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23 Oct 2007
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A Comparison of Zen and Shin Buddhism: Dogen VS Shinran

Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy

Buddhism was not originally a Japanese religion, since the said originator of the way, Siddhartha Gautama (also referred to as Shakyamuni Buddha) was born in a region that is now Nepal, and spread his teachings mostly around northern India. China later received his teachings through various...

23 Oct 2007
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All Quiet on the Western Front

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

Eight and a half million people dead and another 20 million injured, it was a disaster unparalleled in human history. There was nothing great about this "Great War" except for the death and destruction. Erich Maria Remarque's novel, All Quiet on the Western Front describes the pointlessness...

23 Oct 2007
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What is Judaism?

Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy

What is Judaism? What does it mean to be a Jew? According to Webster's Dictionary, “Judaism is a monotheistic religion that traces its roots back to Abraham and having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Talmud.” There are three...

22 Oct 2007
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The Battle of the Sexes in Ancient India

Case study - 2 pages - Literature

For time immemorial, mankind has been locked in a vicious and never-ending struggle against an enemy that is cunning, resourceful, and not above hitting below the belt; in short the one enemy that is capable of presenting a formidable challenge on every conceivable field of battle: womankind....

22 Oct 2007
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Upton Sinclair and "The Jungle"

Essay - 5 pages - Literature

“The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair, was a revolutionary novel that changed American history, especially the history of the Chicago meatpacking industry. When the book was published in 1906, it aroused anger and disgust among the American public. The horrors of the meatpacking industry were...

22 Oct 2007
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Homer's Oddessy and Gluck's Circe's Power

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

The Odyssey is filled with a large number of secondary characters that are, for the most part, very one-dimensional. Despite being very different in regards to themselves, as a whole they can be easily identified: they are briefly mentioned; they have limited dialogue; and they serve one of two...

22 Oct 2007
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Comparison: Everything that Rises Must Converge and Girl

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

“Everything that rises must converge,” By Flannery O'Connor, and “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid are completely different texts that share a common theme. The story by O'Connor is about the feelings and emotions of a boy named Julian. He is strongly opposed to his mother's view of...

22 Oct 2007
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African Religion and Vodoo

Tutorials/exercises - 5 pages - Philosophy

For more than two hundred years the Haitian religion commonly referred to as voodoo has continued to intrigue, excite, and scare Americans. In a recent Hollywood blockbuster, “The Skeleton Key” starring Kate Hudson, a small New Orleans family is terrorized by a menacing duo of voodoo...

22 Oct 2007
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The Bluest Eye

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

In “The Bluest Eye,” Toni Morrison explores racial tension in the town of Lorain, Ohio, immediately following the Great Depression. The novel follows the lives of a number of African Americans, including Claudia MacTeer, the narrator, Pecola Breedlove, the main character, and Pauline...

22 Oct 2007
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Clouds and Apology

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

In “Clouds,” by Aristophanes, and “Apology,” by Plato, Socrates is portrayed in completely different ways. In “Clouds,” Aristophanes attempts to ridicule Socrates and his followers, the Sophists. In his play, Aristophanes demonstrates that Socrates is corrupting the...

22 Oct 2007
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Portrayal of Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

Horror stories are known to be misogynistic in their portrayal of women; Bram Stoker's Dracula is no exception. The novel offers a stereotypical, character archetype of the female in various forms: Mina Harker, Lucy Westenra, and the Succubi. The women are used to embody ideas and values of the...

22 Oct 2007
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Setting the Atmosphere in The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death and Pickman's Model and The Lottery

Thesis - 6 pages - Literature

“It was a dark and stormy night…” Classic, word-of-mouth horror stories begin with this line. What is it about the “dark and stormy night” that should cause us, the reader, to feel anxiety and fear about the story about to be told? Horror stories cannot begin without a...

21 Oct 2007
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"Similarities in Dean Koontz's Hideaway and Bram Stoker's Dracula"

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

To say there are similarities between the novel Hideaway by Dean Koontz and Bram Stoker's Dracula is an understatement - there are so many plot, character and thematic parallels, with very little derivation on Koontz's part it is nearly the same story. First, the character of Vassago, or Jeremy...

19 Oct 2007
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To Exist Is to Question Existence Itself

Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy

Writers define themselves by their purposes. A novelist writes to entertain, to embrace the imagination and create a world of escape for the reader. A columnist writes to inform, to relay the facts and describe a world of current events for the reader. What, however, exists in-between? With...

19 Oct 2007
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The Fall of Ulysses

Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy

In all its humor, 1984 ½ would have in actuality been a very fitting title for Terry Gilliam's Brazil. An invisible, all-powerful government, the struggle of the individual against the state, the apparent hopelessness, there is no doubting the similarities between George Orwell's dystopian...

19 Oct 2007
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The Ecstasy of Grief

Essay - 4 pages - Literature

History thrives on contradiction. There would be no words to fill textbooks if world events and facts did not clearly oppose that which was taught the year before. The reasons behind wars alter like the tides, and entire countries burn to the ground to be built up again under a new leader and a...

19 Oct 2007
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The Degradation of Women in the Works of Ayn Rand

Essay - 5 pages - Literature

A common trend in American writing is to highlight gender differences. Authors appear compelled to hammer home the concept of women's suffrage, representing women as nothing but the weaker, fairer sex. In a way, it's almost a case of reverse sexism, proving the other side right by inversely...

19 Oct 2007
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Self-fulfillment

Essay - 20 pages - Philosophy

The controversy surrounding self-fulfilling prophecies, while originally centered on proving their existence, has recently settled on the probability of such phenomenon occurring in a natural environment. While not directly cited in this resource guide, the original “Pygmalion Effect”...

19 Oct 2007
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Rush into the Secret House

Essay - 7 pages - Literature

Romeo loved Juliet, Juliet loved Romeo, and in the end, they both died to prove it. Neither the Capulets nor the Montagues could understand such love, so neither could allow such love. Romeo and Juliet died to prove it. Yet centuries later, William Shakespeare's darker tragedy is still revered...

19 Oct 2007
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Scream: A Gendered Autobiography

Essay - 4 pages - Literature

One cannot discuss the concepts of gender without looking at the various frameworks in which it exists. In Paradoxes of Gender, Judith Lorber states that gender is “a process of social construction, a system of social stratification, and an institution that structures every aspect of our...

19 Oct 2007
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Punishment and the Damned

Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy

It can be questioned whether the Greek and Roman people ever believed in their own gods. However, even such questioning cannot undermine the didactic value of their religion. Greek and Roman mythology thrived on storytelling; bards assumed the role of primitive priests, teaching moral reasoning...

19 Oct 2007
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Original Imitation

Essay - 4 pages - Literature

In a modern era of corporate tyranny and the disappearance of an independent creative market, the artistic longing for originality is often forgotten. Radio stations sell out to public opinion, Top-40 hits recycling the last generation of Top-40 hits, and the hand-published pages of timid...

19 Oct 2007
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Journeying Abandonment

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

Dante's Inferno, while a fictionalized version of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, is in many ways an accurate portrayal of the doctrines of Christianity. However, this Hell he creates is a Hell the Bible never expected. Influenced by the growing mistrust of the Pope throughout his native...

19 Oct 2007
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Know Your Neurosis: An Analysis of Frank Bruno's It's OK to Be Neurotic

Book review - 3 pages - Literature

I picked It's OK to Be Neurotic: Using Your Neuroses to Your Advantage by Frank Bruno from the bottom row on the third book case in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble because the title on the spine was so obnoxiously bold and it was shelved at the wrong end of the alphabet. They say not to...

19 Oct 2007
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I Love Not Loving You

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

Any author to have ever written, from poetry to prose to every other genre in-between has been confronted with one universal question: where do you get ideas for your characters? And really, the answer is just as universal. It is impossible to create a completely original character, for the...

19 Oct 2007
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Honor and the Honorable

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

According to newspaper headings and television reports, every man and woman who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is a hero. Even three years later, memorials are still built, hymns are still sung, and candlelight vigils are still held in remembrance of the bravest individuals...

19 Oct 2007
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"Holocaust Literature: Humanity Reborn"

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

If Holocaust literature strives to portray the paradoxical (the representation of the unrepresentable, the expression of the inexpressible), maybe it too is a paradox. Confessions of the unspeakable, the unthinkable in written word. And yet it exists, tangible, published. In memoir and fiction...

19 Oct 2007
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Fathering the Son

Essay - 2 pages - Literature

There is a lot to be said about love. It saturates literature, Hollywood, every means of creative output known to the history of this planet. There is something mysterious about it, something undiscovered. So desperate have populations been to answer the timeless questions of love that it can...

19 Oct 2007
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Gambling Art: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Custom-House Introduction

Essay - 3 pages - Literature

In the preface of the second edition of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne discusses the “unprecedented excitement” generated by the publication of his novel (5). Ironically, this public excitement, and more importantly, the ensuing public discontent, originated not in the novel...

19 Oct 2007
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Father, Forgive Them: A Review of Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

Book review - 2 pages - Literature

There is a basic purpose to the literature of Holocaust survivors: to bare witness. Many believe they survived to perform such a duty, to fulfill such a debt to those who did not. As witnesses, they record living history, for they record the history of their own lives. But what happens when a...