Summary Of Boyhood By J. M. Coetzee

The book I have chosen to review is Boy 21, a fictional read that is written by Matthew Quick. Quick is a New York Times best-selling author debuting in novels such as The Silver Linings Playbook and Love May Fail. To best describe this book, it is a captivating read that is comforting for the mind, as it canvasses the raw and unflinching life of a high school senior who displays love for basketball and life relationships. Furthermore, set in a troubled Belmont city of Philadelphia, Quick incorporates the presence of mobs and violence which is captivating towards the reader and audience. I was intrigued about how the novel was written through Finley the main protagonist, which was Quick’s childhood perspective of life in Philadelphia and his passion towards basketball.

One reoccurring theme that is present in the Holocaust is a change of identity with everyone involved. The incidents people confronted, especially the Jews, during this harsh time was life changing and traumatic. The identity of many in the concentration camps changed; young and innocent children developed into mature men. Elie Wiesel in the novella, Night, faces a change of identity within himself and the surrounding people, the Jews, through a variety of events that he encounters.

In “How Boys Become men,” Jon Kats shows a list in which boys follow to become men. The list has a set of rules/values which can help during a hitch. In “The Absolute True Diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie,” Junior the main character has a rough child hood. He was born with 42 teeth, a normal person has only 32 teeth also was born with oversized ears which made him a target. He is an Indian who does not always feel like an Indian. Junior’s uniqueness makes his classmates find him strange. Junior’s growing up and learning on his own. While in “How Boys Become men,” it’s more of a process rather than learning from your mistakes. Which can be argued that the list is useless but the list shows character it shows the reader that he experienced

Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon is an excellent coming of age story. A recurring subject in this book was evil. The teaching moment of the book is that everyone has their own monsters, but it is how people handle those monsters that shows their character.

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy” (Joe Paterno). Tragedy is defined as an "event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident" when Elie went thought the holocaust his way of life and meaning of life dramatically changed for the worst. Elise process of change without World War 2 has shaped his faith, personality and his relationship with his father.

There were several characters that became part of Elie’s journey in the book; Shlomo, Moishe the Beadle, Idek, Dr. Josef Mengele, and so on. Shlomo, his father, is present throughout most of the book. He is highly respected by the Jewish community of Sighet, especially by his son. Alongside Elie, they try to remain together throughout their time at the concentration camp. Elie gains a will to survive for his father, for example on pages 75-76, when his father does not pass the selection he states “How good would it be to die right here!” This example shows how he is almost the center of Elie’s survival. Elie’s relationship with his father reminds him of essential feelings of love, duty, and commitment. Also reminding him of his own humanity,

The themes of the realistic fiction story, Boy’s Life and the fable, Emancipation: A Life Fable are very similar. Both develop ideas about freedom, however, the exact way the theme develops is slightly different. The overall theme in each text is that freedom comes with patience. In Boy’s Life, the main character desperately wants freedom. It is the last school day of the year, and he wants nothing more than to begin summer vacation. In Emancipation: A Life Fable, the animal is afraid of freedom, hesitant to leave its cage.

In the essay “Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa” David Sedaris uses irony to show his disgust in his partner Hugh’s childhood experiences. He uses comparison to Hugh’s to display the differences between their upbringings. These writing techniques are used to make the point that everyone should appreciate their childhood because someone might have had a worse childhood than they have.

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation. To develop the theme of denial and its consequences, Wiesel uses juxtaposition and characterization.

Think of a circumstance where you were so hungry and thirsty, that you did not even care to think about your father anymore. That circumstance goes against common father-son relationships. The common father-son motif is where the father looks out and cares for the son. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he explains why the circumstances around a father-son relationship can change their relationship, whether it 's for the better or the worse. Since the book is about the life of Elie in a Nazi concentration camp, the circumstances were harsh and took a toll on multiple father-son relationships. You can see this with Elies reaction to his father 's death, Elie 's relationship with his father throughout the story, and other sons reactions to their fathers bad state of health.

Family; a blessing, or a curse? In the book Night, Elie Wiesel offers many significant themes, but the question, “is family a blessing or a curse,” is one of the most prevalent and begging themes in the novel. During the novel, Wiesel often questions if he should try and keep his father around, or if life would just be better without him in the picture. “‘Don’t let me find him! If only I could get rid of this dead weight, so that I could use all my strength to struggle for my own survival, and only worry about myself,’ I immediately felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever,” (Wiesel, 111). This is just one example of the internal conflict going on endlessly within himself. In Night, the question asking whether family is a blessing or a curse is the most significant theme because it highlights good and bad times, it shows the internal conflict between whether he wants his father around or not, and it illustrates the dehumanization Elie faces throughout the Holocaust.

In the essay What Does “Boys Will Be Boys” Really Mean, the author Deborah Roffman explains how people perceive and classify boys to be extremely messy in their actions and continuously receive passes for their unacceptable behavior. In the essay How Boys Become Men, the statement “Boys Will Be Boys” expresses how the rules boys set for themselves in their childhood unintentionally effects the decisions they make in their adulthood. The two essays focus on different situations but they come together with the same opinion about men and boys; of whom they focus on the most. One essay focuses mainly on how boys behave and the reason why people classify them the way they do, whereas, the other essay focuses on the effects of how boys learn to behave a certain way and grows into adolescents with the same behavior. While some similarities between What Does “Boys Will Be Boys” Really Mean? and How Boys Become Men are evident in their attention to stress how society sets standards and forces a stereotype upon the men and boys, they have different interpretations.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is a riveting novel encompassing the life and hardships of an unnamed black narrator in the 1930’s. Ellison’s beautifully crafted work dives deep into the racism and hardships of 1930 and uses numerous conventions to layer depth onto his subject. Ellison attempts to inform the reader of the extreme racism that was rampant in 1930’s society.

“The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don't have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it” (Pine, n.d.). This quote by Chris Pine (n.d.) speaks to how one controls how they react put into a situation. The Holocaust was an immoral machination orchestrated by the Nazi’s to eliminate any person who did not meet their criteria of a human. Millions were interned in camps all around Europe. Each person who survived the Holocaust has a different story. Within Elie Wiesel’s Night (2006) and the movie “Life is Beautiful” (2000) two different perspectives on the Holocaust are presented to audiences both however deal with the analogous subjects faced by prisoners. Inside both works you can find the general mood of sadness. The relationship of a father and son during the struggle of the Holocaust. As well as the experience of the prisoners in the camps. In the novel Night and the movie “Life is Beautiful,” the Holocasut is was experienced both similarly and differently through the father/son relationship, the tone of the piece, and the experiences of the Jewish prisoners.

This chapter focuses on the depiction of prejudice, oppression and brutality in the novel under study. By analyzing the content of Black Boy we come to know about the different types of hardships and discrimination as experienced by the Richard Wright.