<span>The Slaying of the Suitors is the event from the Odyssey which best highlights that the Ancient Greeks greatly disliked greediness. In Odysseus’ absence, suitors had been trying to court his wife, Penelope, for access to Odysseus’ wealth and lands. However, Odysseus and his son Telemachus kill all the suitors when Odysseus returns.</span>
After Johnny’s death, Ponyboy wanders alone for hours until a man offers him a ride. The man asks Ponyboy if he is okay and tells him that his head is bleeding. Ponyboy feels vaguely disoriented. At home, he finds the greasers gathered in the living room and tells them that Johnny is dead and that Dally has broken down. Dally calls and says he just robbed a grocery store and is running from the police. The gang rushes out and sees police officers chasing him. Dally pulls out the unloaded gun he carries, and the police shoot him. Dally collapses to the ground, dead. Ponyboy muses that Dally wanted to die. Feeling dizzy and overwhelmed, Ponyboy passes out.
When Ponyboy wakes, Darry is at his side. Ponyboy learns that he got a concussion when a Soc kicked him in the head during the rumble, and that he has been delirious in bed for three days.
Analysis: Chapters 9–10
Underlying the struggle between the Socs and the greasers is the struggle between the instinct to make peace and the social obligation to fight. Hinton turns the rumble into a moral lesson. The fight begins when Darry Curtis and Paul Holden face off; the fact that Darry and Paul were high school friends and football teammates suggests that their rivalry need not exist—that money makes enemies of natural friends. Ponyboy’s comment that they used to be friends but now dislike each other because one has to work for a living while the other comes from the leisurely West Side emphasizes the artificial and unnecessary nature of their animosity. While this animosity seems pointless, each gang member who fights still feels a responsibility to his gang to hate the other gang.
Ponyboy feels this tension within him before the fight. His instincts tell him to skip the rumble, as he knows in his heart that violence won’t solve anything. His hesitation after speaking with Randy and his decision to take five aspirin before the fight show that he is emotionally and physically unprepared for the ordeal. Nevertheless, Ponyboy ignores his instincts and goes through with the fight because he wants to please his social group. His participation in the rumble cements his place in the gang; he is no longer a tagalong little brother but rather a fighter in his own right.
In “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” the theme is captivity and is explored by the author through the relationship between the two captive sisters.
Explanation:
In Katherine Mansfield's short story “The Daughters of the Late Colonel”, the theme is the exploration of captivity and how it affects the primary characters of the story.
Josephine and Constantia have been imprisoned in a world where they have essentially two goals in their lives one is to avoid displeasing their cranky old father and the other is to keep away from him as far as necessary to.
This is the part where the relationship between the two sisters is explored in their silent and morbid captivity within the household.
