...actions, thoughts, and intentions are based on their assumption of morality. Graham Greene’s views on morality lead him to face many internal conflicts in his life such as alienation and self-doubt which made him to commit suicide six times during his adolescent age (Roisman- Cooper). Graham Greene’s internal conflicts and experiences in his life considerably influenced his writing style. His writings contain themes based on his life experiences such as religion, alienation, depth of understanding and sadness. Greene says that Human nature is not black and white but black and grey...
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...Suspense Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was indeed one of the most iconic and influential film directors in the history of the medium as well as being internationally recognizable throughout his life. This paper delves into his earlier works, concentrating on his narrative elements such as the MacGuffin technique, the likeable antagonist, the innocent man or woman whom is falsely accused or misunderstood, and the act of balancing suspense and tragedy with humor and comedy. From a stylistic standpoint the paper conveys Hitchcock’s profound use of atmosphere and landscape, song as a suspense device, landscape of crowd caricatures, and point-of-view technique. Looking at The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Saboteur (1940), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943) we can see the styles and techniques these precursors pioneered and why they were implemented into Hitchcock’s greatest works in the coming decades. We take our first look at Hitchcock’s famed narrative technique, the MacGuffin. The MacGuffin was a plot device used by Hitchcock to hold the tension of the story without actually having any relevance to the plot itself. It was a gimmick that had the sole purpose of adding suspense to whatever situation the hero or heroine might have been in by motivating the characters to start the story. They do not know what it is but they will do anything to uncover its mystery, thus pushing the action and drama of the narrative forward. The initial use of this technique was in one of...
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...storytelling, the film helped to change Hollywood film-making and still exerts considerable influence today. However, at the time of its premiere in 1941, it was a commercial failure that spelled disaster for Welles' Hollywood career. Within the maze of its own aesthetic, Citizen Kane develops two interesting themes. The first concerns the debasement of the private personality of the public figure, and the second deals with the crushing weight of materialism. Taken together, these two themes comprise the bitter irony of an American success story that ends in futile nostalgia, loneliness, and death. The fact that the personal theme is developed verbally through the characters while the materialistic theme is developed visually, creating a distinctive stylistic counterpoint. It is against the counterpoint that the themes unfold within the structure of a mystery story. Its theme is told from several perspectives by several different characters and is thought provoking. Techniques such as single source lighting, creative use of shadows, montage, obscure camera angles, and deep focus photography make the film more enthralling visually, but also contributed to the narrative and many of the themes. The most defining stylistic element of Citizen Kane is the lighting. Welles meant for it to be a dark picture, unlike anything that had been filmed up to that time, so he used single source lighting by having a single stream of light within the scene leaving everything else to darkness. The object...
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...plot revolves around the relationship between Sidney (Sannaa Lathan) and Dre (Taye Diggs) who have been childhood friends. Sidney has taken the position of editor and chief of the hip-hop magazine XXL back in her home town Brooklyn. Dre is a partner in a music label called Millennium Records. Upon Sidney return to Brooklyn Dre reveals that he is preparing to marry Reese (Nicole Ari Parker) who is a successful entertainment attorney. This news sends Sidney into a subconscious tizzy. Sidney going forward after hearing the news of Dre getting married finds herself struggling to interact with Dre. After hanging out before his wedding Sidney impulsively kiss Dre and from that kiss lead them to a confusing night of intimacy and cracking doubt about everything between them. Dre goes through with the wedding and tries to settle in with his new wife and life. While in pursuit of a new artist Dre is faced with choose between his love for true Hip Hop and his job. His partner has signed two untalented commercially rappers for Dre to work with. This decision pushes Dre to spontaneously quit his job and start his own record company and produce the Hip Hop music he once fell in love with. Dre sits down with Reese and inform her of his decision and she is not supportive of the new venture....
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...with magic and life, as he is the protagonist name originally Dunny and later his true name Ged, and his new mentor, Ogion whose journey is to overcome obstacles and defeats an evil shadow. In the...
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...It can be said that every story in the collection Dubliners by James Joyce has a tale of its own where “paralysis” is a central theme in all the stories. The idea of “paralysis” can mean a number of different things to different people depending upon their interpretation of a certain text. In general, what “paralysis” does is inhibit a character from doing what they want to do or know they should do, as if there is a kind of shadow in their life, just lurking and haunting them in the darkness. These shadows especially play an important role in two stories from the collection, “The Sisters” and “The Dead”; they act as a sort of imprisonment for the main character. In “The Sisters”, the narrator and main character is a nameless boy. The boy says at the beginning of the story, “Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears…like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear” (“The Sisters”, 2). From this, the reader sees that the boy does not really know how to respond to the priest’s inevitable death. What kind of relationship exists between the boy and Father Flynn is hard to determine because the reader only sees their relationship through the eyes of the boy. As the reader is introduced to other characters in the story, they start to learn bits of information about the nature of their relationship, but the reader is still somewhat left in the dark. Throughout the story...
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...The Poem named “baseball” written by Bill zavatsky is about a time when the Author that tells the story is around 10 years old and his team played the little league champs. But he doesn't remember who won or who lost, the only thing he remembers is that there was a pop up ball and he was able to catch that pop up ball over second base. In the poem they state “we were the only farm team not “good enough” to make big little league” which is an oxymoron, means a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear, which is “little league”. This stanza states “felt my body rust in pieces to the ground a baby trying to stand up an ant in the shadow at a house.” This stanza has three metaphors. Metaphor means comparing 2 alike thing by...
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...In “A Worn Path”, Eudora Welty uses a narrator as a non-participating character to reveal hidden characteristics of the protagonist, Phoenix Jackson, in order to convey the theme of perseverance and unconditional love to the reader. The narrator impartially suggests that Phoenix is an “old negro woman” with “eyes blue with age”. Although these characteristics are basic, they blossom into complex traits of the protagonist that shadow her astounding tenacity. As the audience, we know Phoenix’s age, since the narrator mentioned her elderliness multiple times. Considering that the narrator objectively shares this information, the reader knows how the difficulties she faced on her trek, from having “to go through a barbed-wire fence” to falling into a ditch “like a little puff of milkweed”, add into a critical characterization of the protagonist that, in the end, alludes to the theme. Despite her elderly age, Phoenix’s refusal to end the...
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...Therefore, its main visual characteristic - a contrasting two-tone graphic image created by a low-key lighting technique known as ‘chiaroscuro lighting’. The name came from words light (chiaro) and dark (scuro) in Italian. Kathrina Glitre notes that the ‘low-key effects are crucial to the expression of the classic noir world’s moral ambivalence and paranoia, revealing as it obscures’ (2009: 12). Indeed, the combination of light and shadow often embody the desire to show the clash and interaction of ambiguous moral decisions. The nostrum for demonstrating this duality became half-lit rooms (often vertical or slanting shadows from the grids and blinds were used to set the mood), faces divided in half with shadow, contrasting silhouettes and shadows in the...
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...Puritan doctrine taught that all men are totally depraved and require constant self-examination to see that they are sinners and unworthy of God's Grace. Because man had broken the Covenant of Works when Adam had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, God offered a new covenant to Abraham's people which held that election to Heaven was merely a possibility. In the Puritan religion, believers dutifully recognized the negative aspects of their humanity rather than the gifts they possessed. This shadow of distrust would have a direct influence on early American New England and on many of its historians and writers, one of which was Nathaniel Hawthorne. The influence of Puritan religion, culture and education along with the setting of his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts, is a common topic in Nathaniel Hawthorne's works. In particular, Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" allows the writer to examine and perhaps provide commentary on not only the Salem of his own time but also the Salem of his ancestors. Growing up Hawthorne could not escape the influence of Puritan society, not only from residing with his father's devout Puritan family as a child but also due to Hawthorne's study of his own family history. The first of his ancestors, William Hathorne, is described in Hawthorne's "The Custom House" as arriving with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 "with his Bible and his sword" (26). A further connection can also be seen in his more notable ancestor John Hathorne, who exemplified...
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...a choice is easy, but to make the right one can sometimes be very difficult. To speak one’s mind and stand up to your opinion can also be tough, especially when in a large crowd, but sometimes this is the most important time for doing so. In Steven Millhauser’s short story, “The Knife Thrower”, the ambiguity of the narrator’s view on the knife thrower’s act is really drawn out and exposed in the spotlight, very unlike the knife thrower’s act itself which is very mystical and sort of hidden in the shadows. “The Knife Thrower” - the name says it all, but at the same time it tells us nothing about the text. The story is very secretive and does a very good job capturing the reader. It seems as if once you have read a couple of lines, you are instantly drawn into the mystical and dark atmosphere in which the story is unfolding, and you simply cannot stop reading. To mention some of the themes in the story there are entertainment, moral responsibility and passivity. These three themes come together very nicely in the story and they play a big part in shaping the reader’s impression of the audience’s opinions towards Hensch and his performance. The knife thrower, Hensch, is the main character of the story, but throughout the text we gain very little knowledge of him. He is very mystical and doesn’t speak a word during his act, of course this is done to make him an anonymous, but still a central character for the story. “If rumors of this kind were disturbing to us, if they prevented...
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...men banter back and forth the notion of assassinating an unlikeable foe for his part in obtaining insider information on gambling bets. The theme of the film portrays a power struggle between the two mob gangs in town with a tone that each gang operates on ethical morals. Concerns whether killing another is morally right reflects on the strength of the context of the movie. The period of which the film convincing depicts 1930’s prohibition era. The film directors make wonderful use of artifacts, such as furniture, lighting fixtures, automobiles, as well as the actors’ costumes from that time period. This action packed film was full of ambushes of underground liquor parties, old-fashion gun shoot outs, gruesome fighting and bloody cold-blooded killing taking place in a city that allowed the gangs to rule society and command the city’s government to cater to their special needs and demands. Special effects added dimensions to the explosions, fires and gun fire throughout the film. Although language in this feature is probably accurate from that era and of that associate with the type of illegal activity, the actors portrayed their characters convincingly with their demeanor, speech, and body language fitting for the style of movie. The plot thickens with mystery of who is loyal to who, as well as those who cast a shadow of doubt in regards to trusting those around themselves. When disagreements between the mob gangsters heat up, the fear of looking over the shoulder...
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...psychologists, writers, and more. Since then, the definition of what identity is has changed and evolved, leaving the true, overarching definition unknown. In his novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Japanese author Haruki Murakami explores the ideas of identity and the consciousness through ideas brought up by postmodernist philosophers and psychologists such as Karl Marx, C.G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud and uses them to create characterization, themes, plot, and symbolism. An important point many notice when reading this book is that the plot is split into two plot lines: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. Wonderland is set in a modern-esque Tokyo, where the narrator is a Calcutec - a data manager that shuffles data in his head. In this arc, the story revolves around the job the narrator is doing for an old man known simply as the Professor. The other story arc, The End of the World, revolves around a narrator known as the Dreamreader. He is trapped in a walled-in town, where he is told his shadow must be removed and that he cannot leave. He is then made to read dreams from the skulls of unicorns, which live outside the town wall. While the story arcs seem to not connect to each other, the narrator in Wonderland finds out that The End of the World is actually a mental construct put in his head by the Professor when he became a calcutec. It is said that “the black box is the subconscious”(Murakami, 255), and it contains the End of the World. The Professor...
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...Macbeth fully comprehend how the murders only led to torment and destruction when he says “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This demonstrates how he is aware that the defeat is soon approaching and his actions and guilt are the catalyst for his downfall. The guilt still strains his heart as Macbeth reveals how he will not be able to grow old and enjoy rewards of old age “…as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have…” This implies how Macbeth recognized that evil actions taken to claim the crown led to him facing a violent and a bloody death. Therefore evidence of his guilt can be discovered as he invariably debates with himself about the path he has chosen ever since he...
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...placed behind the two sitters. Moreover, the young girl is sitting on her mother’s knee while the mother holds a hand mirror up to the girls face. The use of two mirrors not only allows us to see all angles of the mother and child’s faces; but also symbolises the vanity and self consciousness the girl will experience after she grows up and loses her innocence. The mother is revealing to her daughter the character she will require by society. The uses of warm yellow and green tones suggest that the sunlight was pouring through the windows of Cassatt’s studio as she painted. This warm hue is reflected in the judgement we get of the feeling between the two sitters. Striking splashes of colour are used to highlight refracting light and dim shadows – a characteristic common to Impressionist movement. Cassatt’s use of line is also of great importance to the painting. The angle of the sitter`s arms as the hold up the mirror, and the angle of their legs lead directly to the central component – the child's head. This pulls the viewers’ eyes into the centre, allowing them to promptly grasp Cassatt's main focus of the child's innocence. Cassatt often used friends and neighbours as sitters in order to create a more domestic, real sense to her paintings. She did not need to glamorise her...
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