Frank Alpine

Throughout literature there have been many great writings that exemplify a great characters journey. Several characters accept their journey and succeed while ours try to go against their fate. In literature there are times that characters are challenged to do what’s right but choose to do what’s wrong. Some believe that good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. I agree with that analogy because in order for a person to become wise they must go through the adventure of making the mistake for them selves and learn from it. A great example of that is shown in two pieces of literature, Frank Alpine in the Assistant and Theodor Fischer in The Mysterious Stranger.

Frank alpine in the Assistant, by Bernard Malamud, is a great example of an individual that becomes good because he learns through his wrong doings. Frank who at first robes the grocery that he will eventually take over goes through a series of transformations. Once Frank starts working at the grocery he keeps on stealing even though he knows it’s wrong and feels bad about it. Frank has an internal conflict with his needs and his self conscience. At the begging of the novel frank doesn’t want to suffer he needs to help his needs he cannot

even confess to Morris that he has been stealing from him or that he robbed him. With Morris’s help at the end of the novel he learns how to suffer for others and replaces Morris when he dies. Morris and Frank also had a “father and son relationship” that Frank learned from Morris how to be an honest person and educates him about the moral sense. When Ida Morris’s wife asks Frank why he still sticks around even though he basically makes no money he says because of Morris, which shows frank learning how to suffer from others and doesn’t care about his own needs . He also falls in love with the grocers’ daughter Helen who he sneaks up on in the shower which leads to him raping her. At the begging of the novel Frank only wanted Helen because of her physical looks and wanted something in return from her. At the end of the book Frank actually loves Helen for who she is and is willing to pay for her college tuition and doesn’t want anything in return. Frank starts of as a person that commits crimes and does bad things but with Morris’s help he learns from his failure and becomes a good person.

Theodor Fischer in The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain is another example of a character that becomes wise through his failure which leads him to being good. Theodor who lives in an arrogant town in Austria is afraid to go against what every one else thinks because he might be singled out. He meets an angel who calls him self Satan who enlightens him and makes him understand the truth. Satan picks out a lot of human failures one being the moral sense according to Satan it makes us inferior to animals and holds us back. It makes us inferior to animals because we know not to do the wrong thing but we still do it but animals it’s not expected of them they don’t know the truth. Human nature is to ignore facts and to rely on what we want to believe not what is