Critical Lens free essay sample

Michelle Veliz Period 7 4/27/12 Critical Lens Essay A famous author named Richard Wright once said, â€Å"All literature is a protest†. In simpler terms, books have been written to raise awareness about problems in order for humans to find solutions for them. This quote is true because in most works of literature the author makes their characters go through difficult obstacles to overcome that not everyday people go through. The book Night was written to protest against anti-Semitism, which means hatred towards Jews. This book took place during the Holocaust where times were hard and unforgettable for the Jews. The main character Elie takes the reader on a grieving journey where he describes his accounts from the Holocaust where he was mistreated and was seen as an outsider. On the other hand, the book Animal Farm by George Orwell was written to alert the world about totalitarian leaders and perplexed people. Totalitarian leaders had control over society, which gave them the right to mistreat their people and abuse their power. Macbeth becomes a tyrannical ruler and is forced to commit more murders in order to protect himself from suspicion. In literature, evil seems like a good choice and is slightly successful but in the end it is proven to be less than good, possibly even harmful. The idea that evil often triumphs but never conquers in literature is true. This is shown in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph is chosen the leader and sets the goal of getting rescued using a signal fire to attract ships. Jack is the leader of the hunters and wishes to use authoritarian rule over democratic rule. Jack is ruled over by evil through his selfishness in wanting to hunt and forget about the fire. He hides behind a mask and quickly moves towards complete savagery. He never gets that far since the boys are rescued by a naval officer. In Macbeth, the main character, Macbeth is persuaded by his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the king of Scotland so he will take the throne. Lady Macbeth makes Macbeth feel unmanly and cowardly so he will be tempted to follow through with the plan. The evil that has won over Macbeth allows him to be more comfortable with having people murdered. He finds safety and security within the apparitions, but is surprised when he learns that he can be killed and ends up getting murdered. Jack in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth are two characters that chose to be evil but are never dominated by it. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding can be applied to the idea that in any given situation evil will prove that it is powerful and can be successful even though in the end it will actually be weaker than it seems to be. This is true as it can be seen in the decisions that Ralph and Jack and his hunters make. The first literary element which establishes the force of evil is the rising action. At first the group of boys set a fire that gets out of control and ends up burning a quarter-square mile of the forest. Then later in the novel Jack and his hunters take the boys who are supposed to be tending the fire on a hunting trip and while they are gone the fire goes out. The smoke from that fire could have decided the boys’ fate on the island especially if a ship went by while the fire was out. The boys also haven’t been following the rules when it comes to drinking water and using the bathroom. Some of the things that aren’t being done are refilling the coconuts after they are emptied and using the appropriate place as a lavatory. The information provided by the rising action shows that evil seems like a good choice and can be successful even when reality it isn’t. You can see this in how the boys continue to pile wood on the fire so that they can stay warm and feel safe. They thought that doing this was a good idea even though they got carried away and caused destruction to the environment. This is also shown in how the boys begin to follow the rules less and less the longer they remain on the island with no adults. A second literary element which proves that evil is triumphing is the climax. The climax occurs when a majority of the boys are out hunting and they target a sow with piglets and kill the sow in a savage way. During the killing one of the boys does something sexually inappropriate to the sow. the death of the sow in a savage-like way reveals that the boys are losing their civility on the island. The climax shows that evil has proven that it can be successful since it is starting to turn the boys to savagery and caused them to kill the sow the way they did. Most importantly the literary element which reveals that evil may triumph but never conquer is the resolution. The resolution in Lord of the Flies occurs when Jack and his tribe set the island on fire in an attempt to smoke out Ralph and kill him while they are hunting. Up to this point Ralph has remained fairly civilized and hasn’t acted too much like a savage. He follows the rules and has focused on having the fire to give a signal so they can be rescued. He tried his best to keep the boys organized and civilized even when all they did was act like savages nd not care about the rules or getting rescued. Jack and his tribe have become so uncivilized that they will do anything in their power to get rid of Ralph so Jack could be the only leader. The fire built from attempting to smoke out Ralph is so large that it attracted a naval ship that was passing by. Jack’s tribe chased Ralph all of the way out to the beach where they ran into a naval officer there to take them ho me. The resolution shows that evil will never conquer in how the naval officer arrives and stops the chase. If the boys didn’t set the island on fire or if the ship didn’t see the smoke, the tribe could have possibly caught Ralph and killed him. If this were to have happened evil would have taken complete control over Jack and his hunters meaning evil would have conquered. At this point the boys would be entirely uncivilized and as savage-like as possible. Also if the naval officer didn’t appear to rescue the boys the critical lens would prove to be false, but since he did rescue them the lens is true. With this being said, the actions of Ralph, Jack and his hunters prove that evil can appear to be successful even though in the end it is less than good and doesn’t come out on top. William Shakespeare’s novel Macbeth also supports the theory that evil may seem like a good choice and be beneficial even when, in the end, it is inferior to the forces of good. This theory is true and can be prove by the characters, Macbeth and Macduff, in this Shakespearian piece of literature. The first literary element that brings about the forces of evil in this work is the rising action. In this point of the book, the wife of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, guilts Macbeth, the main character and tragic hero, into murdering the original king, King Duncan, so he can seize the throne for himself. In order to accomplish this she asks Macbeth if he is a man and reminds him that he promised that he would follow through with it. This shows that evil is established since Macbeth has committed himself to killing Duncan, revealing that he believes evil could be the right choice to help make him king. Another literary element that proves evil is triumphing is the climax of the novel. In the climax, Macbeth finally decides to kill Duncan. To help make the deed easier, Lady Macbeth gets the guards drunk, and Macbeth uses their daggers to commit the crime. Then he plants the weapons back on the guards so that it appears as if the guards murdered Duncan themselves. Macbeth was willing to act evil because he believed that doing so would be beneficial to him, proving that evil is triumphing. Macbeth was convinced to be evil, so he decided to act evil. The literary element that reveals evil may triumph but will never conquer is the resolution given by Shakespeare. During the resolution, Macbeth learns something that he thought he was completely safe from. He was told by one of the witches’ apparitions that he couldn’t be killed by one born of woman. At this point Macduff and his rallied troops meet at Birnam woods and carry branches to Dunsinane to show that the forest is moving and cause Macbeth to be paranoid. As Macbeth and Macduff duel it out, Macduff reveals to Macbeth that he was untimely ripped from his mother’s womb. These means that he was born via Caesarian section and that he can, in fact, kill Macbeth. Then Macduff takes Macbeth’s life and beheads him to prove to Malcolm that the tyrant has been slayed. This outcome shows that evil can never conquer in how the good in Macduff is able to overpower the evil in Macbeth. Evil is actually proven to be a bad choice rather than a good choice since the character that represented evil is murdered. The two characters, Macbeth and Macduff, show that evil is not a good choice even though it may seem so and that in the end good always comes out on top. In literature, evil seems like a good choice and is slightly successful but in the end it is proven to always be less than good. This theory is true as the novels Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Macbeth by William Shakespeare prove it to be. The characters and events that best demonstrate the theory that in literature, evil often triumphs but never conquers, are Ralph and Jack from Lord of the Flies, Macbeth and Macduff from Macbeth, the rising action, climax, and resolution of both stories. The longer Jack and his hunters remain on the island the more uncivilized and savage they become. The savage-like and uncivilized actions show evil may triumph and the rescue of the boys and Ralph show that evil will never come out on top. Macbeth decides to use evil to benefit himself and becomes more comfortable with killing and having people killed when in the end he himself ends up being murdered by good. The idea presented by the critical lens can actually be connected to the real world. For example, in the real world, people revolt in order to cause change to their government so that they can benefit from certain things also. During some of the revolts people choose to be evil and act using violence. It seems like it would be a good idea but then proves that it may have not been such a good idea when they are arrested and put in jail. Some of the Occupy Albany protesters refused to follow the revised laws enforced by the state and many of them were booked and put in jail for their actions. This all occurred during one night and even though they were doing it to continue to try and prove a point good still came out on top when many were arrested.