'Holden's quest is an impossible one; it is a quest for the preservation of innocence in a world of phoniness and cruelty'. By close examination of appropriate episodes in the novel, discuss how far you would agree with this statement.
'Holden's quest is an impossible one; it is a quest for the preservation of innocence in a world of phoniness and cruelty'. By close examination of appropriate episodes in the novel, discuss how far you would agree with this statement. On reading 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D Salinger we discover Holden Caulfield's quest to preserve innocence in the world of phoniness and cruelty that surrounds him. However, the various people, places and events that we come across as the story unfolds lead us to doubt the possibility of such a quest. The novel takes the form of a retrospective narrative as Holden, the seventeen year old narrator and protagonist, relates to us from a kind of institution the "madman stuff" that happened to him the previous December. It charts Holden's journey other three significant days in his life, from the elite boarding school Pencey Prep to the urban wilderness of New York City as he resists entry to the adult world which he views as a cold, cruel and corrupt place. His overriding belief is that this world poses a major threat to the purity and virtue of childhood innocence. I will now explore the many ways in which Holden attempts to protect this innocence and evaluate the extent to which he succeeds in his quest. In order to better understand the innocence-threatening world presented to us in the novel, we must first consider its various contextual
How do Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter S thompson portray the villain in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' and 'The Great Gatsby'
How Do Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter S. Thompson portray the villain in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' and 'the Great Gatsby'? In The Great Gatsby and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter S. Thompson use a villain as contrast to represent the ugly side of 'the American Dream'. The two novels are set in different time periods and so the severity of each character's actions and the effect they have differ in relation to the environment they are in. However in both there is a consistent theme of greed and self indulgence which is portrayed as a predominant common trait in the villains. The comparison between these two characters arises in the extent to which they exploit wealth and their surroundings to distort the freedom aspired to in the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby it can be considered that the villain is Tom Buchanan. He is the embodiment of greed, selfishness and self indulgence and represented as expressing traits characteristic of what would be considered a villain during the time Gatsby was written. To a modern day reader Tom can be regarded as racist when he makes comments such as "there are great things happening in Germany at the moment". This adds to his villainous portrayal. Similarly to Dr Gonzo, Tom is in a powerful position amongst his fellow characters and abuses this status to manipulate his peers as a way of getting what he
HOW DOES FITZGERALD TELL THE STORY IN CHAPTER 1 OF THE GREAT GATSBY?
"HOW DOES FITZGERALD TELL THE STORY IN CHAPTER 1 OF 'THE GREAT GATSBY'?" The opening chapter of any novel is fundamental in setting the tone for that which follows it: Fitzgerald therefore ensures that the first chapter of the 'The Great Gatsby' firmly imprints certain key themes into the mind of the reader, using a variety of devices to do so. The very first thing that Fitzgerald makes clear to the reader is the perspective from which the novel will be presented. From the first sentence, it is plain that there is a first person narrator, meaning that the narration will opinionated and cannot be taken as fact. The narrator is a man called Nick Carraway, and the first thing the reader learns about him is something which his father told him when he was younger, which he has been "turning over in (his) mind ever since" (i.e. something essential to our understanding of his views and actions: a core part of his psyche). This turns out be his father telling him that "all the people in the world haven't had the advantages that (he has) had". As a consequence of this advice, Nick tells is, he has always been "inclined to reserve all judgements", showing the reader that he will not tend to present his views on a person before he has had a chance to learn more about them. This appears to make him an ideal narrator for a story, because all of his views will be given after
Plot-Construction of Pride and Prejudice
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Discuss the view that in "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Catcher in the Rye" Holden and Ruby can be regarded as unreliable narrators
Julia Christie Coursework Discuss the view that in "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Catcher in the Rye" Holden and Ruby can be regarded as unreliable narrators ---------------------------------- In both "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" and "Catcher in the Rye" there are obvious signs that Holden and Ruby are troubled and unreliable characters. The informal conversational tone that Holden uses is meant to be spontaneous and unrehearsed; so instead of getting a focused autobiography, we get a scanty account of a few days that often trail into other stories that are what we use to draw a picture of Holden. Holden states his intentions from the beginning. He has no intentions of telling his 'whole goddam autobiography or anything' and states clearly that he doesn't want to write 'all that David Copperfield kind of crap'. This also suggests that Holden has no concern with what has happened previously, which we later see is not the case. "Catcher in the Rye" is only spread over a few days unlike "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" which can be seen as more of a bildungsroman and appears to be a child's viewpoint in an adults voice. This is characterised by the use of vocabulary and descriptions and also marked by the use of parenthesis. Parenthesis often follows descriptions such as after the description of the guest bed Ruby adds in brackets 'much nicer than the camp bed'
Tess says, Once victim, always victim thats the law. In the light of this remark, explore ways in which Hardy presents Tesss experiences in Tess of the DUrbervilles.
Tess says, 'Once victim, always victim - that's the law.' In the light of this remark, explore ways in which Hardy presents Tess's experiences in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy wrote "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" in 1891 during the height of the Victorian ideals where society was restrictive to individuals and appeared controlling to its members. Tess is a modern character, who is the easiest victim of circumstance, society and male idealism. She fights the hardest fight yet is destroyed by her ravaging self-destructive sense of guilt, life denial and the cruelty of two men. Tess Durbeyfield is a victim of external and incomprehensive forces. Passive and yielding, unsuspicious and fundamentally pure, she suffers a weakness of will and reason, struggling against a fate that is too strong for her. It is primarily the death of the horse, Prince, the Durbeyfield's main source of livelihood that commences the web of circumstance that envelops Tess. Tess views herself as the cause of her families economic downfall, "Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself... she regarded herself in the light of a murderess." The use of 'nobody' at the beginning of the sentence emphasises the extent of the guilt Tess feels since she believes that she is responsible for the loss of her family's livelihood. As Anne Mickelson persuasively argues Tess is, "trained from childhood to fit
Thomas Hardy - analysis of three poems. Afterwards, During wind and rain and After a journey.
English Literature: ASSIGNMENT G 'Afterwards' An epitaph is an inscription upon a tomb, in few verses for the casual observer to read carefully. It is usually carved in stone and is very synthetic. The Elegy is much more lengthy than an epitaph. The two genres differ not only in lengths, but also in subject matter, since the epitaph is a 'report' concerning the deceased, the elegy is an expression of 'mourners'' sorrow. As for the setting and space, the epitaph is part of a spatial monument, the elegy of a temporal ritual. Epitaphs are normally about the deeds and qualities of a particular deceased person and they claim our attention; whereas funeral elegies are about the thoughts and feelings of those who mourn. "Afterwards" has an elegiac quality and embodies numerous sensory impressions and language used is emblematic of Hardy's style. It is mostly complex in meaning. Rhythm, rhyme and punctuation, not only give an appropriately solemn, funereal quality to the poem, but these also guide the reader to the final climax of the poem 'Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom'. As with many other poems, the structure gives a sense of diminuendo; from 'Present' to 'Future' or to even 'eternity' as implied by the former verse. The poem opens with an image of the personified 'Present' that 'latches' behind the speaker. Hardy uses the word 'postern' which probably is
To what extent can Lord of the Flies be considered a Marxist piece?
To what extent can Lord of the Flies be considered a Marxist piece? Lord of the Flies centres on a group of boys stranded on a tropical island when their plane crashes en route from England to Australia as part of an evacuation during an atomic war (hypothetical war.) The story is essentially an allegorical tale of the innate evil of man - good versus evil. Of the book, Golding said that he wrote it to illustrate how political systems cannot govern society effectively unless they take into consideration the inherent defects of human nature. Marxism is seen as the development from an oppressive capitalist society to an equal and classless society. Golding tries to set a utopian world within the island devoid of adult, societal constraints but in the end the innate animal characteristics of man come to the fore. Golding based his story on the 19th century novel 'The Coral Island' written by R M Ballantyne. Whereas Ballantyne's novel, an adventure story of three boys stranded on a desert island, was optimistic, Golding's is terrifyingly pessimistic. The novel was written shortly after World War II , in the early days of the Cold War when paranoia about communism was at its height. In the early 1950s many people were accused, often falsely, of being communists (the McCarthy era in the USA at this time is a good example of this.) It is within this context that Golding wrote
An essay that examines whether Briony ever achieves atonement in 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan
An essay that examines whether Briony ever achieves atonement in 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan Ian McEwan is held in high esteem as an author, and won the 1998 Booker prize for his novel Amsterdam. Atonement lives up to these high standards, being short listed for the 2001 Booker Prize and was awarded the best fiction novel of the year by Time Magazine. Atonement is acknowledged to be one of Ian McEwan's finest works offering a love story, a war story and a story of whether atonement is achievable. We read so much of Briony's search for it and so little of the result of that search, that perhaps the point of the book is her need for atonement and not whether she found it or not. The ambiguity of giving the story two possible endings is a very effective and clever device used by McEwan; this in turn may leave him open to criticisms by readers who are left frustrated at there being no satisfactory conclusion as to whether atonement was ever achieved. The work operates on a number of levels. It has a strong narrative and is written with tremendous descriptive power dealing with complex themes and examining the creative act of story telling via the shared, self-reflection of the main protagonist, Briony Tallis, a budding author. At the beginning of the novel Briony is a girl of thirteen her mind filled with romantic stories containing morally certain scenarios; she views the world
The Mayor of Casterbridge - Henchard Vs Farfrae
The Mayor of Casterbridge - English Essay Henchard Vs Farfrae "Farfrae's good fortune is a result of Henchard's ill luck." Consider this view, commenting upon Hardy's use of; * Characterisation * Language * Historical and social background * Craft in the structure of the novel Thomas Hardy wrote the novel 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' in 1886. Two of the main characters, Donald Farfrae and Michael Henchard have a contrast in luck and Hardy uses characterisation, language, historical and social background and a craft in the structure of his novel to help bring across this point. During this essay I am going to comment upon how Hardy does this and further consider the view that, Farfrae's good fortune is a result of Henchard's ill luck. Throughout the novel there are many examples of Farfrae's good fortune resulting in Henchard's ill luck. One of the most important examples in the book is when Henchard and Farfrae both gamble on the weather. Henchard is told that the weather will be awful and the harvest would be ruined so he buys up all the grain early hoping to sell it off for more. Farfrae on the other hand risks the weather hoping it'll be a good harvest. When the weather turns out good and Henchard has to sell his grain off for even less than he brought it for, he becomes bankrupt and looses everything. Whereas Farfrae makes a lot of money on the good harvest and
