The Juniper Tree

In stark contrast to the long, intricate tales penned by other literary fairy tale writers, in
particular those practicing their arts in French salons, most of the fairy tales collected and
published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are quite short—in many cases, easily squeezed into
just one or two pages, or even just a few paragraphs. One major exception: “The Juniper Tree,”
one of the longest tales in the original 1812 Children’s and Household Tales, which also happens
to be one of the most horrifying tales in the original collection. repetitive poetry.

The story opens with a familiar fairy tale motif: a wealthy woman longing for a child. One snowy
day, she steps outside to cut an apple beneath a juniper tree. She cuts her finger, letting a few
drops of blood fall beneath the juniper tree, and wishes for a child red as blood and white as
snow—consciously or unconsciously echoing the mother of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
She feels considerably better after cutting herself and wishing for this child—the first of many
disturbing elements in the tale.

Nine month later, she has a child, and dies. As requested, her husband buries her under the
juniper tree. Eventually, he remarries.He and his new wife have a daughter—Marlinchen, or
Marlene. His new wife knows that her stepson will inherit everything. Her daughter, nothing.
It’s the evil stepmother motif, with a clear cut financial motive. She begins physically abusing
the boy.

And one morning, after her daughter asks for an apple, which this family keeps in heavy chests,
the mother has a terrible thought. She tells her daughter that she must wait until her brother
returns from school. When he does, she coaxes the boy towards the chest, and murders him with
its lid, decapitating the poor kid within seconds.

Like many murderers, her immediate concern is to not get caught, so, she props up the body and
ties the head to it with a nice handkerchief like that is not really what those things are for and
then puts an apple in the dead kid’s hand and then tells her little daughter to go ask the kid for
the apple and if he says no, hit him. Marlene does, knocking the boy’s head off.

Marlene, naturally, is more than a bit freaked out. Her mother then manages to worsen the
situation by saying that they absolutely must not let anyone know that Marlene has killed her
own brother (!) and thus, the best thing to do is to turn the boy into a stew. She then feeds it to
the father, who finds it very tasty, as Marlene watches, sobbing.

This bit with the stew, incidentally, was edited out of most English editions of the tale, much to
the irritation of several scholars, perhaps most notably J.R.R. Tolkien. Granted, this is from the
same man who later conjured up an image of a giant hungry spider blocking the entrance to a
monstrous land of fire and despair, so, I dunno, maybe you were harmed just a tad, Tolkien. Or
maybe not. But the belief that he was not harmed by reading about kiddie soup formed a central
plank of a longer essay urging us not just to stop relegating fairy tales to children, but also to
stop shielding children from fairy tales.
Back in the story, Marlene carefully gathers up her brother’s bones and places them beneath the
juniper tree. The tree reacts the way many of us would, when offered human bones: it moves. It
then does something most of us can’t do: it releases smoke, and then a white bird. Marlene sees
the bird and cheers up instantly, heading back inside to eat.

the bird decides to fly through the town, pausing at various places to sing a cheery little song
about his murder, ending with the line “What a lovely bird I am!” Incredibly enough, the
goldsmith, shoemaker and the various workers at the mill don’t respond to the line, “My father,
he ate me,” with a “What the hell?” but rather with a “Can you sing that again?” On the other
hand, plenty of people like rewatching horror movies and TV shows, so, maybe the story is onto
something here. The bird has figured out how to monetize this: offer something for free the first
time around, and then demand payment for a repeat. As a result, he gains a gold chain, a pair of
red shoes, and a millstone.

And then the bird returns home.

Even if not read out loud, the image of a bird singing happily about his sister gathering his bones
as he tosses red shoes at her is… something.

But this story gains its power, I think, not so much from the repetitive poetry, or the bird’s
revenge, or even the image of a father eagerly swallowing stew formed from his son’s legs, or his
daughter carefully gathering up his son’s bones from the floor, but for its focus on an all too real
horror: child abuse, and how that abuse can be both physical and mental. It’s notable, I think,
that this story starts with emotional and verbal abuse before ramping up to child murder and
cannibalism, and that it emphatically places the murder of children on the same level as
cannibalism. These things happen, the story tells us, and the only fantastic part is what happens
afterwards, when Marlene gathers her brother’s bones and soaks them with her tears.

It holds another horror as well: the people in the town are more than willing to listen to the
singing of the bird, and more than willing to pay the bird for the performance, but not willing to
investigate what is a pretty terrible crime. Instead, they just ask to hear the song again, finding it
beautiful.

The story also touches on something else that almost certainly came from direct observations
from the Grimms: the problems with inheritance laws in large families. The Grimms had
nothing to inherit from their father, who died young, so this was less of a concern for them—but
they presumably witnessed multiple cases of older sons inheriting, leaving younger siblings to
scramble, the situation that the mother in this story fears for her daughter, Marlene.

In the end, it can be assumed that this particular son will take very good care of this particular
younger sister, even if the father marries a third time. And he might: he’s well to do (and now
has an added gold chain, courtesy of a terrifying singing bird), single again, and clearly not
overly cautious or discriminating in his choices of women. It’s quite possible that Marlene and
her brother might find themselves with more half siblings turned potential rivals—or at least
seen as such by their new stepparent—allowing the cycle to start again.
Though even if the father embraces chastity after this, I still can’t help thinking that both
Marlene and her brother will find themselves frozen from time to time, especially at the sight of
bones, and that neither one of them will be able to eat apples without a shiver of memory—if
they can eat apples at all. Because for all its happy ending, and promise of healing and recovery,
and for its promise that yes, child abuse can be avenged, “The Juniper Tree” offers more horror,
and terror, than hope. But it also offers something else to survivors of childhood abuse: a
reminder that they are not alone

Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band

Published: 1892
Literary Period: Victorian
Genre: Mystery
Setting: London and Surrey, England
Antagonist: Dr. Grimesby Roylott
Point of View: Third-person

Exoticism
Holmes solves a case in which the villain and the murder weapon have ties to India. The story is
set in Victorian England, a period when the British empire was expanding its colonial reach
around the world
Many of the story’s sinister elements have ties to India. For example, after living and working in
India for a long stint, Dr. Roylott develops a violent temper. Although he was an angry figure
before living in India, Helen Stoner believes that his temper was “intensified by his long
residence in the tropics.” Dr. Roylott also has a fondness for many Indian exports. He smokes
Indian cigars and, most importantly, collects exotic animals. Roylott’s wandering baboon and
cheetah are an ambient threat that can be felt throughout the manor, and the swamp adder, “the
deadliest snake in India,” is proven to be the murder weapon in the case. At the end of the story,
Holmes claims that he deduced that the snake was used in the killing because the idea of using
such a venomous animal would obviously “occur to a clever and ruthless man who had had an
Eastern training,” thus giving non-Western medicine and science a tinge of danger or evil.
The “wandering gipsies” that are living in encampments on the forested land around the Stoke
Moran Manor are another element of the sinister exotic. While the gipsies are European, Roma
people are ancestrally from the Indian subcontinent, and their nomadic lifestyle has always
made them outsiders in Europe. Just like the dangerous foreign animals, then, the reader is led
to believe that the exotic gipsies could easily be responsible for the death of Julia Stoner. With
no friends of his former social class and stature, it is implied, Roylott can only associate with this
marginal community, which is meant to enhance the reader’s suspicion that Roylott might be
sinister and unhinged.
By populating the story with a variety of exotic elements—people, animals, and objects—Doyle is
trying to create a setting that is both strange and sinister. In doing this, he is largely playing off
of the racial and cultural anxieties that the average white British reader of the time would likely
have been feeling in relation to the country’s expanding reach around the world and the
potential consequences that this new globalization might have at home.
Greed desperation and decline
The murder in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” takes place in a crumbling and isolated
manor belonging to the once-noble Roylott family whose wealth is now gone. Although he is
destitute, Dr. Roylott—the last remaining member of the Roylott family—still feels entitled to the
life of an aristocrat in which he lives well without working. His greed leads him to murder one of
his stepdaughters, Julia, and attempt to murder the other stepdaughter, Helen, in order to
protect his claim to monthly payments from his late wife’s wealth. Therefore, the Roylott
family’s decline in wealth and status leads directly to Dr. Roylott’s moral decline into greed and
murder. This shows that desperation in the face of decline can lead to depraved and immoral
behavior.
The Roylott family was once one of the richest families in all of England, with a series of vast
estates and a massive fortune. Over the course of a century, though, a few different heirs slowly
drained the family wealth with their wasteful lifestyles and gambling habits. Due to this decline
in family wealth, Dr. Roylott’s father was reduced to living as “an aristocratic pauper,” as there
was no family or family fortune left for him.
He has undergone a psychological decline from the days in which his family was respectable.
When Roylott and his two stepdaughters return from India to live at his family’s decrepit
country manor, the neighbors are excited “to see a Roylott of Stoke Moran back in the old family
seat.” Dr. Roylott shuts himself inside of the house and gets angry with the townspeople who
cross his path. The precipitous decline in this family’s wealth and status could lead its last
surviving member to desperation. Indeed, a combination of his financial strain (and his greed in
the face of it) and his psychological disturbance leads him to commit murder so that he can keep
the last of his ex-wife’s funds.
A physical embodiment of the Roylott family’s decline in fortune and respectability, the Stoke
Moran Manor itself is visibly crumbling after many years without upkeep. Only one wing of the
mansion is inhabitable . The other wing and central portion of the manor are in a state of
near-ruin, with a caved-in roof and boarded windows. The diminishing size of the manor
parallels the diminishing size of the family, while its state of ruin reflects the family’s decline in
wealth. The exterior of the home, too, is slowly reverting back into wilderness from its
presumably once well-manicured state. Not only have the grounds been drastically reduced to
only a few acres, they have also been left to grow into a shrubby expanse that conceals
wandering exotic animals and a group of traveling gypsies who live in tents on the property. In a
way, the mysterious and sinister grounds can be seen as a reflection of Roylott’s psychological
state. While it’s clear for most of the story that he is a dangerous and mysterious man, it’s not
clear for much of the story whether he—or whether the ambient dangers of the property—are
responsible for the murder.
Through depicting the last descendant of a once-noble family driven to murder by greed and
desperation, Doyle is showing that decline and loss can provoke violent emotions and behavior.
However, Doyle offers a glimpse of hope: Helen Stoner is an orphan whose sister is dead and
whose life and money are tightly controlled by her evil stepfather. Like the Roylotts, Helen’s
family has declined in wealth, size, and status, but Helen—unlike Dr. Roylott—does not become
violent or immoral in the face of this grim reality. Instead, she hires Holmes and Watson to
protect her. Doyle isn’t clear about what saves Helen from moral decline, but it’s noteworthy
that she has meaningful social ties: a fiancé and an aunt whom she loves. Perhaps, then, family
could be a redemptive force for Dr. Roylott, if only he knew how to love his stepdaughters rather
than take advantage of them.

Isolation and powerlessness

“locked-room mystery,” where a crime is committed in a closed-off and seemingly impenetrable
room. However, the story distinguishes between true isolation and the belief that one is isolated.
By making the Stoner sisters feel isolated, their stepfather Dr Grimesby Roylott psychologically
manipulates them into feeling powerless. Their vulnerability, however, does not come from true
isolation (either physical or emotional), since Julia is murdered because the locked room is not
as sealed off as she believed, and Helen only saves herself from the same fate by seeking help
from Holmes, which proves that she is not truly cut off from others. Therefore, Doyle
emphasizes that a person who believes herself isolated becomes vulnerable, while those who are
able to seek out connections between people (and recognize connections between clues) have the
power to control their own destiny.
the secluded Stoke Moran Manor—is the most isolating aspect of all, the ideal location for the
elaborate murder at the story’s center. It is difficult to escape the manor’s rural isolation and
find sympathetic people who might be able to protect her from the dangers in the house.
Furthermore, the mansion’s slight removal from the surrounding community in the town makes
it so there is no broad oversight of what develops there.
The inhabitable areas of the house have been reduced to only a portion of one wing, leaving all
common areas and exterior space (which has both dangerous animals and supposedly fearsome
gypsies wandering about) off limits. Therefore, the Stoner sisters are kept in relative seclusion
from their immediate surroundings and have no interior spaces to encourage communal
activities,
psychological isolation. Roylott tries to prevent them from seeing anyone besides their aunt . As
a result, the twins are certain that they are alone and powerless, which is key to their
vulnerability

Sherlock Holmes
The eccentric hero of the story, Sherlock Holmes is a detective with hypersensitive abilities of
observation and deduction. As this story comes after the publication of dozens of other popular
stories starring Holmes, Doyle is assuming that the reader already has some familiarity with the
biographical details of Holmes' life. In this story, Doyle gives only passing hints about Holmes’s
life: he shares an apartment with Watson, he tends to be a late riser in the mornings, he has a
sharp sense of humor, and is rather strong despite his slim build. He is also prone to reverie, as
he frequently stares off into space or takes quick naps throughout his investigation. Most
importantly, though, he is an excellent detective. In his chosen profession, he works more “for
the love of his art than for acquirement of wealth” and he only takes cases that “tend towards the
unusual, and even the fantastic.” His dedication to the job goes above and beyond what a typical
detective might be willing to do in order to solve a murder.
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
Famous for his deduction skills, he is an esoteric character, this making him more entertaining
as the readers try to guess what his next steps will be.
For Victorian readers, Holmes’ methods were new to them, making him more captivating and
unique. Holmes appeals to modern readers as well, as they try to understand his personality.
Doyle presents Holmes as infallible , mercurial and inscrutable. Holmes is perfect and
constantly working to solve the crimes . This quotation shows us Holmes’ faultless ability to
reason and observe, thus making him a better detective.
Doyle might have presented Holmes as impossible to understand to make him more
entertaining for the audience. Doyle shows the reader Holmes’s dual-nature: his manic,
detecting side and his quiet, introspective side.

John Watson
The longtime sidekick on Sherlock Holmes’s crime-solving adventures, Dr. John Watson is the
narrator of these detective stories. Watson and Holmes are “sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker
Street '' and that they have solved over seventy cases together as a working duo. He has served as
an army surgeon in India, where he was wounded during the second Afghan War, and has
returned to England in impaired health. He and Holmes meet in London; they share rooms at
221B Baker Street. The character of Watson, as written by Conan Doyle, is modest and
intelligent. He is a patient and sensitive observer, but his detecting capabilities are no match for
the lightning-swift deductive reasoning of Holmes.

Symbols
Swamp adder- speckled band is the deadly swamp adder snake, with its “peculiar yellow band,
with brownish speckles. Dr. Roylott used this trained snake to murder Julia, and the snake
represents, in part, the exotic form of evil that Doyle is emphasizing throughout the story. The
swamp adder, “the deadliest snake in India,” is the most potent, as it’s the one that actually
proves deadly. The snake also represents Roylott’s own descent into evil—he goes from being the
last living member of a noble Saxon family to a desperate eccentric willing to commit murder in
order to save himself from an inevitable financial downfall. The fact that swamp adder, which
Roylott trained and kept in a safe in his bedroom, ultimately ends up killing his master
literalizes how extreme desperation can take over a person’s life.
Stoke Moran Manor- This slowly crumbling house represents the decline of the once
prosperous and respectable Roylott family, which is now left with a sole descendant who is both
destitute and unhinged. The house’s decay also parallels Roylott’s loss of Victorian morals, as
Roylott becomes evil and deranged in tandem with the house falling apart.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory(1964)

Author ; Roald Dahl
Type Of Work ; Novel
Genre ; Children’s fiction
Narrator ; Third person. The anonymous narrator is sympathetic to the heroes, Charlie and Mr.
Wonka, and critical of the other children. subjective voice. The narrator follows Charlie’s point
of view and speaks on his behalf, announcing his hardships and criticizing his competition.
Setting (Place) An unnamed city; a small wooden house on the edge of a great city; a fabled
chocolate factory
Protagonist ; Charlie Bucket
Themes; Good things come in small packages; poverty vs. wealth; what goes around comes
around
Motifs; Vice; punishment; absurdity
Symbols; The chocolate factory; golden ticket; glass elevator

Charlie Bucket
Charlie Bucket is the protagonist of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he is the
embodiment of all that is virtuous. He is deprived of adequate food, a bed, and any privacy. In
spite of all this, he never complains, nor does he ever accept charity from his family when it
comes at their own expense. And each night, he returns home from school and dutifully spends
time with his bedridden grandparents, a chore that he seems to genuinely enjoy.
Charlie’s physical proportions align with his personality: not only is he quite small and
undernourished, but also he is meek. He speaks only when he is spoken to. He never asks for
more than he is given. He looks forward to the one time a year, on his birthday, when he can
indulge in a Wonka chocolate bar, and instead of wolfing it down all at once, he savors it (bite by
bite) for many months. Charlie walks past the world-renowned Wonka chocolate factory twice a
day, yet this never causes him bitterness or anger. Instead, Charlie simply indulges in the savory
smells coming out of the factory and humbly dreams of entering the factory one day. When the
golden tickets start turning up in the hands of nasty, greedy children, Charlie never complains
about how unfair it is that he will never get to go. Charlie’s strongest criticism of one of the other
children comes when he hears that Veruca’s father is using all the workers in his peanut factory
to unwrap chocolate bars night and day until his daughter gets a ticket. Charlie’s only comment
is that Veruca’s father is not playing quite fair.
Behind Charlie’s meek and virtuous exterior lies an inner strength and courage. He faces the
new challenges and mysteries of the factory with the same bravery he employs to overcome the
adversity of his everyday life. He finds all of the adventures in the chocolate factory to be wild
and stimulating. While other characters cringe at the speed of the boat as it tears down the
chocolate river, Charlie demurely embraces it, clutching to Grandpa Joe’s legs for stability and
enjoying the ride of his life. Compassionate, understand suffering, sympathy, kind.
Willy Wonka
The eccentric owner of the world-famous Wonka chocolate factory. Mastermind behind the
architecture of this mysterious factory. He had a quirky character. Along with his eccentric
behavior, Mr. Wonka also has a benevolent side. The mystery workers operating his chocolate
factory after the reopening are called Oompa-Loompas. The Oompa-Loompas hail from
Loompaland, where they are the defenseless prey of hungry creatures like hornswogglers,
snozzwangers, and whangdoodles until Mr. Wonka rescues them. He brings the malnourished
Oompa-Loompas back to his factory where they are allowed to eat their favorite food—cacao
beans—in unlimited quantities and live in complete safety in exchange for running the factory as
‘volunteers’ . Mr. Wonka treats the Oompa-Loompas like children, and, in return, they treat him
as a benevolent caretaker. Mr. Wonka further demonstrates his affinity for children and
wariness of adults by choosing a child to take over his factory. The child he seeks is humble,
respectful, and willing to run his factory exactly how Mr. Wonka runs it himself.
Though benevolent, Mr. Wonka’s character is not beyond reproach. His treatment of the
Oompa-Loompas is paternalistic, and his desire to mold a child into a second version of himself
is narcissistic. Furthermore, Mr. Wonka is unwilling to accept anyone’s foibles. He can be
extremely demanding and judgmental. The four children who do not win the grand prize clearly
disgust Mr. Wonka. He is short with each of them—he acts as if he invited each of them simply
to prove the virtuosity of Charlie. The humble and gracious Charlie is everything Mr. Wonka is
looking for.
Grandpa Joe
Grandpa Joe is the oldest and wisest of the characters in the novel. However, like Charlie and
Mr. Wonka, he remains young at heart. His youthful exuberance makes him the perfect person
to escort Charlie to the chocolate factory.Grandpa Joe is also Charlie’s best friend. Every evening
when Charlie spends time with his grandparents, Grandpa Joe entertains Charlie with a story. It
is Grandpa Joe who initially tells Charlie all about the history of Mr. Wonka and his vaunted
chocolate factory, and Grandpa Joe urges Charlie to have faith that he can find a golden ticket.
Grandpa Joe used to work at the chocolate factory before it was shut down. He was therefore
excited to go see the factory again. He loves Charlie a lot and makes sure he is okay throughout
the journey.
Charlie’s paternal grandfather. Grandpa Joe spends all his time in bed with the other three
Bucket grandparents. He is extremely imaginative and fun loving. He realizes a return of his
childish energy when Charlie finds the golden ticket. He thinks Mr. Wonka’s idea to send out
golden tickets is a marketing stroke of genius, and he continues to think Mr. Wonka is brilliant
while the other parents think he is mad. Grandpa Joe is kind and loving and also sensible. He is
Charlie’s greatest friend and confidant.
Augustus Gloop
A fat boy who loves nothing but eating. Augustus is rude and insubordinate in his never-ending
quest to fill his own face. His parents choose to indulge him rather than listen to his whining. He
suffers for his greed in the factory: while sucking from the chocolate river, he falls in and is
sucked up by one of the super pipes. He comes out changed on the other side, as evidenced by
his new thin body.
Veruca Salt
A spoiled brat. Veruca demands anything she wants and throws tantrums until her parents meet
her demands. She is mean and completely self-involved, and her parents always acquiesce to her
wishes. Veruca’s impetuousness causes her trouble at the factory. She demands to own one of
Wonka’s trained squirrels, but when she marches in to claim it, it deems her a “bad nut” and
sends her down the garbage chute. Mingled with garbage, she comes out changed at the end of
the story. Entitled.
Violet Beauregarde
An avid gum chewer. Violet’s attempt to beat a gum-chewing record completely consumes her.
At the factory her gum-chewing antics become her downfall when she grabs an experimental
piece of gum against Mr. Wonka’s advice. She eagerly chews the gum and turns into a giant
blueberry. After being juiced by Oompa-Loompas, she leaves the factory, changed. Boastful.
Pride.
Mike Teavee
A boy who cares only for television. The more guns and violence on a show, the more Mike likes
it. Mike is slightly more complex than the other bad children in that he is smart enough to
realize when Mr. Wonka is lying to him. Still, his attempts to get answers to his questions go
completely unheeded. At the factory he wants nothing more than to check out the chocolate
television room. Once there he spies the opportunity to be on television himself. Without regard
for his own safety, he engineers a filming of himself and ends up shrinking down to a couple of
inches and getting stuck in the TV. The Oompa-Loompas stretch him out to twice his normal
height in the end. He was a sloth as he didn’t move much and watched TV all day
The Oompa-Loompas
Fun-loving dwarves hailing from Loompaland. Mr. Wonka’s diminutive workforce feasts on
cacao beans and performs all of the work in the Wonka chocolate factory. They also enjoy
dancing, beating drums, and singing songs about what happens to bad children. They were tiny
people with funny looking hair.
The Oompa-Loompas are from Loompaland, which Mr Wonka describes as a terrible place.
"Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world - hornswogglers
and snozzwangers and those terribly wicked whangdoodles,". They used to make food out of
caterpillars and it tasted gross. They tried adding things to it to make it tasty but it didn’t work.
They wanted cacao-beans and chocolate to eat. Loompaland is such a terrible place that when
Mr Wonka invited the Oompa-Loompas to come back to his Chocolate Factory, they leapt at the
chance. Now they live and work there, helping Mr Wonka with his experiments and generally
keeping his Chocolate Factory going. The Oompa-Loompas enjoy singing and dancing. They're
always making up songs. Their favourite food is the cacao bean, the central ingredient in a bar of
chocolate, and in the Wonka Factory they have access to as many cacao beans as they could
possibly wish for. But they had no choice but to live there. They didn’t volunteer. They were
slaves even if they were given all needed living conditions. They were taken away from their
home and even if the temperature was adopted according to their needs it sill can be traced back
to
The parents- The parents are moronic and indulgent for whatever their children want. They
alway pay attention to their egoistic entitled children. They are weak and ineffectual. They let
their kids talk back. The kids were raised wrong.

Motifs
Vice- The children are either good or ba d.The bad children are easy to spot because they are
the embodiment of their vices. Augustus is greedy, Veruca is bratty, Violet is an obsessive gum
chewer, and Mike is obsessed with television. Makes it clear from the outset that these children
are bad. He makes Charlie all the more obvious as the hero of his story.
Punishment - bad children must be reformed through whatever means necessary. Indeed, the
necessary means take the form of wild and sometimes violent punishments. Punishments are
necessary to create good out of bad, which is a moral imperative within this story. In this story,
the proper punishment is the only thing that can transform a bad child into a good one.
Absurdity - absurdities are hair-growing candy for children, square candies that look ’round,
and edible pillows. All of these demand a suspension of disbelief from the reader.

Themes

Poverty vs wealth- Money is dangerous, especially when it is used unscrupulously. Veruca’s

father embodies all the negative aspects of wealth when he uses his financial resources to secure
Veruca a golden ticket. Even Charlie, who almost never speaks ill of anyone, says he disagrees
with Mr. Salt’s method. In contrast, poverty can often lead to good things. Charlie is extremely
poor; he rarely has enough to eat, and he sleeps on the floor with his parents. But the dignity
with which Charlie handles his poverty makes him a beloved character. Yet he is eventually
rewarded with riches beyond his wildest dreams.

Slavery and colonialism - Indeed, the workers for his chocolate factory, the
Oompa-Loompas, were slaves. When Charlie and the four other golden ticket holders and their
parents first spied the Oompa-Loompas Wonka explained that the workers were not made of
chocolate, but they “are real people! They are some of my workers!” He had imported the tiny
black people “direct from Africa!” They belonged to “a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as
Oompa-Loompas. I discovered them myself,” Wonka exclaimed. I brought them over from
Africa myself—the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest
and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before.”
Wonka informed Charlie and his companions that the tribe had been starving, subsisting on
green caterpillars but longed for cacao beans; “oh how they craved them,” he said. He bargained
with the tribe and promised that if they agreed to “live in my factory” they could have all the
cacao beans they wanted: “I’ll even pay your wages in cacao beans if you wish!”
So, the black pygmies traded their freedom for permanent enslavement and all the cacao beans
they could eat. After the tribal leader agreed to stop eating green caterpillars and work for
“beans,” Wonka “shipped them over here, every man, woman, and child in the Oompa-Loompa
tribe. It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all
got here safely.”
A slave galley even made an appearance in the book, one powered by the pygmies who rowed on
a river of chocolate. To further emphasize the slave analogy, Dahl introduced whips into the tale,
“WHIPS—ALL SHAPES AND SIZES.” And why whips? Well, “For whipping cream, of course!”
Riveting the idea that these black pygmies were Wonka’s property, to which he could do
whatever he wanted, the Oompa-Loompas were subject to hair-growing medical experiments
and product testing that turned the little pygmies into blueberries. The entire Wonka enterprise
relied on slavery and complete racial subordination. Willy
Wonka is an obvious example of white supremacist racial subordination.

Chocolate Factory - The chocolate factory is the physical embodiment of the difference
between poverty and wealth. Charlie’s poverty-stricken home stands in the shadow of the
behemoth chocolate factory, which is filled with untold riches. The chocolate factory also
represents the idea that things cannot be fairly judged from an outside perspective. It seems
enormous from the outside, but it's true glories lie below ground, where they cannot be seen
without a closer look.

Golden Ticket - Finding the golden ticket allows Charlie to live his dream. As its name
indicates, the golden ticket is made entirely of gold. It is the most valuable thing Charlie has ever
touched. But it also represents a leveling of the playing field between the rich and the poor.
Charlie has just as much chance as anyone else to find a ticket. The ticket represents hope.

Glass Elevator- For Charlie, the great glass elevator represents his future. The elevator allows
Charlie to see the world laid out before him. But before Charlie can reach that point of clarity, he
must trust the elevator and remain willing to ride on through all of the turbulence and
frightening times. Once Charlie can accept uncertainty as part of his future, the elevator takes
him to the place where his future is at hand. Once there, Charlie must be brave enough to stand
on uncertain ground and seize his own fortune.

Blowing In The Wind- Bob Dylan

"Blowin' in the Wind," Bob Dylan's classic 1962 protest song, has had a long, rich life as an
anthem for causes from civil rights to nuclear disarmament. In this song, the speaker poses a
series of huge questions about the persistence of war and oppression, and then responds with
one repeated, cryptic reply: "The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind." Finding an end to
human cruelty, the song suggests, is a matter of understanding a truth that's all around—but
paradoxically impossible to grasp.

The Senselessness of War and Oppression

Bob Dylan’s classic protest song “Blowin’ in the Wind” addresses the incomprehensible cruelty
of war and oppression. In this song, the speaker asks a series of unanswerable questions about
how long it will take for humanity to establish lasting peace, compassion, and justice, and then
repeatedly concludes: “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” This ambiguous reply suggests the
complexities of the question itself: if the answer is “blowin’ in the wind,” it’s either right there in
front of people or it's impossible to grasp—or both! That paradox also reflects on the nature of
human cruelties, those obvious evils that humanity can’t seem to stop perpetuating.
The speaker presents listeners with a series of big questions about war, oppression, and
indifference throughout the song, treating these questions both as worldwide problems and the
problems of every individual. To that end, the song's language is grand and general, and the use
of biblically-inflected images—for instance, the searching dove as a symbol of peace—suggests
the scale and depth of the questions at hand; these are issues, the song implies, that go right to
the roots of human nature itself.
Of course, these questions also work on a more personal scale. Stopping war and oppression is
the individual, internal work of “a man,” the song suggests, as much as that of a government or a
nation; big cruelties can grow from individual attitudes to the world.
The solution to all these problems, the song repeatedly insists, is both ever-present and
impossible to grasp: it’s “blowin’ in the wind,” at once as obvious and as invisible as the air itself.
This paradoxical non-answer suggests bewilderment in the face of human cruelty, but also a
strange sort of hopefulness. One can’t pin the wind down, but it is everywhere
Perhaps the song is suggesting that people need to think and perceive in new, freer ways in order
to break out of their old patterns of war and violence. That this is a job both for humanity at
large and for every “man” offers a grain of hope in the song as well: if individual people can
think in novel ways and come to understand how the answer might be “blowin’ in the wind,”
maybe an end to war, cruelty, and oppression is possible after all.

Poetic Devices- Alliteration, Assonance, Metaphor, Paradox, Allusion, Refrain, Repetition,

Rhetorical question
Form- 3 stanzas, each an 8 line octet, Within stanzas, too, there's a repeated rhythm of
questioning: the speaker always adds on to the initial question with a "Yes, 'n'" (i.e., "and").
These repetitions add to the feeling that this speaker is turning over questions that just can't be
answered easily. No matter how many questions the speaker asks, the speaker always has to
return to the slippery wind in the end.
No meter
Rhyme Scheme- ABCBDBEE

Imagine- John Lennon

Imagine by John Lennon was written and performed in 1971 during the Vietnam War. According
to Wikipedia, the song Imagine is one of the top 100 most-performed songs of the twentieth
century. The song has been divided into five stanzas in which the 3rd stanza is repeated at the
end. There is no definite rhyme scheme
In the first stanza, the poet asks the readers and the audience to Imagine that there is no heaven
and no hell and it’s easy if you try according to him. The idea of heaven and hell is in almost all
the major religions in the world like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.
This idea is however different in all the religions and also the cause of a number of wars,
crusades, enmity among the people and even the countries. Thus for Lennon, Heaven and Hell,
or in other words life after death has no reality or proof.
In the third line, he asks us to Imagine that all the people living for today and above us are
nothing but the only sky. The poet is asking the people to leave aside what has been prescribed
and advised in their religions and beliefs and rather consider the world as the ultimate reality
and live for today.
In the second stanza, the poet again asks us to imagine there’s no countries and no religion too
and thus nothing to kill or die for. According to the poet, it isn’t hard to do i.e. there is no big
deal in imagining it.
The countries and the religions divide the people and also lead them to fight and kill each other.
The poet thus wants us to imagine what if these two dividing forces were not here on the earth,
then no person would die or kill others. And thus all the people live life in peace.
The poet says that the people may think that he is a dreamer. However, according to him, he is
not the only one to think like this.. There are many others as well and someday we will also join
him and that day the world will be one. There will be unity among the people, and peace and
prosperity will prevail.
The poet asks us to imagine that there would be no possessions and no need for greed or hunger
and thus a brotherhood of man would exist where all the people would be sharing all the world.
The poet talks about material possessions. Materialistic desires lead to greed and thus
capitalism, which again divides the society into classes i.e. rich and poor class. This desire is,
again, a cause of problems faced by the people in the world. The poet thus asks us to think and
imagine if we would give up the desire to possess the material things, there will be no fight, no
class, no greed and thus no problem. Universal brotherhood will prevail in the world and it will
be shared by all the people equally.
Theme
The song or the poem reflects the dream of a poet who wants to see the world problem-free. For
him, religion, afterlife, countries, possessions, etc are the things that divide the people and make
them fight with each other.As a dreamer, he asks the readers and the audience to imagine like
him and see the world as he does. Though it is difficult to imagine so, yet we will someday find it
to be the ultimate solution and will accept it and then we will be one.

Literary Devices
Repetition, Enjambment, Alliteration, Antithesis

The Walrus And The Carpenter- Lewis Carroll

‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ is a narrative poem by Lewis Carroll. It was included in his 1871
novel ‘Through the Looking-Glass.’ Carroll’s characters, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, recite the
poem out loud to Alice. Since it first appeared it has become very popular, appearing in a variety
of media since its publication.
The characters of the walrus and the carpenter are interesting. Throughout history, there have
been several interpretations in regards to who they represent, or if they represent anyone at all.
Some have suggested that they are meant to be the Buddha and Jesus Christ.
‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ is one of the best examples of nonsense, or nonce, verse that
Carroll wrote. Although aimed primarily at younger readers, nonsense verse is not just for
children. These poems appeal to all age groups due to their outlandish settings, invented words,
and otherworldly characters.
They require a suspension of disbelief and willingness to engage with the strange.
Personification, song, consistent rhyme schemes and metrical patterns, as well as aspects of
story-telling, are all part of this genre of poetry. These elements, as well as many others, are
found within this particular poem as well.