Violence In Literature Analysis

1. In chapter eleven of his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster examines violence in literature, and particularly the way violence functions on multiple levels. Foster identifies two different kinds of violence in literature, and discusses how those two different kinds create different literal and literary meanings. By examining Foster's categories of violence in more detail, one can see how violence in literature serves as an important link between the internal events of a story and the story itself.

There are two categories of violence in literature: the specific injury and the narrative violence. Specific injury causes characters to visit on one another or on themselves. Narrative violence cause the characters to cause harm in general.

Violence affects people in many ways, including how it can desensitize cruelty by means of images in the media and exposure, and how this affects our society as a whole. Violence is defined by, “the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force”. In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah we see a boy go from innocent into a soldier killing hundreds of people a day. Issues of violence our throughout our culture today, like the effects of violent movies and games in adolescents. Ishmael Beah went through something a boy should never go through, a world full of violence that left an impact on him forever.

Many people have different views on whether or not they are for or against violence in children’s literature. I am for children’s literature due to the fact that if one is not educated, how is one expected to know. In this essay we will look at the pros and cons of including violence in children’s literature.

What has America come to? Although the articles, “We’re No.1(1)!” written by Thomas Friedman, and the article “Violence is Who We Are,” by Steven Crichley, have different overall subjects, they have a similar arguments. The world isn’t as great as it used to be, we are lacking good leadership, and we happily invite wrong doings into our lives.

As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning

Violence is something the readers cannot miss in this novel. The most popular scene in the book to spot violence is when Ishmael talks about his experience as being a soldier. He talks about him and two other boys that were his friends during the whole war. He said that he became something that he never wanted to be, which was being a fighting machine. The boys also discovered drugs that made them break out into violence. This scene shows the physical violence

     Another example of violence transpiring for more than a sole purpose, is through the character of Jonathan Harker. Jonathan is struggling with an inner conflict, and one of the supernatural; man versus himself and man versus the supernatural. His inner conflict is due to the fact that in his mind, he is a prisoner in Castle Dracula, and there are no means of escape. Therefore, the struggle within himself is one of keeping his sanity and rational way of thinking, since he is such a rational, business-minded man. However, the most obvious conflict derives from the physical and mental struggle with Count Dracula. The novel sets a tone of good versus evil or the supernatural, which is directly related to the conflict. Accordingly, on June 29, the Count tells Jonathan that this is his last day when he stated, "To-morrow, my friend, we must part"(pg.51). After the Count led him to the door where the wolves were howling, he

Like reading? If so, Jo Treggiari’s White Pine award winner, published in 2011, Ashes, Ashes, is a book which many people really enjoy. Everybody who likes reading is most likely into certain themes, but some people try new things and change it up a little, and sometimes even find a new theme, or even book. For sixteen year old Lucy Holloway, the end of the world came and went, taking ninety-nine percent of the population with it. This book is full of excitement, which many thrive on.

Authors use violence to portray many different things while they write books. Violence adds shock to readers which makes them want to continue reading the book that they are reading. This shock makes the authors have more options to write about and gives them a lot of flexibility, which will help make their writing even better than it already is. To go along with shock, violence can also add emotion to the readers which makes them understand characters even more. Readers may feel sympathy for a character if a someone close to them dies in a violent way. Many authors rely on violence for their success as a writer. In the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor , the author, Thomas Foster reflects on how without the use of violence many writers would be nowhere today. “Violence is everywhere in literature. We’d lose most of Shakespeare without it ...Twain… Fitzgerald...Hemingway...and on and on” (Foster 103). Without the presence of violence, several authors would have no career in being an author. Authors also use violence to make novels be more realistic. Everyone goes through violence in their life and they have some sort of downfall. Since authors use it in their books, it makes the readers feel like the book is more sensible while they read. Violence is used by an author in literature because it adds the element of shock which make readers want to keep on reading, and it adds emotion to the readers so they can feel for the characters.

Violence throughout our time has been evident ever since the beginning of our human species. From verbal to physical, one will not go through his/her lifetime without understanding the violent nature of other people. Richard Wilkinson brought up a point that “More unequal societies tend to be more violent” (Wilkinson 2). Wilkinson shows that there is a prominent correlation between income and homicide. Lower incomes shows higher rates of homicide. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens shows how violence can flourish due to the inequality seen in the lower classes. Dickens uses violence to portray that a society filled with inequalities can lead to violence.

Violence can be described as a behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Violence has been around from the beginning and can be seen through history in writing and events that occurred. In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, violence’s jarring effects on societal members are evidenced through various relationships and partnerships, portraying society’s corrupt ideologies and ethics.

Before televisions existed, newspapers did, and before newspapers, telegraphs. Technology is continually making the world smaller. News and other information are now being disseminated into the public at a startling rate. No longer do people have to wait for the telegraph or a newspaper to arrive at their door, they simply click a button and information comes pouring out. While technology has greatly connected the vast wealth of the world’s knowledge and made it easier to access, it also has some downsides. Todd Schwartz, the author of “American Jerk: Be Civil, or I’ll Beat you to a Pulp,” believes excessive usage of cell phones and other recent technology has led to the increase in incivility, yet he fails to acknowledge another downside of

In conclusion, Shakespeare illustrates the theme of violence by writing about three murders committed by Macbeth. Macbeth starts off hesitant about murdering someone, but by the end of the play, he has no hesitation whatsoever. He uses violence to achieve power, gain power, and keep power and overtime it corrupts him. His violent actions lead to his overconfidence, which eventually lead to his downfall and death. This is what violence can do to a person. Just ask

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1