...subdue and subjugate. Authors such as William Golding and Joseph Conrad have recognised this basic nature of humanity and portrayed it in their novels Lord of the Flies (Golding) and Heart of Darkness (Conrad). These novels exemplify the methods by which humans have placed checks upon their savage nature, checks which prove to be diaphanous when challenged by true hardships. In both of these stories, the authors attempt to demonstrate the savage nature of the human spirit by utilising symbolism and irony. Both Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness are intensely allegorical novels and emphasise the use of symbols. However, these symbols are not merely the characters, but also include their actions and the settings of the stories. For example, the characters of Kurtz and Jack are symbols for the ancestral instincts of humankind. Though they are two separate characters, they are both symbols for the same idea. They are contrasted with Marlow and Ralph, who are also separate apparitions of the same philosophy. Kurtz, the quintessential ivory hunter from Heart of Darkness, is consumed by the desire for ivory and allows his primal nature to dictate his actions. He even goes so far as to proclaim himself a god and order the natives to attack his fellow Europeans. “He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer” (Conrad.145). This shows how far Kurtz had fallen, that he, like Lucifer, would prefer to reign in hell...
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...The poem “To Germany” to be scrutinized is one by the Charles Hamilton Sorley, a writer and poet of short stories and novels. It was published during the First World War in the year 1914. The poem is a discussion of the concept of theme of war. The poem under discussion is based on the concept that is aimed at outperforming the notion of the war that was the concept of the initial World war. With the application of various techniques applied in the contextualization applied in the work of Charles Hamilton, the poem is able to clearly depict the portrayal of the author’s perception of war. The author, Charles Hamilton wrote about the First World War which appears through the whole of his poem. The relevance of the poem to the society and those affected by war is both encouraging and its emphasis is defined by the imagery and thoughtfulness of character envisioned in the overall fundamental analysis of the poem. There is evidenced array of character, politeness and distinct humbleness, a denser factor within a more serene environment that is later epitomized by fundamental thought of people feelings. It is thought in various historical backgrounds that war brought death, suffering and separations. Nonetheless, in this poem, this perspective is being erased as the poet brings in a renewed faced, hopefulness and most importantly, a sense of forgiveness. According to research conducted by various authors the literary skill used by the author Imagery, among other literary techniques...
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...the law makes him King" : Lord Chief Justice Coke quoting Bracton said in the case of Proclamations (1610) 77 ER 1352 The rule of law is a system in which no one, including government, is above the law; where laws protect fundamental rights; and where justice is accessible to all. It can be said to be the foundation of the building of the civil society in which just, peace, liberty and progress reside. It provides the foundation of socio-economic development, prevention of crime, protection of human rights, protection of dignity and provision of self-government. In short, the rule of law is a system of government in which a society maintains a set of good, just, and fair laws by which it and its government will be governed. The alternative to such a system, of course, is one in which the government can do whatever it wants and the people have no way to refuse laws that they don’t think are good, just, or fair. Rule of law is a classical principle of administrative law. As a matter of fact this principle was one of the principles that acted as impediment development of Administrative Law principles. The irony further is that the rule of law is now an important part of modern Administrative Law. Whereas the rule of law is still the one of the very important principles regulating in common law countries and common law derived countries modern laws has denied some of the important parts of rule of law as proposed by Dicey at the start of 19th Century. Dicey defined rule of Law...
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...based on their faith, had always treated Hindus as infidels, but having said so, it seems that over a period of time both communities had somehow carved out a way to live together in the social setting of India and created an amalgam of Muslims and Hindu culture. This is evident from many rituals common in both even today, for example the marriage ceremony practiced by Indian Muslims. So conflict and concord were running in parallel between the two communities and even to this day, there are many events of communal riots in India between Muslim and Hindus simultaneous with frequent events of unity. This fact leads to an argument that if these two things have been and still are parallel to each other then what was the point in creating a separate country, if the conflicts were so strong and that it was impossible for Muslims to live with Hindus then India should have seen another partition as there are still approximately twenty million Muslims in India, more than the...
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...Alex Hendershot ENG 4U Ms. Straus May 23, 2015 Hamlet Quotation Test Quotation 1: “How all occasions do inform against me And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.” (Hamlet: IV, iv, 3238) Literal Level: This quotation is from Act IV, Scene IV, when Hamlet observes Fortinbras leading the army through Denmark towards Poland. Hamlet learns that the Norwegians are going to war with the Polish over a small, worthless patch of land. In this soliloquy, Hamlet ponders how these men are willing to risk their lives for such a small cause, when he is still so hesitant to act on his revenge on Claudius for his father's murder. 1. This passage helps to develop Hamlet’s character and the plot of the play because it is in this scene that Hamlet realizes that he must act on his revenge plan or else he is just going to be a purposeless “beast”. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles with whether or not to exact revenge on Claudius because he is not certain of all of the facts. When Hamlet sees how willing the soldiers are to fight over such a small piece of land, he realizes that without action Hamlet is not taking advantage of the gift of life that God has given him. Hamlet realizes that ...
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...Fernando De Barros Shorter University American Literature Prof: Renee Emerson James Fennimore Cooper was born in America on September 15th of 1789, and passed away September the 14th of 1851. Before starting his career as a writer he served in the US Navy. That caused him to base some of his stories on the sea and his Navy experience. He spent most of his time in Cooperstown, which was a town that his father founded. Also he was a member and contributor to the Episcopal Church. About his education, he attended to Yale for three years but then he good expelled due to misbehavior. He was without a doubt a prolific writer of the early 19th century. And he is one of the most important romantic writers in American history. His masterpiece is The Last of the Mohicans, which will be analyzed in this essay. The Last of the Mohicans is the most popular story from the Leatherstocking Tales. It is a story about the French and Indian war that took place in the 1750s. They were fighting about who would have control over the colonies. When Cora and Alice, the daughters of an English military man, are traveling to visit their father led by Magua they run into Hawkeye, Chingachgook and Uncas. Hawkeye came quickly into account and realized that they were being led to a trap so he tries to stop Magua but they failed. The day after Magua and his men attack the group and take Cora and Alice captive and Magua explicitly tell them that he hate the girls because the Colonel humiliated him. Magua’s...
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...Cold Mountain Literary Terms Journal 1.) Alliteration (page 137) “Her mind marked every mantis in a stand of ragweed.” Repetition of “m” at the beginning of words. 2.) Allusion (page 5) “He seldom spoke more than a word or two at a time, and Inman had learned little more of him than that his name was Balis and that before the war he had been to school at Chapel Hill, where he had attempted to master Greek. Connects to The Odyssey and the greek gods and goddesses. 3.) Imagery (page 4) “By now he had stared at the window all through a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag, so damp it caused fresh sheets to sour under him and tiny black mushrooms to grow overnight from the limp pages of the book on his bedside table.” This sentence is so descriptive and appeals to my sense of touch and feeling it makes me feel like it’s a hot and humid summer night again. 4.) Metaphor (page 68) “[ . . .] gobs of biscuit dough the size of cat heads cooked in the yellow broth.” The authoru related the size of a cat head and biscuit dough, which are two very different things. 5.) Personification (page 1) “At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.” The author described the flies’ actions with a humane action. 6.) Simile (page 14) “Every morning after that dream, Inman awoke in a mood as dark as the blackest crow that ever flew.” The author used the word “as” to compare the meaning of a color...
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...invention of the epic and lyric forms of poetry, though, the Greeks were also essentially responsible for the invention of drama, and they produced masterpieces of both tragedy and comedy that are still reckoned among the crowning achievements of drama to this day. Indeed, there is scarcely an idea discussed today that has not already been debated and embroidered on by the writers of ancient Greece. The epic poems attributed to Homer are usually considered the first extant work of Western literature, and they remain giants in the literary canon for their skillful and vivid depictions of war and peace, honor and disgrace, love and hatred. Hesiod was another very early Greek poet and his didactic poems give us a systematic account of Greek mythology, the creation myths and the gods, as well as an insight into the day-to-day lives of Greek farmers of the time. The fables of Aesop represent a separate genre of literature, unrelated to any other, and probably developed out of an oral tradition going back many centuries. Sappho and, later, Pindar, represent, in their different ways, the apotheosis of Greek lyric poetry. The earliest known Greek dramatist was Thespis, the winner of the first theatrical contest held at Athens in the 6th Century BCE. Choerilus, Pratinas and Phrynichus were also early Greek tragedians, each credited with different innovations in the field. Aeschylus, however, is usually considered the first of the great Greek playwrights, and essentially invented what we...
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...Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” Goodman Brown was not asleep in this short story. As I read, I believed that Goodman did indeed meet the devil in the forest. If he had indeed dreamt about the trip he was sent on and meeting the devil, I think his nervousness would have been described in more detail then it was. Concentrating more on the anxiety he was feeling would have led the reader to believe that the events were not real. I also saw this story as an allegory. I saw the allegory after reading the story two times. I think it is centered on Goodman Brown having a bumpy past and that he wants to go beyond his past and reach heaven. The characters names also show the religious allegory in the story. The names Goodman and Faith are used and the characters are then soon faced with terrifying evil. I think that Goodman Brown and his wife, Faith’s names symbolize that they are good, religious people and that Goodman is making up everyone being evil in his head. I found an essay by Alexa Carlson that described the symbolism in light vs. dark, forest vs. town, nature vs. human, and fantasy vs. reality. In her paper, Essay #1: Young Goodman Brown, she states that “…fantasy vs. reality are employed to reinforce the idea that good and evil have been set up as strict categories into which no one, not even the religious figures of the community, fit neatly.” As she later writes, if Hawthorne was apprehensive about “what he considers right and wrong in terms of human behavior, I...
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..."Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father." Referring only to the first chapter of the novel, discuss how Okonkwo's relationship with his father is presented, and how their relationship with their broader society -- the "these people" of the quote above -- is presented. Be succinct but use the novel, and you must NOT write more than two typed pages! Okonkwo, protagonist in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, is introduced to the reader as a young man born in Umofia, one of the many tribes populating late 19th century Africa. Okonkwo derives a grim satisfaction from being starkly different to his father Unoka; fortunately enough, his people judge a man "according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father", leaving him free to deviate from Unoka's reputation to forge his own. Where Okonkwo had acquired prestige at the youthful age of eighteen, his father was a man who had known no success. Okonkwo is depicted as an excellent fighter -- he even manages to overthrow a famous wrestler during a contest -- externally virile ("tall and huge" with a "severe look" and a habit for "breath[ing] heavily") while his father is described as "tall but very thin [with] a slight stoop". Where Okonkwo seems to radiate hostile energy, Unoka's face was frequently "beaming with happiness", yet is clearly stated to be a "failure", only paragraphs after Achebe comments on Okonkwo's "fame". Put simply...
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...Chris Abani’s novel, GraceLand, tells a heartbreaking journey of a teenage boy named Elvis, and his slow escape from the impoverished lifestyle of Lagos, Nigeria. Elvis is smart and independent, having lost his mother when he was a young boy and growing up with a distant relationship with his father, Sunday. Throughout the novel, Elvis’s relationship with each character becomes important in defining Elvis’s character as a whole. Each character has a very distinct influence on Elvis and it is these different influences that shape him into the puzzled and distraught youth he is illustrated as in the novel. Elvis lives a different life when he is in Afikpo. In the first flashbacks, it is easy to see how close Elvis is with his mother, Beatrice. Beatrice is later revealed to be suffering from breast cancer and inevitable dies when Elvis is still young. But before she does, she makes full effort to teach her son everything necessary for him after she dies. Beatrice tells her mother, Oye, “I have taught him to sew, to iron, to cook, to read and write at a level beyond his age” (Abani 38). Beatrice’s teachings explains how Elvis is well beyond his years at age sixteen; he loves reading eminent works of literature and cares enough for his step-siblings to buy them food since their mother, Comfort, never would. After Beatrice passes away, Elvis remains close to his grandmother, Oye. In a later flashback, Elvis would read her letters from her pen pals. Abani writes, “Elvis...
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...Vanity Fair A Novel without a Hero (Book Report) Passed by: Maegan Rhyzelle C. Rivero I. Book title: “Vanity fair: A novel without a Hero” II. Author: William Makepeace Thackeray III. Theme: Thackeray wants his audience to realize how vanity itself can affect how people act. It is mainly a story about two girls with different outlooks in life; entangled in problems that neither of them could face well. IV. Main Characters: Miss Barbara Pinkerton – presiding over an Academy for Young ladies Jemima Pinkerton – sister of Barbara Amelia Sedley – will be the wife of Mr. George Osborne John Sedley – father of Amelia Mrs. Sedley – wife of John Sedley Joseph Sedley – brother of Amelia Mrs. Blenkinsop – housekeeper for the Sedleys Sambo – servant for the Sedleys Rebecca Sharp – will be the wife of Rawdon Crawley Sir Pitt Crawley – a miserly, old baronet Rose Crawley – second wife of Sir Pitt George Osborne – godson of Mr. Sedley Rawdon Crawley – falls in love with Rebecca Other Characters: Miss Swartz Rose Crawley (daughter of Sir Pitt) Violet Crawley Pitt Crawley (son of Sir Pitt) Horrocks Miss Horrocks Rev. Bute Crawley Mrs. Bute Crawley James Crawley Frank Crawley Mr. Osborne Jane Maria Miss Wirt Miss Crawley ...
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...Many experts and analysts refer to the rise of Islamist terrorism as a new phenomenon, more deadly and obtuse than the more traditional terrorism associated with separatist and nationalist movements. Religious writings are subject to wildly different interpretation and can be used to justify opposing viewpoints. Often, man’s interpretations of these teachings are twisted and distorted to emphasize to their followers what they stand to gain rather than what they can give or share with others. The issue seems fundamentalists, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim; share a common fault that emphasizes personal gain above the welfare of others, and a belief that somehow this inherent selfishness and self-interest will ultimately be rewarded. The irony is that religion taken to extremes is more likely to cause a violent conflict than a solution. More predictable is the fact that people exploit other people to advance selfish interests under the guise of religion [Religious Extremism www.globalfocus.org/GF-religion.htm]. Twenty years ago people thought that Islamic extremism meant the Shiites in Iran. Now society find that the extremists in Afghanistan are Sunni....
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...first Russian artist to receive the National Endowment for the Arts grant (DAF 1). Komar and Melamid gained popularity for focusing on the absurdity of the Soviet system through their paintings. Their art was initially aimed at dismantling that system and now that the system has been dismantled, Komar and Melamid nostalgic about the sadness of the past (Solomon 77). Since the 1970s, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid have used their paintings and installations to discuss the manipulation of history and art by governments and powerful people to achieve their own ideological goals. Their works have an undercurrent of a playful sense of irony, which is most apparent in their early works that mock at the pretensions of official Soviet art (Solomon 77). In the process of collaboration, Komar and Melamid first discuss their ideas and make separate sketches, select elements from each sketch and finally compose a new one. They work separately and take turns in switching and continuing the other’s work (Rueschemeyer et al 101). Komar and Melamid sometimes chose to focus on historic figures and events to identify a past that has...
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...ROMEO & JULIET Prologue (ACT 1) As a prologue to the play, the Chorus enters. In a fourteen-line sonnet, the Chorus describes two noble households (called “houses”) in the city of Verona. The houses hold an “ancient grudge” (Prologue.2) against each other that remains a source of violent and bloody conflict. The Chorus states that from these two houses, two “star-crossed” (Prologue.6) lovers will appear. These lovers will mend the quarrel between their families by dying. The story of these two lovers, and of the terrible strife between their families, will be the topic of this play. ANALYSIS This opening speech by the Chorus serves as an introduction to Romeo and Juliet. We are provided with information about where the play takes place, and given some background information about its principal characters. The obvious function of the Prologue as introduction to the Verona of Romeo and Juliet can obscure its deeper, more important function. The Prologue does not merely set the scene of Romeo and Juliet, it tells the audience exactly what is going to happen in the play. The Prologue refers to an ill-fated couple with its use of the word “star-crossed,” which means, literally, against the stars. Stars were thought to control people’s destinies. But the Prologue itself creates this sense of fate by providing the audience with the knowledge that Romeo and Juliet will die even before the play has begun. The audience therefore watches the play with the expectation that it must...
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