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assignment title: Essay 4
assignment instructions: Please write about the theme of the loss of innocence in Salinger's "The Laughing Man." Compare and contrast either the story or the narrator with another story or narrator. This essay should be 3 pages, double spaced, and with an original title. Please quote from the short story as well as your other source. Your thesis and support should reflect your opinion of the loss of innocence or rite of passage in these pieces.
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Learning about Life
In two dissimilar parables, there is a shared moral. The Laughing Man, by Jerome David Salinger and Stand By Me, the movie share differences in plot line and the relationships that are portrayed, yet they both present the loss of innocence as a lesson, where the reality of death becomes a concrete fact for the characters involved. This lesson took place at a similar time for both narrators, as they were both nearing or entering their teenage years. Additionally, in both stories, the narrator is remembering his childhood as an adult. However, the stories are dissimilar in their depiction of relationships. In one, the narrator remembers his close friendships fondly and they form a key component of his experience, and are perhaps even strengthened by it. In the other, the narrator does not seem to have formed any close friendships, and almost seems to dislike his companions.
In Stand By Me four friends depart from their hometown to search for the body of a dead classmate. In The Laughing Man, The narrator enjoys his time as a member of the Comanche club, and shares a close friendship with the chief, until the chief kills off the laughing man. Both stories encompass the loss of innocence in young men. For example, after the boys in stand by me encountered the dead body, their shock and horror was kept to themselves "We headed home-and although many thoughts raced through our minds, we barely spoke." This seems to exemplify a first encounter with death, young men who might have been naive now have no choice but to look death in the face, the death of someone whom they knew personally, this in turn forces the young men to realize their own mortality. As the 4 boys returned home, "We'd only been gone two days, but somehow the town seemed different-smaller" When a child is exposed to death, or death is explained to them at an age where they are capable of understanding it, and accepting it as a truth, a part of their childhood innocence is lost, and the world seems like a smaller place.
Conversely, when the chief kills The Laughing Man in his final installment of his tales told to the children, it shocks and horrifies the narrator "I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go right straight to bed." This was a very traumatic experience for the narrator, and for the other Comanches. The laughing Man was a character that they idealized, if a child's hero can die, then anyone can die. As the narrator returned home "the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask." I believe that the imagery of the mask, disconnected from the laughing man has a note of finality; the narrator is coming to terms with the fact that his hero is dead and will never return.
Although both stories share the loss of innocence due to the forced assimilation of death as a reality, the condition that brings about this altered view of life differs. In the Laughing Man, the narrator's loss of innocence is due to the chief telling a story about killing The Laughing Man, a fictitious character, but one idealized and worshipped by the narrator. When the chief depicts the final installment of the laughing man saga "The Laughing Man's last act, before turning his face to the bloodstained ground, was to pull off his mask. The story ended there, of course. (Never to be revived.)"
In Stand By Me this loss of innocence takes place due to the narrator and his friends seeing a dead body "None of us could breathe. Somewhere under those bushes was the rest of Ray Brower. The train had knocked Ray Brower out of his Keds, just like it had knocked the life out of his body."
The two stories are based 31 years apart, and in both the narrator is remembering his past. "In 1928, when I was nine" gives us a clue that the narrator of The Laughing Man is looking back at his childhood as an adult. Likewise in Stand By Me, the narrator is portrayed in the beginning thinking to himself, "I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959-a long time ago."
The two tales are dissimilar in the relationships that are portrayed. In The Laughing Man the narrator does not really establish close relationships with the other boys "when another Comanche and I were flipping a coin to decide which team would take the field first," and "the best seats were taken by that time and I had to sit down in the middle of the bus. Annoyed at the arrangement, I gave the boy sitting on my right a poke in the ribs with my elbow." The narrator gives the name for one of the other Comanches only once. It seems that he did not form any significant relationships with the other Comanches, and instead his only profound relationship is with the chief. In Stand By Me, the narrator muses, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" A tremendous part of the story revolves around the deep friendship between the four boys, and the bonding that takes place throughout the course of their adventure.
Among all the similarities and dissimilarities of these two stories, the strongest common thread is that of awakening to the reality of Death. This is a difficult aspect of life for any child to accept; yet it is a necessary step in the journey to becoming an adult. With this in mind, both stories are not only about the loss of innocence, but also portray a critical stepping stone on the path to becoming adult: accepting uncomfortable, difficult facts of life.
The Laughing Man, by Jerome David Salinger and the film Stand By Me, the movie share...
As you get into advanced writing, you'll learn about conventions of style, including APA's rule to use words for numbers below 20 and numerals for numbers above:
As the 4 four boys returned ----it looks nicer, anyway.
Use a comma to separate the quoted stuff: ...really establish close relationships with the other boys, "when...
That conclusion needs another sentence or two. The conclusion is what the whole thing amounts too! Make it meaningful.
:-)
