War and Peace Essay: The Importance of Sonya

Betrayal, one of the most horrible things you could do to anyone your family, a friend anyone. To me it’s one of my all time most hated things a person could do and it’s almost unforgivable. In this book A Separate Peace by John Knowles two boys Phineas and Gene who are best friends at a boarding school in New Hampshire experience some of the worst kinds of Betrayal you could think of. Gene commits a very bad betrayal when he jousts the tree limb they are both standing on ending up with Finny falling and badly breaking his leg. This was no accident because Gene can’t stand the guilt.

Our history books continue to present our country's story in conventional patriotic terms. America being settled by courageous, white colonists who tamed a wilderness and the savages in it. With very few exceptions our society depicts these people who actually first discovered America and without whose help the colonists would not have survived, as immoral, despicable savages who needed to be removed by killing and shipping out of the country into slavery. In her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore tells us there was another side to the story of King Philip’s War. She goes beyond the actual effects

As Carl Jung once stated, “Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious”. To reach a peaceful reconciliation, one must learn to embrace two distinct elements of their personality, the "Persona" and "Shadow." Likewise, in the bildungsroman, A Separate Peace, author John Knowles depicts the common rivalry between young adolescents, and how they struggle to accept their identity and the relationship between their unconscious self. Gene, a Devon High student, becomes best friends with Finny and grows jealous of his ostensibly flawless friend, causing him to make a life-changing decision. His struggles to reach an inner balance between his “Persona” and “Shadow” lead to the ultimate death of Finny. Gene’s transformation involves the changes of his mask and “Shadow”—from guilt and jealousy to pride and tolerance—which results in the later acceptance of the light and dark parts of himself, allowing him to truly reach adulthood and a state of peace.

Moreover, Chekhov’s overall goal of “Anna on the Neck” is not aimed at a concluding idea of what it means to hold power or wealth, but rather to portray what it means to be human by presenting the shift in moral values of Anna. In addition, Chekhov uses distinct images and motifs to establish Anna’s initial position in the beginning of the story as being submissive, powerless, and weak and shift’s this image of Anna to be one of strength, authority, power, and pride, after she became aware of her influence. By Anna not helping her family like she wanted to in the beginning of the story, she now holds a false sense of values since she became the high class superficial woman who did not achieve the goals she wished to accomplish through

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

In their lives a distant and cold character exists. When the war began in Sarajevo the men on the hills cut off the city’s water. Kenan’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Ristovski thrusted her plastic bottles towards him when he opened the door and all she said was “A promise is a promise.” and left him standing at the doorway. Even before the war Mrs. Ristovski had always acted abrasively; knocking on their door early in the morning and complaining about their first born’s crying. Not once has she shown

Historical events can play an important role in a person's life.  In A Separate Peace, the whole atmosphere at the Devon School changed as World War II progressed.  The boys either eagerly awaited the draft, enlisted in the area of war they wanted, or did not want to go at all.  The students at the school created new activities for enjoyment since the customary past times could not be played due to a lack of materials.  When a friend "returns" from the war, the boys at Devon got a real sense of what the war was like.  The boys learned that going to war was not all fun and games like they had anticipated.  The influence World War II had on the characters in A

(C) How was Anja to know that not giving up her only child to a stranger would inadvertently lead to his death? How was any parent, for that matter, expected to make this impossible choice: to give up their child or keep them close by. So goes the cataclysm and morbid oppression of war. When contemplating the virtue of her decision, I drew parallels to the Bible of all places. Specifically, there are similarities between here and the story of Moses. When the Egyptians grew fearful of the Israelites power in further generations, they ordered all the male children be killed. Moses’ mother hid him until she no longer could. Then, God gave her inspiration for a plan to save him.

Sonya: In the novel, Sonya alludes to Jesus Christ and serves as Raskolnikov’s benefactor. According to the Bible, Jesus was God’s son that was sent from heaven to save earth from eternal damnation and acted as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity. Although Jesus was persecuted by his own people, the Jews, Jesus still exhibited his unconditional love and compassion for sinners. Jesus also brings Lazarus back into the world from death. In the novel, Sonya served as a guide for Raskolnikov. At the moment that Raskolnikov revealed to Sonya that he had killed Lizaveta, and Alyona, Sonya demonstrates her support rather than ostracize him. Despite Raskolnikov’s heinous crime, Sonya exhibits “how much of her love was on him, and he felt it heavy and strange and painful to be loved like that” (Dostoevsky 422). Raskolnikov expresses to Sonya how he no longer feels human but rather far superior than one, establishing that societal rules and morals do not apply to him hence justifying his crime. However, Sonya brought

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.

Family is usually a binding force that draws people together and makes people put others before themselves. However In many scenarios, Dostoyevsky has characters make selfish decisions and act without concern for family and demonstrates how the lack of concern for family affects the characters who make these decisions. For example, Marmeladov has the ability to provide for his family, but he continues to drink and take money from his daughter “… here i am, her own blood father, and i took her thirty kopecks to go and get myself drunk.”(Dostoyevsky 20). He feels an immensely bad about his actions but it doesn't stop him from being a leech who hurts his family just so he can drink. by showing how the lack of a sense of family (or acting upon that sense) affects a person, Dostoyevsky is able to comment on the significance of the human universal of family and what it means to an individual. In addition to this, he also explores some of the other side of the universal of family through Raskolnikov’s mother and sister. Raskolnikov’s mother has been sending him money that she borrowed to support her unemployed son while she is on a low budget pension. As well as Dunia, Raskolnikov’s sister, who “ would not sell herself even to escape death. For someone else, though — yes, she would…”(Dostoyevsky 42) as she is marrying herself off to a most likely abusive husband for the wealth and stability it would bring to her family. This demonstrates how

We will begin with an analysation of his family situation. Praskovya, his wife, had been a love constructed from the start of an economic and sociological expectation rather than that of a true courtship. The happiness therefore of the union was derived solely of a necessity to fulfill a desire on the part of others for a “success” of sorts, surely her desire as well. “Ivan Ilyich could have counted on a more illustrious match, but even this one was quite good. He had his salary, and her income, he hoped, would bring in an equal amount. (Tolstoy, 56)” Tolstoy goes on to make several remarks on the benevolent nature of the relationship between he and his wife. The arrival of his children creates no great marker in his life, and proves to be little more than a factor in his ever-lengthening retreat into his life of solitude and work.

88). Treplev sarcastically refers to Trigorin as a "great luminary" and says that Nina melts in his rays. Treplev hopes to show Nina that Trigorin has the power to manipulate not only her, but also his mother Irina. In trying to prove this point to her, he says, "A fine character! you and I nearly quarrel over him, while he's in the drawing-room or garden or somewhere, laughing at us, and - drawing Nina out, trying to make her see what a genius he is" (II, P. 96-7). Both of these conflicts are primary to the play and the development of the characters. These problems are also complicated by Irina's obsession with being the center of attention. Treplev is most often at the receiving end of her need for attention, but she does not neglect the other characters of the play when it comes to her egotism.

War has been a part of human culture since it's birth. It has led to a great many massacres and has shown us the evil that exists within the souls of humanity. Some have even gone as far as saying that war is human nature. To better understand the reasons behind war and how it affects others, I've examined several different societies and cultures so as to better understand the necessity of war and see the cause of their external war attitude. To do so, different variables from two topics (military institutions and external war attitude) were matched up and crossed so as to look into the answers to these questions. The variables were then calculated and through these graphs, I was able to find different societies in which

One of the main themes of War and Peace is the irrational nature of human behaviour. A clear example of this is the scandalous affair between Natasha Rostov and Anatole Kuragin. Natasha Rostov was happily engaged to Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, but suddenly ended the engagement because she fell in love with Anatole within a 3-day span and wished to elope and run away with him. Her cousin Sonya, upon learning of the affair directly from Natasha, commented “Natasha, I can’t believe you, you’re joking. In three days to forget everything, and like this…” (659). To this, Natasha responds “It seems to me as though I have loved him for a hundred years… You can’t understand that” (659). This relates to how irrational impulses are logical to an individual, but seldom to anyone else. To Natasha, following her heart means finding happiness, but her desires also blind her from reality and concrete truth.