Heroism in Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry Essays

Heroism in Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry Essays Heroism in Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry Paper Heroism in Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry Paper To me a hero/ heroin is not someone who has to be a major star. It just has to be someone who does something brave and extraordinary. It can be something as normal as helping a blind person cross a road, as a selfless act. There are many different definitions or perceptions of a hero. After reading Roll of thunder hear my cry, I think the hero of the book is Stacey. Even though it may seem that he didnt do much in the book, but what he did may have been little, but he was brave and stood up for what he believed. One of the heroic acts that Stacey did was standing up to the white bus driver and children who chased the black kids on the road to their school. Stacey knew that complaining wouldnt work, so he, Cassie, Little Man and Christopher John took revenge on them in their own way by digging a hole on the road and filling it with water. Cassie dug a hole on the side of the road, to make it look like it was washed out, Christopher John and Little Man started scooping out mud from the middle of the road. Stacey and Cassie shovelled ragged holes almost a yard wide and a foot deep, when Stacey and Cassies holes merged into one with Little Mans and Christopher Johns, they covered the hole with water and stacked three rocks to identify the spot. So once the bus rides along the road it will get stuck in the hole and the kids will have to walk home covering them in mud and water. The act of revenge may seem small but at least when the children walk to school they know the bus driver will be more cautious and the image of the white kids clothes dripping with water and mud will be good enough. Stacey used skill and careful thinking to make his plan perfect. Later in the book when Mama whips Stacey in class for having cheat notes, although she didnt know that the notes belonged to TJ and Stacey had only taken them off him because he knew it was wrong. When Stacey goes to look for TJ, he finds out that TJ is in the Wallace store hiding, the Wallace store stood almost half a mile beyond Jefferson Davis, on a triangular lot that faced the Soldiers Bridge crossroads. Stacey found TJ and leaping high like a forest fox, fell upon TJ, knocking him down. The two boys rolled toward the road, each trying to keep the others back pinned against the ground, but then Stacey who was stronger gained the advantage. As all the people watched them fight, nobody noticed a mule wagon halt on the road until it was too late, Mr Morrison came out of the wagon, walked straight up to Stacey and lifted him up. Mr Morrison said that he would not tell Mama, but he would leave it up to Stacey to tell. Even though Stacey knew the trouble he would get into for going to the Wallace store against his parents wishes, he took the risk and told them. What he did showed that TJ was brave and risked the trouble he would get into, to show TJ a lesson. In the book Stacey is twelve years old, which is a manly age, where he has to be more responsible and understanding. Although there isnt much age difference between him and Cassie, Stacey is very understanding and knows more about the racial injustice that they are faced with. He helps Cassie many times to understand why some things are done. Like when Big Ma takes Stacey and Cassie to Strawberry, while in the shop of Mr Barnett Cassie doesnt understand why white people get priority in serving and Black people dont, and when Big Ma forces her to say sorry to Lillean Jean for bumping into her by accident she gets really upset. Stacey tells her that Big Ma only made her apologise because couldnt do anything else and if she wouldnt have said sorry it would have caused a hassle there. From these incidents you can see that Stacey helps Cassie understand the concept of racial discrimination and why. The heroin in this book is Cassie, although she doesnt do many things. One of the acts she did stands out most to me, because what she did was a great achievement for herself and she showed Lillean Jean that she couldnt go around believing she was better than everybody. During the trip to Strawberry, Cassie bumped into Lillean Jean, she apologised, but that wasnt good enough. Lillean wanted her to move off the road, when Cassie refused. Lilleans dad forced her to move of the road and apologise again, Cassie ran and Big Ma made sure she apologised and called Lillean Jean miz. She could not understand why Big Ma had made her apologise. Cassie was intent on getting revenge on Lillean for what she did to her; she waited to think out what she would do. Cassie decided that she would put up an act, by being nice to Lillean Jean and call her Miz, without being forced to. By doing this she gained the trust of Lillean, being her slave throughout the month of January, carrying her books. Lillean bragged about her little coloured friend in front of her friends, but when they were alone she confided her secrets about the boy she had passionately loved for the past year and the things she had done to attract his attention; the secrets of the girls she couldnt stand as well as those she could; and even a tidbit or two about her older brothers romantic adventures. Cassie used this to her advantage by luring Lillean out to the woods, she then dropped the books shed been carried and told Lillean that she was tired of carrying them. They then fought and Cassie was more clever and beat Lillean. She made it clear to Lillean that if she told anyone what had happened she would tell her fancy friends how she keeps a secret and how Cassie a nine year old girl beat her up. This incident shows that Cassie thought out the perfect revenge and kept with it for months. Cassie stood up for her beliefs, which to me shows shes the heroine of this book.

Biography of René Magritte, Belgian Surrealist

Biography of Renà © Magritte, Belgian Surrealist Renà ©Ã‚  Magritte  (1898-1967)  was a famous 20th-century Belgian artist known for his unique  surrealist works. Surrealists  explored the human condition through unrealistic imagery that often came from dreams and the subconscious. Magrittes imagery came from the real world but he used it in unexpected ways. His goal as an artist was  to challenge the viewers assumptions by using odd and surprising juxtapositions of familiar objects such as bowler hats, pipes, and floating rocks. He changed the scale of some objects, he deliberately excluded others, and he played with words and meaning. One of his most famous paintings, The Treachery of Images (1929), is a painting of a pipe below which is written Ceci nest pas une pipe.   (English translation: This is not a pipe.)   Magritte died August 15, 1967 in  Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium, of pancreatic cancer. He was buried in  Schaarbeek Cemetery. Early Life and Training Renà © Franà §ois Ghislain Magritte (pronounced mag ·reet) was born November 21, 1898, in Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium. He was the eldest of three sons born to Là ©opold (1870-1928) and Rà ©gina (nà ©e Bertinchamps; 1871-1912) Magritte. Aside from a few facts, almost nothing is known of Magrittes childhood. We know that the familys financial status was comfortable because of Là ©opold, ostensibly a tailor, made handsome profits from his investments in edible oils and bouillon cubes. We also know that young Renà © sketched and painted early on, and began taking formal lessons in drawing in 1910 - the same year that he produced his first  oil painting. Anecdotally, he was said to be a lackluster student in school. The artist himself had little to say about his childhood beyond a few vivid memories that shaped his way of seeing. Perhaps this relative silence about his early life was born when his mother committed suicide in 1912. Rà ©gina had been suffering from depression for an undocumented number of years and was so badly affected that she was usually kept in a locked room. On the night she escaped, she immediately went to the nearest bridge and threw herself into the River Sambre that flowed behind the Magrittes property. Rà ©gina was missing for days before her body was discovered a mile or so downriver. Legend has it that Rà ©ginas nightgown had wrapped itself around her head by the time her corpse was recovered, and an acquaintance of Renà ©s later started the story that he was present when his mother was pulled from the river. He was certainly not there. The only public comment he ever made on the subject was that hed felt guiltily happy to be the focal point of sensation and sympathy, both at school and in his neighborhood. However, veils, curtains, faceless people, and headless faces and torsos  did  become recurring themes in his paintings. In 1916, Magritte enrolled in the  Academie des Beaux-Arts  in Brussels seeking inspiration and a safe distance from the WWI German invasion. He found none of the former but one of his classmates at the Academie introduced him to  cubism, futurism, and purism, three movements he found exciting and which significantly changed the style of his work. Career Magritte  emerged from the  Academie  qualified to do commercial art. After a compulsory year of service in the military in 1921, Magritte returned home and found work as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and worked freelance in advertising to pay the bills while he continued to paint. During this time he saw a painting  by the Italian surrealist  Giorgio de Chirico, called  The Song of Love, which greatly influenced his own art. Magritte created his first surreal painting, Le Jockey Perdu  (The Lost Jockey) in 1926, and had his first solo show in 1927 in Brussels at the Galerie de Centaure. The show was reviewed critically, however, and Magritte, depressed, moved to Paris, where he  befriended Andre Breton and joined the surrealists there - Salvador Dalà ­, Joan Miro, and Max Ernst.  He produced a number of important works during this time, such as The Lovers,  The False Mirror, and the Treachery of Images. After three years, he returned to Brussels and to his work in advertising, forming a company with his brother, Paul. This gave him money to live on while continuing to paint. His painting went through different styles during the last years of World War II as a reaction to the pessimism of his earlier work. He adopted a style similar to the Fauves for a short time during 1947-1948, and also supported himself doing copies of paintings by Pablo Picasso,  Georges Braque, and de Chirico. Magritte dabbled in communism, and whether the forgeries were for purely financial reasons or intended to disrupt Western bourgeois capitalist habits of thought is debatable.   Magritte and  Surrealism Magritte had a witty sense of humor that is evident in his work and in his subject matter. He delighted in representing the paradoxical nature of reality in his paintings and in making the viewer question what reality really is. Rather than depicting fantastic creatures in fictional landscapes, he painted ordinary objects and people in realistic settings. Notable characteristics of his work include the following: His arrangements were often impossible under the laws of physics.The scale of these mundane elements was frequently (and deliberately) wrong.When words were painted - as they were periodically - they were usually a witticism of some sort, as in the aforementioned painting, The Treachery of Images on which he painted, Ceci nest pas une pipe. (This is not a pipe.) Although the viewer can clearly see that the painting is, indeed, of a pipe, Magrittes point is just that - that it is only a  picture  of a pipe. You cant pack it with tobacco, light it, and smoke it. The joke is on the viewer, and Magritte points out the misunderstandings that are inherent in language.Ordinary objects were painted in unusual  ways and in unorthodox juxtapositions in order to evoke mystery. He is known for painting men in bowler hats, perhaps autobiographical, but perhaps merely a prop for his visual games. Famous Quotes Magritte spoke about the meaning, ambiguity, and mystery of his work  in these quotes and others, providing viewers with clues  as to how to interpret his art: My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, What does that mean? It does not mean anything because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist. Important Works: The Menaced Assassin, 1927The Treachery of Images, 1928-29The Key of Dreams, 1930The Human Condition, 1934Not to be Reproduced, 1937Time Transfixed, 1938The Listening Room, 1952Golconda, 1953 More of Renà © Magrittes work can be seen in the Special Exhibition Gallery Renà © Magritte: The Pleasure Principle. Legacy Magrittes art had a significant impact on the Pop and Conceptual art movements that followed and on the way, we have come to view, understand, and accept surrealist art today. In particular, his repeated use of commonplace objects, the commercial style of his work, and the importance of the concept of technique inspired Andy Warhol and others.  His work has infiltrated our culture to such an extent that it has almost become invisible, with  artists and others continuing to borrow Magrittes iconic images for labels and advertising, something that would no doubt greatly please Magritte. Resources and Further Reading Calvocoressi, Richard. Magritte.London: Phaidon, 1984. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte.New York: Thames Hudson, 2000. Paquet, Marcel. Rene Magritte, 1898-1967: Thought Rendered Visible.New York: Taschen America LLC, 2000.