Fyodor Dostoevsky: Coping with flaws and surviving in society
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the narrator writes from an underground location reflecting on the flaws in man and the society he once lived in. Through examining his days prior to retreating underground the narrator comes to hate the bonds of society and human nature more and...
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
This book was originally recommended to me by freshman humanities teacher. When I read the book previously, it helped me to make sense of my own beliefs and I recently came to a point in my life where I felt that it was time to read it again. This is really a story of philosophy and religion. It...
Psychological analysis in the Heart of Darkness
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
Orphaned at the age of twelve, Conrad's writing reflects solidarity. In his most popular novel Heart of Darkness he states, “We live, as we dream- alone.” Common themes in his works are alienation, confusion, and doubt. He wrote not only about physical threats but also about inner...
Integrated essay on the empire in the West, France and England as powerful states, the medieval period and Black Death in Europe
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Charlemagne's coronation as emperor at St. Peter's Basilica heralded a new era for the West and for the Byzantine Empire. Charlemagne became the strong leader at the helm and his missi dominici kept a watchful eye on territories that were far away. The governments of France and England could not...
Revolutions in thought
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
In the 18th and 19th centuries, natural philosophers were making great claims on the nature of the world around them. Although they did not have some of the technology that is available today, they were able to make assumptions about the composition of certain substances through the inference of...
Gender and Christian life in first Corinthians and first Timothy
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Analysis of Biblical texts inherently involves examinations into issues of morality and behavior according to Christian doctrine. The Apostle Paul, whose writings are a major focal point of much of the New Testament, addresses these matters with a series of letters to Christian congregations as...
Historical perspectives on social Darwinism and the impetus behind European imperialism in the 19th century
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Contemporary society is rooted in the idea of the nation state, both as a geographical institution and as a symbol. This idea, however, is not unique to the modern world. Rather, it is one that dates back to the very beginning of human existence and spans the historical timeline, from the...
Odradek: A structuralist interpretation
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
The need to assign meaning is a distinct human quality. Individuals seek, and to a certain extent are defined by, the methods by which the objects and observations that occupy space in a perceived reality are explained and rationalized. Failure to do so implies not only a lack of understanding,...
Modeled in God's image
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Humans have believed in a God or gods since the beginning of time but the concept of what a god is like varies. Historic tales have given us a clear picture of the polytheistic gods who were believed to have ruled the land in the time of Gilgamesh and Homer but most modern religions draw from...
Sin and punishment from East To West
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Texts from Feudal Japan to Western Europe differ in the way they view sin and punishment. The Analects of Confucius and The Divine Comedy by Dante have opposing positions on how past beliefs and actions should be viewed by people of the present. Confucius' Analects are also irrelevant in the...
T.s. eliot's the hollow men: exploring self-realization - published: 30/03/2010
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
When reading “The Hollow Men”, by T.S. Eliot, one's immediate response might be to consider it against to context of which it was written. Such context may be purely historical or may revolve around the author's social life. All of these accounts may prove significant in assessing the...
The history of poetry: A magazine of verse
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Harriet Monroe became famous for her magazine, but even more so, her open-door policy. There were many poets that just wouldn't get published, authors listed above, because their works were not accepted in society. T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was considered...
Iago and Lady Macbeth: The nature of their evil
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
The conflict between good and evil is one of the oldest and most consistently fascinating sources of literary drama. It is a primary motor of countless movies and books, just as it has always been one of the most important issues for philosophers and religious scholars. Shakespeare explored the...
Creative rebels without a cause
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Rimbaud once said that creativity is the greatest form of rebellion, a sentiment that I mostly agree with, and can completely understand after having read some of his poetry. There is a strong vitality to his work, an intensity and dissatisfaction that draws the reader in and communicates...
Ironic patriotism
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Someone once said that history is written by the winners, and, as in the case of Shakespeare's history play The Life of King Henry the Fifth, sometimes it is even dramatized by them. Total objectivity is very difficult to achieve when drawing solely from historical documents of either the victor...
Shakespeare's dark humor
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Pinpointing just what exactly makes “good comedy” is one of the most elusive and difficult tasks to undertake. Who can really say why one joke is funny and another one isn't, what subtleties must a stand-up comedian consider to get his audience laughing? Shakespeare could be considered...
Shylock: A Shakespearian scarface
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
There's no doubt about it, bad guys are more interesting than good guys. In dramas catering to mass audiences every hero is set within a strict moral rubric. We know what to expect from him. The villains are the wild cards. In the typical Hollywood blockbuster they have meatier lines, they get to...
Donne's Angel and Marvell's Mistress
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Donne's song “Air and Angels” and Marvell's “To His Coy Mistress” are both love poems. However, they are poles apart in their definitions of love. Donne sees his beloved as a mysterious presence whose body merely gives shape to the love he has felt before. Marvell sees the...
Meatball and Callisto: Two responses to entropy
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Pynchon's “Entropy” begins at a party that has lasted 40 hours. Everyone knows parties don't last that long - or at least, they shouldn't. Meatball's party has continued far too long and is about to disintegrate. This deterioration is linked explicitly to the law of entropy, which is...
Sheep's guts and the vernacular of the human soul: Music as a dramatic force in the works of William Shakespeare
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
This paper will provide a brief exploration into: the different types, styles and musical “conventions” that were utilized in Shakespeare's plays; the different ways that music was used as a dramatic force in the plays; and finally, Shakespeare's influence on the development of...
Plato and his predecessors: Socrates and the Sophists
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
In his Apology, Plato goes to great lengths to vindicate his mentor and distinguish him from other disreputable orators of the time. In contrast to the Sophist, Socrates denies ever taking money from those that he has conversed with, cites examples of loyalty and bravery to his city, and claims...
The duality of the "New Woman"
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
F. Scott Fitzgerald's life is a tragic example of both sides of the American Dream—the joys of young love, wealth and success, and the tragedies associated with excess and failure. By 1925 he was known primarily as the historian of the Jazz Age (which he named) and chronicler in slick...
William Blake: The divine image
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
“For all must love the human form. ” William Blake simply, but beautifully, claims as fact in his poem A Divine Image, taken from his Songs on Innocence. Poetry, elicits emotion. The beauty of poetry is that it can be interpreted; the meaning is held entirely by the reader. Here, a...
Magic and enchantment as a tool of love in Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
“The course of true love never did run smooth. ” This, one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare's romantic comedy, A Mid Summer Night's Dream, no truer words have been spoken as Shakespeare leads the audience through a story of fantasies and misunderstandings. The story follows...
David J. Francis, Uniting Africa: Building regional peace and security systems
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
“Africa today is faced with a stark choice, either unite or perish. ” So opens David J. Francis' intriguing study on the state of African nations in relation to one another. Frances spends a great deal of attention outlining the serious social and economic problems facing the African...
Jenny and the patriarchal voice in Rossetti's poem
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
“Asleep, poor jenny, hard and fast,--/So young and soft and tired. ” Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Jenny is smooth and flowered poetry. Lines such as the selected portion above are sprinkled throughout each stanza. The poem is widely recognized as a classic. Questions regarding the speakers'...
Becoming lost and found: Peace, Christianity and anti-oppression
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
With reference to oppression, the author contests that lessons of religion, namely peace and forgiveness, can and should be implemented to teach the values of inclusively. This article sets out to discover why people, most of whom are inherently religious at least practicing faith to some degree,...
Rose and Flo
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
“Rose thought of her own family as straddling the river, belonging nowhere, but that was not true. ” Throughout the stories, throughout her entire life, Alice Munro's main character, Rose, in Who Do You Think You Are? struggles to grasp her identity. In many ways, Rose defines herself...
Comparison and differences between two selections from Lermontov's a hero of our time and Gogol's dead souls
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Mihail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol were two of the premier Russian novelists of the nineteenth century. Both helped to expose and shape how the outer world understands the vast and historically intriguing Russian continent. Lermontov's creation of the character Pechorin is widely read as a...
Catcher in the Rye and dead poets
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
The Dead Poets Society, at its very core, transcends the message that art is meant to be lived and is meant to inspire. While the back-story of The Catcher in the Rye speaks more to the place of art in society, than the story itself does. In the Dead Poets Society, students willingly choose to...
