Open “But this is your dream son!” “No, dad, it is your dream”. The plot twist of so many American sports movies – the son finally breaking away his father and the way he vicariously lives through his son. The same problem is seen in the autobiography Open from 2009 by Andre Agassi – although much darker. For even though Agassi grew up to be a world-famous tennis player it might not always have been his own dream. Because when you have a father who’s relationships and upbringing dominate your…
In Master Harold and the Boys, Athol Fugard uses kite flying to characterize the relationship between Hally, a white boy, and Sam, his black servant. In the play, both Hally and Sam view the kite with a positive outlook. To both Sam and Hally, kite flying is a happy memory of when Sam would take care and play with Hally. However, towards the end of the play, the memory becomes a lesson for Hally from Sam to teach Hally about the choices he can make moving forward as a white boy growing up in…
‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney is a poem that pulls on your emotions and that of many people can relate to. It is about a boy who has idolized his father his whole life, wanting to be just like him, but as he grows up he realizes that his father may not be as he thought he was and changes directions to where his life was heading. Throughout his life he was always following and looking up to his father but the roles switched, where he was once following his father, his father is now following him.…
In The Scarlet Ibis, symbolism is used as a main story telling element. It expresses the character, Brother’s, feelings toward all that happens, and shows his connections to events taking place in the story. In the story, the character called Brother learns to deal with his feelings of hate, embarrassment, and hope for his little brother, who he calls Doodle. He also has to encourage and push Doodle to become normal and fit into society. Brother at the end has to cope with the events of his…
Pedro Paramo: In-depth analysis of the novel through the image of protagonist. What happens to a person who gave a vow to his mother that he would find person he had never met in his life? What if this person is his father? How does a hero react when he finds out about the uncountable number of bastards and a legal child of his father? How does the “trip to his legacy” change him? How does he react when he finds out that his father is a pure devil? To make matters worse, what if the town of his…
“The truth hurts”, a wise man once said, but Ben, the main character of Deadline, never expected to lose all of his close friends. The book Deadline, by Chris Crutcher, is about an eighteen year old Ben Wolf, the protagonist, who discovers he has one year to live due to a terminal blood disease. In the beginning of the novel, he decides that it is best to not tell anyone, but this decision comes back to haunt him. Throughout the novel, Ben becomes close with some people in Trout, the city in…
In The Kite Runner, there are two important characters, Amir and Hassan. Amir is the main character as well as the narrator of the story, leading to seeing events through his eyes. As Amir is telling the story, he thinks of an event that happened twenty-six years before, when he was a little boy, living in Afghanistan, saying that that made him who he is. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and he grows up being used to getting what he wants. Amir grows up with his father Baba,…
O’Brien is an extremely complex character. We are presented him as three different stages, the little boy, the soldier, and the writer. They all posses different viewpoints on certain subjects. Writer O’Brien stresses upon bringing out these differences. A good example of each character having a different viewpoint is their take on death. Little O’Brien came to accept death even at the age he was. Soldier O’Brien digs into that past knowledge and uses it to help him through the war with death…
The novel, “All the broken pieces” by Ann E. Burg, is a fantastic book. This book is a constant page-turner, and is very straightforward so you don’t get lost anywhere in the book. This book takes place in the United States towards the end of the Vietnam War. The main character Matt Pin, is from Vietnam but has to move to the States because of the war and the toll that it was taking on his country. During the novel Matt has to overcome hatred by his classmates in order to achieve his goals, and…
Hope can inspire people to endure difficult times. In Stephen Galloway’s novel “The Cellist of Sarajevo” the struggles that the citizens of Sarajevo must contend with during the Bosnian war are explored. Dragan and Kenan are put in situations in which their hopes on survival are tested. The effects of the war causes Kenan and Dragan to lose hope which changes their views on life. The consequences of the Bosnian war causes many people of Sarajevo to lose hope. Trying hard not to lose hope on…