... siblings recognized his brutal personality and tried to avoid him. As a young adult, he showed no regard for authority, and exhibited cruel and unacceptable behavior. Harriet, Ben’s mother, tried to alter this behavior by first chastising him and then showing compassion. She sought help from professional therapists who chose to ignore the true nature of Ben’s personality. Lessing suggests that human nature is unchangeable and strongly believes in the “nature� vs. “nurture� theory of personality. From the time of birth, Harriet had conceived Ben as being a belligerent infant whose main purpose in ...

... This point of view enables the ending to be ironic. The situations in "The Lottery" are ironic. The author's use of words keeps the reader thinking that there is nothing wrong and that everyone is fine. The story starts by describing the day as "clear and sunny"(309). The people of the town are happy and going on as if it is every other day. The situation where Mrs. Hutchinson is jokingly saying to Mrs. Delacroix "Clean forgot what day it was"(311) is ironic because something that is so awful cannot truly be forgotten. At the end of the story when Mrs. Hutchinson is chosen for the lottery, it is ironi ...

... France had driven the ruling Medici family out of the city of Florence, the last resisting Italian principality. The Florentines would not stand for this; they ousted the new ruler out of the city and founded the Florentine republic. Machiavelli soon started work as clerk under Adriani, head of the Second Chancery. Four years past by and in 1498, Machiavelli became Chief Secretary of the Florentine Republic, and then later that year, he succeeded Adriani as head of the Second Chancery. While in this position as Chief Secretary, he went on many diplomatic missions and observed many foreign governments in action. Fro ...

... hearty individuals just trying to survive a tough life. After Lennie’s Aunt Clara passed away George took the responsibility of looking after Lennie. Through good and bad times George has learned to love and protect him. Lennie, an animal lover at heart always takes pleasure from petting them. He loves all small, soft, fuzzy things and cannot help himself from petting them. During their journey to the new ranch, Lennie catches a mouse, “I could pet it with my thumb while we walked along.” (Steinbeck:6). George hates it when Lennie catches animals and plays with them “well you ain’t ...

... a woman's social standing is measured by how successful your children are and also how well you care for your spouse. Because of this, Waverly's mother boasts about Waverly's mastery of the game of chess. Throughout all of the Jing-Mei Woo stories June has to recall all of the memories of what her mother had told her. She remembers how her mother left her babies during the war. June's mother felt that since she had failed as a mother to her first babies she had failed as a person. When she made June take piano lessons June thought that she was trying to make her become a child prodigy like Waverly, but her ...

... was in on the trials. Many people testified against the accused witches, not many defended them. Perhaps this was because they might be accused of wizardry of being a witch themselves if they did so. I can say that there were important families such as the Carrier, Jacobs, Proctor, Good, Hobbs, Nurse, and the Cory's. Also many children were supposedly being hurt by witches and they banded together against the accused. The predicament in this story was that events such as a bad crop season of the girls being bewitched needed to be explained. To say that "witchcraft" is the answer the these questions. The unfortun ...

... viewed in the context of this society and by Chaucer himself. During the period in which Chaucer wrote, there was a dual concept of chivalry, one facet being based in reality and the other existing mainly in the imagination only. On the one hand, there was the medieval notion we are most familiar with today in which the knight was the consummate righteous man, willing to sacrifice self for the worthy cause of the afflicted and weak; on the other, we have the sad truth that the human knight rarely lived up to this ideal(Patterson 170). In a work by Muriel Bowden, Associate Professor of English at Hunter College, ...

... Two Cities (1859), Dickens once again expresses his concern. The novel opens in 1775, with a comparison of England and pre-revolutionary France. While drawing parallels between the two countries, Dickens also alludes to his own time: "the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only" (1; bk. 1, ch. 1). The rest of the chapter shows that Dickens regarded the condition to be an 'evil' one, since he depicts both countries as rife with poverty, injustice, and violence due to the irrespo ...

... brother Harold Lauder. Fran puts her personal feelings for Harold aside, and goes with him to the place in her dreams, Boulder, Colorado. On their way, they met up with six people from various states in the United States who joined them on their journey. Fran is disturbed by her dreams, as all of them are by their own. She dreams of an old lady named Abigail, in Colorado. This lady is kind and loving and promises to protect them from evil. In the dreams there is always a “Dark Man.� He is always there lurking, waiting to attack. Harold admits to him himself that he is in love with Fran and goes crazy when he re ...

... in a southern town called Suffolk, in which Jews are looked down upon. People laugh at her as she walks down the street, and snicker when they hear her speaking Yiddish. Children at her elementary school tease her for being Jewish. Ruth becomes ashamed of her identity, and tries to conceal it by changing her name. She explains, “My real name was Rachel, which in Yiddish is Ruckla, which is what my parents called me--but I used the name Ruth around white folk, because it didn’t sound so Jewish �(80). Ruth’s attempt at acceptance is in vein, however; it never stops the children from teasing her. When ...