The Awful Rowing Toward God Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Awful Rowing Toward God - Assignment Example It seems something that causes ruin, injury or pain would be pretty clear-cut, but what if it is to destroy a cruel dictatorship, to cause injury as a means of repairing an internal injury or to create pain as a means of setting a broken bone? In many ways, evil must be considered to be a changing concept depending on the dominant cultural beliefs at a given time and considered along with the greater context of events. By looking at some relatively recent depictions of evil in today's culture, it is possible to see that evil is usually considered to be an outside force characterized by its creation of unearned pain and destruction.  It seems something that causes ruin, injury or pain would be pretty clear-cut, but what if it is to destroy a cruel dictatorship, to cause injury as a means of repairing an internal injury or to create pain as a means of setting a broken bone? In many ways, evil must be considered to be a changing concept depending on the dominant cultural beliefs at a given time and considered along with the greater context of events. By looking at some relatively recent depictions of evil in today's culture, it is possible to see that evil is usually considered to be an outside force characterized by its creation of unearned pain and destruction.   In the novel The Shining, for example, evil is a bodiless force that is confined for some reason within the area of a remote Colorado resort called Overlook. Within the novel, there is no clear sense of where the evil comes from or why it is attached to that particular location, only that it has likely been in place since the hotel's beginning. There are several instances where people who have died at the hotel are mentioned somewhat offhandedly as if it is too regular to make anyone upset. The Torrence's arrival at the hotel is marked by an angry woman speaking about the time her second husband died out on the roque court (Ch. 9) and they continue to hear about other deaths, increasingly more viole nt in nature, as the book continues. Even early in the story, some of these deaths seem odd, such as the death of the hotel's first owner, working as a caretaker after he'd lost his fortune. "He plugged his finger into a light socket by mistake and that was the end of him" (Ch. 10) or that of his son, who was killed in a riding accident on the property. The evil of the hotel is a disembodied thing, but it has a clear objective - to destroy life by causing extreme pain and mental anguish and to acquire power. The violence of the hotel is introduced in Chapter 12 as the little family is getting a tour of the Presidential Suite on the third floor: "Great splashes of dried blood, flecked with tiny bits of grayish-white tissue, clotted the wallpaper.