The Soldier's Kiss Analysis

Improved Essays
Imagine a cell with no familiar faces and being wiped, just to get your freedom. Imagine forgetting a part of you after being brainwashed by drugs. The main character of The Winners Kiss by Marie Rutkoski, Kestrel, experiences these difficulties after being turned in by her own father and being sent to a brutal camp to work in the mines in the Tundra’ s. This story takes place during the time of a war. In this camp, they would feed its prisoners with drugs that will slowly erase all of your memories. The drugs made Kestrel forget her love for Arin, her father, and her people. Arin is a slave that wants to defeat the empire and he loves Kestrel.For each day they gave her different drugs for sleeping, working, eating and more. Kestrel tries to escape the campsite and she wants the Empire to pay.Meanwhile, Arin is fighting a war after he broke up kestrel and he believes that he doesn't love her anymore. Arin knew how Kestrel was like she cared …show more content…
On page 40, Kestrel says, “ A giddy rushed her. Her heart soaring in her chest. Her ribs spread with relief (...) she was free.”Kestrel rushed out of the gates and she was free. Kestrel was punished after she was caught, trying to escape.Kestrel suffers the consequences after she was whipped and hurt by one of the workers at the camp. Kestrel knew the consequences but she wanted to be free.

Next, Kestrel Learn that betrayal to her own country will lead to the freedom of others. On page 363, she betrayed her own country because the Empire was unfair to its people, “ ‘“Traitor.’ He knocked the sword from her.” She betrayed her people to give others their freedom by dressing up as one of the men in the Army. Later she gets stabbed in the thigh because a soldier found out. This shows that Kestrel had to suffer the pain and she couldn’t walk for a few days. She also knew the consequences, but she was willing to suffer the pain and giveaway her

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    “On the eve of the Civil War, Ira Berlin writes in Slaves Without Masters, there were a total of 488,070 free blacks living in the United States. That’s almost 10 percent of the entire black population” (Gates 4). There were more free African Americans living in the South and stayed there during the Civil War. The powerful, moving, and horrific biography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, shows the great desire slaves had to be free. At the beginning of the book, Douglass is stabatashed to believe he is a slave forever.…

    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Frederick Douglass utilizes figurative language to help the northerners understand how it is like to be an escaped slave. Douglass at first felt excited when he left his “chains”(S.2) at first until he realized he could not trust anyone as the loneliness overcame him. When Douglass first escaped slavery“[he] felt as one may imagine the unarmed mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate” (S.8). Douglass takes advantage of this analogy to compare the relief of first escaping slavery to the relief of getting saved from the pirate to help the northerners imagine what escaping slavery would feel like. Once Douglass realized that he actually could not trust anyone so” he is [at] every moment subjected…

    • 241 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Enjoy freedom? Fear for your control. Beatty, a character in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, states that "Not everyone [is] born free and equal...but made equal" (Bradbury 55). Beatty likes to burn books because he believes that it levels the playing field for all mankind in the most sufficient method. However, Beatty does not consider that by stating this quote, he is affirming the common theme of another book, titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Owning a slave turns Mrs. Auld into a very brutal person, but before long she is more brutal than her husband. Nothing makes her more angry than catching Douglass with a newspaper. He does not let this stop him as he is convinced that knowledge is the key to getting away from slavery. He manages to learn by making friends with white kids in the streets, and they’re happy teach him what they have learned in school. Douglass has a favorite book called The Columbian Orator which has many speeches.…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In Rediker's section on "The Botswain" of the Nighingale, he uses a primary sources to provide a detailed account of a captured woman. The author is citing a 1769 story told by a sailor aboard the ship. This first hand information supported the author's narrative of the deplorable conditions and treatment that the African captives faced. Rediker/the sailor describe the tale of a woman who was known and respected among the ship for her ability to maintain order among her fellow captives. However, she was unable to preserve what little authority she had, because her position threatened the power structure of the ship.…

    • 207 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Aimee Bender uses Steven’s lips as a symbol of the changes he exhibits when he comes home from war. Mary’s focus on his physical attributes rather than their emotional relationship together exposes the dramatic changes that warfare can impose on a person and their relationships. When Steven returns from war Mary notices one thing, his lips are missing. “Steven returned from the war without lips…I expected lips.…

    • 1135 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass uses contrast, parallelism, imagery, allusions, and details to enhance the wickedness of slavery. He recalled all of his experiences in the mid-1800s as an educated man trapped in slavery. His journey guided him to become one of the most influential writers during the period of slavery. He was an extremely important slave because he was one of the few slaves that was highly educated and was aware of the unfair situation that he and the fellow slaves was trapped in. In his narrative, Frederick Douglass uses many literary devices to accurately portray his experiences as a slave, including contrast, parallelism, imagery, allusions, and details.…

    • 1919 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Frederick Douglass employs three very important themes in his autobiography, all of which are effective at gaining the reader’s sympathy. One theme is his point that slavery is an impersonal system of dehumanization, in which slaves are treated like animals, plants, or even inanimate objects, but never like humans. He also shows how slavery corrupts the church and the legal system. White men are never subject to any legal ramifications if they hurt or even kill slaves. To help illustrate these themes, Douglass brings special attention to the slaves’ songs.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Solomon Northup: A Slave As A Slave

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 2 Works Cited

    The relationship that exists between Patsey and her mistress reveals a lot about the kind of unconventional domestic scene that slavery creates. The white and black women live near each other, with themes such as jealousy, sexual abuse and violence playing major roles in their…

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 2 Works Cited
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Douglass reflects on the feelings he experienced when he became a free man. Upon arriving in a free state for the first time, Frederick Douglass experiences a plethora of emotions such as excitement because he is finally free, relief that he successfully arrived in the North, loneliness when he realizes he can trust nobody, and fear of being captured by white men and returned to his master. His use of language in the passage helps him convey these feelings while strengthening his emotions in order to demonstrate the adjustments slaves had to make upon escaping the tortures of the South. Douglass begins by informing the reader that when asked how it felt to become a free man he never knew how to properly…

    • 1445 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Douglass wants readers to understand how the power of knowledge was key to overcoming the terrible tribulations of slavery. Countless of times Douglass thought acquiesce was the only was he was going to make it though slavery alive. Instead the thought of freedom was overpowering. With the use of imagery, symbolism, and situational irony, he shines light on his unimaginably, gruesome, dehumanizing experience as a slave; allowing readers to undergo his journey to becoming educated with him.…

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Slavery’s roots have long been a part of the America’s past, and continue to play a role in its development. Though many slaves suffered for their entire lives, some few were fortunate enough to get that taste of freedom they so deserved and shape their new lives in the direction they desired. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Frederick Douglass examines the elusiveness of freedom through his transformation from an ignorant slave-boy into a knowledgeable and self-aware man. Frederick Douglass examines the ever-eluding ideas of freedom through symbolism, education, and how to move forward once one has attained this freedom.…

    • 1622 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier is a historical narrative about Joseph Plumb Martin 's adventures and efforts while in the Revolutionary War. This classic read uncovers the thoughts and struggles of a soldier in the Revolutionary War during the year 1776. Plumb Martin enlisted in the Continental Army in 1776, and served in New York and Connecticut during the American Revolution. Joseph Plumb Martin was an American patriot for many different reasons. One of those reasons being that he went against his own will to enlist and continue to enlist until the end of the Revolutionary War.…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Literacy is the defining term that differentiated slaves from their masters. Slaves were kept from any connection or exposure to literacy, more or less reading and writing. In addition, by keeping them in constant mental neglect, the masters ensued their predominate power and wealth across the south in a time of prejudice and racial ideologies. As a result of becoming self-aware and knowledgeable of slavery’s demeanor and its injustices, Douglass contradicts the status quo in the South. This knowledge consists of the evident cruelties in slavery and how the masters hid themselves behind the justifications of their actions through religion and law.…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Road to Freedom In his excerpt “Learning to Read and Write”, Public speaker, editor, author and former slave, Frederick Douglass, recounts his path to learning how to read and write in order to escape to the north to be a freed man. In order to convey his strong emotions of helplessness and loathing, Douglass effectively uses metaphor and references to animals to convince abolitionists to sympathize with his situation. Douglass begins his narrative by recounting the instruction from his mistress to teach him how to read and write. The words used to describe the transition of his mistress after her “training in the exercise of irresponsible power” (Douglass 100) inject a fear like prey has to predator to appeal to the intense emotions of…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays