The Quintessential Rebel :: essays research papers

The Quintessential RebelIn Allan Sillitoes The Loneliness of a Long surmount Runner, we are introduced to Smith, a man with his own standards, beliefs, values, and battles. As we are taken through the story of a period of his live, we come to understand what Smith really stands for. He is a diehard rebel that is destined to always stick to his beliefs, and is willing to sacrifice all in a battle against his greatest antagonist and opressor, society.     Throughout the book Smith gives us a chance to get to know him. He willingly shares his thoughts with the reader, and often times his thoughts develop as he is telling his story giving us an up-close look at the inner workings of Smiths mind and personality. Smith belongs to a group of hatful he calls the Out-Laws. It is the underprivileged lower class poor street criminals. Crime runs in Smiths family, and being born into poverty he bottom(prenominal) sees, nor is even willing to contemplate a life without cr ime. At a point he hints on having some commie views, and perhaps suggests that his father had communist friends, if he wasnt one himself. Fatally inflicted by cancer, Smiths father died a painful death. We later find out that it was Smith who name his father breathless in a pool of his own blood, and to this day has a great deal of respect for him. The first time Smiths family gets a taste of a financially comfortable life is when the factory his father worked in gave them a lump of cash upon his fathers death. a wad of crisp blue-back fivers aint a sight of good (Sillitoe, 20) says Smith as the one break his family got was only due to his fathers death. Smith is not money hungry, he steels simply to get by. He knows exactly where he stands in the world- in direct antagonist of the In-laws, the pig-faced snotty-nosed dukes and ladies"(Sillitoe, 8). He realizes that he is a poor nobody, a petty criminal, an outcast of society.      Smith by nature is a rebe l. He puts himself and his fellow Out-laws in direct opposition of the rest for him its us versus them. As we are get to know Smith, he is spending his time in a Borstal after having been caught for a bakeshop robbery. He has no regrets about doing what he did in the bakery shop, and has a big enough heart to be happy for his accomplice, Mike for getting off.