Word: paradox
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...good man is hard to find, and intolerable to men and gods once he is found. The age of the anti-hero tends to overlook this fascinating half-truth, which is the durable paradox at the core of Oedipus Rex and Othello. But Ken Kesey used it well in his short, cruelly focused first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, laughing con man and indestructible alley fighter, cons his way into an insane asylum to escape the drudgery of a prison farm. His battle is with Big Nurse, the white-starched emasculator who bulls his ward...
...townspeople: they can't stand for Stamper to win, but they feel cheated and confused when he begins to lose. But Kesey understands that intolerable as a good man may be to men and gods, his defeat is even more so. Perhaps in that paradox is the twisted tragedy...
When John F. Kennedy appointed his Defense Secretary in 1960, he posed him a paradox: 1) meet U.S. military requirements without worrying about arbitrary budget ceilings, and 2) do it at the lowest possible cost. Since then, in Robert McNamara's 31 years on the job, military spending has soared by nearly $10 billion, now hovers around the $50 billion mark...
...paradox followed Rilke in a final irony. Picking such a rose in his garden, he pricked his finger. The puncture did not heal, and from this small clue his doctor discovered that Rilke had leukemia in a rare, painful and eventually disfiguring form. "Life is a glory," were among his last words...
...this brand of authenticity and moral paradox on the cold war frontier that led at least one critic to be lieve that the author must be a spy himself. Cornwell did spend three years in the Foreign Office. "But not espionage -I've never done it." He learned his spymastery from published reports: "I was astonished at how much had been said. Intelligence seems to be an iceberg of which 80% is above water...