Anna is the heroine in the story and highlights the theme of letting go. The other characters such as Michael Mompellier, Elinor, and the Bradfords provide contrast in their ability to let go of certain things and the results that it brings. The theme of letting go of the past is further highlighted by these other characters. The time of the plague was a time of letting go. Everyone's world changed in some way. In the beginning of the novel, Anna reflects on the loss of labor for picking apples. This foreshadows the changes that are to come in the rest of the novel. Ann says, "There were so few people to do the picking. So few people to do anything. An those of us who are left walk around as if we're half asleep, We are all so tired, " (Brooks, p. 3) This quote sets the tone of the novel and serves as a clue that many more changes are to come and many losses as well.
The last two chapters of the novel do not seem to be consistent with the rest of the novel. It would appear that the people who survived would remain in the town. However, Anna decides to take a chance and leave for a foreign land where she will have to let go of everything that she ever knew. She will have to let go in order to survive in the new lands. The novel contains may themes, such as the social roles of society, faith, and the ability to overcome great challenges. However, it is the theme of letting go of things that drives the central plot of the story. In order to see this plot, one needs to examine the characters from an outsider's view rather than by examining the individual scenes of the story.
One of the key symbols that is consistent throughout the novel is harvest time and the smell of rotting apples. In the beginning of the novel, these are a sense of comfort and joy to Anna. They are a symbol of abundance and the ability to survive the winter. However, as the novel progresses, the smell of apples rotting begins to symbolize the losses that Ann and the rest have endured. In the end of the novel, she no loathes the smell of rotting apples....
Tale of a Shaman's Apprentice by Mark J. Plotkin, "chief ethno-botanist for Conservation International" (Plotkin: Back cover). The Works Cited one source in MLA format. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice With the augmenting technological development at a rapid pace, today life offers no guarantees but innumerable luxuries. However, the pruning of trees and cutting down priceless forests and vegetation that can provide evidence of life on earth has crippled the economy,
How different it was to be from the loose ungoverned part I had acted before, and how much happier a life of virtue and sobriety is, than that which we call a life of pleasure."(moll Flander, Chapter 38). By this choice of words, Defoe contrasts sobriety and pleasure and the conclusion could be that there is no pleasure for the virtuous. By "life of pleasure," he means, of course,
In "Piaf," Pam Gems provides a view into the life of the great French singer and arguably the greatest singer of her generation -- Edith Piaf. (Fildier and Primack, 1981), the slices that the playwright provides, more than adequately trace her life. Edith was born a waif on the streets of Paris (literally under a lamp-post). Abandoned by her parents -- a drunken street singer for a mother and a
The puppets enable Fugui to regain his self-esteem and give him a sense of creativity, as he is now capable of articulating his thoughts through the puppets. He is able to make a better living as a traveling entertainer than as a seller of needles and thread. When it became too painful to live in his old town where he was once so wealthy, Fugui flees and goes on the
Diary of Anne Frank The importance of Anne Frank's diary lies not in the fact that it is an eyewitness to the terrors of the Holocaust, for this is but one in thousands, it lies in the fact her writings reaffirm man's faith and hope in his fellow man and demonstrate that even under the most depressing of circumstances one can live, love, dream, and experience the entire spectrum of
" The differences in these two lines seem to be only a matter of syntax but in actuality, it also differs in the meaning. The King James Bible version makes it seem like the Lord is making the individual do something, as if by force or obligation, while the Puritan version states that the Lord causes the individual to do something, as if out of their own will. This alone
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