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Analysis of Stone Soup and The Gangster as Tragic Hero
It is said that Americans are raised on certain values and all live and strive toward the American dream. Somewhere along the way, though, lines were strewn and those values and morals became extinct by nature. Now with misinterpreted ideals and ideas of logical fallacies as our only reference to the normal way of living, life is made to be more complicated and full of anxiety. In the short stories of “Stone Soup” by Barbara Kingsolver and “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” by Robert Warshow these non-realistic values are tackled and confronted to reveal the true ideals of the modern day world and the effects on its people. In the story “Stone Soup” Barbara Kingsolver…show more content… Our families resemble one big cauldron ready to be heated and filled and the contents of that cauldron differ with every family. Every family is the same through differences and should be accepted through our similarities. In the story of “Gangster as Tragic Hero” Robert Warshow discusses how classic gangster films can be looked at as tragedies that play along with actual everyday life of an American citizen, and trigger our ingrained dissatisfactions and fears. He argues that although America is blindly committed to an unrealistically positive view of life, the condition in which they live is far from their expectations. Americans relate to these depictions of gangsters because they express many Americans’ desires to reject the qualities and burden of modern life. Americans all have strong equal roots in the belief in the American Dream. That if we work hard and play fair that we can all succeed to live good and wealthy. Somewhere along the line the American Dream, our depiction of freedom, and the quest to succeed are misinterpreted. “At the bottom the gangster is doomed because he is under the obligation to succeed, not because the means he employs are unlawful. In the deeper layers of the modern consciousness, all means are
