By Mary Kershisnik, Athena Levitch and Chelsea Tennent

Lazarus is a beggar in a biblical story

Throughout it he is compared to a rich man

Lazarus is kind and good despite his poverty, the rich man is cruel and unfeeling

In the end, the rich man goes to hell and Lazarus goes to heaven

The moral of the story is, no matter who you are, you will either be punished or rewarded for your deeds

The basic idea of Lazarus is used in almost every story you can think of in one form or another

Although most don’t end in heaven or hell, many mirror the triumphant through good and failure through evil

Beauty and the Beast In the beginning, the beast, who had been a rich man,

is punished for his evil doing

Harry Potter Harry is good and ends up above Voldemort, who

despite all his power, is still evil and loses

Hairspray Tracy is good and nice to everyone, and eventually

works her way to the top, while Velma Von Tussle gets fired for being evil

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs The mayor, who is greedy, ends up sinking on a food

raft that he stole from the towns people after becoming morbidly obese

A different Lazarus it also featured in the bible, this time rising from the dead after four days.

There isn’t so much of a moral here, but it pops up a lot in literature

Batman Casper Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Dr. Who

NarniaAslan is sacrificed by the White Witch, but

comes back Lord of the Ring

Gandalf the grey dies and later returns as Gandalf the White

“Lazarus.” Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2010