Just Hilly

Pursuit of Happiness “Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ” ― William S. Burroughs In J.D. Salinger’s “Slight Rebellion Off Madison”, the plight of Holden expresses a theme of deviance and the individual’s incompatibility with the predestined life he’s been set up for. He is not passionate about his education and feels school is not where he’s supposed to be. His feelings bubbling up during his date in the city, shows just how strongly he feels about this. He relates to his date, Sally, “Boy, I hate school! You oughta go to a boy’s school sometime. All you do study, and make believe you give a damn if the football team wins, and talk about girls and clothes and liquor, and-” Holden does not find the bland conversations and seemingly pointlessness of going to school. On one hand, school and traditional paths to becoming an established adult aren’t for everyone. There is some merit to...

 The Most Anticlimactic of Escapades “Disappointment forever lurked just beyond the edges of her joy, ready to spring like a ravenous cougar.”     - Kathleen Rice Adams, Prodigal Gun  In “An Adventure in Paris” by Guy de Maupassant the subject of the story is a woman dissatisfied with her life. The narrator refers to her as a “little person from the provinces” suggesting she is not of a lavish lifestyle. She is a wife, mother and homemaker; exactly what a woman should be yet she yearned for more. Sexual exploration and being a participant in group sex was her main fantasy, those thoughts being her escape from the everyday boredom she experienced. Even while next to her sleeping husband, those thoughts ran through her mind. The lives of the wealthy appealed to her, “ she was continuously thinking of Paris and read the fashionable papers eagerly.” She was naive, adventurous and ready to change her life. Once she got the nerve to go, there was no stopping her; her ...