Night Mail - Wystan Hugh Auden (1936)
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Night Mail was written in 1936 by Auden. He was asked to write it for a 22-minute-long documentary also called "Night Mail," and also released in 1936 by the general post office in the UK. This documentary was created to show how the night mail worked, to illustrate what it was like to work on...
Lifeboat Earth Famine (Onora O'Neill, 2016), Famine, Affluence, and Morality (Peter Singer, 1972) - The moral obligation to act against hunger and poverty
Text commentary - 5 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Hunger and poverty have been a consistent problem for humanity. While the majority of humanity agrees that hunger and poverty are atrocious, the degree to which we are morally obligated to interfere is debatable. I will be examining two philosophers' papers, both that argue we are morally...
Junky - William Seward Burroughs (1953) - Is Junky merely the story of the narrator's drug addiction?
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Junky, the first novel of W. BURROUGHS, was published for the first time in 1953. It deals with the story of drug addiction, through one example: William LEE, the narrator. It is a major work relating the lifestyle of drug addicts during the 1950s. He employs a laconic tone, but he always seems...
The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac (1959) - The role of jazz in the novel
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
"The Subterraneans" is a Jack Kerouac's novel written in the 50's (written in 1953 and published in 1958). This novella is not fictional, it deals with a very short romance that Jack Kerouac had with an African American woman, Alena Lee (New York, 1953). But it was bad form to have this...
Is a road trip running away from things or running towards something?
Text commentary - 1 pages - Literature
A road trip is a travel, an escape by campervan or motorcycle (like a Harley Davidson), through vast spaces and during long hours on the road, to discover new landscape, cities or countries. I will take three texts as examples.
Can new technologies facilitate the exchanges?
Essay - 1 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Now, we are going to talk about new technologies to illustrate this notion. Indeed, new technologies, such as SMS, e-mail, and the World Wide Web, are all around us nowadays, like our smartphones. So, we're going to try to answer the question: "Can new technologies facilitate the exchanges?"
Presentation of The American Dream
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The American dream is the ideal by which equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved if they just work hard enough. It appeared after the Declaration of Independence in 1776 which proclaims that 'all men are created...
Humour and Nonsense
Presentation - 1 pages - Humanities/philosophy
My presentation will deal with the theme writer in his society. Writers usually criticize their society by literature to show people that things need to be changed such as those in Victorian Society. But how do writers by using humour and nonsense in their literature manage to criticize the...
Meeting the Other
Presentation - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
My presentation will deal with the theme meeting the other. In the major parts of literature's pieces, the characters are researched in a psychological way so that the readers recognize themselves into them and learn valuable lessons about life in general. The example of the novels Jane Eyre...
Baa Baa, Black Sheep - Rudyard Kipling (1888) - Questions and answers
Tutorials/exercises - 1 pages - Linguistics
A tale is told to a child at night while he is put to bed, right before he falls asleep. There are several characters in the scene: Punch, the ayah, the hamal, Meeta, a Surti boy and Judy. Punch is the child who is being told the story and seems to be the son of an important character, as he is...
The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
Edgar Allan Poe is a 19th century American romantic writer best known for his dark and mysterious short stories. 'The Tell-Tale Heart', published in 1843, is one of the most famous ones. It is about a murderous narrator trying to convince the reader of his own sanity by explaining and...
The Great Depression and World War II (1929-45) in U.S. Literature
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
The confidence of the Jazz Age died in 1929 with the Crash. As the nation threatened to disintegrate, the American writer recognized the fragility of its coherence ; capitalism and industry could no longer be trusted to sustain an egalitarian society that could guarantee the welfare of...
Transhumanism and his symbol/meaning : do you agree?
Essay - 1 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Seen as the future of society by many scientists, transhumanism is nowadays something that we have a lot to discover. This image shows the symbol created for transhumanism. Its design has been thought; the ‘+' means development, an improvement, so humans can no longer bound to their...
Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger's (1951)
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
This novel is often considered to have been the bible of the postwar young, the story of Holden Caulfield, an upper-middle-class adolescent schoolboy just on the edge of losing his presocial and presexual innocence - which he is able to express, like Huckleberry Finn, in his own vivid...
Is the American Dream a myth ?
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The American dream is the notion that the American social, economic, and political system makes success possible for everyone. It's linked to the notion of the ‘self-made man : the idea that, with enough work & dedication, anybody can climb the social ladder and become wealthy....
In what way storytelling helped shape feminism in our current society?
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
I choose the notion of the Idea of Progress. To illustrate this notion, I decided to talk about the idea of progress in feminism. Before I start, I'd like to give a quick definition of the notion: the idea of progress can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change. As a...
The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dream - Nasdijj, Timothy Patrick Barru (2020)
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams (2000) is the memoir of a man, Nasdiij (the author) who writes about his life and feelings. Being of mixed Caucasian and Navajo decent, Nasdijj feels like he does not belong to any of those groups. Nasdijj has a hard life, his dad beat him, his mom...
The Blindfold - Siri Hustvedt - Post-modernism
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.' Is a quotation from Harold Pinter that illustrates the ideas of the post-modernist movement,...
Beat Generation - Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
'Follow your inner moonlight, don't hide the madness' is a quote by Allen Ginsberg that embodies the ideas that members of the literary and social 'beat generation' movement advocate. The later was created in the 1950s at the end of the Second World War, mainly by two young...
Places and forms of power - What is the role of money in our society in our lives ?
Essay - 1 pages - Humanities/philosophy
I am going to talk about the notion of places and forms of power. First, I would like to give a definition of power. Power is the ability to control others and to make things happen despite obstacles, resistance, or opposition. This, of course, leads to conflict between those who have and...
Oedipus The King - Sophocles (425 B.C.) - The Dramatic Power of Fate
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
Over the centuries, people have believed in the influence of divine or diabolical power in their lives. One of the most often discussed themes of ancient Greek tragedy is fatalism, the idea and belief that human actions are guided by the hand of fate, destiny, the gods or some other supernatural...
How you think EAP is different from general English?
Essay - 1 pages - Linguistics
English for Academic Purpose (EAP) is a course included in the preparatory program of the bachelor's degree in order to improve students' capacities in English. Some students argue that EAP is like the secondary school English system but a little more advanced in that EAP represents a...
The Appointment in Samarra - W. Somerset Maugham (1933) - Encounter with Death
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
Terrorising and scary, death has always been a threatening subject. Although nobody wants to think about dying, we all wonder when Death is going to take us. In the fable "The Appointment in Samarra" by W. Somerset Maugham (1933), the author demonstrates that humans cannot avoid their fate. When...
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharto, 1905) and Passing (Nella Larsen, 1929) - Women identity issues in the early twentieth century
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton) and Passing (Nella Larsen) are novels presenting female characters struggling to fit into the 20th century society. At the time, women were not very independent and had almost no means to earn a living. In The House of Mirth, Lily Bart's parents died and in...
How to write an essay?
Practical guide - 3 pages - Literature
An essay is the English equivalent of a dissertation in French. You will be asked a question about a subject, or a fact, and you will have to develop about it. An essay has some particularities, that differentiate it from the French dissertation. Indeed, even if the same type of questions is...
How to become a part of the Great British story?
Text commentary - 2 pages - Literature
Cultural heritage, representing culture and civilisation, has a vital importance in Great Britain, and in this context the school has an important place. Access to culture is achieved primarily through education and training and, in addition, literature, theatre and art, which are unique and...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey (1962) - The 3 main characters
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
At first sight, this quotation makes me think that in reality it is our acts which determine the person that we are. We can be judged by our acts. It is particularly true in Ken Kesey's novel... The example of the three main characters: The Chief, the Big Nurse and McMurphy.
Biography of a self-taught person - Ernest Hemingway
Financial analysis - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Ernest Miller was born in 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, in Chicago's suburbs. His mother, Grace, is a singing teacher, whereas his father, Clarence, is a doctor. Grace Hemingway gave to his son the name of her very father, a hero of the American Civil War. Ernest has four sisters and a brother:...
Marvels, Monsters and Miracles in Anglo-Saxon England - Genders and Feminine Monstrosity in Beowulf and Judith
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Monstrosity has always been a recurrent topic in literature, especially during the Anglo-Saxon period, as people were fascinated by what was considered as abnormal, such as monsters, marvels and miracles. Definition of monstrosity is intricate and is profoundly associated with the viewer's...
Pride and Prejudice, Volume II, Chapter 3 - Jane Austen (1813)
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
This fragment is located in the third chapter of the second volume of the book. This chapter is showing that Elizabeth Bennet has been rejected by Mr Collins, cousin of the Bennet sisters and the heir to their properties. Its principal function is to show us that this rejection has touched her...
