Kurt Vonnegut's Short Story 'The Lie'

One of the most important elements in this drastic point of time for Eli is silence. In general, silence symbolizes Eli’s fear and inability to respond, which allows it to determine his actions in his prospective. For example, Wiesel wrote, “One day when Idek was venting his fury, I happened to cross his path. He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood. As I bit my lips in order not to howl with pain, he must have mistaken my silence for defiance and so he continued to hit me harder and harder.”

This is important to the book as a whole because it connects to the theme of optimism. The change is apparent when life isn’t going in Eli’s favor, and the life of his father is taken away from him. Deep inside he feels a sign of relief but guilt at the same time. Eli spends a lot of time praying showing that he is religious.

Elie started out as a very happy Jewish boy with a loving family and a happy home. Towards the end of the holocaust Elie feels little to no emotion. On page 48 he writes, “I want to stay with my father.” Elie is desperate to stay with his only family member he has contact with. This soon changes.

It is Eliezer’s great fear that he too will lose his sense of kindness and filial responsibility, that he may turn against his father to facilitate his own survival. An old man named Rabbi Eliahou comes into the shed looking for his son, who was separated from him while running. Rabbi Eliahou is a good man, admired by all, and he and his son had remained together for three years in the concentration camps. Eliezer tells the Rabbi that he hasn't seen the man's son, but after he leaves, he realizes that he actually had. The son had seen his father falling behind in the pack, but he had continued to run farther and farther away from him.

In life difficulties may arise, but an “instructive eye” of a “tender parent” is a push needed in everyone’s life. Abigail Adams believed, when she wrote a letter to her son, that difficulties are needed to succeed. She offers a motherly hand to her son to not repent his voyage to France and continue down the path he is going. She uses forms of rhetoric like pathos, metaphors, and allusions to give her son a much needed push in his quest to success.

Best of the Worst Parenting is never perfect. Every parents questions whether they are raising their child correctly, and no parent ever feels like they are doing the right thing. With no clear distinction between good and bad parenting, it is usually left to personal preferences and judgements to decide which parents have adequately raised their children and which have failed. When a parent so call “fails,” often it is the children with their strong will and determination to survive that collectively raise themselves. In Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Leonie, one of the narrators and the mother of another narrator, Jojo, is not the most caring, hands-on mother, but is loving of her children nevertheless.

and exactly what he has grown up doing and reading. “Eli was enabled to participate in ways similar to his brothers’ and sisters’, making him a reader like them” (Fishman 240). Fishman goes into detail about Eli Jr. and the way his world has portrayed reading to him. But yet again, her focus shifts after this. She puts the reader in an Amish school setting and describes the events going on.

In his short story “The Lie”, Kurt Vonnegut suggests that ignorance directly impacts one’s pressure to succeed, and causes corruption when expectations are not met. In the story, The Remenzels are on their way to Whitehill, and anxiously talking about the process that Eli will go through to start his high school career. However, Vonnegut tells the reader that Eli has been refraining from telling his parents the truth, that he was denied acceptance from the prestigious school. Soon after the reader learns this information, Vonnegut says “Doctor Remenzel and his wife had no doubts whatsoever about their son’s getting into Whitehill. It was inconceivable to them that Eli could not go there, so they had no curiosity as to how Eli had done on

One day Eliezer comes to his father’s bed and he is gone most likely taken to the crematory. He doesn't mourn for him and feels bad because of it, but he also feels

When the two arrive at Birkenau, Elie clings to his father so he does not lose him. When Chlomo is picked in selection he gives Elie his inheritance. When Elis 's father died, Elie grieved deeply for him. Because of that, Elie begins to lose his fight for life. The death of Chlomo had changed Elie and scared him for life. "

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value,” is a quote from Albert Einstein. Dr. Remenzel, a character in the short story “The Lie” written by Kurt Vonnegut, tried too hard to be a successful man that he forgot about his morals and forgot be a man of value. Within this short story, Dr. Remenzel would harp on his wife and son about being good examples. Not only this but, he would ensure that they wouldn’t, under any circumstances, go searching for a hand out because of their last name.

Parents are always supposed to look out for the best interests of their child. Anne Tyler authored the short story “Teenage Wasteland” which depicts the story of a strained mother and son relationship between the character Donny, and his mother Daisy. Donny is a teenage boy who is struggling with his grades at school and is exhibiting poor behavior. His mother, Daisy is concerned with her son’s grades and behavior, however, she fails at getting her son the help that he requires. Told through the point of view of the character Daisy, Tyler uses irony to tell the story of a teenage boy who is failed by the adults in his life who are supposed to help him flourish, including his parents, a psychologist, and his tutor.

The experiences people go through impact the way the see world and those around them. Children are raised by their parents and witnesses to the triumphs and failures. When the age comes many often question their parent’s decisions. Some may feel bitterness and contempt while others may feel admiration and motivation. The “Sign in My Father’s Hands” by Martin Espada conveys the feeling of being treated as a criminal for doing the right thing.

At the very beginning, Eli’s parents' have a lack of understanding of his individuality causing Eli to deny his own feelings. When Eli receives a rejection letter from his high school, Whitehill, he keeps this a secret from his parents to avoid their ultimate disappointment. From the very start of the story, Sylvia believes her son is just another Remenzel among all the past Remenzel’s who have been on the honor list that will be attending Whitehill. Whitehill has been the high school for generations in the Remenzel family history.

In our life, we often have experiences that teach us how and what we want to be like when we grow up. Everyone has ups and downs from time to time that make one want to stop and other times make one want to run while individually they feel free. The Garden Story by Katherine Mansfield and The First Born Son by Ernest Buckler both show how parental pressure, social pressure, and family pressure around an individual can influence the way one will treat others. Once in a while it is an advantage when they want to change the world to make it better for others, but oftentimes it is for the worse because they personally accept the problems they have and never trying to fix them. Both stories have parental influences that want them to stay as they are, tradition influences that professions stay in the family, and they are always compared to the better child that is more like by parents.