Barn Burning : Familial Bonds And Ethical Choices Essay -- Family, Mot

In Barn Burning, a 10-year old Sartoris Snopes must choose between sticking to his family and making righteous decisions. His father, Abner Snopes, is a Southern tenant farmer who repeatedly burns down the barns of his landlords, so he and his family never stay in one place for too long. During the course of the story, Sartoris vacillates between loyalty to his father and loyalty to society. Ultimately, Sartoris betrays his father by warning the farm owner that his father will burn his barn, getting his father killed. In his short story Barn Burning, Faulkner uses the various characters and their development to elucidate that a familial bond is a substantial force that is difficult to separate from, but breaking the bond is sometimes crucial in order to do what is right. The different characters in the story facilitate in illustrating that family ties are an enormous force in a person’s life and difficult to break. Above all else, Abner believes that family has to stick together since they are all anyone has. Believing that his son was going to turn him in, Abner strikes his son, explaining, â€Å"‘You’re getting to be a man. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you. Do you think either of them, any man there this morning, would?† (408). Having spent his whole life running, Abner has no relationships with anyone outside his family and fears losing his son. It is clear that he is unable to trust anyone, in this case, not even his own son. However, he trusts his family more than anyone else in the world. Sartoris’s sympathetic mother, Lennie, shares Abner’s emphasis on family and is unable to leave Abner, despite greatly contrastin... ... middle of paper ... ...pair remain, he is no longer scared. Like his father had hoped for, Sartoris was becoming a man, just not in the way his father would have imagined. Despite Sartoris being alone at the end of the story, Sartoris made the right choice, and â€Å"did not look back† (417). Sartoris is now free to pursue justice, no longer burdened by his family. Despite the difficulties one must face in order to break family ties, it is sometimes essential to preserve one’s integrity. Full of grief and despair, Sartoris transitions from being a slave to his father’s atrocities to being a virtuous citizen. Principled like his mother, yet determined like his father, Sartoris accomplishes what none of his siblings were able to do: Sartoris escapes his father’s forceful grasp to regain his integrity as a human being. Sartoris liberates himself from the cycle of crime his family imposed on him.

Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decrum Est and Tim O'Brien's The Things Research Paper

Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decrum Est and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried deal with two different war - Research Paper Example The main theme that dominates both works is as follows: the realities of war that soldiers on the ground experience contradicts the idealistic view of war promoted by governments / the military. Compare/contrast the approaches and strategies these writers use to explore this theme. The most painful episodes of twentieth century history are its wars. Starting with the losses of the First World War in 1914 the Second World War was even more catastrophic. Then followed the theatre of the Cold War, in which the American military intervened far and wide in the globe. Notable examples include the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The two works in discussion, Wilfred Owen’s â€Å"Dulce Et Decrum Est† and Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"The Things They Carried† talk about two of the several wars of the recent century, namely the First World War and the Vietnam War. The political context, military strategy and technological aids employed in these two wars were quite diffe rent. Yet, their human tragedy remains the same. Separated by half a century, these two conflicts reflected the global geo-political power equations of their respective times. The two authors, far from glorifying war, present the realities of it in all its gory detail. Their works clearly suggest that futility and absurdity are the captions to the phenomenon of war. This view is in opposition to government/military propaganda, which would have its population believe that war is a noble of enterprise, undertaken to promote high values such as democracy, liberty, etc. There is even the preposterous propaganda slogan that ‘War is necessary to achieve peace’. The rest of this essay will flesh out the following thesis: Far from government rhetoric of the purpose and virtue of war, up-close observations of the actual theatre of war show how despairing, absurd and tragic the event is. The poem ‘Dulce Et Decrum Est’ is the best known of Wilfred Owen’s war po etry, the opening lines of which portray the wretched travails of a soldier during the First World War: â€Å"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, / Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, / Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs/ And towards our distant rest began to trudge.† (Owen, 1917) There is a palpable atmosphere of gloom and hopelessness that faced soldiers of the First World War and Owen’s poem starkly captures this reality. The genius of Owen is his ability to create art out of this most despairing human experience. The fact that Owen himself succumbed in the war is a powerful testimony to the messages and sentiments expressed in the poem. To place it in historical context, the First World War is one of the major tragic events in twentieth century history. Referred to as the Great War, it accounted for great loss of lives and material resources. For example, the trauma suffered by soldiers is captured in these lines â€Å"In all my dreams, before my helpless sight/ he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.† (Owen, 1917) Dulce Et Decrum Est is remarkable in its ability to move the reader. It also excels in stunning and disturbing the reader’s preconceived notions of war. So, while the shockingly graphic elements in the poem sit uncomfortably in the reader’s mind, it is a sound method for condemning the atrocities of war. Owen’s works in general, including the poem in question, also concern themselves with what he saw as â€Å"poetry's failure to render war's actualities truthfully. In the draft preface written for a projected collection of his war poetry, Owen states, "All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful". (Cyr, p.65) This is a veiled criticism of official government portrayal of war, which largely serves a propagandistic

Compare-Contrast Paper on Ancient Egyptian Arts and Ancient Greek Arts Research

Compare-Contrast on Ancient Egyptian Arts and Ancient Greek Arts - Research Paper Example The ancient Egyptians could have been very concerned on how the characters will be portrayed. The carefulness in drawing the characters involved is very notable. Verily, the stiffness nature of the characters portrayed could make a person say that the characters are just representations and not true. One could not entertain the idea that the characters were drawn or painted in an actual setting. Nevertheless, the ancient Egyptian arts are very attractive. Actually, the stiffness character of ancient Egyptian arts is associated to the beliefs and practices of Egypt’s primitive society. In the past, Egyptians gave importance to the exact portrayal of nature and actual life (â€Å"Art†). Exactness was actually viewed by them in terms of being able to draw the identifying features of the subject’s physical appearance. In such case, it is to be expected that in ancient Egyptian arts, the realistic appearance of an object is not given much attention. With regard to anc ient Greek arts, one could notice the realistic portrayal of the objects and characters involved (Hill; Newby, qtd. in Bispham et al. 49). Every detail of the objects and characters are seriously attended. For instance, in ancient Greek painting involving humans, one could see the lively and natural portrayal of human bodies (Pynt and Higgs 56).