...In the 2008 short film “Sommersonntag” directors Fred Breinersdofer and Siegfried portray the fictional narrative of Bruno Hansen (Axel Prahl) and the accidental death of his deaf son Micha (Janos Giuranna), at an elevator bridge in Hamburg, where the main character Bruno Hansen works as a bridge operator. The film portrays the son's death and the ultimate choice the father has to make between saving the lives of train passengers approaching the bridge and that of his own son, as he is playing under the elevator bridge. The cinematographic techniques used to portray this fictional narrative add to the films depiction through its suspenseful close-ups, and switching from differing characters/ objects point of view, as the train approaches the bridge and from the point of view of the father's narration of the event. The aspect ratio of the short film is rectangular filmed in a ratio of 2:3 and is filmed in normal (real time) speed. The onscreen and offscreen space is manipulated from the very beginning of the short film hiding the actual location of the father. The film opens with a close up of the father in a suit and tie, not revealing his location and going through the corse of events that led hid here to this point. It only reveals later through a widening of the shot that he is in a graveyard, recounting the way in which his son was killed. The film makes use of long shots through close ups to give the viewer a feeling of suspense, the scope/ mechanism of the machinery...
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...The Narrative of Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave was written in first person and are therefore true incidents and situations from the life of famous orator and ex-slave Frederick Douglas himself. Hence this book is a autobiography. On the other hand Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave written by Oliver Gilbert is a third person point of view where the author took down the dictations from Sojourner Truth’s life and then cited them down as a book. When both these books are compared with respect to their point of view, it seems that both the authors have been able to portray the true purpose behind the book. When on one hand the autobiography seems more realistic, the third person point of view comes out as a bit more poetic, well-versed. However both the books are mines of facts about slavery and its malpractices and how these high spirited people were able to overcome slavery and prosper towards greatness. When an audience in 19th century reads the autobiography they are more compelled in believing the facts as it has been written from a first person point of view. The entire world that Frederick had experienced seems to come alive to the reader. However when one reads the book by Oliver Gilbert written from a third person point of view it is more of a reading through mere facts and incidents that had taken place in the life of Sojourner Truth. The author is hardly able to connect with the emotions or feeling of the Lady while in the first case they are...
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...Oliver Nyambi considers The Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira First published by: SAGE Open Jul 2014, 4(3) <http://bit.ly/1q7n9ui> ABSTRACT There is a subtle yet discernible connection between the post-2000 political power struggle and the gender struggle in Zimbabwe. In both cases, a patriarchal power hierarchy shaped by tradition and history is perpetuated and justified as the mark of the nation’s unique identity. In cultural, political, and economic spheres, the status of most urban Zimbabwean women is still reflected as inferior to that of most men. During this economic and political crisis period, the prevailing gender power-relations evolved into gendered appraisals of the impact of the crisis and this created the potential for rather universal and androcentric conclusions. The consequent eclipse of female-centric voices of the political and gender struggle tends to suppress women’s perspectives, consequently inhibiting a gender-inclusive imagining of the nation. This article argues that discourses about gender struggle in Zimbabwe’s post-2000 crisis have not sufficiently addressed the question of space; that is, the significance of the oppressed women’s physical and social space in shaping their grievances and imaginings of exit routes. Similarly, the article argues that representations of this historic period in literary fiction have accentuated the wider political and economic struggles at the expense of other (especially gender) struggles, thereby rendering...
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...Flores 1 Antonio Flores English 2333 Final Essay May 10th, 2010 Topic #1: Describe some characteristics of literature in the 20th century and illustrate these characteristics using the texts studied in class. Okay let’s start with William Butler Yeats, who was not only the main figure in the Irish literary renaissance but also the twentieth century’s greatest poet in the English language. Yeats constantly uses allusive imagery and large symbolic structures. Yeats adopted a cyclical model of history which he created a private mythology that allowed him to come to terms with both cultural and personal pain. This model also helped explain the symptoms of the Western civilization’s declining spiral; the plight of contemporary Irish society and the chaos of European culture around World War 1. Yeats shares with writers like Rilke and T. S. Eliot the quest for larger meaning in a time of trouble and the use of symbolic language to give verbal form to that quest. For many years it is Yeats’s mastery of images that defines his work. From his early use of symbols as private keys, or dramatic metaphors for complex personal emotions, to the immense cosmology of his last work, he continued to create a highly visual poetry whose power derives from the dramatic interweaving of specific images. One of his poems called When You Are Old pleads his love for the beautiful actress and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889 and who repeatedly refused to...
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...Theme and Narrative Elements in “Hills like White Elephants” Shawntelle D Holloway Ashford University Theme and Narrative Elements in “Hills like White Elephants” In the fictional writing, theme refers to a broad message the writer wishes to deliver buried deep within his story. A theme therefore cannot be picked directly from the storyline but only after identifying the underlying idea. Looking beyond the general plot will be the only way one can arrive at any stories intended theme. In the story hills white like elephants, the writer has used irony and satirical techniques of writing to create theme in his work. The saddening story of a young misfortunate couple has been used to portray the theme of hopeless love in a vague world that has no concept or morality. The setting of the story is vague and without any kind of personal emotion. The young couple seems to be caught in the crossroads faced by the challenge of abortion or keeping their unborn baby. While Jig seems ready and willing to have the baby, she is pushed by her ruthless boyfriend to abort. He seems more concerned about ideals of travelling, fun and merrymaking even when making a decision involving his unborn baby. Jig is pushed by her love for him to make a decision that will affect her and murder their unborn baby. He is a hypocrite and not kind to women willing to keep his own baby. By exploiting their love, he gets Jig to consent to an abortion even if she knows it is harmful. The use of irony and...
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...Video Analysis Through out the course we have been wrestling with how the media is made and who influences it. A lot of time there are underlying narratives to stories produced in the media. They use everything from lighting to shot angles to make a certain impression on the viewer. In this essay I will do a video analysis on Adele’s song “Someone like you. My goal is to illustrate my understanding of the many ways media producers make meaning and how we interpret that meaning. I will use narrative and semiotic analysis to see what strategies are being used to make the video. Through a careful analysis of how the video is being made we can see what type of meaning is trying to be expressed. Theoretical Frame To be able to do a video analysis it is important to understand semiotics. Semiotics is the discipline that studies the nature of any type of communication (Grossberg p.143). Its important to understand this does not only involve language but other forms of communicating such as traffic light codes, dress codes, or rolls that men and woman play. In all these things we are communicating with each other by using a system that we all understand and can relate to. Semiotics define that system as codes and those codes are constructed signs. For example the English language is a code that we use to communicate with each other. The code consist of words or signs that arbitrarily symbolize something for us. As mentioned above the traffic light is another code of communicating...
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...What is literature? * Creative writing of recognised artistic value. * Written works of fiction and non-fiction in which compositional excellence and advancement in the art of writing are higher priorities than are considerations of profit or commercial appeal. * Literature is literally "an acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts. The word literature as a common noun can refer to any form of writing, such as essays or poetry; Literature as a proper noun refers to a whole body of literary work, world-wide or relating to a specific culture... * lit·er·a·ture n. 1. The body of written works of a language, period, or culture. 2. Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value:"Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity" 3. The art or occupation of a literary writer. 4. The body of written work produced by scholars or researchers in a given field: medical literature. 5. Printed material: All the available collected literature on the subject. 6. Music: All the compositions of a certain kind or for a specific instrument or ensemble: the symphonic literature. Good literature has something important to say about life. If we take the time to read and understand the literature...
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...apparent in regards to genre and its definition. Bennett identifies genre as, "Encompassing groups of texts and categorizing them according to the characteristics they have in common" (Bennett, 2006, pg26) where as writer Barry Keith's arguments are contradictory stating that; "Genre movies are always about the time and place in which they are set." (Grant, 2006, pg6) Theses quotes have enabled me to identify the three pieces of horror genre media texts that I am going to analyze for my research investigation and how their construction is used to appeal to its audience with reference to; "Stalker-Lewis Farinella", "Lovefield-Matthieu Ratthe" and "Vanished-NewDawnFilm", and how their technical, audio, visual codes characterization and narrative are constructed to relay the genre to its audience. It has been quoted that the "Concept of genre is important in arousing the expectations of an audience and how they judge and select texts"(Bateman, 2010, pg46) presenting a valid...
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...that I would like to discuss. In the first case, Sullivan argues insightfully and convincingly against an absolute distinction between how we know and think about fictional characters and how we know and think about real people. In the second case, however, Sullivan insists on an absolute (Cartesian) mind-body dualism as a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. I would like to repeat and extend Sullivan's argument in the first case, but refute it and deny its validity in the second. First dualism: Fact/Fiction Sullivan cites as representative of a certain widely-shared approach Maud Ellmann's insistence that there is an important distinction between a “human being made of flesh and character made of words” (5), a distinction that allows us to make one kind statement about the former but not the latter. Ellmann is not alone in making the real-life/fictional distinction a fundamental matter of ontology. We are all familiar with arguments like hers, having heard * For a response to this response, see “Don Quixote & the ‘Third Term’ as Solvent of Binary Dualisms: A Response to Howard Mancing”, by Henry W. Sullivan, Cervantes 19.1 (1999): 177-97. -F.J. 158 19.1 (1999) Against Dualisms: A Response to Henry Sullivan 159 them often enough specifically with respect to Cervantes. The case made in terms of fictional characters here is part of a larger issue of the supposedly...
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...CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of The Study Every individual has problems in their life. The problem that appears is complex. Most 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...
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...Poetry, prose, sonnets, drama, plays, short stories and novels are concepts that first came to my mind when I think in the question “What is literature?” The definition of literature has change over time. The only thing that is certain about the meaning of literature is that the definition will change. The concepts about what is literature about also change over time. In order to get a clear understanding of exactly what literature is, first we need to know its definition. According to the Merriam-Webster, literature is defined by “the body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age; the body of writings on a particular subject: printed matter.” Literature has to do with letters, but some people often think that literature is only one thing, not knowing that it is composed by several elements that we use every day. These important elements include poems, prose, sonnets, drama, plays, short stories and novels. Poetry is created from the soul. It comes from your emotions and it needs every piece of creativity inside you. It has been called the art of “saying the unsayable” because trough this you can express your feelings with no limit, and nobody can tell you that is wrong. If you make a poem and you think it is not good enough, well it is no good. You as the author or the reader, can only judge if it is good or but for you but maybe for some one else it is the opposite as it is for you. A good place to start when looking back at how poetry...
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...lyrics. No two songs on the album are quite the same and each has their own story to tell. Many songs in the album deal with dark and sinister topics since Ryan Ross, the composer, was going through a tough breakup with his girlfriend whom he caught cheating on him. These topics include prostitution, unfaithfulness in marriage, drugs, and death. The band may not have an opinion of the topics it provides like other bands in its genre, but it talks about the topics from the standpoints of the characters it creates through the lyrics. These topics may seem too heavy to put over a techno beat, but Panic! seems to somehow make it work. As mentioned before, the album has a theatrical, carnivalesque feel to it. This is mainly brought out by the narrative style lyrics in the first song on the track where Brendon Urie speaks directly to the audience like he is a ringleader in a circus or a narrator at a play. He prompts the audience to snap their fingers and to tap their toes to the beat as if they are right in front of him. He even refers to himself as the narrator throughout the song. Many of the songs on the album are story-like in nature; three such titles are “Camisado,” “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” and “There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought Of It Yet.” The story told in “Camisado” deals with a drug addict who keeps relapsing and ending up in the hospital over and over. The next story is told through the song “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and...
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...slaves from children to the elderly as much as they could. Though everyone struggled, being an enslaved child could have possibly been the worst age to be during this time. Most slave children were torn from their blood families which created a lack of love and affection which every child should have in their younger years of life. Thus, these children were forced into their slave owners homes which created a new family for them, sometimes positive or negative. Most importantly, slave children weren’t given much of a childhood; they were torn from their human rights of freedom, education, equality, and many other civil liberties. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictional work by Harriet Beecher Stowe, accurately compares to the real accounts of former slaves on the subject of enslaved children. Along with Stowe’s book, many slave narratives talk about these unfortunate events enslaved children went through. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harry is the first child Stowe introduces to the reader. Even though his story ends up having a happy ending, his family had always been incomplete while they were enslaved. Harry is Eliza and Henry Harris’s son; due to Eliza and Henry being on different farms, Harry would rarely ever see his father. Therefore, Harry and his father could not engage in many bonding experiences white children and their fathers could enjoy. In chapter III, Mr. Harris escapes to Canada because his master is forcing him to marry another woman on his own farm, ultimately, having to...
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...Summary of CT The Canterbury Tales begins with the introduction of each of the pilgrims making their journey to Canterbury to the shrine of Thomas a Becket. These pilgrims include a Knight, his son the Squire, the Knight's Yeoman, a Prioress, a Second Nun, a Monk, a Friar, a Merchant, a Clerk, a Man of Law, a Franklin, a Weaver, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Tapestry-Maker, a Haberdasher, a Cook, a Shipman, a Physician, a Parson, a Miller, a Manciple, a Reeve, a Summoner, a Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. Congregating at the Tabard Inn, the pilgrims decide to tell stories to pass their time on the way to Canterbury. The Host of the Tabard Inn sets the rules for the tales. Each of the pilgrims will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two stories on the return trip. The Host will decide whose tale is best for meaningfulness and for fun. They decide to draw lots to see who will tell the first tale, and the Knight receives the honor. The Knight's Tale is a tale about two knights, Arcite and Palamon, who are captured in battle and imprisoned in Athens under the order of King Theseus. While imprisoned in a tower, both see Emelye, the sister of Queen Hippolyta, and fall instantly in love with her. Both knights eventually leave prison separately: a friend of Arcite begs Theseus to release him, while Palamon later escapes. Arcite returns to the Athenian court disguised as a servant, and when Palamon escapes he suddenly finds Arcite. They fight over Emelye, but...
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..."The Victorian elements in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontё" The Victorian Era, in which Brontё composed Wuthering Heights, receives its name from the reign of Queen Victoria of England. The era was a great age of the English novel, which was the ideal form to descibe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. Emily, born in 1818, lived in a household in the countryside in Yorkshire, locates her fiction in the worlds she knows personally. In addition, she makes the novel even more personal by reflecting her own life and experiences in both characters and action of Wuthering Heights. In fact, many characters in the novel grow up motherless, reflecting Emily’s own childhood, as her mother died when Emily was three years old. Similarly, the vast majority of the novel takes place in two households, which probably is a reflection of author’s own comfort at home as whenever she was away from home she grew homesick. Emily Brontё’s single novel is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. However, despite the relative invisibility of Victorian influence in the plot and content, the attitudes of the Victorian Era make some impact on the story, and the novel is considered not only a form of entertainment but also a means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems. Brontё may not highlight the social aspects in the novel, nevertheless the indications of Victorian society’s...
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