PAPER Topics

... Does Sethe kill her baby girl because she wants to save the baby from slavery or does Sethe end her daughter's life because of a selfish refusal to reenter a life of slavery? It can be said that she is a woman who chooses to love her children and not herself. Sethe kills her baby because her children are the only good and pure part of who she is and must be protected from the cruelty and the "dirtiness" of slavery(Morrison 251). In this respect, her act is that of love for her children. The selfishness of Sethe's act lies in her refusal to accept personal responsibility for her baby's death. Sethe's motivation is divided in the sense that she displays her love by mercifully sparing her ...

... is an ambitious man. He has always wanted to be a rich man, but his dreams have been shot down by his family. No one believes in him. Only he does. This is wny he is the way he is. He is selfish. Always me me me. He lost all the money his family and his mother had intrusted him with. He was always thinking about himself and he lost all his money by giving it to a man who he trusted. But the man ran off with the money. But Walter finally changes. Luckily his mother and saved enough money for a house. But they were going to live in a white neighborhood and the whites did not like that. They offered him a great deal of money not to move there. But Walter, who finally thought ...

... the black race and for years to come. is a book set in the 1930's in a small town called Maycomb located in Alabama. Often as with small towns, the views are extremely conservative. "There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County" remembers Scout (5). Maycomb can be seen as an everybody-knows-everybody kind of town. The majority of the town conforms to the standard norm, which is conservative and reserved for women. While the norm view of blacks in Maycomb is seen as an unequal partnership. The few people who think differently or act differently in Maycomb pay a price for their acti ...

... around it also show his holiness. Light images of the creatures that surround Simon glorify his body, and as light falls on his corpse he is transfigured into an icon of expiation. Also, the water covers Simon in a “coat of pearls” and “creatures” (interpreted to symbolize angels) begin to spread a layer of silver over him. The apotheosis of Simon is complete, as he becomes completely silver. As Simon’s body is carried out to sea, the angels create a halo (phosphorescence) around his head and attend to his wounds. Simon indeed was the purest and most innocent boy on the island; his character a true symbol of religiousness. At the end of the story this becomes very obvious as Go ...

... When the conch calls the group together again, they talk about the need for hunters. A small boy with a mulberry-colored birthmark on his face says he is afraid of a snakelike beast in the woods. Is there really such a beast? The boys can't agree. However, the fear of the beast, of the dark, and of what is unknown about the island is very real and an important part of the story. Ralph convinces everyone that they need a fire for a signal in case a ship passes the island. Starting a fire is impossible until they use Piggy's glasses. Then the boys often abandon the fire to play, finding it hard work keeping the fire going. Jack becomes more and more obsessed with hunting and th ...

... over ruled, allowing the blindness of the boys on what’s really happening- the dominance of evil within themselves, to increase. Golding shows that it doesn’t require much to trigger the beast- the common evil within man. The boys considered most events as games, like the hunt, kill, chant, and dance, whereas in reality these were all key elements to the disintegration of their established society on the island. Order was only ever slightly restored when the boys encountered the naval officer during their manhunt. The games they played mostly to keep their mind off being trapped on an island eventually lead to killings of each other, brutal beatings, dancing like ...

... "did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold."(p.1745) At first when the man started his journey to the camp, he felt certain that he could make it back to camp before dinner. As the trip progressed, the man made mistake after mistake that sealed his fate. The man's first mistake was to step into a pool of water and soak his legs to the knees. This blunder forced the man to build a fire to dry his wet socks and shoes so his feet would not freeze and become frostbitten. When the man began to build a fire he failed to notice that he was doing so under a large, sn ...

... (1529). Simultaneously, Eveline acknowledges that her life, a reflection of self-centered capitalism, is in fact a waste. Eveline admits, "You know it does seem too silly to spend your life filling up rooms with illassorted people who really hate each other" (1530). This moment is of significance; throughout the story Eveline and Mary have had almost identical experiences. Both women have lost the loves of their lives, but it is Mary, the determined socialist, who puts the needs of others before her own. Mary is able to continue on with what is important to her rather than escaping the harsh realities of life by means of suicide. Dos Passos has constructed a shallow illusion of what ...

... for her family. At the end of the book Francie is getting ready for some big occasion and she looks across the lot and sees herself 7 years ago when she was ten and still lugging junk to Carney’s for pennies. She calls out to the girl saying “Hello Francie!” and then the girl gets a defensive and starts telling Francie that she is Florry and that Francie knows it. That confuses you right? Francie calls Florry Francie when Francie knows Florry is really Florry, ugh a mouth full. Francie sees that she was exactly like Florry at that age and she calls Florry Francie because she sees herself, earlier. Within the last two pages of the book the author (Betty Smith) talks about ...

... busy life as his fighting career has taken him to a great many places. He has seen military service in Egypt, Lithuania, Prussia, Russia, Spain, North Africa, and Asia Minor where he "was of [great] value in all eyes (l. 63). Even though he has had a very successful and busy career, he is extremely humble: Chaucer maintains that he is "modest as a maid" (l. 65). Moreover, he has never said a rude thing to anyone in his entire life (cf., ll. 66-7). Clearly, the knight possesses an outstanding character. Chaucer gives to the knight one of the more flattering descriptions in the General Prologue. The knight can do no wrong: he is an outstanding warrior who has fought for th ...