Parables of a Violent World Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Parables of a cherry-red World - Article ExampleWriters such as William Vollmann and others help to accomplish this important goal. McMurphy, the hero of iodin Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, is a quintessential individualist. He marches to the beat of his own drum and follows his own bearing in life. He refuses to follow orders and seeks egress pleasure. He has an irrepressible charm that works on well everyone around him. He is also a natural leader in his own way. But McMurphy is not approved of. He is too individualistic and non-conformist. Although he seems Ameri empennage in his self-reliance, in the course of the raw he runs into serious problems from a new, more materialistic, mechanical, conformist America, represented by the conception. The job of the institution, of the anesthetizing culture that currently surrounds us in America, is to repress the irrepressible. Too many outbursts, too many adventures, are bad for business, the institution says. It locks away and neut ralizes people like McMurphy who dont fit in properly and live no desire to do so (Kesey). This is important to understand in light of what we saw after September 11. After the terrorist attacks in that location was a call to arms, and also, subsequently, a call to uniformity and conformity. We were asked to march to the beat of the same drum. The president staged us into Iraq and we were supposed to obey. Those who disagreed had their patriotism questioned. In the administration itself, we saw how people were fired for disagreeing with the president. Times have changed since then. A cultural steady has descended on the country as politics have begun to calm down. outright we have access to endless entertainment much of which is not unlike having a lobotomy. The rise of inordinate celebrity culture has been representative of the last few years. Everywhere you look celebrities pose in photographs and conduct outrageously on television. There is no content to their actions. In a sense, they are simply a culture anesthetic, designed to lull us into complacency, just as the drugs in Keseys mental hospital lull the patients into a stupor. The question we must ask ourselves, faced with all of this, is how best to respond? From time immemorial, it has been writers who imply a stand against injustice and cultural complacency. Through their work, they skilfully satirize and pick apart the wrongs of the stipulation quo and show us a better way to live. They celebrate the best of what is America and condemn the worst. We can see this in action in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. What we need more than ever, is skillful writers to retire on the twin challenges of today terror and celebrity. One of the writers who is moving in this direction is clearly William Vollmann. This entirely original American writer has been as prolific as the culture in turning out new work. Every year he seems to publish a new book. One of his most surpassing achievements is Rising Up and Rising Down, a multi-volume set of books which studies the role of violence in our world. Here the novelist is go away behind the fiction in order to pursue social and historical research (Vollmann). We need our writers in this day and age to be grounded in reality. As such, this set of books is a magnificent achievement. Vollmanns work is multifarious, notwithstanding there are a few elements which can be explored in a simple manner.