Loss Of Innocence In The Human Comedy

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I will be addressing the World War and Postwar State era. The author that I have chosen is William Saroyan. I will discuss how victims and their families from California dealt with World War II. Children were forced to take on responsibilities of an adult at an earlier age, for the sake of survival and sustenance. I will emphasize specifically on the adversity young children and adults had to overcome and how the war obliterated their innocence.
William Saroyan’s novel, The Human Comedy, was set in Ithaca, California during World War II. Homer is the protagonist and at the age of fourteen, he learns the bitter truths about how the world war drastically changed people’s lifestyles. Homer is compelled to work as a telegraph messenger to support his family because his brother serves as a soldier in the war and his father has passed away nearly two years ago. Homer supports his family which includes his older sister, Bess, and his younger brother, Ulysses. Homer delivers not only messages of joy and hope, but more frequently of death to the families of Ithaca whose sons were killed in action.
This correlates directly to the tragic events of …show more content…
Ulysses is innocent and essentially learns how the world works by constantly asking questions. He questions his mother about his father and brother’s whereabouts and the mother informs him that his father has already passed away and that his brother Marcus is currently serving in the war. Ulysses is clueless and does not have social understanding of what happens around him. For example, he accidentally got caught in an animal trap created by Mr. Safferty, and unknowingly stole an apricot from Mr. Henderson’s tree, found out what is a funeral by his friend Lionel, felt good about going to library because he felt he had learn something from looking at
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