blank wall. He proposes an existentialist way out, but his sense of courage is greater than his suggested submission to man’s apparent destiny. (Adams)

Daniel Quinn’s novel Ishmael discusses the aspiration the character Ishmael has toward teaching his student known as the narrator to “save the world”. Ishmael teaches the narrator to understand and form ideas, based on examining the question “why are things are the way they are”? Ishmael 's teaching help the narrator and the reader explore culture and ourselves in a new light, helping the narrator and the reader understand the quote stating "It should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself."(255). In order to interpret the quote the narrator and ourselves first had to understand “why things are the way they are”.

In this essay, I will be comparing the importance of knowledge in terms of power in The Tempest and Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve are the main characters I will focus on in Paradise Lost, and the main character in The Tempest will be Prospero. During the English Renaissance, knowledge was becoming easier to obtain, and the literature became concerned with telling people about the possible unforeseen dangers of certain types of knowledge. In The Tempest and Paradise Lost, knowledge becomes more important than anything else to the main characters of each story. Also, these two literary works help reinforce the idea that the pursuit of knowledge can have devastating effects. Consequently, both stories end with Adam and Eve of Paradise Lost and Prospero of The Tempest being left to deal with the consequences of their actions.

In his parable Before the Law, Franz Kafka suggests that obstacles that one faces in life can either be used to mold one’s success or bring about one’s failure. If one can overcome challenges that they face they grow in a unique type of way, for every individual perceives each situation in a distinct fashion. That unique type of growth is what establishes a person’s character and perception of the world. However if one cannot overcome their obstacles, then they cut of their means for growth and are left uninspired, forgetting any dreams or aspirations. It is through the man’s interaction with the doorkeeper, and his inability to overcome this obstacle, that eventually leads him down the path of complacency and failure.