Courage In The Face Of Adversity Essay, Research Paper

In most of the world’s greatest literature, there have been introduced countless courageous characters and triumphant victories. These characters have the power to father strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. Such characters as Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God, Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, June from The Joy Luck Club, and Edna from The Awakening. Throughout each of these magnificant stories comes an example of bravery and courage. Although in some cases, the characters may not generally be perceived by the public to be courageous at all, they demonstrate extreme strength in overcoming adversity.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character of Janie is a prime example of overcoming adversity. She is faced with racism early in life, and then forced to marry at a young age. In her lifelong search for true love, Janie goes through three marriages, several moves, and an incredible journey of self-discovery. On Janie’s quest for unconditional, true, and fulfilling love, she gains her own interdependence and personal freedom, which makes her a true heroine in this novel. Because Janie strives for her own independence, others tend to judge her simply because she is daring enough to achieve her own autonomy. “Ah wants things sweet wed mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah?” (Eyes 23) Throughout the novel, she searches for the love that she has always desired, one that is represented to her early in life by the marriage between a bee and a blossom on the pear tree that stood in her grandmother’s backyard. “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came over her. She saw the dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold the revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.” (Eyes 10) Only after feeling other kinds of love does Janie finally gain the love like that between the bee and the blossom. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother and primary caregiver in the novel, gives Janie a kind of protective love, as does her first husband. Janie’s second husband provided he with a kind of escape from this protective and unsatisfying love of her first husband. Joe, her second husband, is a man of lofty goals and charisma, and Janie feels that this might be the first time in her life that she may find true love. However, Joe is extremely possessive and abusive, treating Janie as a trophy. This is a major hardship for Janie, one that she must bravely endure and overcome. In her search for love and losses she suffers, Janie gains independence. Throughout this quest for independence and love, Janie encounters the harsh judgement of others. One woman, Mrs. Turner, is especially opinionated. ” ‘And dey makes me tired. Always laughin’! Dey laughs too much and dey laughs too loud. Always singin’ ol’ nigger songs! Always cuttin’ the monkey for white folks. If it wuzn’t for so many black folks it wouldn’t be no race problem. De white folks would take us in wid dem. De black ones is holdin’ us back.’” (Eyes 135) The porch sitters of the novel also serve as a judge to Janie. As the novel opens, they sit and comment about her return and her present lifeless appearance. Mrs. Turner, the bigoted restaurant owner, judges Janie in a way that she had never known possible; a new, terrible sort of prejudice and ignorance. This Janie got through with her own strong will. Janie definitely overcomes all sorts of adversity and hardship in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Because Janie endures the harsh judgement of others, she is able to gain independence and strength.

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the character of Edna creates a herione, although many may see her as a weak-willed, feeble-minded quitter. At the end of the novel, Edna kills herself by being brave enough to let herself be free in her own mind. Whether this was intentional or not seems unimportant; the point is that Edna was brave enough to conquer her innermost fears and finally swim by herself. This makes Edna a complex but heroic character. To truly understand Edna’s actions, one must understand the entire message of the novel. It is one of freedom (or lack thereof), opression, and ability to be free in one’s own mind. In The Awakening, Edna marries a man from a different backround that her own, and must be someone she is not to fit in with this Creole society that oppresses and ties down its women. This society has set behavior that its women must follow or be chastised. The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, tells the story of a woman, Edna Pontellier, who transforms herself from an obedient housewife to a person who is alive with strength of character and emotions which she no longer has to repress. “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her while being with her a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.” (Awaking 49) This metamorphosis is shaped by her surroundings. Just as her behavior is more shocking and horrifying because of her position in society, it is that very position which causes her to feel restrained and makes her yearn to rebel. Edna has the courage to realize that she must be true to herself before anyone or anything else. The adversity posed to her in the form of her position in society is a challenge that she must overcome. Edna uses one character in particular as inspiration for her courage. The person whom Edna truly admires is Mademoiselle Reiz, who is a brilliant pianist. Her talent is somewhat lost on the other people on the island. They cannot appreciate her artistry as does Edna because Mademoiselle Reiz does not fit their idea of what a proper woman should be; she is eccentric and bold. Her music touches Edna to the very core of her being. “Mademoiselle played a soft interlude. It was an improvisation?.Gradually and imperceptibly the interlude melted into a soft opening minor chords of the Chopin Impromptu?.Edna did not know when the impromptu began or ended?.The music grew strange and fantastic-turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty?the music filled the room. It loated out upon the night, over the housetops, the crescent of the river, losing itself in the silence of the upper air.

Edna was sobbing, just as she had wept one midnight at Grand Isle when strange, new voiced awoke her. She arose in some agitation to take her departure?” (Awakening 116) Something inside her is stirred, and she feels alive like never before in her life. Edna respects Mademoiselle Reiz because she has the courage to be different. It is Mademoiselle’s music that starts to “awaken” Edna and allows her to see the beauty and passion in life. The “awakening” that Edna goes through is truly a test of strength, truth, but most of all, courage.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a novel about a independently wealthy man, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a man of hope and relentless optomism. He is in love with his selfish and almost heartless neighbor, Daisy. His love has spanned years, and traveled hundreds of miles. Gatsby becomes wealthy simply to impress and win over Daisy, even though she is already married. One comment Gatsby makes to Daisy combines symbolism with his undying love for her. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” (Gatsby 147) In Fitzgerald’s novel, the green light is a symbol of hope, and Gatsby incorporates this fully. Gatsby had the courage and strength to follow his heart, regardless of circumstances and the opinions of others, and never loses hope that his love will change.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….. And one fine morning-” (Gatsby 189) Jay Gatsby clearly Fitzgerald stresses the need for hope and dreams to give meaning and purpose to man’s efforts. Striving towards some ideal is the way by which man can feel a sense of involvement, a sense of his own identity. Certainly, Gatsby, with ‘his extraordinary gift of hope’, set against the empty existence of Daisy, seems to achieve a heroic greatness. Fitzgerald goes on to state that the failure of hopes and dreams, the failure of the American Dream itself, is unavoidable, not only because reality cannot keep up with ideals, but also because the ideals are in any case usually too fantastic to be realised. The heroic presentation of Gatsby, therefore, should not be taken at face value, for we cannot overlook the fact that Gatsby is naive, impractical and oversentimental. It is this which makes him attempt the impossible, to repeat the past. There is something pitiful and absurd about the way he refuses to grow up, but also brave and courageous. The way Gatsby refuses to sacrifice his ideals is admirable, although many saw it as foolish. Jay Gatsby died because of these ideals, and can almost be seen as a martyr for his own beliefs and idea of perfection, or the American Dream. Gatsby’s good friend, neighbor, and the narrator of this novel thinks very highly of the complicated Gatsby. “Your worth the whole rotten bunch of them put together,”

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