I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." During the fight, the protagonist's blindfold slips just enough for him to see the other fighters. "Pushed this way and that by the legs milling around me, I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see the black, sweat- washed forms weaving in the smoky, blue atmosphere like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of blows." He instantly recognizes the importance of not letting it slip so much that his tactical advantage (of sight) becomes...
In that instant, he also recognizes the true meaning and importance of his grandfather's dying words. "… with my eye partly opened now there was not so much terror. I moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to attract attention, fighting group to group."
Yet perhaps no American author embraced the grotesque with the same enthusiasm as the Southern Flannery O'Connor. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor uses the example of a family annihilated by the side of the road by an outlaw named the Misfit to show the bankruptcy of American life. Instead of an evil serial killer, the Misfit is portrayed as a kind of force of divine
Royal Battle: The Prevalence of Social Injustice in Today America One of the most controversial contemporary American literary works that raised eyebrows in the 1950s was Ralph Ellison’s essay, Battle Royal. A short story told in the first person, with the main character, the narrator being a young high school graduate whose grandfather’s deathbed last words hunted for the better part of his life. The dying grandfather had called his son,
" Ellison's "Battle Royal" would not have taken place in New York City or any other cosmopolitan place. A small town element is necessary to convey the idea that small towns breed small mindedness. Similarly, Jackson, Mississippi is an apt setting for Faulker to describe the townspeople's impressions of Emily. Characterization is similar among these four stories. A sense of loneliness and isolation pervades "The Lottery," as well as "A Rose
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