The Greatest Gift Short Story Analysis

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." Joseph Campbell. Jonas from Lois Lowry’s The Giver makes that example true by making the choice to fight against the community. While his journey might differ slightly from what is considered an orthodox Hero’s Journey, he still has a journey consisting of steps and goals.

Every story whether it is a fiction or non-fiction story, has a plot. The plot refers to the

It’s a Wonderful Life is a film set in the World War II era that follows the life of George Bailey. George spends his entire life in a small town named Bedford Falls. His dream was always to leave the town and travel the world, but he never gets the opportunity because he is stuck running his father’s building and loan company. George serves the citizens of the town by providing them with affordable housing. During this time he makes many important relationships with people throughout the town. George does not realize the value of these relationships until the end of the film. George gets so caught up in material wealth that he believes that 8,000$ is the dividing line between his death and a life worth living. After George’s guardian angel, Clarence, shows George what life in Bedford Falls would have been like if George had never been born, George finally realizes the huge treasure that lay in the relationships he cultivated throughout his life. This is when the movie shifts into focusing on what really matters, spiritual wealth. George was willing to throw away all of the amazing relationships he had formed over a pile of cash. Like George, most people in society spend their whole lives chasing material wealth, and never slow down to appreciate the priceless spiritual wealth they have built up through friends and family.

In The Giver by Lois Lowry, the main character, Jonas, can undoubtedly be considered a hero. Jonas’ actions throughout The Giver are a quality example of the archetypal pattern of the Hero’s journey, and to depict this I used a variety of text, illustration, and color throughout my graphic novel.

The book, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan focuses on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships amongst immigrant and first generation families.Through the use of narrative and metaphor to convey Ying Ying St. Clair’s inner thoughts and the hurt and suffering she endures. Furthermore Tan’s style is easily recognizable to many mother’s and daughters because it captures their struggles to understand each other.

Sundiata and The Odyssey are two out of the many great great orally told tales in all of mankind history. In writing, comparing your work to another similar text is extremely important for making your paper understandable to any audience. In this case, I will be comparing the two similar texts, The Odyssey and Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Both of these two tables show the characters, Sundiata and Odysseus, long quests of pursuing and accomplishing a certain objective. To reach their goal, both characters encounter obstacles and enemies who want to stop them on their prolonged journey. Another item that is extremely important in both stories is the use and importance of fate. Both characters rely on their fates for assistance and for achieving

In “Death of a Salesman” & “The Tragedy of Macbeth” by Arthur Miller, the character Willy Loman on the modern america, in the 1940’s as cars and appliances ar be made willy is constantly to maintain the best in family as he slowly starts to lose his mind in the world it’s clear that willy only cares about one thing is that it’s keeping up with the people around him.

Many people have goals and dreams they want to achieve, but most of them either fall short or give up on achieving that goal they have. “If Only We Have Taller Been” by Ray Bradbury, is a poem that talks about how the success was usually out of reach, but at the end, the success was reached. In “All Summer in a Day” also by Ray Bradbury, the characters, who are children, try to get more of something they don’t have, which was the sun. Both of these stories suggest a theme throughout imagery to send the message of reaching for something you don’t have.

Change is a part of life that can be beneficial, harmful, or both. Every day people dream of becoming something they are not with hopes they can achieve what they believe to be a better life. In “The Ruined Maid” by Thomas Hardy and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell, both narrators undergo a drastic transition in their lifestyles. In Hardy’s poem the narrator, Melia, goes from living a simple farm life, to living a luxurious life as a prostitute. In Russell’s short story the narrator, Claudette, transitions from life as a wolf-girl to becoming an average human girl. Though the content might be different, the theme of these two pieces of literature are the same. The theme being that change does not come without sacrifice.

What if we lived in a world of peace and equality? What if we lived in a world with no differences? A world with no social classes and inequality. That sounds pretty amazing doesn’t it? In Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver that is the reality. The catch? The catch is freedom. There is no room for being different, no room for spontaneity, no room for experimentation and breaking the rules. If you break the rules you will be caught and their is no room for forgiveness. Also, if you are diagnosed with a disease, or just simply sick, you must likely will be released into the “elsewhere” world.

Stories are the foundation of relationships. They represent the shared lessons, the memories, and the feelings between people. But often times, those stories are mistakenly left unspoken; often times, the weight of the impending future mutes the stories, and what remains is nothing more than self-destructive questions and emotions that “add up to silence” (Lee. 23). In “A Story” by Li-Young Lee, Lee uses economic imagery of the transient present and the inevitable and fear-igniting future, a third person omniscient point of view that shifts between the father’s and son’s perspective and between the present and future, and emotional diction to depict the undying love between a father and a son shadowed by the fear of change and to illuminate the damage caused by silence and the differences between childhood and adulthood perception.

There is a quote from an anonymous speaker that says, “It takes a couple seconds to say Hello, but forever to say Goodbye.” This quote can be related to the fictional characters, Jay Gatsby and Dexter Green. Both were men who met an extraordinary woman and could never seem to let her go. These are characters from the book The Great Gatsby, and the short story Winter Dreams, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest novels to come out of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. The two stories have similar plots. They are both about men who met a woman and fell in love with her, but in one way or another, she got away from them. They spent several years of their lives gaining money and rising up in society just to get her back.

The story of Beowulf is a well known story and is used in many schools as a teaching model and in many schools around the world. The movie The Lord of The Rings is a very popular movie that many people have watched and know about it. The creator of The Lord of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, was a huge fan of Beowulf and used many of the ideas from the story into The Lord of The Rings. There are many similarities and differences between the two stories. The similarities and differences between the characters and the settings in both of the stories. Also there are some themes that appear in both of these stories and how they are connected and different. Some of these themes are the themes of death, boasting/ego, courage, violence, and Good vs Evil.

Macbeth is a play written by the great English poet Shakespeare. Macbeth is a story about a soon to become king Macbeth. He is the main character of the story as he plays a big role in the events that occur during the story. Macbeth was known for being ambitious and a person with great perseverance. The movie Throne Of Blood is an adaption of the play Macbeth, but it’s not just a translation of the play. In Fact, The director of the movie Asir Kurosawa did a brilliant job by inserting diverse cultural, and historical sources into the movie.