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Shape  What do you think when you see some one that doesn’t follow the regular human form?  You may laugh and joke about them, you may be afraid or you may just wonder why he/she is like that.  “Shapes tell us something” about the character in the story by the way he deals with his deformity (Foster 21).

Scars  A scar can tell you something about that person and where they come from.  For example “a scar on your cheek might tell us” you have been in a fight or you have been in an accident (Foster 21).  It is up to the viewer to decide which is true.

Marking a hero  A hero “bears some mark that sets him apart” from others and make him special (Foster 21)  “Why does Harry Potter have a scar where it is, how did he get it and what did it resemble?”(Foster 21)  Harry Potter has a scar that he got from his enemy, it looks like a lightning bolt and symbolism the great power Harry has.  Harry’s scar sets him apart from the others and makes him an idol, or as some might put it a hero.

Abuse  Some characters are abused and have marks as an out come of the abuse.  For example “in Beloved, Sethe has been whipped so severely in her past that she wears elaborate scars resembling a tree on her back” she was strong and could take it and overcome all else and survive (Foster 21).  The marks on her back resemble a tree to symbolize how she has blossomed and taken hold of her situation and became a stronger person.  A scar symbolizes the strength in a person and how they have the power to overcome.

Destiny from birth  A name can reveal someone's destiny for example Oedipus mean “wounded foot” (Foster 21).  “Oedipus Rex” was a infant whose feet were sown together because of a prophecy (Foster 21)  Oedipus “parents, fear[ed] the terrible prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother” so the king ordered the servants to kill him, he knew the servant could not kill a baby so he had his feet sown together and left on a mountain to perish (Foster 21).  In the end Oedipus carries out the prophecy.

Why  “Are deformities and scars there for always significant?”(Foster 21).  Deformities may not always be significant a scar is just a scar or a limp is just a limp, “but more often than not physical markings by their very nature call attention to themselves and signify some psychological or thematic point the writer wants to make” (Foster 21).  After all it is easier to just leave the person normal because if “you give a guy a limp in chapter 2, he can’t go sprinting after the train in chapter 22” (Foster 21)

Great Expectations  Magwitch is lamed in Great Expectations with an “iron on [his] sore leg!” but that doesn’t stop him he saws off the iron and later on in the novel in known to be Pips secret benefactor, who bring Pip out of poverty (Foster 21).

Everyday life  In my life when I see a crippled person I start o wonder about him/her.  How did he/she get like that?  I'm sure you do the same I never thought of them as destined for greatness, but I know I will surely think differently about him/her.

WORK CITED Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, Print Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., Print.