St. Augustine On Death Essays - Amillennialism, Augustine Of Hippo

St. Augustine On Death Death is a very natural occurrence in life, and everyone experiences death differently, but yet in the same way. When Augustine was a young boy his father died, and he makes a small account of this in the Confessions. Later on in life, he loses a dear friend, and his loving mother. With time, he mentally matures and death affects Augustine differently each time. The death of his father was merely mentioned in the Confessions, while the death of Monica, his mother, was an elaborate detailed account of the time of her death. The death of his close friend, when Augustine was a child made him realize that life is temporal. Growing up, Augustine was not very close to his father. He confided in his mother and leaned towards her Christian beliefs. Patricius, Augustine's father, was a pagan, but later became a catechumen. Patricius did not pressure Augustine about following his mother's beliefs, and gave him the freedom to do so. When Augustine was a child, he was subjected to the verbal abuse his father laid on Monica. His father was also not faithful, and this left a lasting scaring impression on Augustine. Patricius never hit Monica, and she realized that other wives were being beaten, so she accepted the verbal abuse. Patricius was proud of his son's accomplishments, and was admired by all for the sacrifices Patricius made for Augustine. Patricius was considered"generous," but then was also very "hot-tempered." In the Confessions, Augustine only makes note of his father's death, and one reason may be that Augustine was not happy with the way Patricius treated his loving and ever-forgiving mother. Shortly after Patricius' death, Augustine deals with death once more, with his childhood friend. In the Confessions, Augustine tells of a close friend he had as a child growing up. They both went to school together, and enjoyed each other's company. "...I had come to have a friend who because of our shared interests was very close. He was my age, and we shared the flowering of youth. As a boy he had grown up with me, and had gone to school together and played with one another..." Augustine and this unnamed friend knew each other for a short time, yet Augustine felt that he was losing someone he had known all his life. "You [God] took the man from this life when our friendship had scarcely completed a year. It had been sweet to me beyond all sweetnesses of life that I had experienced." The unnamed friend came down a bad fever, and he was baptized while he was unconscious. Augustine felt as if this baptismal sacrament would have no affect on him and he would carry all the sins of his childhood. The unnamed friend did awake from his unconscious state and Augustine and the friend had a minor conflict over a joke Augustine made over the friend's baptism. The friend did not find it a laughing matter, but they did resolve the conflict. Augustine left for a few days and while he was gone, his friend passed away. Augustine explains that he was stricken with grief from the death of his friend, that made him want to leave his hometown. Everything made him think of his friend, and he was always looking for him. Augustine was constantly weeping and was a wreck. "My home became a torture to me; my father's house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I shared with him was transformed into a cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. I hated everything because they did not have him...I had become to myself a vast problem..." Augustine explains that during this time of sorrow, he did not look towards God for help, and was too wrapped up in the misery of the death of his friend. One thought he had was that he was angered by the fact people in general do not realize that they are on this earth for a short time, and they do not understand the temporality of life. "What madness not to understand how to love human beings with the awareness of human condition!" With this sorrow, Augustine moves from Thagaste to Carthage. The third death Augustine had to confront in his life was that of his mother's, which ends the biographical accounts in Augustine's life. During days of Augustine's childhood, Monica felt as if he was the "son of tears." He turned away from Catholicism, and became a Manichean. Monica greatly disapproved of

Symbols in Fahrenheit 451 Essays

Symbols in Fahrenheit 451 Essays Symbols in Fahrenheit 451 Paper Symbols in Fahrenheit 451 Paper Essay Topic: Fahrenheit 451 As spoken by Socrates â€Å"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new†. Focusing on change and putting all your energy in changing what is wrong is what Ray Bradbury is expressing in the novel Fahrenheit 451. This novel is about one man named Guy Montag is set on a path by multiple people to change society and make it a new dawn of humanity. Bradbury asserts three main symbols. The Phoenix, which embodies rebirth of mankind and the nature of history, mirrors which represent seeing oneself and understanding what has happened, the last symbol blood personifies someones instinctive self. Right up front, the Phoenix embodies the ability for mankind to see one’s mistake and fix the mistake and learn not to do it again. For example in the novel Fahrenheit 451 Granger states â€Å"We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for thousands of years, and as long we know thatsomeday we’ll stop making goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them†(156). Granger makes a direct comparison to human beings and the Phoenix. They both destroy themselves in a shroud of fire, but both start again in the ashes. If the people in the society kept the books which preserve the past and allow people to learn the lessons of prior tragedies. Granger hoped that humanity will remember the suffering caused by destruction, and will avoid destroying itself in the future. Granger clearly statesâ€Å"We’re remembering . . . And some day we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest g______ steam-shovel in history and dig the bigges t grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up†(157). He is saying, ask yourself one question what we’re doing and you can say â€Å"We’re remembering†(157). Granger is saying when somebody remembers then that will be the dawn of fixing our mistakes, but we don’t fix them because we don’t look ourselves in the mirror and try to fix it. The