...How does the writer present his thoughts and feelings about World War One? How far is the extract similar to and different from your wider reading in the literature of World War One? You should consider the writers choice of form, structure and language, as well as subject matter. By the extract being from Bertrand Russell’s autobiography it should show an accurate depiction of the war at the time, due to him actually living through these events. However, autobiographies could be biased as they are based on the writers’ beliefs and opinions rather than just the truth and facts. By him also being a pacifist and refusing to fight it would also mean he hadn’t been at the front so would only know what the rest of the people at home would, meaning that they would only be able to access the censored media within Britain at the time. By this being an extract from an autobiography we could expect for it to be a truthful depiction of the time, due to it being published a considerable amount of time after the war in 1967-69. However by Russell being a pacifist it could also be critical about the war due to him being against it. Within the first line of the extract Bertrand already shows a strong feeling of anger towards the war and the people that were involved in creating it “I became filled with… rage against all the statesmen of Europe”. Through his phrase of ‘all the statesmen of Europe’ it shows he wasn’t just angry with the British government but also all the other government...
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...EAST 40th Street, New York, N.Y. Printed in the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword I II What Why is Writing? Write? Whom Does One Write? 7 38 III For IV Situation of the Writer in 1947 161 Index 299 67 FOREWORD want to engage yourself," writes a young imbecile, "what are you waiting for? Join the Communist Party." A great writer who engaged himself often and disengaged himself still more often, but who has forgotten, said to me, "The worst artists are the most engaged. Look "If you at the Soviet painters" "You want tres is to murder An old critic gently complained, literature. spread out insolently all Contempt for belles-let- through your review." A petty mind calls me pigheaded, which for him is evidently the highest insult. An author who barely crawled from name sometimes awakens men accuses me of not being one war to the other and whose languishing memories in old concerned with immortality; he knows, thank God, any number of people whose chief hope it is. In the eyes of an American hack-journalist the trouble with me is that I have not read Bergson or Freud; as for Flaubert, who did not engage himself, it seems that he haunts me like remorse. Smart-alecks wink at me, poetry? And And music? You want to engage them, too?" some martial spirits demand, "What's it all about? painting? And "And literature? Well, Engaged unless it's What it's the old socialist...
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...help you interpret the context of the writing. It will also help you see why writers make the decisions they do—from the largest decisions about what information to present to the smallest details of what words to use. The chapter concludes with instructions on how to write an analysis of purpose and technique. This kind of rhetorical analysis will provide the perspective required to keep you from being pushed by words in directions you don’t want to go. T 103 104 Part 1 Writing About Reading The Writer's Purpose Insofar as people know what they are doing, they plan their actions to achieve their purposes. Someone who selects the purpose of being rich will design and carry out a set of actions, legal or illegal, to gain the desired wealth. A person who wants to gain great wisdom will design an entirely different life course. Writers, whether they want most to be wealthy or wise, have specific purposes they hope to achieve by any piece of work. If they are skilled writers—that is, in control of what they write—they design each aspect of what they are writing to achieve their purpose. Being aware of the writer's purpose when you read helps you evaluate how well the writer has achieved the purpose and decide whether you want to follow where the writer is trying to lead you. The active reader reads more than the words and more than even the ideas: the active reader reads what the writer is doing. The active reader reconstructs the overall design, both the writer's...
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...glish literature How to Write an A* GCSE English Literature Poetry Response Copyright © 2008 www.englishteaching.co.uk + www.english-teaching.co.uk How to Write an A* GCSE English Literature Poetry Response 2 The Poetry Component of the GCSE Literature Paper The poetry task is the second question on the GCSE English Literature exam paper. It is perhaps the more demanding of the tasks on the paper, because unlike the question on the prose, in this section you are being asked to compare four poems simultaneously throughout your answer. In the exam you should spend one hour on this section of the paper. Given the greater demand of the task, your response to the poetry is worth more marks than the response to the prose. In order to perform at the highest level on this paper, it is important that you develop a nuanced and sophisticated comparative written style. However, this is achievable if you adopt a systematic approach to ordering and writing your responses. It does, however, demand considerable practice prior to the final examination. What is the Examiner looking for in a response to the Poetry? The exam is designed to test your ability to do the following things: Can you respond to the poems critically, in detail, and sensitively using textual evidence? Can Can you explore language, structure and form contribute to the meaning of texts? Can Can you compare the ways that ideas, themes and relationships are presented in the poems by...
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...Owen, being a Soilder in World War 1, and experiencing many horrific outcomes that came along, was also a writer and used his knowledge of war for his poetry. His creativity mainly began after recovering from shellshock in hospital, where he had possibly met others in the same position as him, or worse. Owen had seen much through the time of war, and expressed his feelings and thoughts of this through his poetry. He was also influenced by other poets such as Rupert Brooke. Owen’s melancholic poem ‘Disabled’ explores the results and the pity of war, describing the story of a young man as easily fooled by the propaganda as everyone else and lives the consequences of the act of going to war underaged. He returns with nothing but regret and reflects on the past. Losing his limbs and becoming disabled has changed his life in numerous ways and he has become bitter of gaining nothing for his actions. One of the ways in which Owen conveys the ‘pity of war’ in the first stanza, is creating an eerie atmosphere in the beginning of the poem. He describes the man as ‘sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark and shivered in his ghastly suit of grey.' The immediate appearance of 'dark', 'grey', and 'shivered' reveals the isolation of the wounded soldier. The alliteration of ‘his ghastly suit of grey’ expresses how even the soldier’s clothes gives off a dullness that surrounds him. Whilst the solider is sitting in his wheelchair, he also hears the ‘voices of boy’s rang saddening like a hymn...
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...Explore the ways in which the three texts present the suffering of soldiers in the war. World War One is known as “the war to end all wars”[1]. The war cultured “extreme suffering” which inspired many writers. The war also aided the advancement of attitudes towards the emotionality of men. Individual suffering is manipulated to intensify the pain by isolating singular characters. Sacrifices of the men force the reader into an uncomfortable atmosphere. Sebastian Faulks’ Bildungsroman Birdsong highlights the suffering of individual to understate that of the masses. Regeneration, written by Pat Barker in 1991, uses factual occurrences of Sassoon and Owen’s lives in Craiglockhart to detail historic experiences of suffering. The poetry features both pro and anti-war perspectives from historical figures featured within Regeneration. Birdsong emotively persuades readers that individual anguish has detrimental effects on soldier’s lives intensifying their suffering. The texts use third person narrative to create emotive circumstances which manipulate the reader into understanding the suffering as either mass or individual. The writers’ portrayal of individual suffering was the most poignant compared to the subversion of widespread suffering. The texts expose the stigmatization of physical disability as a cause of individual suffering. Historically, the dependence of disabled life reflects the burden faced by soldiers of returning to normality. Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled explores the...
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...Chapter1 Introduction Feminism is not one unitary concept; it is instead diverse and multifaceted grouping of ideas and indeed, action. The basis of all strands of the concept may be stated as that it concerns itself with women’s inferior position in society sand with the discrimination encountered by women because of their sex. “Feminism is a doctrine suggesting that women are systematically disadvantaged in the modern society and advocating equal opportunities for men and women.”(The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, second Ed). The term includes many loose like liberal feminism, Marxist and socialist feminism, radical feminism. Liberal feminists work for equal rights for women within the framework of the liberal state; they did not question the structure –economic or political-of the state but they demand the rights and privileges given by the state should be equally shared by man and women. Marxist and socialist feminists’ link gender inequality and women’s oppression to the capitalist system. Women suffer a double exploitation as women and as members of the working class. Radical feminists disregard all questions of political and economic dispensation to concentrate on the roots of the problem. The central root of the problem is the system of patriarchy which leads to all kinds of discrimination against and devaluation of women. Politico-economic questions are not the roots but only auxiliaries. The concept of gender is the real villain and has to be demolished. Lately...
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...American Realism The Civil War tore the country apart. Once America was reunited in 1865, there was a lot of healing that needed to take place to correct the wounds Americans had suffered at the hands of their kin. In these years there were still a lot of questions to answer and still a lot of truth to be found out about the nation itself. The questions of the place of African-Americans, white Americans, political Americans and every other kind of American out there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s...
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...Notes on Existentialism Compiled for PSY 345 (Fall 2004) Existentialism provides a moving account of the agony of being in the world. The spirit of existentialism has a long history in philosophy. But it became a major movement in the second half of the 20th century. Existentialism is not a systematic body of thought like Marxism or psychoanalysis. Instead, it is more like an umbrella under which a very wide range of thinkers struggled with questions about the meaning of life. Much of the appeal and popularity of Existentialism is due to the sense of confusion, the crisis, and the feeling of rejection and rootlessness that Europeans felt during World War II and its aftermath. Existentialism’s focus on each person’s role in creating meaning in their life was a major influence on the Phenomenological and Humanistic traditions in psychology and on the “human potential” movement that emerged from them. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world.”. To modern existentialists this means that the World itself has no real meaning or purpose. It is not the unfolding expression of Human Destiny or a Divine plan, or even a set of natural laws. The only meaning is that which we create by acts of will. To have a meaningful life we have to act. But we should act without hope. Acting is meaningful but it doesn’t create meaning that lasts beyond the acts themselves or beyond our own lifetime. You are what you do – while you are doing it – and then nothing. (Very...
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...“Compare how Vera Brittain and JG Ballad present the theme of ‘WAR’ in Testament of youth and Empire of the Sun” Both the novel and the memoir are set during a war that disrupts the main characters life in a way that allows the reader to experience the raw brutality of war, whether that is physical or emotional. Testament of Youth (ToY) is set in WWI and Empire of the Sun (EotS) in WWII, the 27 year gap between the wars meant there were technological differences such as communication, aircraft and weapon advances. These factors highlight that the later war would have been more sophisticated in both ground and air defence/fighting techniques. This could possibly be why both characters envision the war differently, although there are other factors such as gender, geographical location and political positioning to consider. Ballad writes in a 3rd person emotionally detached manner whereas Brittain’s first person perspective allows us to empathise with her situation. The extracts I will be using to explore the way in which war affects the thoughts and feelings of each protagonist are page 30-33 from EotS where on the eve of pearl harbour Jim investigates Hungjao aerodrome and comes across an old fighter plane. This is when we see his fascination with warfare technology. I will compare it to pages 67-72, chapter 8, in ToY when Vera sees her future fiancé, Roland, receive his awards on speech day at her brothers school and both Roland and her brother are appropriately attired in...
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...fifty-five different formal styles of poetry to choose from (Kennedy & Gioia 681-717) no two individual’s tastes will coincide, the same can be said for poets. No one will argue that Walt Whitman and Herman Melville have vastly different techniques for chronicling the events they experienced. This is especially true for the author’s interpretations of events leading up to, throughout, and after the American Civil War. Although they approached their subject from the same vantage point, that of the Union or Northern Army, both author’s writing styles could not be more different. Melville and Whitman’s family history, personal experiences, professional interactions and literary notoriety all factor into their chosen poetic style and content. The following is a critical analysis of these similarities and differences using select works from Melville’s Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The list of recommended poems is not sufficient to adequately fulfill this requirement. For thoroughness, additional poems...
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...ends with the city in flames. He also illustrates how much the real world relates to the crumbling world in the novel through technology, their current events, and the way the people treat certain issues. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury through his use of literary terms exposes how literature saves society from its inevitable demise by revealing today’s society’s weaknesses, challenges readers to connect the dystopian society in the book to reality, and demonstrates how human connections give people a reason to live and love. Even when Bradbury was a child he was interested in literature. In the article “Ray Bradbury: Martian...
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...of them related to human psychological condition. One of the basic problems of individual is feeling inferiority. This emerges as the result of psychological and social weakness. Inferiority feeling also arises for imperfection in doing something. Those feelings include subjective feeling, which is experienced by people because of their social disabilities. Thus, human beings try to compensate for their inferiority feeling by striving to overcome their feeling. Inferiority feeling influences human being life style. In other words, inferiority determines life style involving how people attempt to defeat their weakness. Commonly, individual applies their inferiority in social life. However, they tend to be motivated to overcome feeling of inferiority by building relationship with others to get their life’s goal. Sometimes, the goal of life will become difficult thing to be reached since there are many problems in human life. The problems in human life cannot be separated from thinking, feeling, and acting. Those are actually bringing up influence for the literary work. Therefore, literature closely related to psychology in human being including experiences facing the life. A work of literature is created not only to entertain but also to convey values and meanings to human life which can be discovered in the problem and conflict. The psychological type discussed about the psychology, focusing about the development of personality by Sigmund Freud. A...
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...has been regarded as one of the most pessimistic poets. Larkin surely takes a very dark view of human life. The main emphasis in his poems is on failure and frustration in human life. And then there is his preoccupation with death. In a number of poems he emphasizes the sombre and grim aspects of human life and in many poems he speaks of the cert of death. We are all aware of the facts of failure and frustration in human life and we are all aware of the faith of death. But what makes Larkin a pessimist, and a confirmed pessimist at that, is his repeated emphasis, and over-emphasis, on these aspects of human life. On explanation of his repeated reminders to us of the certain of death, he has been regarded as “a graveyard poet”; and the general and brooding atmosphere of melancholy and despondency in his poems justifies the label “pessimist” for him. A number of poems come to our minds in this connection. The poem Ambulances paints a gloomy picture of human life because of the fact that every street is visited by an ambulance at one time or the other. An ambulance is a symbol of disease and death. Dockery and Son contains the following pessimistic line: “Life is first boredom, then fear”. And this poem concludes with the pessimistic view that there is old age, and that the end of old age is death. Aubade is a poem in which Larkin’s fear of death reaches its climax. Larkin himself described it his “in-a-funk-about-death poem.” The Positive Features of His Pessimistic Poems ...
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...Decorum Est” was written in the twentieth century by Wilfred Owen. The main similarity observed is that they both capture wartime experiences. However, the poets’ present these events using their own style and the effect is two completely different observations of war. The themes of the two poems are portrayed in very distinctive ways. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” explains in a majestic approach that fighting in war is something every soldier should honor. The poem is also about the loyalty of the soldiers, not the bad luck or foolishness of men. Tennyson presents this in his poem to show the bravery of the soldiers, although, he only highlights on the benefits of war. Tennyson’s poem glorifies the war, celebrating the sacrifice they had made for their country with the statement “Honor the charge they made”, (“The Charge of the Light Brigade”, line 51, Tennyson). By glorifying the Brigade, Tennyson has ignored the obscurity and massacre of the war. This is shown by the loyalty that the soldiers have for their country. The commitment of war in “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is only shown because Tennyson's looking at war from afar. We can see this because in the poem he has not used descriptive language to describe what war was like and has not shown the real outcome of war. In contrast, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” gives us the complete opposite. It takes away the lie that...
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