Cormac McCarthy’s novel ,Child of God, is the tale of a violent, dispossessed man living on the outskirts of society. Set in 1960s rural Tennessee, the novel focuses on the life of Lester Ballard, a murdering necrophiliac who seemingly only follows his own rules. Ballard is represented as a despicable, unhuman character, who apparently is, “A child of God much like yourself perhaps” (4). While Ballard repeatedly commits evil acts, one cannot help but find a soft spot for this man who was unloved as child and seems to be a product of his cruel environment. On the surface, Ballard’s actions make him seem alien to “us” (society) but to delve deeper, one discovers a true understanding of Lester Ballard. McCarthy uses Lester Ballard and his attributes to reflect on the condition of human nature. Lester Ballard is given many titles in Child of God, most that compare him to …show more content…
Ballard is not shown love. His father does not love him enough to not kill himself, “They say he[Ballard] never was right after his daddy killed hisself” (21). The townspeople immediately notice that after his father’s suicide, that Ballard becomes different. He does not receive the love he needs from his father which prevents him from receiving love from other women. Because he cannot receive love, Ballard decides to instead make love with the corpses of dead women. “Kneeling there between the girl’s legs he undid his buckle and lowered his trousers” (88). Ballard possess full power over the woman’s corpse, and because she cannot tell him no, he believes that he has the ability to objectify the corpse as a sex object. Necrophilia is a taboo is society; it is seen as something that barbaric and uncivilized people do. Because of his rampant practice of necrophilia through the novel, Ballard cannot be called one of “us”. He lacks the physical restraint to not have sex with corpses and even kills to fulfill his bodily
The novel goes through many recurring themes such as child abuse, social and economic differences, and legitimacy. These themes not only impact the main character but all the characters as a whole. It is the harrowing story of how Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright, a child must learn to cope and deal with the many terrible atrocities that are inflicted upon her by her stepfather, “Daddy Glen.” Before Bone could even coherently make a judgment upon herself she was labeled as an outcast. She was a sin and mistake that should be labeled as such for the world to know about it.
The novel represents marginalized youth in Canada in a way that we rarely see in literature and film. The novel has some very dark themes, including sexual abuse, violence, and substance abuse. The Lesser Blessed is a very bleak novel- because of the dark themes it presents,
Summary: This article is about a man named Jaime Prater who was born and raised in Jesus People USA (JPUSA), a religious community where the leadership clothes you, feeds you, educates you, and basically raises you. JPUSA were started by hippies who used to travel through the USA, but soon settled down in Chicago, and is now run by an authoritarian leader and councilship members. Jaime Prater was born into this community and thought of it as his family, but when he was 8 years old he was molested. He took it to the council, but they shut it down to stop spreading rumors and isolated him. In isolation, he felt lonely and scared for three and a half years, and left the comminity in his early 20’s after he realized that he didn’t belong.
A young catholic boy stands up for what he believes in while so many, of his own friends and classmates, turn on him because they do not want to be set out like outcasts. Meanwhile, teachers use their power for their own wants and needs and sit back while evil lurks the halls. Robert Cormier uses both a student and teachers point of view to create a powerful novel that involves both the abuse of power and evil within. Looking back on the events of his son’s and his life, Robert Cormier not only shows the battle of power and evil, but also how the 1970s and 1980s impacted his life the most in The Chocolate War.
A gift from God: The young Messiah in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road The Road shares the rough journey of a man and his messianic-figure son struggling to survive the morality of a post-apocalyptic world. The earth is destroyed and a majority of the once living are now deceased, however, the boy and his father continue to travel through their burned world. On their route south towards the coast, they find injured “good” guys and “bad” guys including thieves, shelter, clothes, and little food and water.
In his novel Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut illustrates the life of Billy Pilgrim as he is unstuck in time in order to ask, “What is the point and validity of Christianity if it only leads to pain and suffering?”, to which he answers that there is no point or validity to it through his emphasis on violence and cruelty in Christianity, juxtaposition with Tralfamadorian beliefs, and satire and mockery of Christian values. Using cruel, violent imagery ironically indicative of Christianity, Vonnegut emphasizes the pain and suffering of the religion’s figurehead and ultimately the hopelessness it leaves its followers. Billy was taunted by a picture of “an extremely gruesome crucifix” his mother hung over his childhood bed even though “Billy
By not including anything that might be offensive to a reader of a different religion, Hughes expanded his audience to a wide array of readers. Incorporating this religious experience to your own life experiences can be beneficial when relating to similar situations that you might have faced, or will face in the future. This story of a young man realizing that things may not always be as easy as others make it seem, and that at some points in life you must rethink everything you thought you once knew, is an important life lesson to all readers. Forming your own opinion on controversial subjects, such as religion, is something that one must do several times throughout their lives. This reason itself is what makes this story by Hughes interesting and unique in the way that it can relate to so many subjects not regarding
Flannery O’Connor, in her short life, wrote one novel and many short stories that impact literature to this day. She wrote two superb short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, which have many similarities hidden in the theme of their complex text. While both stories include themes about religion, identity, and the way we view others, the endings are astoundingly different. Nonetheless, O’Connor’s main theme concerning the way we view other people, is the most significant in both short stories. In Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell repeatedly states that the bible salesman is the “salt of the earth” meaning that he is just a good and simple country boy.
Literary Analysis ENG2106 Student name: Li Michaela Bernice Student ID: 4002551 Word count: Grace and sins Flannery O’Connor was a Southern author from America who frequently wrote in a Southern Gothic style and depended vigorously on local settings and bizarre characters. Her works likewise mirrored her Roman Catholic faith and regularly examined questions of morality and ethics. She created violence in the end of both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge” to put the stories to the end. She asserted that she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace, and also violence is the extreme situation that best reveals who
A certain darkness encompasses each of these stories and helps represent the recurring themes of evil and sin throughout them. In conclusion, “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown” are both strongly based in religion, contain symbolism, and share a dark mood. These elements enrich the stories by conveying the important points included in each one. Hawthorne synthesizes these elements in much of his literature, which explains how these stories are beautifully woven together like a well-crafted
Silence by Shusaku Endo is a tale of religious conflicts amongst Christians and Buddhists in Japan during the 1600’s. It documents the story of Sebastion Rodrigues, a young Jesuit priest in Portugal, who in 1637, sets out for Japan alongside two priest companions for missionary work, and to find out the truth about their teacher, Christovao Ferreira: a highly respected missionary and theologian in Japan who was recently shamed because of his apostasy. In Japan, Christians lived under heavy persecution and were often tortured into apostasy. One of the biggest themes explored in this story is the symbol of God/functions of God, as well as God’s lack of intervention and imminent silence in light of tragedies that Gods people face(d), and whether or not Gods silence has a meaning to it.
Jon Krakauer, Author of “Under the Banner of Heaven”, shares his first experience of a FLDS town located in Colorado City, Arizona. Krakauer describes stopping at a gas station where girls wore long, plain dresses, and later being tailgated out of town by a white Ford truck. After his story, the film brings us to Colorado Springs and scenes of where Krakauer traveled to, church songs sung by children rang in the background. The singing draws the viewer in, the viewer may start to believe this tale is not a violent one; but just a few minutes later, it is revealed, Warren Jeffs, leader of the FLDS church, raped young girls. Throughout the documentary, songs sung by children are played, and the viewer is forced to imagine the horrors children were faced with in FLDS villages.
I left the Church but she has not left me.” Many might think that after leaving a religion, the connection is over but it quite the opposite. Conroy proves in his confession that his upbringing within the Catholic Church shaped him as not only as a person but also as a writer. Devices • Ethos: Conroy’s confession appeals to ethos when stating that he will never submerge his children into
“Her characters, who sometimes accept and other times reject salvation, often have a warped self-image, especially of their moral status and of the morality of their actions” (Hobby). This addresses how some of the important lines in the story describe to the reader about the extreme exaggeration and the psychological realism of the church, which O’Connor wanted to express within her story. The extreme use of exaggeration and how the use of the characters bring a sense of an uncanny feeling of good and evil within each character, portrays how deep the meaning is seen in this short story. “the story is filled with dark, grotesque humor created largely by the story 's many ironies” (Hobby). The author of this source highly emphasizes that O’Connor creates this dark humor for her characters to build on her meaning in the story and uses irony to create the distortion within her
The Feminization of Roaring Camp: Bret Harte and the American Woman 's Home, by Axel Nissen, is a criticism of Harte 's work, The Luck of Roaring Camp. The critic argues, the story serves as a parable, or a story with deeper meaning, the symbolism of Tommy Luck as a Christ-like figure, gives him the ability to transform miners into what everyone sees as a Victorian civilization, but this in turn leads the wilderness wipes them out I agree with Nissen because the the stories plot gives Tommy very Christ-like qualities that can make him have the ability to change the miners way of life to what would seem to be better. “... the father was unknown.” God is the father of Christ, but because no one can see God, it would make it seem like he had no father or that he was unknown, and Tommy had the same “problem.” “ The cabin assigned to “Tommy Luck”- or “The Luck,” as he was more frequently called- first showed signs of improvement.