Miracles Archetypes

In the novel “there was the flu” (Mandel, 37) that killed almost all of humankind is described “like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth” (37). By comparing the disease to a deadly military weapon which many know can kill and destroy cities in the masses in a single hit, it perceives the flu to be something that practically obliterates the world like a neutron bomb. At the beginning, “newscasters weren’t admitting it was the end of the world” (243), but eventually they did admit the “apocalypse was beginning” (243). Twenty years after the end, a survivor, Clark becomes aware “about how lucky he’d been” (231), this is after realizing he has “seen one world end and another begin” (231). For someone who has lived in both eras of before and after the apocalypse to think that another world is beginning, must mean humanity has been adapting to the circumstances and is developing. People are adjusting to “the world after the Georgia Flu” (195), but “the people who struggle” (195) are seen to be “the people who remember the most” (195) because they have lost more as Kirsten states “the more you remember, the more you’ve lost” (195). She also “found herself wondering” (147) every time she saw children born after the apocalypse, “if it was better or worse to have never known any world except the one after the Georgia Flu” (147). As the new era progresses, people must leave behind and forget the past in order to survive, or else they will have problems fully adapting. The children that were born in the new era know of only the current conditions, thus beginning a new world where many have no knowledge of a previous one. The end of the old world, the beginning of the new world and people trying to forget the past are evidence of new societies beginning to form, which is imperative to

The film Miracle is about the U.S men’s ice hockey team winning the 1980 gold metal for the Winter Olympics, led by head coach Herb Brooks. Miracle was fairly accurate with its historic content during the course of the movie. The director Gavin O’Connor did a good job tying in historical and political background that brought the film together, which made it unique to other sport films. In the beginning of the film there was a sequence highlighting the historical events that lead up to the 1980 Winter Olympics. Miracle specifically opened up with the historical footage against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Our country endured the time where it was divided because of the support of the Vietnam War. To make

The uplifting story of an underdog hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York is told by the film Miracle. The team is composed of many college hockey players trying to better their game play. Tryouts come and go and it is when Coach Herb Brooks reads the final roster of the 1980 Olympic Men’s Hockey Team that starts the beginning of the greatest moment in sports history.

In Rudulfo Anaya’s novel of Bless Me, Ultima, many of Antonio’s observations are seen as “magical” because of his parent’s influential culture which has an effect on how he uses magic as an explanation for unfamiliar things. For example, Antonio wonders, “Perhaps, like the dream said, the waters of the river had washed his soul away,” (27). This shows that Antonio believed that Lupito’s soul had been washed away after he killed the sheriff, signifying that the river has the power to do that such thing as to wipe someone away.

Post-Apocalyptic settings used in fictional works have become increasingly popular over the years. The entire bases around post-apocalyptic is how the world as we know it is great changes, therefore altering the lifestyle of all things living. Whether the reasoning be weather, or an epidemic there already build society is arubtlly changes forcing major alterations in how life continues on. The ethical code of morals in which we live by is replaced by the instinct to survive when adapting to life in an altered world. Using examples from Cormac McCarthy’d The Road, George R. Stewarts, and the AMC series The Walking Dead, this paper will demonstrate the transitions human society makes as survival takes precedent in a post-apocalyptic world and how rebuilding civilizations while establishing hierarchy occurs. These three fictional works demonstrate the beginning, middling and end stages of the changing process as people move away from traditional life styles of the past world and into the realization of present existence.

Siffer, a French geologist, spent six months in a cave with no natural light; his biological rhythms became free-running in the absence of light. The cave was artificially lit and Siffre had a phone to the outside world to turn light on or off. He had no watch and ate and

Nowadays, people in general tend to use the word miracle when referring to a surprising event, such as the Patriots coming back from a 25 point deficit to win Super Bowl LI, or the American hockey team winning at the 1980 hockey Olympics, dubbed a “miracle on ice”. However, these so called miracles do not portray the actual meaning of the word, which is defined as an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers therefore is ascribed to be a work of God. Although there has been some skepticism among people, Christians included, as to the existence of miracles, this paper will argue that true miracles do occur. Furthermore,

Los Angeles possesses the characteristics of great fame and fortune as well as immense homelessness and poverty. Often times, young people are misled by the financial success of some and assume that is typical of city people. Writers Joan Didion and Carol Muske-Dukes characterize the realization that an adolescent’s lifestyle is not suitable for the demands of a city as signaling the dawn of the apocalypse. In the essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion highlights how the failure of society is brought about by a family’s inability to fulfill traditional roles and a lack of education as exemplified during the Hippie movement. While poet Muske-Dukes utilizes gothic language and allusion to illustrate the notion of an apocalypse in the poem “Like This”.

In the 21st century people seem to have become more fixated on how the world is going to end than actually living in it. This is evident in the numerous post-apocalyptic dystopian bestsellers there have been recently. One of the most prominent of those is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Separating it from the flood of numerous other books in its genre McCarthy and The Road challenges existing motifs of post-apocalyptic literature. The Road uses these themes to focus on the central idea of good vs evil.

During the 2000’s, the word apocalypse petrified and frightened humanity around the world knowing that the world will soon come to an end. Post-Apocalyptic films illustrated the importance of catastrophic events as the films worked their way up into popular media during the 2000’s and how the world itself changed creating diverse conspiracies and predictions on how and when our planet will come to an end, which frightened humanity. The 2000’s are when post-apocalyptic films began to explode in popularity. Due to environmental and social trends which became popular during that time period, these movies showed the importance that humanity will survive no matter what apocalypse may come. The major focus of these films is to show and give humanity

For years, post-modern writers have foreshadowed what the end of the world would look like through dramatic representations in literary works. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx & Crake, are no exception to this. Delving into the complexities that underlie man’s existence on Earth, these authors use their novels as vehicles to depict a post-apocalyptic world, in which all that once was is reduced to an inconceivable wasteland, both figuratively and literally.

It is unrealistic that a teenage boy could survive upwards of 200 days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean alongside a 450-pound tiger. But literature does not reflect ordinary life, therefore it is important in the study of literature to separate the two, because literature is not about being practical or realistic, it is about being imaginative. The unreality of Life of Pi allows the Hero’s Journey archetype to be easily identifiable, for example, as literature provides the extremes of scenarios, stretching the capacity of the imagination to the very heights and depths of what the human mind can conceive. Literature provides us with an experience that reality cannot, because in reality, the imagination is limited to what is physically possible, but in literature, the imagination is able to be free. Through understanding the conventions of literature, the individual, in studying more complex works, is able to appreciate the use of the imagination to reach beyond what reality offers us and is able to refine his sensibilities as he recognizes the partition between life and literature.

In the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy illustrates the actions, geographical setting, and expressions to shape the psychological traits in the characters struggle to find survival in the gloomy and inhumane civilization. McCarthy uses imagery that would suggest that the world is post-apocalyptic or affected by a catastrophic event that destroyed civilization. In Gridley’s article The Setting of McCarthy’s THE ROAD, he states “On one hand the novel details neither nuclear weapons nor radiation, but the physical landscape, with his thick blanket of ash; the father’s mystery illness; and the changes in the weather patterns of the southern United States all suggest that the world is gripped by something similar to a nuclear winter”(11). In other words, Gridley asserts that McCarthy sets the setting as an open mystery, so that anyone can draw his or her own conclusions. The surrounding of the colorless and desolate society affects the characters behavior positively and negatively. Similarly the surroundings and settings of the society illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.

A clock has a life span like a human; eventually they both break down and their time stops. Born with expiration dates the human mind eventually will run out of time. William Faulkner presents the concept of time and its effect on the human condition in his short story “A Rose for Emily”. His main character Emily is left alone when the only man, her father, who controlled her world dies. Unable to accept the fact of his death Emily undergoes a state of depression, which shields herself from society and makes her unable to face reality. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” reveals the terrible consequences when humans attempt to make time stand still.

The apocalypse is a common subject addressed in films and such Doomsday scenarios have become increasingly popular since the beginning of the Cold War. These films provide a different cause for the downfall of human kind and approach the subject with various degrees of despair and hope. Despite the obvious differences in approach that different directors take, these films all serve to highlight not only the negative qualities of human kind that led to and are represented by the agent of destruction but also to highlight the strength of the survivors who keep the will to fight for their lives despite the bleak circumstances. For the most part, The Mist, adapted from a Stephen King novella, sticks closely to the archetype. The Mist, a