With Her Oil Lamp on, That Night Review

DEATH—He kindly stopped for me. I was not present at Ruth May’s birth but I have seen it now, because I saw each step of it played out in reverse at the end of her life.” (365). This part is important because this happens right after Ruth May dies and the “He” in the poem which

Each of the main characters in the novel are grieving over the loss of a loved one. As a result, one of the key themes focuses on survival tactics used after suffering a loss. Each character chooses a different way to manage their grieving process.

The idea of death can be, and is an enormously disturbing, unknown issue in which many people can have many different opinions. To some individuals, the process of life can progress painstakingly slow, while for others life moves too fast. In the excerpt We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates, a innocent farm boy named Judd Mulvaney has an eye-opening encounter by a brook near his driveway. During this encounter, Judd faces a chain of feelings and emotions that lead to his change of opinion of the issues of life and death, and change as a character. This emblematic imagery of life and death, as well as jumpy, and retrospective tones benefit the development of Judd as an innocent child as he begins to change into a more conscious and aware adult.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

In the story,”Tall full-leaved trees grew here and there across the lawn.”(Creech 253) When Sal notices this, it’s greatness reveals. She can see the beauty and peace that her mother rests in, so Sal knows she’s at peace. This has importance in order for Sal to move on with her life. The story tells the reader, “I knew by myself, and for myself that she was never coming back…”(Creech 254) When Sal realizes that her mom never will come back, she can accept the fact and move on. The story says,”she isn’t actually gone at all, she’s singing in the trees.” (Creech 254) Sal accepts that she died, but also knows that her mom will connect with her through the trees. Now, Sal can move on with her mother’s spirit. In conclusion, when Sal sees her mother’s grave, she can eventually move on and accept. This setting has importance because she can move on from this trip’s

The ride home was much different than the ride to the hospital, Mrs. Girroir reminisced about all the good and the bad times they shared. She told me how he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and got several Medals of Honor. She told me the story of how they met in Honduras while he was stationed there. She grinned as she explained how he told her father he would marry her before they even spoke to one another. He was a very confident man, very romantic, yet stubborn and sarcastic. I glanced in the rearview mirror at the girls and saw them smiling listening intently to their mothers stories. The mood was no longer melancholy but lighthearted almost mirthful. We attended the funeral, Janice and I. We had become a part of their family, experienced both sorrow and pain alongside them.

Along with not seeing the bigger picture soldiers lost their ordinary lives due to the war and the contrast was so different between pre and post war that it was hard to cope with life for the men fighting in the war. “For Kien, the most attractive, persistent echo of the past is the whisper of ordinary life, even though the sounds of ordinary life have been washed away by the long storms of war. It is the whispers of friends and ordinary people that are the most horrifying.”(63) The strongest emotions occur as the story unfolds and life takes over from childhood fantasies, destroying individuals and their families as a whole society is remade for instance Kien’s sweetheart before the war. Kien abandons his lover and instead spends the next years plodding through the jungle where everything dies. "no jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass, no plants" (26). He had no true friends and he learned not to fear death but rather wish it. When war ends he has a struggle to rebuild that was once loss, he can no longer see the good of things while he slowly goes insane with out love and hope and of course no sweetheart to aid him. A very sad and classical effect of a war that was worthless to its soldiers and people.

Tim O’Brien uses literary devices such as Imagery and repetition to show how conflict affects humanity. It changed the way they think to care for what they have and the time they have with the people they care for. In the book it says “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about special way thar dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountain and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen” (81). It’s telling us that you should care for what you have and the memories and the sorrows.

War takes effect on almost every aspect of a community. It can alter the way we think about fellow people, it can create prejudices or injustices, it can destroy huge amounts of land, culture, and other tangible parts of a community and it can drastically drop the number of people within a community. Timothy Findley makes a point to show his readers the amount of deaths have occurred as one reads the novel. Effect this has is to remind people that war is not simply an event in which many good stories have came out of it, it is a time of tragedy and the author makes a point to highlight the importance of recognizing the number of men and women who have dedicated their lives to defending their country. Thousands of people die in the war and hundreds

Tragedy in the narrator's life (the death of his daughter) sparks him to write a letter to Sonny. It is this tragedy or struggling that brings out the narrator's

“Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood”, is an extremely valuable novel. The novel, written by Richard E. Kim, focuses on a young Korean boy who lives during the Japanese colonization before World War II. Korea itself was under Japanese rule from 1910 until Japan surrendered in August of 1945. The way the Japanese colonized the Koreans was ruthless; not only did they drive fear into their hearts through physical threats, they also struck fear by manipulating their culture, their educational system, and using psychological threats to really put the Koreans under their thumb. The Japanese did not just colonize the Korean people; they began to turn them into another sect of the Japanese race. They took the Korean’s names, their religion, their language, they took their entire culture away and forced them to accept the Japanese way of life in hopes that they would not fight back, and that they would be completely under control in the Japanese rulers. They were successful too, as their reign lasted more than a few decades. “Lost Names: Scenes From a Korean Boyhood”, details that time in Korean history on a very personal and intimate level, and shows how terrifying colonization can be, in regards to the emotional and cultural condemnation by the Japanese people on the Koreans. The quote that is used in the third question prompt, “the real force of colonization comes not through physical coercion, but

Under the Black Umbrella tells the many captivating stories about the 35 years of Japanese occupation in Korea through both world wars. The memories are all from the perspective of Korean men and women who lived through some or all of it. Many of their stories and the history during that time are influenced by several factors, some of which include their location in Korea or surrounding areas and the government’s involvement in recording history. The Japanese were not all awful to the Koreans, since they were humans all the same, but they committed enough atrocities to have a bad reputation with the Koreans. In attempts to unify, North Koreans employed nationalism and ethnocentrism to fuel their way to become a strong nation again. South Koreans did not rally around such extreme ways and did not utilize their northern brethren’s methods of fear for power. Back then and now, globalization is a part of life and it should not be stifled. Nationalistic thinking will bring about more pain and suffering rather than just trying to coexist. Korea faced many hardships with the Japanese occupation. In recovery to their rule, issues arose when it came to accuracy in history, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and the different roles they all took between the north and the south.

However, in this instance the reader see’s the grandfather making progress when he buries all the “things [he] wasn’t able to tell him. Letters” (322.) This displays him attempting to let go of the past. With that being said he is much elder and lived almost all of his life grieving Anna’s death. The author continues to show what grief over death can cause a person to do.

He just uses her body for narrow minded delight and self image satisfaction of a lukewarm kind. " This announcement is so sincerely stacked and could be extremely disquieting yet the way its conveyed, so fat and limit, takes away the enthusiastic connection. The passing too in story B is a dim and awful part but at the same time is advised so gruffly to help you to remember demise being the equalizer. For instance, the writer composes so effortlessly about the passing "Mary gathers all the resting

Death is inevitable to all forms of life. In giving birth to a typical family, Flannery O’Connor immediately sets the tone for their deaths, in the story, A Good Man is Hard To Find. O'Connor’s play on words, symbolism and foreshadowing slowly paves the way for the family’s death.