“The human capacity for a burden is like branches- far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance,” author Jodi Picoult once said. This quote demonstrates the topic of loss and resilience as the two characters both experience it first hand and have to learn ways to get over it. John Gardener’s “Redemption” and Anton Chekhov's “Misery” both display the main characters trying to find ways to overcome their difficulties, which in this case is the loss of a loved one. Ultimately, one is obsessed with living in the past whereas the other lives in the present which proves that there is more than one way for a person to be resilient.
Both authors use setting and atmosphere to demonstrate the position Jack Hawthorne and Iona Potapov are in. The authors also effectively use these devices to compare how the deaths affect both characters. In “Redemption,” the story starts out with the death of Jack’s brother and goes to show how Jack behaves and how the rest of his family deals with the loss. The author clearly describes what was going on in Jack’s head during the accident. In the text it says, “Even at the last moment he could have prevented his brother’s death by slamming the brakes, but he was unable to think.” The setting of the story initially takes place on a clear, sunny, blue day so one would assume the story was going to have a positive vibe to it. However, the author twists the setting and reveals that Jack killed his brother even when he had the right of mind to
Everyone faced with lots of different challenges such as divorce, death, and financial issues in their lives and stories are a way of coping with certain issues. Scott Russell Sanders’ tackled this issue in this essay “The Most Human Art”, and in Macbeth, by Shakespeare, the characters prove how this theory is inflicted in day to day life. In Scott Russell Sanders’ essay, he proves that the grieving can find safety and support through reading stories. He says that in most stories, there's a happy ending, like in the fairy tale formula which is “Once upon a time”, and “Happily ever after”.
Gail Cadwell once said “I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures” In Richard Wagamese’s novel, Ragged Company, the theme of loss is developed through the main characters’ physical strength to face the challenges of life with without a sense of fear regardless of the risk of disappointment, their emotional willpower to overcome adversity and their influential beliefs that allow them to endure hardships. The physical death of loved ones affect the five best friends’ ability to comprehend their losses. The emotional tragedies that each character develops have an expressive impact these characters’ perception of the world around them. The loss of spiritually influences how each individual deals with their own hardships and struggles. As a direct result of loss, the five main characters are forced to cope with their misfortunes and survive in modern day society.
When disaster strikes, two responses exist: lose hope, or find an inner strength to rise above. “Werner” is an essay where the author, Jo Ann Beard, presents the idea of rediscovering yourself, rebuilding a life after loss, and rising above adversity. Werner, Beard’s main character, finds that the only way to truly move on after a tragedy is to take a leap into what is unfamiliar. After a fire burns down everything Werner has, he is forced to grow and become a new man, leaving his old life behind. Throughout the essay, Beard illustrates a man who faces challenges to his sense of self, and who sequentially must change and become someone new to find who he is again. Beard’s use of the third person, candid diction, and conflict resolution compose an elaborate work that focuses on the concept of becoming a new and better person after a traumatic event.
Discuss how the authors, Craig Silvey and Tim Winton, reveal the central character’s process and understanding of trauma and grief.
During a person's lifetime, he or she will have to suffer from loss. Loss is seen through The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield. Throughout these two texts, loss severely impacts the view of the story. In both The Grapes of Wrath and The Queen of Versailles, loss brings nothing but stress and sadness. The authors of these two texts clearly makes an effort to portray that there is no possible way to avoid this burden.
At some time in life, a person will experience the death of a relative or lose something that was very important to him or her. After that traumatic event, will that person confront his or her pain, or will that person bury it deep within them? Both ways are possible, however, only one is effective in the long term. According to Tim O'Brien, the most effective way to heal after a traumatic experience is to share stories. In Tim’s book, The things they carried, he used the motifs of loneliness, life, and the mood of nostalgia to illustrate the importance of sharing stories during a healing process.
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.
As one of the most frequently used themes, death has been portrayed and understood differently throughout modern history as well as by poets Christina Rossetti and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in “Remember” and the “Cross of Snow.” It appears in literature as the preeminent dilemma, one that is often met by emotions such as grief, hopefulness, depression, and one that can encompass the entire essence of any writing piece. However, despite Rossetti’s “Remember” and Longfellow’s “Cross of Snow” employing death as a universal similarity, the tones, narratives, and syntaxes of the poems help create two entire different images of what the works are about in the readers’ minds.
The journey of coping with a death often takes a year and is a struggle throughout. In Holden’s case, it takes triple the amount of time to recover. Because of Salinger’s use of death as a motif, the definition of the seven stages of grief is emphasized as an extensive process and affects an individual in close to every way possible. The passing of a loved one is
It’s a horrible feeling to lose someone you love. In the story The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner the main character Dill has to learn how to adjust to a new life. He lost his father and is now taking care of his mother, he worked, went to school and is still worrying about his mother. Luckily he had some friends who helped him through it all. It is very hard to lose everything and then have to learn to live without everything you had, but Dill somehow makes it through. In this essay you’ll learn that what happens in other people’s lives may actually affect what happens in yours.
Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.
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.
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.
The grief comes from lost love must be recovered by love. In crow lake, the author Mary Lawson portrays a young successful scholar, 26-year-old Kate Morrison, always is bothered by her anguished past. The innermost struggle not only leads she can’t directly face the problem existing between her and her older brother Matt for years but also becomes an obstacle of the further relationship with Daniel, the men she loves. But all the problems are concealed elaborately before the invitation letter received. While the peaceful life is broken by the invitation coming from Matt’s son, her nephew Simon, Kate suddenly has to face all the problems she doesn’t want to face
Reading and understanding literature is not as easy as it sounds. Being able to dissect each piece of information and connect it to the overall theme of the story takes lots of rereading and critical thinking. Reading the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes lots of critical thinking and understanding the literature in a different point of view than the average reader would. The theme of this particular story quickly came to mind after initially concluding the reading, the author is trying to convey that nobody can escape death and how thoughts in the mind are so substantial in the consciousness that it can take over the reality. The author comes to this theme by incorporating specific literary elements such a symbol, irony,