In this coming of age story by Ernest Hemingway, two hit men come to a small-town restaurant to shoot a man to oblige a friend. The three men already in the restaurant (its manager, cook and a young customer) are detained but, when the intended victim (a prize-fighter) doesn’t turn up, they are released and the hit men leave. The customer hurries to warn the prize-fighter. However, the poor man appears to have accepted his fate, saying there is nothing anyone can do to save him. Themes include crime, passivity (“looking the other way”), futility, acceptance, courage, manhood, disillusionment. More…
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The Minority Report
Philip Dick’s The Minority Report is a dystopian adventure story set in a society that takes policing a step even further than the infamous “Thought Police” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its premise is that the authorities have found a way to identify a crime and imprison the would-be perpetrator before he or she even thinks of committing it. Their methods in doing this are disturbing to say the least. Themes: (general) free will vs. fate, injustice, trust vs. paranoia, self-fulfilling prophesy, extrajudicial murder; (for the “precogs”) violation of human rights, enslavement, degradation. More…