Author: SarahZ

Smith addresses the vast class differences he notices in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The proposer of the pamphlet is painted as a vain, wealthy member of the Irish upper-class, who doesn’t even bother to recognize those of the lower-class. But Smith isn’t just criticizing these self-righteous Irish citizens, he is also urging them to help the poor.

The proposer comments that “landlords … have already devoured most of the (poor) parents.” Of course, Swift doesn’t mean literally that the parents are being eaten, but he implies that there isn’t much difference between the suggested acts of cannibalism and the day-to-day activities of the rich.

Throughout the story, the proposer writes in an analytical tone; as if the matter of the poor people of Ireland is just another math problem to be dissected. This demonstrates that the upper-class are painfully out-of-touch with people lower on the food chain. To them, the humanity of the lower-class is just a number. In fact, the proposer doesn’t bother to do anything although he knows and writes that those who are “aged, diseased, or maimed” are “every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.” Smith is rebuking his pamphlet-readers for doing nothing, except maybe raise the rent, as their tenants and workers live and die in squalor.

The proposer serves as a caricature of the affluent demographic, unable to believe that the impoverished citizens are anything other than mere products, their only use to be bought and sold. Swift suggests that they are by nature predatory and indifferent to others, lacking in morality and common sense though more scholarly than most. Still, he prods them to help out and rediscover their compassion for others. After all, when all the Irish children are devoured, what else will there be to eat but each other?

Seventeen-year-old Billy Weaver is the polar opposite of the landlady of the Bed and Breakfast, who puts up a sweet front in order to lure Billy into her clutches. In “The Landlady,” Roald Dahl uses this juxtaposition of young and old to demonstrate the cruelty of the adult world.

Billy Weaver admires adults, in particularly the “big shots” at the business office he works at. He thinks that they are “amazing,” and tries to act like them. Billy is also very trustful, to the point of being gullible. He travels to Bath, where he is a stranger, because “Mr. Greenslade at the head office” tells him that it is “splendid.” In fact, it is his gullibility that leads to his demise later at the hands of the landlady. Billy never suspects her, though there were many signs that something wasn’t quite right. He believes that the landlady is a “kind and generous soul,” even after she made several suspicious comments, saying that Billy is “just right,” among other things.

The landlady, on the other hand, is cruel and dishonest. She uses her grandmotherly air to induce Billy to put his trust in her, only to betray it in the end by poisoning him. The landlady’s scheme also demonstrates how sly she is. Though Billy thought she was slightly dotty, the landlady is actually meticulous, agile, and organized. She has “quickly moving hands” and “red fingernails.” Hearing that Billy would like to go to bed directly instead of eating dinner with her, the landlady tells him to go downstairs to sign “the book.” She uses this opportunity to serve him poisoned tea.

Billy’s innocence causes him to only see the best in people, representing the kindness and trustfulness of youth. However, having not been in the cruel world for long, young people can be too trustful, becoming oblivious to red flags. Billy completely misses many discrepancies in the landlady’s behavior. This admittedly is his fault, for he was not cautious enough. This lack of caution might have been caused by his haste, imitated from the adults whom he had blind regard for. The landlady, wicked to the point of depravity, shows how growing up robs people of the innocence they had when they were younger.

Each character in A Good Man is Hard to Find has their own flaws and weaknesses. The two who are the easiest to condemn are the grandmother and the Misfit. The grandmother is characterized by being rather judgmental and manipulative. She lies to her grandchildren, telling them that “there was a secret panel” in a house she wanted to visit, rightly predicting that they would make a fuss, forcing Bailey to make the detour. The Misfit is also someone most people would view as evil, murdering innocents in cold blood. However, these two deeply flawed characters both receive some form of grace.

The grandmother, in the moments before her violent death, reaches out to the Misfit, and tells him that he’s one of her “babies,” that he’s one of her “children.” The text tells the reader that “her head cleared,” which shows that she isn’t insane in her dying moments, but perhaps is more lucid than before. She has been touched by a thread of compassion, which she was devoid of in the beginning of the story. The grandmother realizes that, despite the Misfit’s vile actions, he is also a human being. This, for her, is her form of salvation — she dies serenely, trying to comfort the Misfit.

The Misfit, after being wrongly imprisoned for his father’s murder, commits heinous crimes. He believes that the injustice done to him wasn’t a simple mistake, but is God’s fault. Obviously, his punishment wasn’t right, but his way of coping with what happened is also wrong. The Misfit says that he “signs” the crimes he later perpetrates himself. In trying to match the consequences to the crimes he commits, he ultimately leads himself further down the path of destruction. But after his conversation with the grandmother, and after experiencing the love she had for him despite knowing all the atrocious acts he committed, the Misfit starts to change. Earlier, he lives by the maxim “no pleasure but meanness,” but at the end of the story, he displays some type of weariness of it all, saying that there’s “no real pleasure” in killing. Perhaps the touch of grace the Misfit had experienced could cause him to leave the criminal life.

A Good Man is Hard to Find shows that everyone can receive redemption, no matter if it is a criminal with a hardened heart, or a hypocritical old lady. Although it is true that punishments given on Earth will never be fair, God can, and will, freely grant even the most imperfect people salvation.

It is well known how overbearing Asian parents are. Everybody has heard of the joke that if an Asian student comes home with less than an “A+” on their report card, they will get kicked to the curb. Rules of The Game clearly shows how this tendency of the so called “tiger moms” can strain a relationship. But this schism isn’t just the fault of the parents. The narrator, now grown up, looks back and realizes “how wicked” she was.

Waverly’s mom, realizing that her daughter is a genius at chess, latches on, causing her daughter to lose much of her freedom. Waverly, looking back, writes, “I no longer played in the alley of Waverly Place. I never visited the playground where the pigeons and old men gathered.” In doing so, Waverly starts to feel suffocated. She can’t understand her mother, which isn’t helped by the language barrier between them. Her mother, being from China, speaks broken English, which is muddled and hard to comprehend. Waverly hates it when her mother stands over her, watching as she studies new chess moves. But the grown up Waverly realizes that her mother might have thought herself as her daughter’s “protective ally.”

Despite the obvious strain in their relationship, Waverly still tries to please her mother. Throughout the story, the mother-daughter duo try to outmaneuver each other, and Waverly sees her mother as a chess opponent, “two angry black slits.” But perhaps this is also just a scheme of Waverly’s; she believes that if she could just please her mother, her mother would stop being so demanding. She believes that she could end the chess game with her mother if she fulfills everything that her mother wants.

Waverly dreams of running away from her mother. She sees herself being “pushed up toward the night sky until everything
below (her) disappeared.” This is just another indicator to the tense relationship she shared with her mother. Nevertheless, Waverly never estranges herself from her. Maybe it’s just because of the Chinese quality of being xiao shun, of being filial to parents. But it is clear that Waverly respects her mother; she respects that her mother “imparted her daily truths,” allowing Waverly and her brothers to become better in every which way.

The strain between Waverly and her mother is caused by a variety of factors, among them misunderstanding, miscommunication, and the uneven placement of control. However, no matter how large the rift is between mother and daughter, somehow they don’t alienate themselves from each other. This is seen in how grown-up-Waverly doesn’t write about her mother with bitterness, but describes her fairly. Waverly as an adult still views her childhood with sadness, but she has changed her view of her mother, from dreaming of running away to understanding that she was well-meaning.

In The Lottery, the inhabitants of a small village attend a lottery every year. Having done the same thing for years on end, they unquestioningly accept what is happening, even as they are murdering their friends and neighbors.

This lottery is only an extreme example of what can happen if people just follow what their predecessors have done without question. Despite the lottery having existed for so long that many of the rules, and even the purpose of the event, have been forgotten, the inhabitants of the village still cling to it. With every new generation, more of the lottery is being forgotten, until one has to wonder if the current lottery holds the same purpose as the original, or if it is just an empty skeleton of what it had previously been. After all, parts of the lottery had been “allowed to lapse,” and other parts had been “changed with time.”

When Mr. Adams mentions that some other towns were abandoning the lottery, Old Man Warner contemptuously says, “Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves…” His belief that society would fall apart without the lottery indicates why the tradition is kept, among other reasons. Old Man Warner is also the one who urges the other inhabitants to stone Mrs. Hutchinson. He not only encourages these acts of violence, but he also vastly overestimates the effect of the lottery. However, he can’t exactly be blamed for that, as nobody investigated the event. His character is a warning to be wary of blindly following tradition. Old Man Warner also boasts that he has attended the lottery for seventy-seven years. He does so freely, as if it’s some sort of strength, not realizing that there are very real people being affected very seriously by such an event.

In this story, Mrs. Hutchinson seems to be the only one to truly understand the implications of the lottery, as she is the only one really affected (familial ties don’t seem to be too important in this village). But by the time she fully realizes it, it’s too late. At first, she, like everybody else, unquestioningly attends the lottery. However, the way she treats the lottery was different from her neighbors — while everyone else treats it as a solemn occasion, her tardiness, among other events, shows that Mrs. Hutchinson thinks of the lottery more lightheartedly, at least initially. But when she draws the slip of paper spelling out her death sentence, the full weight of what is going to happen hits her hard. The only thing she can do is cry out that “it’s not fair.” Despite her obvious hypocrisy, it is difficult not to feel sorry for Mrs. Hutchinson.

The people in this story are, as stated previously, committing murder, but it doesn’t weigh on their conscience at all. They, simply because they are not affected, do not realize what is happening, nor do they bother to wonder about it. This story is a warning that traditions should be appraised and questioned critically. When the purpose is lost, even if a tradition provides comfort in its regularity, there is little reason to continue following it.

In The Ransom of Red Chief, Bill tells Sam that his favorite biblical character is King Herod. King Herod is notorious in the Christian realm for plotting to kidnap and kill the baby Jesus, being envious of the rising of a new “king.” This is similar to the story Bill and Sam are set in, as they try to kidnap the son of wealthy businessman Ebenezer Dorset, but they do it in the attempt to earn money. In both stories, the prey manage to get away.
Jesus’ parents, while on the run from Herod, live in perpetual terror of getting found out. They spend most of Jesus’ childhood in Egypt, fearing the consequences of returning to Judea and having Jesus discovered. On the other hand, Johnny Dorset, who was kidnapped by Bill and Sam, terrorizes his kidnappers. Instead of being scared, he violently attacks and wears down his kidnappers. Additionally, Jesus, after growing up, taught his followers not to fight back, but to “turn the other cheek.” Meanwhile, Johnny often fought back, and that turned out to be the driving force in his release.

The predators in these two stories are vastly different as well. King Herod lived lavishly; Bill and Sam were in need of money. But their actions when it came to their respective kidnappings (technically the planning of first degree murder on King Herod’s part) are also distinct. As stated previously, Bill and Sam were terrorized by Johnny. At one point, Bill tries to show Johnny the door, and thinks he has left. After discovering that the boy is still with him, he “loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks.” Eventually, the duo pay Ebenezer Dorset to take back his rambunctious child. Meanwhile, King Herod was cunning and cruel. He was known for killing off members of his own family, fearing that they would take his position. After discovering the baby Jesus had disappeared along with his parents, he prompted a mass massacre of all baby boys. Of course, Jesus survived, but the massacre lives on in history known as the “Massacre of Innocents.”

These two stories are clearly different in who played the dominating role in the kidnapper and the kidnapped. However, they are similar in several respects. Most clearly, is that those in what should have been the lower position escapes unscathed. Bill, saying that his favorite character in the Bible, probably meant that he admired King Herod for his merciless murders, and not of Herod’s failure of the killing of Jesus in his plan so similar to his own!