...Bezoukhova, an embodiment of internal beauty, life, love — Natasha Rostova. Natasha — the favourite heroine of Tolstoy. It submits the reader the sincerity, a spontaneity, cheerfulness, poetry, richness of an inner world. "The poetic, full of life, the charming girl" her Andrey Bolkonsky calls. For the first time we meet Natasha in the house Growth, she appears at us the thirteen-year-old girl, absolutely young, touching, direct. "Black-eyed, with a big mouth, the ugly, but living girl, with the children's open coat hanger … with the black curls which got off back, the thin bared hands and small legs in lacy pantalonchik and open shoes, was at that lovely age, when the girl not the child, but the child not the girl yet any more". We see how Natasha matures, goes to the first ball, endures the first love. This heroine is very direct, close to the nature. She admires beauty of a moonlight night in Otradnoye, is very organic in a hunting scene. Natasha is very musical, romantic. She perfectly sings, is thin feels music, Denisov admires her singing. And dancing of Natasha in which all reveals her Russian soul? This dancing delights both the uncle, and Nikolay, and the aunt Anisyyu who suddenly understand that this young girl "was able to understand everything that was both in Anisye, and in the father Anisye, both in the aunt, and in mother, and in any Russian person". Natasha is close to the people. During departure from Moscow she asks parents to give supplies to wounded soldiers...
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...INTRO “I consider tragedy the highest form of art.” Joyce Carol Oates reveals her very realist outlook though this quote, which she stated on a PBS interview in 2008. As an American Author from 1963, being a woman writer was overlooked, however, she managed to make a career out of something she started to love as a child. Throughout this speech, I will tell you about Joyce’s life, the book of hers that I read, and how she connects to what we’ve learned in English Lit thus far. BODY 1. The Author Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16th on her parents' farm, outside the town, and went to the same one-room schoolhouse her mother had attended. This rural area of upstate New York, straddling Niagara and Erie Counties, had been hit hard by the Great Depression. The few industries the area enjoyed suffered frequent closures and layoffs. Farm families worked desperately hard to sustain meager subsistence. But young Joyce enjoyed the natural environment of farm country, and displayed an interest in books and writing. Although her parents had little education, they encouraged her ambitions. When, at age 14, her grandmother gave her her first typewriter, she began consciously preparing herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college, said American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Without the typewriter from her grandmother, she may not have even started writing seriously. When she transferred to the high school in Lockport, she quickly distinguished...
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...Invisible Monsters is a novel that tells about the beauty desires of a woman who lost her beauty after an unfortunate accident. Her jaw was injured and thus she was incapable of speech. This novel has a big relationship with our topics about gender, particularly, body image. After reading this novel, we can gain a deeper understanding about how bizarre appearance affects a person’s life, the extreme desire that people have to be beautiful, and how the story relates to modern society. In the novel Invisible Monsters, a woman, whose name was initially hidden, was shot while driving on the freeway. The shot made her lose her jaw. Becoming jawless was a quite shame for the girl because before the shot, she was a very beautiful fashion model. After the mishap, she immediately became a “monster”. The cover of the novel expresses the meaning of entire story by showing a picture of a girl without a mouth. When the book is turned it up side down, we see a picture of an old and ugly person. This image is further developed by a statement made by the disfigured woman (Shannon). “If I can’t be beautiful, I want to be invisible” (Palahniuk, 1999, 214), this quote was said by that disfigured woman and it expressed her desire of being beautiful as she was before. That woman preferred being invisible than being disfigured. In the novel, there is another main character beside the jawless woman who was Brandy Alexander. Brandy was friend of the disfigured woman and she used to do an...
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...to her wooden desk in her white dress, I slowly stood up from my chair. After jumping over the sea of backpacks lying on the floor and saying the words “excuse me” to three of my peers, I finally reached the front of the small, packed classroom. I caught my breath to eventually say “thank you Mrs. Gonzalez!” with the biggest smile my face could manage. I picked up the big chalk board eraser, and a classmate of mine stood up from her seat. Ever since Kindergarten, Christina was my competition for every test, quiz, and most importantly, becoming “teacher’s pet.” She had short brown hair, a little taller than I was, and always had her white polo ironed and her white sneakers as clean as can be. She never let me live a day without telling me my shoes were dirty or my shirt was wrinkled. Christina believed she was better than me because of her clean uniform. Her mom always said that “being presentable is what gets you noticed,” and it constantly drove me crazy. So as I erased one of the two chalk boards and she walked to the second board, I saw by the corner of my eye, the other eraser get picked up by her big, white hand, and the tension in the room escalated. Suddenly, a loud shout echoed in the room with the...
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...by Alice Walker and “What it’s like to be a black girl”, written by Patricia Smith by exploring the difficulties that black women face, no matter of age or where they may live. When it comes to these two stories and poem both written by black women, the one thing both writers have in common is their main character is a black women or girl. Both have dealt with some form of discrimination because of the color of their skin is black. In Alice Walker, “The Welcome Table”, she writes in third-person omniscient trying to explain to the audience how this old black lady just wanted to worship inside of a church, any church. This older black woman has finally found a church, once she was inside she did not even realize that this church was for the white folks – all she wanted was to worship the lord. The older woman in this story was not afraid of the fact that all the members were white, this is the first sign of discrimination against her based off her race no one wanted her to stay there but she was determined to worship the lord inside of this church. Everyone in the church wanted her to leave the church, telling her this is not your church and she did not belong there. For some unknown reason the old black women just muttered within herself, “Go ‘way”. So, now here is this old black woman that was determined to worship inside that church. Eventually she was thrown out of the church. Everyone in the church made a big deal out of the fact the not only was she a black...
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...It was a normal day in Los Noches. Mila-Rose and her husband Jazen were sitting on the couch in the living room of their apartment relaxing when their 15 year old daughter Crystal walks in to the room with a big smile on her face. Crystal looked exactly like her mother but she had silver hair and fair skin which she got from her father, her eyes were the same as her mothers. She was also tall like her mother and father. She also had big breasts like her mothers, which had all the guys staring at her. Her mask piece was shaped like a star in the form of a hair pen. Rose noticed the look on her daughters face first. “What are you so happy about, Crystal?” Rose asked. “I met a boy yesterday, he`s really cute and he`s a gentle man like dad.” Crystal said looking at her mother. Jazen looked at crystal and asked “what is the boy’s name?” Crystal replied “his name is Otaru and I want you to meet him.” Rose and Jazen were a little surprised by what crystal had said. No one said anything for minute then Jazen spoke up “ok, how about you invite him come over for lunch today and we will see whether or not he`s ok for you to hang out with” Jazen looked at Rose to see if she was alright with this. She nodded. Crystal smiled and said “thank you, so much!” she then hugged her father and mother then kissed them both on the cheek. Crystal then ran for the front door and went out to tell her friend the news. “She must really like this guy, if she wants us to meet him” Rose said looking at...
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...skills these days are considered more important than anything, IT PISSES ME OFF!!! I hate how in every waking moment in our public lives we're expected to have something in our heads that's worth saying to someone in case they come into contact with us, and how 'quietness' is now regarded as something to be seriously concerned about. I was bullied at school, so I'm naturally wary of people and therefore I prefer not to communicate, more often than not. Teachers now acknowledge quietness in pupils for their report cards, as though it's a personality trait that needs correcting. It's not my fault I'm in a class full of rowdy imbeciles... I hate loud-mouth extroverted people who, for some reason, seem to think that shy people who don't talk to them are being rude, when in fact we're just intimidated and shunned by people who have mouths bigger than their minds. We live in a world that favours extroverts so much, IT PISSES ME OFF!!! Social awkwardness. Social awkwardness has ruined my life too many times, and I blame modern life for allowing it to exist. I hate the fact that you can't go out and have a meal or a drink in public by yourself without receiving pitying looks. People who can't tell the difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Mainstream comedy. British sitcoms these days are tedious and appalling. Televised comedy is not even remotely funny anymore and 90% of people you meet have unimaginative, seriously retarded, sacre and sweet senses of humour as...
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...society now. It also impacts your perspective on how we, as people of the U.S. in today’s society, have it easy compared to the Puritans that came long before any of us. The characters of this play lived in a completely different society, where religion controlled every aspect of your life. If you had a day off from work, then praying was the only way free time should be spent. (TW) 2. “The Salem tragedy, which is about to begin in these pages developed from a paradox” Act 1, pg. 6 3. “…slave sense has warned her that, as always, trouble in this house eventually lands on her back” Act 1, pg. 8 The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a story about the tragedies that occur in Salem. I would have to say that tragedy is the big theme of the play because it informs the reader about a true historical time period where many innocent lives have been sacrificed due to witchcraft. These characters enlisted in this play were once actual people. They obviously are now historical characters used to explain this one major theme, tragedy. Their lives best describe the tragedies that occur during the Salem witch trials. This introductory quote is very important because it tells you what the story is mainly going to be about- which are the tragedies of Salem. (DI) I have always wondered what my life would have been...
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...novel narrated from the viewpoint of an uneducated, sexually abused Harlem adolescent, Precious Jones - ill-treated, deprived, fuming, obese, loathed, ignored and hence self-taught, direct, naive, raw as being sensible, worthy and truly humane. Precious Jones, the teenage protagonist, suffers unbelievable adversities for her young age — raped by her father (when she was only seven years old), ill-treated and badly beaten by her mother. At the start of the novel, Precious Jones is pregnant for the second time with her father's child. She says, “Don’t nobody want me. Don't nobody need me. I know who I am...ugly black grease to be wipe away, punish, kilt, changed, finded a job for"(p. 33). This obviously shows how much has she hates herself. Precious believes her life would be different if she were a white girl. She thinks white girls have all imaginable happiness a girl could possibly have. Precious realizes her physical appearance made people to mistreat her. Even if she sits obediently in class every day, she experiences-"I always did like school, jus' seem school never did like me"[(p. 38). In fact the school principal tells her teacher to renounce her, saying "Focus on the ones who can learn"(p. 39). She realizes at some point that "The tesses paint a picture of me wif no brain," "The tesses paint a picture of me an' my muver-my whole family, we more than dumb, we invisible" (p. 33). She despises the world that makes her and her family “invisible”—as if they don’t exist...
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...“Come on,” I whispered to Scout, grabbing her hand and running across the square. We ran a certain distance and pacing ourselves, Scout was fidgeting to go farther, but I knew better to wait for a minute. Maybe adrenaline, maybe nervousness, I don't know what it is but my stomachs in a knot. I inhaled and exhaled and peeked up the sidewalk. “We can get closer.” I tightened my grip on Scout’s hand and we ran back out into the darkness. I had that feeling that we couldn’t make a fuss, that we’d get in trouble. Told to go home. I wasn't going to have it. Men got out of their cars, alone or in ugly pairs, wishin’ it was shadows moving towards the jail door, but they were solid figures. Atticus stayed put where he was, the men blocking our view of him....
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...Cláudia Soeiro Av. Dr armenio maia n.º 212º esq 3680-115 Oliveira de Frades/ Portugal Student nr: 70662912 Exam nr 50046800 Email: Claudia.soeiro1@gmail.com The song I'm choosing is full of poetry and it has a deep meaning like clear water and I guess we all feel it once in life at least. In this thesis I would like to approach the meaning the song as for me and the difference between 1993 until 1999. Also leave an important message to you that you can read during this prewriting. In 1993 singers were artists and some ugly in 1999 singers are all models that sing. In 1993 I was 15 years old. I was a teenager in the down of my adult life and when I listen to this song on the radio I always wondered what that emotion so private that they sang was. Private Emotion: The song is from the Hooters and the lyrics are as follows: Every endless night has a dawning day Every darkest sky has a shining ray And it shines on you, baby, can't you see You're the only one who can shine for me It's a private emotion That fills you tonight And a silence falls between us As the shadows steal the light and wherever you may find it Wherever it may lead Let your private emotion come to me Come to me, come to me, come to me When your soul is tired and your heart is weak Do you think of love as a one way street? Well, it runs both ways, open up your eyes Can't you see me here, how can you deny It's a private emotion That fills you tonight And a silence falls between us As the shadows...
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...When I was in high school I weighed an average of 144 pounds and wore a size 7 or 9 jean. I had some “skin rolls” or that extra stomach fat most adults talk about as being “unacceptable”. At the time I didn’t think much of it until one day I heard the words that would change my innocent image of myself into one that I saw as horrid and imperfect. The words that came out of my own mothers mouth, “Mira esto que tienes aqui, necesitas perder de peso Kendra no te miras bien.” Whats those words meant, for those who don’t know Spanish, is, “Look at this you have here, you need to lose weight Kendra, you don’t look good.” My own mother was judging me. I was never the heaviest in my family. My brother, who was 15 at the time, weighed over 250 pounds; my father, 46, weighed about 210; my older sister, 20, weighed about 190. So you see, I wasn’t really overweight, just had body fat. Yet to my mother it was just, fat. As you know, or should know, many teens wake up and the first thing they think of is, “Oh my God, I can’t leave this room looking like this!” Self image is important to us, or so that’s what society wants us to think. We must always look our best. Well in my case I also thought this way, waking up extra early to pick out my outfit (somehow making different varieties of a blue and khaki pant with white shirt; our school dress code). Then of course my hair, it had to be extra perfect. I’d flat iron it for about twenty minutes max until I thought it was perfect, then all the...
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...still, but not the grand prize which made my heart race more. As time went on, I clenched my phone in anticipation. Just when I was about to lose hope and hang up I heard the presenter on the phone and radio. "Who's on the line?", the presenter asked My heart stoped, my eyes widened as I tried to gather my words. "Laura", I sqeeked. "Hi Laura, are you the tenth caller to know the answer the question that will win you the grand prize, to meet the mystery celebrity tonight for one night only. AND to go on stage with that celebrity during his preformance?" "Yes", I squealed. "So what is it?", he asked. Silence, my mind knew the answer, but was making connections. I had been a fan of this celebrity since before he hit it big. I was disspointed in some things he did, but admired his talent and looks still. I followed him on twitter, fanned him on facebook. I pretty much stalked him everywhere. So I knew the answer. I knew three weeks ago, Chris Brown, or Brizzy as I call him had said on twitter in so many words that he...
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...Being the child that I was, I didn’t understand, neither did I read too much meaning to the words she said. “My child, you can now retire to your room. I will call on you when am ready.” And so I headed for my room, but on touching my bed, I continued with the game I was playing before mother called on me. I played some little more before I fell asleep. Later that evening, amidst my dream I heard the sound of my name. It sounded so loud as if the person was standing next to me that I sprang out of bed. Behold it was my mother; she was standing at the entrance of my room. She turned and walked away. I followed her lead and we ended our walk sitting by the dinning where she had prepared a tray of biscuit, a full plate of groundnut and a big jug of lemonade juice that will aid us through the journey of the story-telling. I stared so much at the groundnut and lemonade juice, for I am a lover of groundnut and anything drinkable, except for alcohol; that it prompted mother to say “They are yours already; you need not dive into it but am sure that by the...
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...American Literature * Authors * Books * Short Stories * Christmas * For Children * Features * ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Bottom of Form * Login/Signup The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen Although he is well noted for his fairy-tales, the poignant story of The Little Match Girl or The Little Matchstick Girl is a great example of Hans Christian Andersen's broad literary talent and ability. I personally like to read this story at least twice a year, once in Autumn as the holiday season comes into focus, and then again around the Christmas holiday. It's a gentle reminder of the value of compassion and charity. Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast. One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were...
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