God in the valleys

The Shack by William P. Young is a compelling story of one man and his search for God through the 'The Great Sadness'. Young aptly uses one character to symbolize the entirety of the human race and its quest to find One to ease the pain of the most awfullest of life's experiences.

The climax of the story is in the first few chapters. Mack, a father of five, takes his youngest three children camping. On their last day of vacation the two oldest of the three children take a canoe out on the lake and end up tipping it. Mack rescues the children and all seems ok. Mack then realizes his youngest child, Missy, is missing. It is discovered that she has been kidnapped by a serial killer, a man whose victims have never been found. The trail of the kidnapper is found and eventually leads the police and Mac to a remote shack. Inside the shack Missy's red dress, the dress she was wearing when she was kidnapped, is found in a pool of blood.

"Three grown men, arms locked in some special grace of solidarity, walking togehter, each one toward his own worst nightmare."..."Mack immediately saw what he had come to identify and, turning, crumpled into the arms of his two friends and began to weep uncontrollably. On the floor by the fireplace lay Missy's torn and blood-soaked red dress."

This was the climax of the story because, like Mack, the reader falls into a 'Great Sadness' after the trauma of losing a child to such violent circumstances. Losing a child, especially to circumstances like that, is the most horrific experience a perent could be asked to go through. Young skillfully weaves his story so that the reader can actually feel the fall into depression and the fog that clouds the mind after such a traumatic event. After the early climax Young slowly, and with incredible imagination and insight into the needs of humans, brings the reader up out of the 'Great Sadness' to a point where they can meet God and see him(or her in this case) for what he really is. A living, loving God who uses the evilness of humans and their sins for his greater purpose.

Young's fresh twist on storytelling, using an early climax to plunge the reader into the story and then bring them slowly back to hope, is not only ingenius but so very lifelike. Reality is often a crisis than occurs out of nowhere and then the slow recovery from that crisis. Young captures reality to its fullest.

A life lesson

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel full of social injustice and racial prejudice. While one might think that is the extent of the depth of the novel that is far from the truth. Harper Lee uses social injustice and racial prejudice to show the reader that our differences are not what matters, it is how we react to those differences that is important.

The first example Lee uses is that of Dill Harris. He is a boy who comes to live beside Jem and Scout, two of the main characters, for the summer. Dill is an odd boy. He tells 'stories', is very small for his age, and is just generally weird. At first Jem and Scout don't know what to think of him however after taking the time to get to know him they discover what a wonderful friend and playmate Dill is. Lee uses Dill as a small first lesson in the unimportance of differences.

The next example she uses is that of the African American community. One man in particular, Tom Robinson, seems to represent everything that community stands for, at least in the eyes of the townspeople. Tom is accused of raping a white woman and stands trial over a three year period. Jem and Scout's father, Atticus Finch, defends Tom and proves in court that it could not possibly have been Tom who perpetrated the crime. Despite the compelling evidence in Tom's favour, the all white jury finds Tom guilty and sentences him to die.

"A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson." ...."I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: 'Guilty...guilty...guilty...guilty...'"

This example is the most obvious one that Lee uses of the intolerance of people to those who are different.

The third example Lee uses is that of the children, Jem and Scout, and the mysterious 'Boo' Radley. Mr. Radley is the town recluse who has been inside for 15 years. The children know nothing concrete about him. The rumours surrounding Mr. Radley that circulate around the town however have led the children to fear and dislike him. He is as diametrically different to everyone else as one could get. Or so they think. At the end of the book both Jem and Scout change thier minds about the importance of differences. Boo Radley ends up saving Jem and Scout from a knife weilding drunken excuse for a human, Mr. Ewell, the father of the girl whom Tom Robinson was accused of raping. The children realize that Boo is different from them, those differences are nothing to fear.

Harper Lee does a wonderful job teaching the importance of looking at a person, not their differences, while using social injustice and racial prejudice as the moral stepping stones of her lesson.

Hawthorne's Descriptive Settings

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter makes wonderful use of setting as a method of relaying mood and significance of a particular scene to the reader. There are two particular examples of this that contrast each other beautifully and fully convey the meaning that Hawthorne has put into the story.
The first setting is the town of Boston. Describing a building in the town Hawthorne writes

“Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society…”

The setting of Boston is portrayed as bleak, drab, and somewhat menacing in its structure and form. There seem to be no redeeming qualities about the town. This bleakness helps to create a contrast with another setting in the book.
The other setting that needs to be examined is that of the forest. Throughout the book there has been a huge stigma placed on the forest. The only people who go into the forest are those who are friends of the devil. This is especially embodied in the character of Mistress Hibbins who is suspected of being a witch. Speaking to Hester Prynne, the main character of the book, Mistress Hibbins calls “Wilt thou go with us tonight? There will be merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh promise the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make one.” The stigma surrounding the forest and the desolate way Hawthorne has described the setting of Boston make the reality of the forest setting all the more joyful.
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All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the grey trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy.”

The forest signifies the point in the story that hope finally emerges for two very significant characters. That its setting is described so drastically different than that of the Puritan Boston aids the reader in realizing the significance of the scene and the joy that the characters feel in the moment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne used descriptive settings to enhance the mood and import of particular scenes throughout his book The Scarlet Letter.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter shame is the dominant theme. Every central character wears their shame in a different way.

Hester Prynne, the main character, has to wear a visible symbol of her shame. The Puritan society in which she lives passed judgement on her for having an affair. Hester was not caught in the act however she did become pregnant and since her husband was presumed lost at sea she had no valid reason for being with child. As punishment Hester had to stand before the people of Boston on a raised platform for hours while her fellow townsmen and women stared at her with scorn and disgust. After the public shaming Hester is forced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter over her heart for the rest of her life. Hester’s shame is very public and for several years she is the social pariah of Boston. However in the ensuing years Hester and her daughter Pearl live an upright, virtuous, and morally sound life and regain the respect of the society in which they live. Hester’s scarlet letter transfigures from a symbol of immorality and sin to a badge of virtue and honour.

The Reverend Dimmesdale, the young minister in the village of Boston, wears his shame very differently from Hester. His shame, the secret that he has hidden for years, is very private. He, a leader in God’s church and a paradigm of holiness, is the other guilty party in Hester’s affair. Hester would not name Mr. Dimmesdale when she was caught thinking that she could spare him the shame of public opinion. Instead the good Reverend suffers more than Hester ever did. He becomes increasingly ill over the course of the book, constantly clutching at his heart. In the final pages Reverend Dimmesdale confesses his part in the affair from the same platform on which Hester stood seven years before. At the end of his confession he rips open his shirt to reveal a scarlet ‘A’ imprinted on his skin over his heart. Unlike Hester, whose scarlet letter was a symbol which could be removed should she leave the Puritan society, Mr. Dimmesdale’s shame was etched into his very being and, after poisoning his very soul, manifested itself physically.

The third character whose shame is visible throughout the book is that of Roger Chillingworth. Mr. Chillingworth arrives in Boston at the time of Hester’s public shaming. After she is returned to the prison he visits Hester and it is revealed that he is her husband, long thought to be dead. As they discuss her infidelity Chillingworth acknowledges his part in her shame in that, though he was indeed shipwrecked years before, he could have sent word to her much sooner. Chillingworth also feels Hester’s shame because she is his wife. He therefore extracts a promise from her not to reveal his true identity to anyone. He also promises Hester that, although she will tell no one who her partner is in the affair, he will find out who he is. I believe that at this point Chillingworth turned his shame and guilt to the pursuit of revenge. As the book progresses Mr. Chillingworth’s appearance becomes more and more evil as his shame and guilt, which is transformed into the drive for revenge, converts his appearance from that of a cultivated intellect to that of a hellish fiend.

Hawthorne is masterful at portraying the different facets of shame in The Scarlet Letter. He does so in a descriptive and realistic way that forces the reader to confront the brutal aspects of this intense human emotion and leaves the reader pondering the after-effects of shame from one small action or decision.