There are multiple times throughout the novel in which characters go out of their way to assist people they do not know. These character’s are showing compassion towards others during a time of misfortune and despair. When a man and his two sons enter the diner, they are clearly financially strained. The man requests to purchase a loaf of bread for less than the actual price. Mae, a woman working at the diner, was initially reluctant to give the man the discount, but her co-worker coaxed her into compliancy.
Flannery O’Connor, in her short life, wrote one novel and many short stories that impact literature to this day. She wrote two superb short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, which have many similarities hidden in the theme of their complex text. While both stories include themes about religion, identity, and the way we view others, the endings are astoundingly different. Nonetheless, O’Connor’s main theme concerning the way we view other people, is the most significant in both short stories. In Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell repeatedly states that the bible salesman is the “salt of the earth” meaning that he is just a good and simple country boy.
The boy takes care of him as they talk one last time. Most prominently, the symbol of “the fire” (McCarthy 278) and carrying it are used to display hope and virtue. The man often uses ‘carrying the fire’ as a way to
In the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”, Richard Connell craftily used foreshadowing to suggest that General Zaroff was a cannibal. For example, in the exposition of the story, Whitney and Rainsford spoke of Ship-Trap island. Over the course of this conversation, the two of them mentioned the topic of cannibalism (2). Here, Connell used the repetition of “cannibals”, as well as the overall tone of the conversation to foreshadow events yet to come. Not long after Rainsford arrives on the island, the reader receives a description of General Zaroff; this description, while initially quite positive, took a turn as Connell described the general as having “red lips and pointed teeth” (6).
One of the biggest obstacles is the cannibals in this new post apocalyptic world, to the boy and the man they are described and called the “bad guys”. The code of ethics that the man and the boy follow isn't the as the “old world rules” where laws exist, government, and they have to abide by doing right toward others. The code of ethics they follow have to be chosen, and it is a path many don't chose in this “new world”. The man and boy are living just the two of them, not looking to hurt anyone else unless their lives are being threaten and even then the boy doesn't like to hurt others. The man does at time do some things that the boy doesn't like, and can look like he is turning out to become a bad guy, yet it is necessary steps to ensure their safety.
For both of them, they are “each other’s world, entire” (6). Nothing or no one else matters because they can only trust and love each other. As the man 's wife points out before her suicide, "the boy was all that stood between him and death" (25). In other words, the man 's thirst for survival is fueled by the love for his son. While the man may expect his own death, he lives in order to seek life for the boy.
Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.
Michelle Moffo English 1110.03 Peter C. Dully Jr. 26 February 2018 Most people who read The Road by Cormac McCarthy would describe the novel as a very bleak and grim tale. McCarthy uses a wide array of vocabulary and imagery to create a world that the reader themselves would want to escape from, describing the world as “Barren, silent, godless” (McCarthy 4). While the novel may appear to be very depressing on the surface, the hope and goodness that exist within the two main characters, referred to as the man and the boy, keep the reader clinging to every word. It is evident that McCarthy uses the boy as an example of how religion, hope, and morality can bring people through the darkest of times.
Resilience is displayed through the drive shown by the characters in these stories, despite hardships or trauma in their pasts. In The Road, Papa and the boy continue to move forward and “carry the fire”, staying morally true to themselves, even despite the things they had seen. The boy’s mother shot herself, he has seen cannibalism, slavery, and people reduced to monsters and broken shells of humanity, but he is still fighting and trying to be one of the good guys. He still wants to help the little boy when he meets him, still wants to help Ely when he meets them (McCarty, 162); The Boy still has a desire to help people who are suffering. He is starving, but he wants to give away his food so that the people who are good in this world won’t die.
The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.” This text shows how society is corrupt, for multiple reasons. Not only are families who kill each other going to a sacred place together under a temporary cease-fire, they are also hearing a preacher speak about brotherly love and saying that it is a good sermon.
The concept of Cannibalism in "Diary of a Madman" is more of a crazy person who believed everyone was out to eat him including his own brother. As the days goes on he starts to get more paranoid at anyone who smiles or stares at him a certain way. In "Medicine" were loving family is trying to save the life of their only child. In the text, "In the other hand he holds a bright red mantou, it color drip-drip-dripping to the ground "Volume F, 254). Little- Bolt 's family believes that human blood could save his life, but in the end it failed and he passes away.
Their only form of defense includes a flare gun which the son does not approve of for killing or hurting others, let alone as a means of obtaining food. McCarthy suggests the young boy as a Messiah throughout his story as a means to display the morality in a dystopian world.
In the 1953 short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, readers are given a glimpse of what the end of the story may look like through use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and other literary techniques. Although the story looks to be an innocent story of a family who travels to Florida for vacation at the start of it, readers soon find out that the story has a darker twist to it. This family trip turns violent and this gruesome ending can easily represent the violence taking place in America during the time this story was written by O’Connor and even today. The short story starts off with a family of six- parents, a grandmother, and three children-
According to Mark Twain, humorous stories are very different from comic and witty stories. Humor adds amusement and interest in the message that is being delivered. “Cannibalism in the Cars” delivers the humorous message by using irony, satire, and syntax. The irony in the short story is in the way that the senators speak so sophisticated.
His idiosyncrasy remains loving and understanding, even when his younger son returned home after many of been away with not a penny to his name. The young son showed disobedience to all the goodness his father had offered to him. The young son showed traits such as selfishness as well as being ungrateful. He had no worth for his father’s property nor did he want to work alongside his father on the family farm.