In the unnamed city, two lovers dream about life beyond the war that ceaselessly swallows their daily lives. Mohsin Hamid accentuates the prevalent and convoluted escape routes of the city which taunt its viewers with uncertainty in his book Exit West. Saeed, an innocent boy meets Nadia, a peculiar girl with harsh opinions of the revolutionizing world they have the opportunity of experiencing simultaneously. Together, they imagine a life outside their city’s sky high boundaries, but are met with barriers physically closer to home. Their door frames are not just door frames and their windows panes are not just window panes. Instead, they are structures that support the altering realities that have different connotations to those who seek refuge, …show more content…
It was likely that death would ensue an inevitable blast, being that people could “bleed out after being lacerated by shards of flying glass”. With a violent war comes an equally violent death. Considering “windows could not stop even the most flagging round of ammunition: any spot indoors with a view of the outside was a spot potentially in the crossfire”, almost all windows could be broken in an instant due to an army general’s single command. When all the glass is broken, so is the skin of innocent civilians. During daylight, a window reflects the light which makes it difficult to see through, but soldiers are “flagged” to shoot regardless of what’s inside. In addition to the fragile glass, “the pane of a window could itself become shrapnel so easily, shattered by a nearby blast”, showcasing that along with glass, the support structures of windows double as an enemy because it has the potential to “lacerate”. Because windows are delineated as “borders through which death was possibly most likely to come” it is implied that people tried to overcome them. An observative rather than statistical tone conveys that death was typical and unaccounted for since it happened so often. Windows allowed its surroundings a way out, but through injury and
In the story “Araby” the protagonist is portrayed by the author to seem young, which limited his ability to see past his dull, dead-end neighborhood. The author explains the boy’s carefree mindset by describing how the protagonist and his friends would run through the back lanes of the houses and hide in the shadows when they reached the street again.
The NL West is a riveting division which produced two playoffs teams last year; although four can be considered to have a shot this season, at least one of those four will disappoint. The Dodgers have won the division each of the last four years and will likely win it again this season. They have both a dynamite lineup and a light ‘em up rotation, but were plagued by injuries last season and have numerous players who are injury risks this year. Their ace is Clayton Kershaw, who has been an all-star for six consecutive seasons and the NL Cy Young winner thrice; in one of those years he won the NL MVP as well. Rich Hill pitched superbly last season when he was on the mound, but he gets injured way too often. Kenta Maeda pitched well
Automatically, the reader knows that serious issues are about to be discussed and that the outcome may not be positive. This novel challenges the material ideology discussed above. It does this by bringing the issues to the forefront and reporting on them in a fictitious yet realistic manner. The reader is not led to believe that the ending will be happy, he is supposed to expect the consider the harsh realities of the world throughout the piece.
Could humiliation and pain come from something as simple as a glass in a wooden frame? Throughout the novel, My Name Is Asher Lev by Chiam Potok, much of inner characters are revealed through the symbol of the window. The mother, the father, and Asher all face many struggles and the use of the window helps one to understand them.
In the novel Grand Avenue. Greg Sarris uses the theme thread of poison to connect all of his separate stories about the Toms’, a Pomo Indian family. He proves that the roots of a family are the basis which gives the family its structure, even if those roots are bad. In the Toms’ family they’re roots were poisoned from the very founding of the family starting with Sam Toms’. His poison was not the fact that he tried to steal a married woman away, but that he was filled with secrets, deceptions, and self hatred. His family was founded on these poisened roots and passes the poisen down generation after gerneration. The only way to stop the poison, or inner self hatred taken out in other forms, was to let go of past and
West Side Story came out in 1961 as a melodramatic musical that took place in New York. It takes the same theme as Shakespeare's, Romeo and Juliet, in that it is about two lovers whose relationship is not accepted by others because of conflicting backgrounds.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the West was considered a wild and desert territory, with scarce possibilities of being populated. The advance of the Developed East over the Savage West was a clash of two different cultures; this collision would mean the end for one of them. The right to appropriate lands and displace Native Americans was justified by the belief that the United States had rights to aggressively spread the values of white civilization and expand the nation, also known as Manifest Destiny . The mid-end of the nineteen century was crucial in the development and expansion of the West, and also was its repercussion to natives and settlers. Hordes of settlers crossed the Great Plains on their way to find gold in California or to rich farms in Washington and Oregon.
Do we really know how it feels when you’re loved ones are killed in a war or when you will stop breathing? No matter how sad we become after listening to their painful stories, we can’t really feel the pain or problems that the victim’s relatives had gone through. The Road to Chlifa, novel illustrated by Michele Marineau describes the story about a boy who lives in Beirut Lebanon, a country that has been in the civil war for fifteen years. Karim expresses the theme of isolation, through his feelings for Nada. The protagonist in the novel is Karim, 17-year-old boy who lost the girl whom he loved, during the war, and the antagonist is the war occurring in Lebanon and also the school that Karim attends in Montreal. Karim left lonely after his parents went to Montreal, then Bachir moved to Paris and the one whom he loved died.
In the short stories, “Paul’s Case” by Willa Carter and “Araby” by James Joyce, both the protagonists are infatuated with the idea of escaping the conventional routines in their daily lives. Their main goal is to obtain a more romantic, extravagant, glamourized life. For Paul, his dream of a glamorized life lies in distant New York. For the unnamed protagonist in “Araby”, he hopes to find his in Araby with the neighbor girl who he barely knows. They believe that by achieving this escape, they’ll find the pleasure and satisfaction they’ve been hoping for. Both the protagonists dream to find a romance in a world hostile to romance by escaping the reality that they live in.
Abstract: This thesis attempts to analyse the relationship between physical and psychological escape as reflected in Su Tong’s “Fleeing in 1934”, Yu Hua’s “1986”, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Textual analysis reveals that Su Tong’s delineation of escape is external but the influence becomes internal as villagers’ morality has been lost as a result of the escape, whereas Yu Hua and Kurt Vonnegut’s representation of escape emphasises on the psychical escape when both protagonists in the novels look for derangement as a means of escape. Coincidently, the three novelists all agree on the same notion of the inescapability of history.
Tehran, the capital of Iran, has its highs and lows. It is polluted by everything it encompasses. The city is jam packed with rapid highways, stentorian neighborhoods, and idiosyncratic citizens. City of Lies, written by Ramita Navai, perfectly sums up the way that this cryptic and disturbing city works. The novel follows eight very unique characters on Vali Asr Street who have a connection to the city that changed each of their lives. Each of them have very different backstories and personality traits that make them different from the last. But in the end, what brings them together is that they are all polluted by the city they call home. These characters, throughout their lives in Tehran, experience difficult pasts and hardships all because of the different ways of pollution in the city. This is evident when we read about Dariush’s environmental realization during his return to Tehran, when we read about many woman characters dealing with sexism and prostitution, and when when we read about the citizen’s opinions on the politics and organizations.
Throughout history, books have shaped the world. Some books, such as the Bible, have influenced Christians. The book Common Sense by Thomas Paine encouraged Americans to join the fight against the British. Other books do more than simply encourage; they set forth a new philosophy. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith claims to promote a philosophy which one day would provide the foundation for modern economics. One author wrote two books that would forever change the course of history. These books would lay the foundation to communism and influence leaders like Lenin and Tse-Tung. Karl Marx’ works, Capital and The Communist Manifesto, have forever changed the course of history.
Abstract: This thesis attempts to analyse the relationship between physical and psychological escape as reflected in Su Tong’s “Fleeing in 1934”, Yu Hua’s “1986”, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Textual analysis reveals that Su Tong’s delineation of escape is external but the influence becomes internal as villagers’ morality has been lost as a result of the escape, whereas Yu Hua and Kurt Vonnegut’s representation of escape emphasises the psychical escape when both protagonists in the novels look for derangement as a means of escape. Coincidently, the three novelists all agree on the same notion of the inescapability of history.
In the novels Midaq Alley and The Yacoubian Building, we are shown the ongoing, daily struggles of the working-poor in both colonial and postcolonial Egypt. Both share central, overarching themes such as debauchery, desperation, and unstable political situations. The two settings are both examples of microcosms, “cities within a city”. Midaq Alley is a small, dead-end neighborhood in 1940’s Cairo that consists of various shops and apartments. Within each of these buildings are characters that live completely separate lives but all have the same aspirations, to experience the world outside and the wealth it has. The Yacoubian Building is also set in Cairo during the turbulent 1990’s. Similarly, the characters were all tenants of a large apartment building, living in cramped and decrepit spaces.
The West Side Story portrays the lives of two different gangs living in America, as well as their beliefs and examples of living a good life. The expectations of what people consider the good life to be may vary on a person’s morals and their dreams of what life is truly about. In this movie, whether or not these characters were good people, lived a good life, or lived in a good society is a very controversial topic.