Is Antigone or Creon the winner of the debate between them - A discussion of Anouilh's Antigone as modern tragedy
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Which character in Jean Anouilh's modern adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy, Antigone, Antigone or Creon, presents the stronger argument in their debate concerning the best way to deal with the dilemma of whether or not burying Polynices, Antigone's brother, is necessary or wrong, from a...
'We don't live here anymore': The historicity of what was once the deserted house
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Historically, women in industrialized societies are placed at a double disadvantage; in addition to occupational workloads and/or the rigor of citizenship, they are also responsible for the daily maintenance of the domestic sphere. In regarding women's experiences in Stalinist-era Soviet Russia,...
Especially the fallen tree the snow picks out in the woods to show
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
If one were to read through A.R. Ammons' poems, in chronological order, they would see a clear progression of tone and theme; his subject matter, as well as they voice he uses to portray it, goes through definite transformation as he becomes a more experienced poet and, perhaps most importantly,...
Blindness: A Jose Saramago's novel
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
The blindness that suddenly and quickly takes hold of an entire population in Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness, is atypical in many ways. Most notably, those afflicted are not plunged into darkness; rather, all agree that they are floating in a sea of milky whiteness, unable to make out shapes or...
Images of identity in feminist and immigrant Canadian literature - Interior landscapes of the self in Munro and Ricci
Thesis - 7 pages - Literature
This paper will compare and contrast the authorial approach to coming-of-age narratives, and the formation of identities in two works of Canadian fiction, Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women and Nino Ricci's Lives of the Saints. Munro employs a first-person narrative that interweaves the voice...
Exploring Caliban in Shakespeare's the tempest in the context of post-colonialist theory
Thesis - 7 pages - Literature
The character, Caliban, from Shakespeare's play The Tempest, is one of the most widely discussed individual characters in Shakespeare's entire canon, especially in relation to issues of the way that Europeans represent (or mis-represent) non-white peoples, historically, in literature and in...
Foreign language inadequacies in America
Thesis - 7 pages - Linguistics & languages
What do you call a person who speaks more than two languages? Multilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. And what do you call a person who only speaks one language? An American. So goes the oft-told joke, particularly loved by my European friends (all of whom...
Putting the rest cure to rest: An interpretive essay on "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Since its publication in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a variety of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost story, it has been regarded as Gothic literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian patriarchal...
Pam Gems feminist vision in "Stanley". Exploring queer aesthetics through historical reflection
Thesis - 6 pages - Philosophy
Stanley Spencer, one of England's most lauded post-war visual artists, is also among the most obscure outside of the context of his reception in England, which included his being Knighted near the end of his life.(Hauser, 2001) In a “Self-Portrait” from 1914 the artist paints himself in...
The light and the dark - Goethe's faust and the theme of the search for inner wholeness
Thesis - 6 pages - Philosophy
In dramatic literary history, tragedies are a form through which dark elements in human motivation, character and decision making are explored. Often the tragedy revolves around the flaw of its main character, known as the tragic hero. The hero may have a tragic flaw such as egoistic hubris, or...
Heine's philosophical thinking
Thesis - 10 pages - Philosophy
This essay will explore ideas from “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany” written by Heinrich Heine, one of the most famous German poets and cultural figures in general, of the early to mid 19th century. The paper will argue that in his often enigmatic and aphoristic...
Exploring conflicting meanings of the child in Lewis Carroll's Victorian classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
The construction of childhood in Victorian England helps lend a context to the meaning(s) of Lewis Carroll's children's classic, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This short paper will examine the emergence of ‘childhood' as a new category, beginning in the late 18th century, expanded and...
A strong resemblance between "Lost in the Funhouse" and "Young Goodman Brown"
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
It is truly revealing when one can make a comparison of two completely unrelated stories and find a basic meaning and theme that is analogous to both, despite superficial characteristics. Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” is about a religious man, Goodman Brown, who embarks on...
A review of the book An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Reading An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jamison, was much like driving by the scene of a horrible car wreck. We snuck a peek, turned a page, faced disturbing images and soon became entwined with gut wrenching emotions that made us want to run away. As if transfixed by a cavalcade of emergency...
Healing and the modern day servants
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
The miraculous power of faith has been deemed able to heal a countless number of ailments from the time when Jesus walked the Earth performing miracles all the way to present day medical miracles involving prayer and strong faith. But what do these miracles tell us and prove in both the teachings...
Views about the afterlife
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Nobody knows for sure what will happen in the afterlife, we can only estimate based on our religious beliefs and personal opinions. Five major western religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Ba Hai, also have very different outlooks on what will happen to us, individually and...
"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," book series; and why it has a deep connection with American teen girls
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The "Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants," consists of four books. These books have solidified the series as a literary masterpiece that has been heralded as a great work for young people. It has been celebrated as a wonderful literary effort. The books evoke thoughts of serene and picturesque...
An essay concerning Bloom's reading of the Republic
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
Philosopher and literary critic Allan Bloom (1968) writes that “The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens' accusation against him. That theme is the relationship of the philosopher...
Fighting fire with fire
Tutorials/exercises - 4 pages - Linguistics & languages
The antebellum viewpoint on slavery remains controversial. Presaging the Civil War, a fierce political debate took place between the Southern defenders of slavery and the Northern abolitionists. The two sides argued over the political, economic, social, religious, biological, and racial...
The one sided battled between man and nature
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
As long as the existence of literature, writers have sought to provide insight on the battle between man and nature. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the unyielding power of nature and the dire consequences of man's desire to conquer nature, play out in this cautionary tale. Two examples that will...
Science in action: Review
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Latour suggests that the construction of facts and machines is a collective process. He argues that there is nothing inherent in a statement that makes it a fact; rather it is the future processes of others who accept it, support it, ignore it, challenge it, etc wherein the destiny of a statement...
Barack Obama's use of the indefinite article /a/
Thesis - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
The purpose of my research project was to examine Barack Obama's use of and pronunciation of the indefinite article /a/ during his speeches for the 2008 presidential campaign. I examined this element because I wanted to find out if there was any correlation between Obama's use of the indefinite...
Catastrophe and image, international post-modern fiction
Thesis - 11 pages - Literature
I have found two common, linked problems under scrutiny in three short stories by non-American authors. The three stories are “And of Clay We Are Created” (Isabel Allende), “The Laugher” (Heinrich Böll), and “The Street-Sweeping Show” (Feng Jicai), and the problems...
Why has class conflict not occurred in the form expected by Marxist thinkers and why has history not developed in the way Marx predicted?
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Karl Marx (1818 - 83) was responsible for one of the first and most influential theories of class within the sociological discipline. For Marx, classes can be seen as basic social groups divided by their specific position within the division of labor, and distributed within society according to...
Divided We Fall:Gender, Androgyny, and the troubled union of Adam and Eve
Tutorials/exercises - 7 pages - Literature
The single most important question at the center of John Milton's Paradise Lost is the question of predestination. The poem hinges on the assertion that mankind has been created “sufficient to have stood, yet free to fall” (III.99); if we do not accept this assertion, and instead...
Kristevan themes in "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye"
Thesis - 6 pages - Linguistics & languages
When Morrison describes her attempt to express black feminine subjectivity in The Bluest Eye, she claims that, “the problem, of course, was language”(211). According to Morrison, “ ‘civilized' languages debase humans”(Afterward, 216). Pauline, Pecola's mother, finds...
Masquerade in seductive fictions
Book review - 9 pages - Literature
In her Masquerade and Civilization, Terry Castle hypothesizes that the concept of “masquerade” is central to 18th century consciousness, and provides an intriguing insight into how the self was conceived of in “the age of disguise”(Castle, 5). Implicit in the idea of...
Ethics and faith in "Fear and Trembling"
Thesis - 8 pages - Literature
Soren Kierkegaard once wrote about himself, saying “Once I am dead, Fear and Trembling alone will be enough for an imperishable name as an author” (Kierkegaard's Papirer). Undoubtedly one of his most popular works, it is no surprise he could foresee the endless amount of philosophical...
Dorothy Day (Part III): Nonviolent resistance
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
The Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin whose aim is to “live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.” As the name indicates, the Catholic Worker Movement was heavily influenced by Catholicism, yet not restricted to simple preaching of...
Machiavellian strategies in Koestler's "Darkness at Noon"
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
What would it be acceptable for a society to sacrifice in order to achieve a utopia? Does this utopia exist, and if so, is it even possible to achieve it? Is it possible to build paradise from concrete? Arthur Koestler, in his novel Darkness at Noon , demonstrates the impracticality of using...
