Trager's Survival

Suicide can sometimes feel like the only way to pacify the pain. It is as if something is eating away parts of you slowly and intently and the only way to relieve the constant pain, is to die. Tiffany Hunter and Pierre L’errant are two very different characters with both equally unique yet queer personalities. Although Pierre and Tiffany are not the best of friends, their contrasting characteristics somehow complement each other. They both have similarities in their plans of suicide as well as differences that help them make the correct decision on where they want their life to go in future. Although they both made different decisions at the end, they assisted each other to settle on the right choice. Drew Hayden Taylor develops a theme of despondency and isolation from peers and loved ones in the novel “The Night Wanderer.”

Everyday, people are forced to make choices. Some of those choices are fairly easy to make, and others are not. In the short story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor, a man by the name of Tom T. Shiftlet stumbles across a farm where an old woman and her daughter, Lucynell Crater, reside. When the author first introduces the readers to Mr. Shiftlet, he is described as “a tramp and no one to be afraid of” (674). What starts as a man accidentally coming across the woman’s farm, becomes a story that follows Tom through his unrealized quest for love and acceptance. With the help of Ms. Crater and Lucynell, Tom learns that his choices have consequences. In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, O’Connor creates a world in

James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead” depicts characters that all are seemingly alive, yet, on the inside, are very much dead. The main character, Gabriel Conroy, is more concerned with himself and how he is perceived than anyone else. His conceited nature plays a major role in his epiphany at the end of the story. After his wife, Gretta, divulges her childhood to Gabriel and the first young man who ever loved her, Gabriel come to the realization that “he had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that feeling must be love (p. 628). With Gabriel’s sudden epiphany, the issue the readers knew, but he did not, surfaced. Gabriel was dead inside and only cared about himself. Any form of love he ever gave was to himself to boost his own egotistical personality.

In the essay “The Embalming of Mr. Jones,” (1963), Jessica Mitford is describing a procedure of embalming of a corpse. She writes that people pay a ton of money each year, but “not one in ten thousand has any idea of what actually takes place,” and it is extremely hard to find books and any information about this subject. She assumes that it must be a reason for such secrecy, and may be if people knew more about this procedure, they would not want this service after their death.

Zombies have been a pop culture icon for years. Whether it be video games like Call of Duty or making people feel nervous for a potential zombie apocalypse, the zombie has become one of the most recognizable pop culture figures. The rise of zombies as a frightening creature can be related a real-world issue. In this essay I will dispute that zombies have changed over time and that there is a distinct connection between the way zombies are portrayed and the way the world looks at the lower economic class.

Many people define their lives by the relationships within their family. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, or someone’s mother or father. The loss of a family member, especially due to death, creates a radical readjustment to people’s day to day lives and how they see and feel about themselves. Sometimes the process of grief can last over several years and how it is mentally processed and dealt with is different for everyone. “Mud” by Geoffrey Forsyth, shows an insightful view of a grieving man who had already lost his father and grandmother and is now just coming to terms with the loss of his wife two years prior. The entire story is written in first person point of view which allows for the reader to fully engage themselves in the grief and strife of the narrator’s life. Geoffrey’s story “Mud” begins in the home of the narrator where he encounters these dead family members and has to decide if he is ready to move on from his grief and say goodbye or stay behind and be consumed by it.

In today’s society, several individuals have come across a point where they were on the verge of the death. Murder is constantly being thrown across headlines, news reports, and social media throughout America. It has become a disastrous factor throughout many individual’ lives. Viewing families suffer from their lost loved ones, as well as the murder of innocent lives have been tremendously relevant in today’s society. What many individuals fail to understand, is what actually happens during their last seconds on earth. Throughout the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” O’Connor uses a Grandmother to convey to the readers the actually value of goodness an individual tends to gain when confronted with death. Just as revealed in the short story, violence frequently triggers an individual’s actions when presented with death. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses theme, conflict, and religion in order to portray the false acts of goodness projected by the grandmother.

Loss affects every relationship differently. Sometimes it brings people together, and sometimes it tears people apart. The novel “Past the Shallows”, written by Favel Parrett, is an excellent example of this, as it focuses on less vocalised subjects that most people in our society see as taboo. The aspects of society mentioned are points such as child abuse, alcohol addiction, pain, loss, and change, but most obviously the family centred in all this drama and the dysfunctional relationships formed between them. The story follows Miles, Harry, Joe, and their father, living on the south coast of Tasmania, and the struggles in their life. The themes of familial relationships, and loss feature throughout the novel, and will be discussed within this essay.

Amidst all the pain in John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, there is love. This powerful human emotion has survived in the oppressing society of Waknuk. Wyndham portrays love among hardships to remind us that there is always hope for humanity, despite obstacles it may encounter. Through the Wenders’ sacrificial, unresentful devotion to their mutant daughter, through David’s discovery of reassurance and affection in his uncle amidst fear and uncertainty, and through the telepaths’ undying love for one another despite persecution, The Chrysalids shows us that while Tribulation erased many of society’s aspects, it was unable to extinguish the human quality called love.

“Groom Service” and “The Return” are two short stories taken place in a terrible setting with the main character who deals with relationship problems. Both stories have common themes related to acceptance, acknowledgement, and recognition. The protagonist in “Groom Service”, Bernard, had the ability to survive with his hunting skill, but did not dare to seek his own love. He seeks acceptance from Marie and her family. On the contrary, Kamau in the story “The Return” seeks acceptance from a village, but finds acceptances in the change that had taken place. Due to the influence of the internal and external forces created by their family and personalities, protagonists, Bernard and

The archeologist only found a few coffins, and in those coffins were important people for example Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, an honorable gentlemen, councilman, and captain. On page 75, a cultural technique was revealed that they did before they buried someone. The text states that before they are buried their skulls would be sawed open and they would insert materials that would help preserve their bodies. The three main parts of social studies, culture, geography, and history, are shown within the book, enduring the non-fiction story’s

In the novella The Body, author Stephen King makes an attempt to explain a story about losing innocence, only to be replaced by maturity and the corruption that comes with it. To do so, King revolves a story around a group of four boys who go on a life changing journey to find a dead body they heard about through the grape vine. Little did they know that pursuing this journey would eventually change them for the worse. In its entirety, the crux of the novella was to show how the experience of meeting death hands-on will pivot a person’s life and will either lead them onto a slippery slope or mold them in to a man soon to be. More specifically, King reinforces this theme beautifully by using light imagery during the

Next, Through Christopher's understanding of relationships, Haddon unveils the reality of the idealistic thoughts of normality in society. Society thinks a relationship is to mutually love and respect and trust one another. It’s considered “normal” to show affection if you care for someone. Christopher has an inability to express his feelings of love. "And Father said, 'Christopher do you understand that I love you?' And I said 'Yes', because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling the truth,” (87) Despite the normality society has put on relationships, every person has their own opinion on how a relationship works. The normality of relationships is only an ideal standard. Contrary to what most believe as a typical relationship, some don’t express their thoughts and feelings in the same way. Haddon shows his readers that just because there are standards to what a relationship should be like, doesn’t mean everyone has to abide by those standards. The love Christopher's parents have for him is one- sided, they can’t expect him to feel the same way. (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). Normality is a standard and the standard society has on relationships are unattainable considering all people are different.

The opening paragraph of the story describes how peaceful the dead woman looked in her bed before her children could say the final goodbye to their loving mother. Her facial features looked calm, and her long white hair was carefully arranged as though she wanted to leave this world as beautiful and blameless as her life was. At the beginning of the story her character was introduced as a "sweet soul that lived in that body," who managed to raise two successful children alone by "arming them with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise."

In the last three paragraphs of the short story “The Dead” by James Joyce, Gabriel and Gretta Conroy attend a family function which ends in a marital dispute. Gabriel experiences a tense evening arguing with various family members and ends the evening realizing his marriage has been a facade. In “The Dead,” Joyce reveals the universal truth that what creates meaning in life and death is love not only feeling true love, but being loved.