Smoke Signals Characters

Smoke Signals in my opinion has quite a few different characters with a few different traits. First, I will start with Victor’s dad. To me, his dad is more of an anti-hero. He saves Thomas in the beginning, but throughout the rest of the movie he was kind of a jerk. You don’t find out until the end that he was the cause of the fire but he still saved Thomas. I think he meant well, but he was still te cause of the fire and ran out on his family. He could also be considered an outlaw for beating his wife and drinking and driving.

Now for Victor, I think he could be considered an outsider. He was extremely rude to Thomas while they were growing up  and he seemed to be distant because of his father. He came to the realization towards the end and to me that was a defying moment.

However, in my opinion Thomas is an outcast from the Indian culture. He was treated so different by Victor and his friends. I think that it wasn’t his decision to be outcasted, but he still was. However, I do not think it phased him. He was raised right and meant well.

The fab 4

In the movie “the outlaw Josey wales”, Josey is obviously considered an outlaw, but in my opinion he could be considered all four. Josey isn’t a bad guy; he’s just an angry father and husband. People consider him an outlaw because of all the killing he does. He’s really only killing people that are trying to kill him first. To the people he protects, like the Indians, he’s an antihero. He seems to protect people in a strange way.

 

            The outlaw side of Josey is easy to see as he just seems to ride into different towns and kill people. But before he was an outlaw he was just a farmer with bad aim. Once his family is destroyed he gets angry and full of rage, this anger is then channeled into concentration on becoming the best shot around.

 

            As someone who seems an outlaw to the naked eye, Josey is also an outcast. Mainly because there is a bounty on his head, people tend to think of you as just a reward instead of a person.

 

            Lastly, an outsider, because he is trying to stay off the radar, He is on a mission and he doesn’t want to be found. I think Josey could be compared to batman in a way. He does the right thing but everyone seems to hate him. He will harm a good guy if he is in the way but only if he knows they will be ok.

Seen Invisible

In the first chapter of Invisible Man the character seems to be an outcast. I chose outcast because he is an African American, highly intelligent, and “ginger” colored. When entering into the Battle Royal the group with him made it clear they disliked him. They had felt like he took away their friend’s earnings for the night. Although he was on his best behavior for the white men he was smart and during this time they definitely did not like this. He may have felt invisible, but there were certainly people pay him close attention. Another reason he is an outcast is because he had not, at this time accepted himself. He was asking others questions that he could only answer himself. Then the memory of what his grandfather said on his deathbed haunted him to the point that he felt no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried or wanted to educate himself in the end it did not mean anything. And even though he did not understand exactly what his grandfather meant he still felt like he was a traitor against his grandfather’s wishes.

Cruelty of Blacks

In Cullen’s “Incident” the character in the poem is simply an outcast in the city of Baltimore. He starts out talking about how happy he is, describing himself as “being heart-filled and his head being filled with glee (line 2).” Being a small kid of 8 growing up in this time period, he may have been blind to the discrimination of African-Americans and White Americans, but this altercation with an obvious white boy of his age changes his life. The character became an outcast from then on in his eyes and he made sure he remembered that. “Of all the things that happened there that’s all that I remembered (Lines 11-12).” This poem is about a young child that faces his first sign of racism and realizes that he and everyone that looked like him were outcast to White Americans in the United States.

In Cullen’s “Heritage” the theme of the poem is the same as “Incident” only the character is much older and aware of what is going on. He starts the poem describing what “Africa is to him” and uses the poem to answer his question. The speaker of this poem sees himself as an outcast in his world and suggests that he needs to be back in Africa. He seems to be unhappy with his place in life and how mistreated he is. African-Americans were brought to the U.S. as slaves during this time and he describes how he wishes he could serve a black man. “Must my heart grow sick and falter, wishing He I served was black (lines 99-100).” The character describes the cruel separation between blacks and whites and shows how far outcasts African-American were in this time period.

Forgotten Life: The Wife of His Youth

Mr. Ryder, a member of the Blue Veins society, is a very prestige person. Admired by many, Ryder is considered a social leader. and the position he now obtains, he rightly earned. Upon arrival to Groveland he worked as a messenger at a railroad office, and then, climbed the ranks to stationary clerk. He grew to be the “model male” over the years, but in-spite of his success he remained a single man until Mrs. Molly Dixon crossed his eye. Molly was far younger than he ,but shared the same admirable characteristics. Ryder finally felt he was ready to settle down and get married, so he organized a ball to publicly ask her hand in marriage. On the day of the ball a mysterious woman by the name of Liza Jane arrived looking for her husband as she had been doing so for twenty-five years. She explained how she and her husband were separated during slavery and he promised to return to buy her freedom. Ryder questions Liza’s thoughts of her husbands existence or desire to find her, but she is sure both cases are true. Before she leaves Ryder explains that her will help her find him. Before the moment comes for Ryder to propose to Mrs. Dixon, He created a hypothetical situation to the crowd and asked the question what should a man do if he found his long forgotten wife. At the end he reveals to the crowd that Liza Jane is the long forgotten wife and he, her husband.

I think Mr. Ryder can be considered outcast especially because of his earlier experiences in life as a slave. I think the events were so powerful that it can be argues that he became an outcast of his own mind to overcome the bad memories of what use to be. In doing so, he made himself forget about big details of his earlier years.