An Imaginary Life Analysis

The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across.

In the eleventh paragraph of “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” W. E. B. Du Bois’s stylistic and content choices contribute to the persuasiveness of the idea that prejudice is negative and harmful through the use of such rhetorical devices as word choice, alliteration, rhetorical questions, personification, an appeal to pathos, and allusion. In the first sentence of the paragraph, Du Bois writes that prejudice inevitably brings the “self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompan[ies] repression and breed[s] in an atmosphere of contempt and hate.” In using the word “breed” to describe the effects of prejudice, Du Bois makes the reader think of the mindless propagation of a virus or bacteria. This, therefore, helps

In order to be successful as an author and engage readers effectively, one must incorporate certain elements. Ernest J. Gaines included multiple stylistic elements in his novel, “A Lesson Before Dying”, therefore, he is quite effective as a storyteller. One rhetorical device included in the novel was metaphor. Another device Gaines used in “A Lesson Before Dying” was personification. Furthermore, Ernest used allusions throughout the novel.

Robert Neville, the last human in a dystopian future, must fight everyday to survive against the vampire related creatures that want his blood. The story follows him as he deals with his past and the desperate desire to survive and find other life. Clasen’s quote describes how Robert Neville in the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson, fights through a hostile world, himself and the values of morality. Robert Neville deals with the frustration and pain that the creatures made him feel as they tore his life apart piece by piece, and now wait to take his entire life.

In the works of Literature an epiphany is “a moment of profound insight or revelation by which a character’s life is greatly altered” (24). In the short story “Cathedral” Raymond Carver uses epiphany to draw on the theme, blinded views can alter someone’s behavior. On the realistic level, epiphany advances the plot and character development because they are the basis for the story’s central action. They also help define the narrator and play a vital part in revealing the story’s theme. The following changes in the character’s views have shown an evident development.

In 1776, on July 4th, the 13 English colonies officially declared their freedom from England. However, as the years progressed, slavery became incorporated into everyday American life. In 1852, Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was called upon to deliver a speech to celebrate America’s independence; however, he censured Americans for saying they were a “country of the free”. In the speech, Hypocrisy of American Slavery, Frederick Douglass declares that Americans should not be celebrating their freedom when there are slaves living in the country. He uses emotional appeal, ethical appeal, and rhetorical questions to convince his audience that Americans are wrong celebrating freedom on the 4th of July when slavery exists in their country.

In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” written in 1983, the author points out that empathy and perspective are the only way to truly experience profound emotion.The narrator is struggling is sucked into his own comfort zone, he drowns his dissatisfaction on life, marriage, and job in alcohol. A man of limited awareness breaks through his limitations by socializing with a blind man. Despite Roberts physical limitations, he is the one who saved narrator from himself and helped him to find the ones vies of the world.

Civil rights leader and social activist Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a world renown correspondence, Letter From Birmingham Jail, in April of 1963, during a time when segregation was at it’s peak in the South. When King was making his mark in American history, the United States was experiencing great social unrest due to the injustice towards their colored citizens, which would lead to social rights rallies and unnecessary violence. In response to King’s peaceful protesting, the white community viewed “[his] nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist,” and subsequently imprisoned the pastor (para 27). King specifically wrote to the white clergymen who had earlier addressed a letter to him as to why he was apprehended, in which they argued that his actions were untimely and unconstitutional. In response, King emphasized that justice is never timely, and the refusal to acknowledge equal rights was inhumane and regressive. Throughout the text, King utilized the values of his audience to gain sympathy and later on support. His use of diction and syntax would align his mission to God’s, and show that he was in the right and the clergymen were in the wrong.

The poem My Mother The Land by Phill Moncrieff poetically describes the struggles the aboriginal people faced at the hands of the European people and colonisation throughout history. The fact that the author based the poem on accurate historical events adds to the authenticity of representations and engages the reader in an emotional journey with the struggles the aboriginal people faced with the somewhat loss of their country, culture, identity, people and place. The author uses a variety of language features and text structures to create this view point, for instance the author uses several language features and text structures throughout verse one to demonstrate the loss of culture and people.

In his passage from “Last Child in the Woods,” Richard Louv uses various rhetorical strategies in order to make his audience more supportive of his argument. The passage discusses the connection, or really the separation, between people and nature. On this subject, Louv argues the necessity for people to redevelop their connection with nature. His use of tone, anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and factual examples all help develop the pathos and logos of his piece.

Hook- Absurdism is seen as the confrontation of the individual with the natural world and society. Albert Camus thought there were three solutions to absurdism, which were physical suicide, philosophical suicide, and acceptance.

During the era of the civil rights movements in the 60s, among the segregation, racism, and injustice against the blacks, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial to deliver one of the greatest public speeches for freedom in that decade. In Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech he effectively uses ethos, diction and powerful metaphors to express the brutality endured by African American people. Yet his most important method of reaching his audience, and conveying his enduring message of equality and freedom for the whole nation was his appeal to pathos. With these devices, King was able to move thousands of hearts and inspire the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ernest Hemingway’s characters are frequently tested in their faith, beliefs, and ideas. To Hemingway’s characters, things that appear to be grounded in reality and unmovable facts frequently are not, revealing themselves to be hollow, personal mythologies. Hemingway shakes his characters out of their comfortable ignorance through traumatic events that usually cause a certain sense of disillusionment with characters mythologies, moving them to change their way of life. His characters usually, after becoming disillusioned, respond with depression, suicide, and nihilism. However, this is not always the case. Some characters break the mold and, instead of treating disillusionment with hostility, step back into the illusion in which they once lived

The Cross and the Lynching tree is a recent work from James H. Cone. Currently a Systematic Theology professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, he is renowned as a founder of black liberation theology. In this book, he reflects on the most brutal chapter of white racism in the 20th century America where 5,000 innocent blacks were lynched to death by white mobs. And he tells us how blacks were able to survive the unspeakable reality of violence and torture with faith and hope in Christ. As a witness for blacks who were voiceless and ignored, he speaks out against the white church for saying little about slavery and racial justice. His passion for social justice comes from growing up in Arkansas in the Jim Crow era. The memories of his father and lynch mobs never left him. Black church comforted him, but made him wonder. “If the white churches are Christian, how come they segregate us? And if God is God, why is He letting us suffer?” (1) The lifelong quest for answers to these questions shaped his theology

Australian identity and what constitutes Australian culture are prominent ideas explored by Peter Goldsworthy’s Maestro. Throughout the novel, there is a strong sense of cynicism towards Australian culture as it is painted as ambiguous and indefinite. This is established through the analogy of Paul representing Australian society and his parents representing the British influence on Australian culture. Goldsworthy also explores the European influence on Australia through Kellar’s character. Goldsworthy’s broader message is that Australian identity is in fact quite complex and open to interpretation due how culturally diverse it is.