We celebrate Halloween on October 31st and the ghoulishly exciting night begins with the first twinkling of the full moon and the overly-sized, perfectly decorated bag ready to be filled with the most delicious treats. What may even be more impressive are the characters clutching the goody bags – perhaps a cute rosy-cheeked angel with feathery wings, a crazy clown whose face is covered with heavy colorful makeup, or a scary creature hiding behind a crumbling mask created with latex? Whoever it is, I am reminded of why the October 31st tradition isn’t as strange as it once was.…
Jack used to a have a drinking problem. Thanks to this, he ended up belligerent towards his wife and towards the kids he taught at collage. When one young man named George finally snaps, he decides…
Tobolowsky’s article echoes thoughts and feelings about Santa, fears about life, and general doubts that are common to almost every child at some point in his or her life. Stephen describes childhood events and his own propensity toward fear and doubt in a frank and humorous manner that reminds me of Ralphie’s narration in A Christmas Story. Underneath the humor, however, there exists the real torment of doubt and fear that Stephen experiences, fear of the dark, fear of strange noises at night, fear of monsters living in his bedroom. While these fears simply frustrate his well-intentioned parents, they drive Stephen to create remedies of his own to allay his fears. However,…
Fear has taken control over Jack, leading him to complete awful things. In chapter five, Ralph calls a meeting to talk about what is happening on the island. During the meeting, the boys bring up fear and the beast.…
Jack’s confidence and hunter-like qualities shrink with the cry of the bird, and becomes more like the prey rather than the predator. However, his frustration and destructive determination consumes him once again. The lurid bird passes from his mind, and his surroundings are depleted of color; he sees a vast tree that “[grows] pale flowers on its grey bark”. Not only this, but there is even a “passing pallor in [Jack’s] face, and then the surge of blood again” (). The pallor in the flowers and Jack’s face again display the lack of life in him and the jungle, with the beauty drained from what were once magnificent flowers, and from what was once a boy but now a vicious creature.…
Jack Skellington is the Pumpkin King – the creative genius behind the holiday of Halloween, designing each year to be scarier and more horrible than the one before. However deep inside he longs for more than the horror and scares of Halloween Town, a longing he cannot understand until he stumbles into Christmas Town and sees happiness and cheer the likes of which has evaded him all these years. Having finally worked out what Christmas is all about, Jack decides to kidnap Santa and make himself the new king of Christmas Town so that he can have the happiness of Christmas all the time. But the others in the towns realize the significant consequences that this disruption of the norm will have as Jack's evil nature proves harder to overcome than…
In chapter ten, Jack begins to realize the affect his power has, “The tribe considered this; and then were shaken, as if by a flow of wind. The chief saw the effect of his words and stood abruptly” (161). Once the tribe split into two, he gained complete control of the majority and notices that he can use the boy's fear as a tool to maintain control. When Jack recognized that if he could stay in charge, he won’t ever have to face the guilt and dark truth of what he has done or face the consequences. Similarly, if he has the control to occupy his time he has less time to second guess his methods and less time to realize that he has completely lost sight of his innocence and humanity. This awakening showcases how the altered reality that the boys have grown accustomed to on the island has allowed one of their own, a formerly respectable and stable young boy, to acquire complete control and use it as a weapon of destruction and…
At first Jack has trouble killing a pig but once he accomplishes doing it he can’t stop, “the opaque, mad look came into his eyes again.” he’s an action person the consequence of this is it affects other people, an example of this would be when he left the fire to go hunt and ruined a rescue opportunity, as the book goes on we see Jack cares less about being rescued “Jack had to think for a moment before he could remember what rescue was.” because he is happy with the life he has created on the island, whereas rescue means everything to Ralph the first…
Jack physically reinvents his image to help him illuminate his true inner-self as a barbaric, animalistic tyrant. When Jack first explores the island, he responsibly opposes his subconscious primal urge to kill, remaining morally bound: “He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up…The madness came into his eyes again. ‘I thought I might kill’”(Golding 51). Jack proceeds to embrace his true uncivilized and animalistic inner-voice and still avoid the moral burden it would typically entail; Jack changes his physical appearance animalistically to reflect his inner-voice, thereby easing his…
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” - Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird. In this quote Atticus is telling his daughter, Scout how she shouldn't judge a person until she understands what they go through and to feel what it would be like to be that person. This is a lesson that is taught throughout book by Atticus that everyone should be given an opportunity, and that scout should see how other people live to be able to judge them. In a Christmas memory is a story about a boy that is called buddy that lives with his cousin whose name is not given throughout the story. These two live in a house with other family members but do not…
Topic: ‘Fear is the only motivator for Scrooge. It is when the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows him his lonely grave that he decides to change.’…
The Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge’s second visitor, is the personification of wisdom and memory. The “clear jet of light” springing from the ghost’s crown is symbolic of the “light” the spirit is about to shed on Scrooge’s past. Scrooge’s reluctance to pursue his transformation is demonstrated when he begs the apparition to be covered. When the ghost retorts “would you so soon put out, with worldly…
When Jack is first introduced, he is an innocent leader of the choir boys, but as time on the island passes, Jack changes his ways of living to fit in with the society around him. For example, on their way back to the lagoon they find…
On Wednesday, December 4th I saw an original play called “A Christmas Carol” by: Charles Dickens. The play was presented by the Reagan theater program at the Reagan auditorium. This joyful and upbeat play was about a ungrateful man the resented giving. When visited by his old co-worker ‘Jacob Marley’ telling his that he will be visited by three ghost. The Christmas past, present, and lastly the ghost of Christmas future. After undergoing the ghosts work Ebenezer Scrooge became a changed man that love the time of Christmas year.…
Events that might be magical in the hands of other writers - voices coming from small funnels in the sand, talking animals, animated trees - takes on a hallucinatory, runaway feel, like the reader is falling down a well, or riding a roller coaster no longer under the control of the operator. While the adventure may have begun, in part, with self-determination on the part of 12-year-old Jack Sawyer to save the life of his cancer-ridden mother, he soon is in over his head, sucked relentlessly from one danger to another, both mundane and magical. The violence and danger he faces are conveyed with a visceral reality, enough to make the reader flinch and wince in sympathetic…