Lord Henry consciously chooses Dorian Gray in pupils, attracted first of all with his appearance. “Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that” (Wilde 7). Not only his physical beauty, but his pure soul is so interesting for Lord Henry: “All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth’s passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world” (Wilde 17).
For instance, “Yea, there thou mak’st me sad, and mak’st me sin / In envy that my Lord Northumberland/ Should be the father to so blest a son—/ A son who is the theme of honor’s tongue,/ Amongst a grove the very straightest plant,/ Who is sweet Fortune’s minion and her pride,/ Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,/ See riot and dishonor stain the brow/ Of my young Harry. O that it could be prov’d / That some night-tripping fairy had exchang’d/ In cradle- clothes our children where they lay, / And call’d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!” (I.i.78-89). In this passage, King Henry IV is saying this lines at the beginning of the play that induce conflict between Prince Hal and Hotspur. Henry characterizes the acclaim and affluence of Hotspur by calling him ‘the theme of honor’s tongue’; in analyzing, he says, Prince Hal has been besmirched by ‘riot and dishonor.’ He then mentions an old English folk superstition about fairies who exchanged young children at birth. Henry desires that a fairy had replaced Hal and Hotspur at birth, so that Hotspur were really his son and Hal the son of another.
Comparatively, pious Minister Brown’s fallacious fascination with the world beyond the confines of the Puritan society exposes his innate, iniquitous traits. Further revealing his heretical intention to satisfy his
Pratt, Louis H. “Alice Walker’s Men: Profiles in the Quest for Love and Personal Values.”Alice Walker, edited by Harold Bloom, Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2007, pp. 5-18. “The Color Purple.” Novels for Students, edited by Sheryl Ciccarelli and Marie Rose Napierkowski, vol. 5, Gale, 1999, pp. 48-59.
The presence of religion in American literature, specifically in Walt Whitman 's "Song of Myself" and Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin in the Sun, accompanied by Henry David Thoreau 's Resistance to Civil Government and Clybourne Park by Bruch Norris, accurately reflects the function of religion in present times as a means to create a community and a personal identity. Ultimately, in literature and life, religion serves as a revolting factor to create divide between one 's own beliefs, between people of a rising country, between family members of different generations, and between people of a larger community. Religion consists of a paradoxical nature so elegantly defined within these works through introspection and interaction which missals resting in churches could never exemplify to the curious minds of the bored youth, who will one day, feed
The poem bases around how the weak Puritans are falling into sin and self-satisfaction. It narrates the details of the Second Coming of Christ and the day of judgement. "Day of Doom" creates a mental picture of what it will be like on the day of judgement. The poem harshly describes God 's justice and the horrors awaiting sinners. Wigglesworth 's vivid representation children and infants characterizes the inflexible doctrine of Calvinism.
When he begins the anaphora of “how the…” he follows each with a short explanation of beauty, of the wildly perfect world that the college campus represents (34). While this can be seen as a simple appreciation for its glamour, its overwhelmingly sweet tone rings of mockery and sarcasm at splendor that surpasses any possible reality to the point in which he questions “if it happened at all” (36). Moreover, he questions the statue of the Founder, a moment frozen in an action that can be seen as both setting a slave free, or further blinding him. He asks “why...a bird-soiled statue” is “more commanding” than a clean one, perhaps illustrating that the slave is literally being whitewashed by the bird’s waste, or even being trashed by birds, a symbol of freedom (36). This unanswered question provides leeway to uncertainties of whether all of it “[had] been real” (36).
Philip Roth ends American Pastoral with a resounding rhetorical question: “And what is wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than the life of the Levovs?” (Roth 252). Indeed, one wonders, why has the Swede, a man seemingly perfect in every aspect, been marked out to be a modern day Job, one whose idyllic American life is shattered by a renegade, murderous daughter? The answer lies in the Swede’s enthrallment with the peak of the American dream, his utopian American pastoral. In striving for this ideal, the Swede sacrifices his Jewish identity in favor of the classic image of American innocence and individualistic achievement (the same image that enticed generations of assimilatory American Jews), yet fails to realize that this image does not cohere with the reality of both America and American life; it is this misrecognition
Concerning Yolen’s book in general, this has been classified as different narrative forms because of its content. Children’s book, fairy tale for young adults, adult book, Holocaust tale or novel are some of the categorizations mentioned in the interview by RoseEtta Stone. Even in the author’s webpage, this work is classified in “Adult Novel”, “Adults”, “Young Adult” and “Fairy Tales”. What is undeniable is that, although “Briar Rose was written and published as an adult book” (Stone n. pag.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner's short stories "Young Goodman Brown" and "A Rose for Emily" use morals of the time period to tell a story and teach a lesson. Both short stories are dark and gloomy accounts of the main characters' station in society and their self-imposed isolation. Hawthorn and Faulkner use the characters to describe society as judgmental and hypocritical of one another, and the moral of the story is used to teach the reader a life lesson about judging others. Both stories are dark and depressing. Goodman Brown, the main character in "Young Goodman Brown," thinks he is a "good" Christian, and so are his family and neighbors.