The film, the Revolutionary Road, is based on the true story of an ordinary American couple that has two children and a home in the suburbs during the 1950s. The couple married young and started a family too early that life has become weary and dull. April is dissatisfied with her acting career at the local theater and her life as a suburban housewife. At the same time, Frank despises his marketing job at the Knox Business Machines. Basically, the universal theme that is heavily emphasized throughout the film is definitely the endless struggle for survival. Struggling to be hopeful of the future and the possibilities of change, the couple is stuck in the conformity of life in the society. Draining every drop of happiness out of their dry and thirsty lives, the couple continues to hold hope in the future when Frank decides to pursue his “real” life. The endless arguments, dissatisfaction with people and job, the couple are portrayed in an overly realistic light. This extreme realism about the tiredness of life seems to reach too deep and close into our lives that it makes watching the film quite painful. This feeling of endless struggle not is only is it portrayed through the style of the movie, but also the feeling that the film gives to the viewers. The endless struggle for hope, for happiness seems to shed a desperate light of people. The ending of the movie when April dies and Frank moves reinforces the idea that life is an endless battle that requires endurance in order to survive. If one suddenly looses faith in life, everything will shatter.

Instead of highlight the fragility of life, the theme of endless struggle for survival is portrayed in a hopeful way. In the Famished Road by Ben Okri, the theme is revealed through the family’s constant worry about food, money and shelter. Always in the cesspool of poverty and oppression, the family struggles to climb out of the painful pit of life. Azaro’s father works as a carrier and is carrying heavier loads because of his stubborn political views. He earns little money and has to suffer the body pains. Azaro’s mother sells things at the market but barely makes any money because of the discrimination by the thugs from the Party. The family is unhappy but has to continue their tiring jobs and life every day just to survive. The endless struggle for survival of the family is highlighted as Azaro’s father suddenly leaks out his deep emotions about his pain and happiness after he beat Azaro. Azaro’s father though is tired of his life, he still loves his family and appreciates life as it is. Being optimistic in his perspective, the father sheds a hopeful light on life. Okri though emphasizes the endless struggle of people’s lives, but he also believes that in these struggles, will grow a sweet happiness.

The film and the novel portray the same theme of the endless struggle for survival in life but in different perspectives. I think that the purpose of accentuating this universal theme is to let us know that though life is an endless struggle, it allows us to dig deep into our soul and tests us of our intelligence. If we feel dissatisfied and accept this idea unwillingly, things will go accordingly to our view. If we remain a strong mindset, the hope that is just around the corner will eventually come. This struggle is inevitable. We must realize this fact and not let external factors hurt our inner self. If the inner self is protected, struggle is nothing to be feared of. Life is about endurance of the inner self against the world. I think that this universal theme ties to many aspects of our lives and we must not be afraid to fall because then we’ll experience the happiness in the climb.

I have always wanted to be one of those kids whose parents worked, who got to go home and be by themselves, who got to make themselves a snack without an adult peering over their shoulder. In school, I hear kids take out their keys, the jangling and ringing filling my ears. I see them get off the bus and let themselves into their house. I want to be like that.

Every day when I get home from school, my mom is outside waiting. She greets the bus, a huge grin on her face lighting up the cloudy sky. I’d ask her, bug her, about when she’d get another job. “Matt and I are old enough to take care of ourselves,” I tried to convince her. And finally, it worked. Not because of me, but because she finally found something that she wanted to do.

Today is the first day I get to go home without her being there. I’m so excited I can hardly contain myself. I take that first step off the bus and walk up the driveway, a walk that seems to take a lifetime. I walk into the garage, savoring the tangible aloneness that I feel in the thick, heavy air. I unlock the door and to my own surprise, find myself straining to hear that familiar voice calling, welcoming me to the home that always smells like freshly-baked bread. Now, I don’t smell that. The air seems empty.

Shaking my head, I walk in and busy myself with getting a snack. When I finally sit down to eat, I feel a burst of solitude eating away at my insides, and I suddenly feel guilty for pushing my mom to get a job, because truthfully, it’s lonely here by myself, sitting at the counter in the empty kitchen, without the smell of bread wafting around me. I realize now that that is my mom, and that she keeps me from being lonely. I only wish I realized it sooner.

NOISELESS, patient spider,

I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;

Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;

Ever unreeling them–ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,

Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,–seeking the spheres, to connect them;

Till the bridge you will need, be form’d–till the ductile anchor hold;

Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart’s best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back­a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others’ sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie !

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress­
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

1)

Le

Af

Fa

Ll

s)

one

l

iness

by e.e. cummings

Ammu died in a grimy room in the Bharat Lodge in Alleppey, where she had gone for a job interview as someone’s secretary. She died alone. With a noisy ceiling fan for company and no Estha to lie at hte back of her and talk to her. She was thirty one. Not old, not young, but a viable, die-able age…

That night in the lodge, Ammu sat up in the strange bed in the strange room in the strange town. She didnt know  where she was, she recognized nothing around her. Only her fear was familiar. The faraway man inside her began to shout. This time the steely fist never loosened its grip. Shadows gatherred like bats in the steep hollows near her collarbones.

A bird with a broken wing was beating hte air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water. Edna found her old bathing suit still hanging, faded, upon its accoustomed peg.

She put it on, leaving her clothing in the bath-house. But when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, prickingling farments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and hte waves that invited her.

How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never knew.

The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

She went on and on. She remembered hte night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end..

Her arms were growing tired…Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.

Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought hey would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back