The needle pricked the finger to let the blood drip on to the peace of pine shingle to finalize the oath that was to keep them “mum” (76) about the murder they had just witnessed. Mark Twain’s book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1985) takes place in the mid 1800’s and tells the adventures of Tom Sawyers adventures. The adventures started out with Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Fin, sneaking out and accidentally being witnesses to a murder. They then promise to never tell a word of it. Throughout the book they forgot about the murder and decide to go and play pirates and search for gold, but a trial about the murder finally comes, and it is haunting Tom because an innocent person, Muff Potter, is about to be executed. Tom opens his mouth to tell who the murderer was and then both Tom and his friend are in danger of being the next victims, but fate catches up with the murderer and he starves in a cave when the door is locked shut. The novel’s finale is Tom and Huck finding the chest of gold, which made them both prosper with wealth. Throughout the novel, Twain uses a great approach to making the novel a very good read because of the fascinating characterization of Tom Sawyer. The dominant techniques that Twain uses to characterize Tom as an adventurous young man are his appearance, his thoughts, what others think of him, his actions, and his speech.
Tom’s appearance is the first element that enhances his character. His appearance is always changing. Tom starts most days looking like a cleaned up young man in nice clothes, but it usually never failed that through Tom’s adventures of his rough play, fighting, mischief or swimming his clothes would end t…
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…t example because if a person were in a fight they wouldn’t say “You say enough when you have had enough.” The use in the story makes it more realistic.
Another good example of Tom’s speech is when he was talking about the money that the robbers had got. He said, ” ‘Tain’t a dream, then, ’tain’t a dream! Somehow I most wish it was. Dog’d if I don’t, Huck” (169). This is another good example because Tom was really excited when he stated this, so he wouldn’t worry about good speech and grammar.
Twain did a very good job of characterizing Thomas Sawyer. To do this he effectively used the techniques of characterization including appearance, his thoughts, what others think of him, his actions, and his speech to formulate a very interesting exploiting character.
Work Cited
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985.
The Role of Loneliness in James Joyce’s Ulysses
The Role of Loneliness in James Joyce’s Ulysses
Have you ever had one of those days when the world seems cold and unfeeling? Where the people that surround you are far away and uncaring? Ulysses is about one of those days, and two people who are stuck within it, searching desperately for a way out. Loneliness runs like a thread through Ulysses, a novel by James Joyce. It constantly tugs at the character’s minds, and drives their lives in subtle ways. Joyce drives the point home by giving a drab, grey description of the character’s lives.
Ulysses is set in 1904, Dublin, Ireland. Joyce’s book was first published in 1922. The plot of Ulysses is fairly simple. The novel re-creates the days of two Irishmen, Leopold Bloom, the main character, and Stephen Dedalus, the son of Bloom’s good friend, Simon Dedalus. The story starts with both characters waking up, and follows their lives through a single day. Stephen is a school teacher, and Leopold works as an advertizing canvasser for the local newspapers. For Stephen, it’s only a partial day of school, so after receiving his pay, he goes and visits a nearby relative and then goes for a walk on the beach. Meanwhile, Leopold has woken up, and prepared breakfast for himself and his wife. After going to the butcher’s and the post office, he goes to the funeral of an old friend, Paddy Dignam. After the funeral, he goes about business in town, and comes across Stephen twice. Finally, as Bloom visits a friend in the hospital, he sees Stephen, extremely drunk with a group of medical students. All of them go to a pub. At the pub, they all get bombed, and Bloom takes Stephen on a drunken rampage through town. When Bloom realizes the state Stephen is in, he takes him home, and offers to let Ste…
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…death of Stephen’s mother is still filling his mind – during his drunken spree, Stephen actually thinks that his mother had come back to haunt him. Bloom, on the other hand, after subconsciously searching through Dublin since his son’s death, has found someone to help, and be a father figure for them. Although Bloom’s gesture of kindness is rejected by Stephen, Bloom has taken the first step out of the dark grip of loneliness by trying to help another.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is a story that conveys the drab lives of two miserable Irishmen. The setting portrayed in this book is bleak. Both characters are absorbed in their own loneliness, and lack the perspective to see beyond it. Although Ulysses may seem long and extremely confusing, Joyce creates a thorough depiction of this human condition.
Works cited
Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Random House, 1961.