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The power of the devil over this ripe soul, on the precipice of becoming a known "chosen" soul but born of the good and the evil, his mother being purely good and his birth father being purely evil was complete and as the "friendship" progressed the presence of the devil became almost drug like in its intensity. "He was constant to me as my shadow, and by degrees he acquired such an ascendency over me that I never was happy out of his company, nor greatly so in it." (21) the devil, the narrators close companion uses all of his whiles to convince the narrator to commit murder, first murdering a great preacher and then following it with murdering his father and brother to regain his forsaken fortune.
At no point in the process of character contests does the narrator actually regain his sense of self, or his sense of guilt for actions done with guile, rather than with the convincing of the devil that he is righteous in his actions. The devil tells him that all of his actions are justified and he believes the words and acts upon them.
These people are your greatest enemies; they would rejoice to see you annihilated. and, now that you have taken up the Lord's cause of being avenged on His enemies, wherefore spare those that are your own as well as His? Besides, you ought to consider what great advantages would be derived to the...
(34) He failed at every step to see what was at stake. The story is a culmination of the idea of the sins of the father. The narrator in all his piety had attempted to divorce himself from his father's sins but instead embraced them and allowed them to overtake his life. His denial of wrongdoing is clearly self preservation in the face of utter self-righteousness as well as a complete convincing by the devil that no earthly deed would change his eternal outcome. "My devoted, princely, but sanguine friend has been with me again and again. My time is expired and I find a relief beyond measure, for he has fully convinced me that no act of mine can mar the eternal counsel, or in the smallest degree alter or extenuate one event which was decreed before the foundations of the world were laid." (81) the sins of the father are the stake and no matter the protection he was afforded from his mother and the Father he was preordained to live a life of evil.
Works Cited
Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner New York: Canongate, 2001.
Works Cited
Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner New York: Canongate, 2001.
While each of these readings provide useful insights into the character, this study suggests that Gil-Martin represents something more than either the devil or Robert's imagination. Instead, one may read Gil-Martin as the specter of Robert's religious fanaticism, that part of his belief that justifies all of his actions. Instead of viewing Gil-Martin as an evil or "negative" influence in contrast to Robert's otherwise religious tendencies, one may view
However, Hamlet possesses far more awareness about his own weaknesses, and despite his early doubts, he also doubts the ghost: "The spirit that I have seen/May be the devil: and the devil hath power/to assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps/Out of my weakness and my melancholy, / as he is very potent with such spirits, / Abuses me to damn me" (II.5). Hamlet constructs a test to make sure
Although the advances in law have progressed greatly over the past two hundred years that is still progression that can and needs to be implemented to first establish and then maintain equality within the legal system that deals with domestic disputes in the form of divorce and child custody issues. Bibliography MAN and WIFE in AMERICA: A HISTORY. By Hendrik Hartog.([dagger]) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2000. 408 pp. Norma Basch, Framing American
Reason tells him that there must be something else, still to come, while he is fighting to stay alive and keep feeling. The author points out that, at some point, he decided to write the book as a "Children's Crusade," as the opposite of every past attempt to present war as something other that what is should be: the worst and most hideous manifestation of the constant of death in