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Although they are three very different books, Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, and Shelly's Frankenstein all have themes of the Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Each book has a theme of the confusing of what is good and what is bad, weather speaking of the enemy forces, the evils of corporations and banks, or the evil of a tormented monster and the evil of his maker. In All Quiet on the Western Front, young German soldiers in World War One challenge their ideas, not only of good and bad, but also of right and wrong. The soldiers superiors become the enemies, and the idea that the opposing forces could be evil also is challenged. The main character Paul, commenting on Russian prisoners, brings up a few of these challenging ideas that go through the soldiers heads: A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the worlds condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim.
But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again at us as if they were free. The book defines many evils, one being war in general.
The contrast between good and evil is also defined through relationships between teacher and students, officers and privates, and government and people. In Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, evil is seen in the banks, and landlords. This is also a confusing evil because it goes to a Pontius Pilate biblical illusion. The people cannot pinpoint their complaint on a certain person or group, because every group that could be blamed blames another. A small portion of the story shows this: Its not me.
Theres nothing I can do. Ill lose my job if I dont do it. And look-suppose you kill me? Theyll just hang you, but long before youre hung there be another guy on a tractor, and hell bump your house down.
Your not killing the right guy. Thats so, the tenant said. Who gave you orders? Ill go after him, hes the one to kill. Your wrong. He got his orders from the bank.
The bank told him. Clear those people out or its your job. Well, theres a president of the bank. Theres a board of directors. Ill fill up the magazine of the rifle and go to the bank. The driver said, Fellow was telling me the bank gets its orders from the east.
The order was, make the land show profit or well close you up. But where does it stop? Who can I shoot? I dont aim to starve to death before I can shoot the man thats starving me.
I dont know. Maybe theres no one to shoot. Maybe this thing isnt men at all. Maybe, like you said, the lands doing it. This tenant is trying to blame this evil thing that is happening to him, but all he can find is a chain of blame, the bulldozer driver, to the bank, to out east. Leaving no one to blame but an abstract idea.
The tenant, seeing this bad, this evil, needs someone to blame but cannot find anyone to shoot, and is left without any real answer to why his house is being destroyed. Matthew 24: 24 So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this mans blood; see to it yourselves. In Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster from dead corpses. This monster learns about many human things that he is very unfamiliar with. He is born good, but becomes angry and vengeful of his creator from his situation. Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drives from joy for no misdeed.
Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous. This quote is the monster talking to Victor Frankenstein. He feels alone and unhappy. It seems as though the monster is the evil, killing and causing the death of the Frankenstein family.
Although it seems as if he is the evil, it is really his creator, Victor, and the world which is evil. The monster is only vengeful of a ruined innocence, and of his solidarity. The themes of the Good and the Bad, or Good vs. Evil will always be recurring themes throughout the literature of the future, as they have been since the Bible. In the three books stated previously, the sense of what was good and what was bad had been changed. Normally with Good vs.
Evil one can say there is a side thats right and one thats wrong, but one could not in All Quiet on the Western Front. Normally one can put the blame on the evil side, but one could not in The Grapes of Wrath. Normally the person or thing doing the evil deeds is the evil of the story, but that was not completely true in Frankenstein. There will always be a Good vs.
Evil, but there is also sometimes a confusion of what is Good, and what is Evil.
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Research essay sample on Good Versus Evil In Three Literary Classics
