Role of Literature

Reply 1 75-100 word minimum.
Student Cooper
A book I have read and have read several times over because it’s one I really enjoy is The Color Purple. In this story the girl that is the main character faces many hardships and is treated poorly by everyone she encounters, but especially the men in her life. Her stepfather is abusive and fathers her 2 children that are taken from her and given away. The man she is forced to marry treats her badly and only has her around to take care of his children as he is a widow and to take care of his home. She always remains strong and confident. In the end she inherits some money from her mother and opens up a business. She is able to live out the rest of her life in peace and make a nice living for herself. She also is reunited with her children that were taken from her and is able to get to know them. At one point she was also separated from her sister who was the only person she ever felt like she had in her life. Her sister is the person that reunites her with her children and she is reunited with her sister too. Something society could learn from this story is that no matter what life throws at you to keep your head and moving along. As long as we persevere things will work out for us.

Reply 2 75-100 word minimum

Student Henson
I have recently been reading through a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway and one that stuck out in particular was his work “The Capital of the World”. In this story Hemingway writes from the perspective of an omniscient third person narrator. The reader is initially led to believe that the story is about a young boy named Paco who became a waiter in Madrid but the narrator actually continually moves focus to a multitude of characters surrounding Paco as well, all with some connection to the bullfighting culture in Madrid. As the story progresses we see an overarching theme of the all encompassing fears gained through adulthood and how what humans do really exists in response to that fear. In this Hemingway addresses the theme of mortality and how the fear of death sets in with the loss of the invincibility complex held by the young. Near the end of the story Paco and the dishwasher, Ernesto, attempt to reenact a real bull and matador fighting with chairs and knives which results in Paco bleeding out on the floor. But even in his final moments Paco does not see the reality of his own death but rather his ideals of the honor found in the death of a true matador.