...The Masque Of Red Death Death is unavoidable. We will all die one day. Nothing can prevent that from happening. Many people are afraid of death because they don’t know what’s coming after death. Many people don't really believe in afterlife because they feel as if there's no God. In the short story,”The Masque of The Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to exude his message, that no one can prevent the inevitability of death. Poe uses the character Prince Prospero to symbolize the conceited belief of the rich. Poe states,” And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated…” What Poe means is while millions and millions of people died while the Prince was inside closed doors not caring about the civilian’s being killed by a disease outside.To put it another way, The Prince stayed inside like he was unkillable and he felt like nothing would happen to him and that the people outside were poor and not rich like him, He was showing no fear while other people died. A sharp line is drawn between a world of life and a world of death. Poe states,” All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death”. What he means is the death was outside, and even though the people inside are supposedly protected by being inside they’re really trapped inside with death all around them. To put it another...
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...Henry Fleming, along with most Civil War soldiers, endured psychological struggles when faced with the reality that death is inevitable. Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage as a realistic novel by using average soldiers and conflicts that the average person could easily understand. Crane also included naturalism in this novel by associating the setting with the protagonist. Stephen Crane’s use of these psychological struggles made The Red Badge of Courage a truly unique novel of its time. The Red Badge of Courage is set in during the Civil War at the three day long Battle of Chancellorsville. The Civil War lasted for about four years in which the Union Army fought the Confederate Army, to preserve the United States, in sixty-seven full-scale battles, three hundred and ten engagements, and 6,337 skirmishes (Bowman 280). The Civil War claimed approximately 360,000 Union soldiers’ lives and left hundreds of thousands of men disabled. More than 400,000 men died of diseases, accidents, and other causes than war (Bowman 280). The war also severely hurt the economy. The property losses would cost billions of dollars by today’s terms. The total cost of the Civil War was fifteent billion in 1860 dollars which is equal to three hundred and fifty billion in 1990 dollars (Bowman 280). These losses resulted in the restoration of the American Union and the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. The Confederate Army fought against the mighty Union army for their...
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...nearly within reach to embrace their mother’s warmth in the cool black of space. Yet, her age was showing, the once vibrant stars’ rays became a scathing red, her mass ballooned, and the once welcoming starlight became a bane for these once proud beings. Iron chilled her breast, and the sunlight that once stoked life in abundance now stifled her creations. Great works and colors were stripped of their vibrancy. Cities melted, minds boiled. Their flesh plagued with cancers, boils, and all manner of degenerative disease. A once hopeful culture became one of dread and worry, every moment but a ruesome reprieve from the scathing sun and the chilling eternity of death. Death became them. Their cities, their culture, great tombs in expectancy of the inevitable coming of death. They knew nothing but the grave and the sheer black obelisks that now towered above their homeworld, a meager attempt to hide from the fetid starlight of their corpse star. An untold time passed before their cancer ridden bodies, the death that so halted their progress to that of a sparrow moving grains of sand from a beach, finally yielded a result. Untold centuries and millennia praying alone at the cold altar of science resulted in an answer from that feckless lord of reality. Crude star ships that projected their dying race and petulant flesh away from that red light. They spit upon the face of fate and sailed for lands more welcoming for their aging, weary bodies. They gave a sigh of...
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...When we read the stories, ‘The Tell -Tale Heart” and “The Masque of Red Death” we see many examples of symbolism. In “The Tell - Tale Heart”, the biggest symbol is the old man’s eye. The old man’s eye didn’t just symbolize an ordinary eye, it has a deeper meaning. The old man’s eye symbolizes fear. The narrator says that the old man’s eye horrifies him. The narrator describes the old man’s eye, and says, “One of his eyes resembles that of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with film over it”(pg.523) . He compares the old man’s eye to the eye of a vulture to show the reader that the old man didn’t have an ordinary eye, he had a sinister eye. The eye also symbolizes fear, the narrator was fearful of the old man’s eye until the eye became an obsession to him. The obsession the narrator had led him to murder the old man. After he murdered the old man, he wasn’t okay, he had such a strong sense of guilt that he turned himself to the police, and he eventually ended up dying. In the story “The Masque of Red Death”, the biggest symbol is death. The prince takes one thousand...
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...The discovery process in “Young Girl at a Window” explores the tensions between self-reflection and confronting realisations about the time and circumstance. Dobson’s second person poetic style, “lift your hand” combines with the distinctive use of the present tense to position the responder to invest in the persona’s attempts to embrace the opportunities of adulthood. The imperative voice captures the need to move beyond the metaphoric “window” of adolescence, juxtaposed against her initial feelings of reluctance and hesitation in response to change, “sighing, turn and move away”. Dobson delves into discoveries about the irrevocable passage of time as the persona mourns the loss of her former self, in the rhyming couplet “since Time was killed...
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...In Aesop’s fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb,” the moral of the story asks the reader to examine the desire for an object—and how we justify our behavior if we cannot obtain that object. This moral is graphically presented through the repeated use of key words to describe the fox’s repeated failure to get what he wants. The fox’s first attempt is foiled as he “just missed” the grapes (35). He attempts “again and again”, running and jumping repeatedly, but has “no greater success” (35). He then becomes disgusted and walks away. These successive descriptions of his failure build to his disdainful comment that the grapes are probably sour (35). The repeated demonstration of fox’s failures and his self-rationalization of why is he walking away—not that he has failed but because he has decided that the grapes are sour and he does not want them anyway—cleverly portrays the moral of the fable: if you can’t get it, blame something else, not yourself. It therefore asks the readers to Aesop’s Fables 3 of 93 The Wolf and the Lamb Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside, when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down. ‘There’s my supper,’ thought he, ‘if only I can find some excuse to seize it.’ Then he called out to the Lamb, ‘How dare you muddle the water from which I am drinking?’ ‘Nay, master, nay,’ said Lambikin; ‘if the water be muddy up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to me.’ ‘Well...
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...The presentation of death in Vergil’s work, The Aeneid, indicates the inescapable will of the gods. Written as Roman ktisis poetry, or a “foundation myth”, Vergil wrote The Aeneid to strengthen the political influence of Augustus and provide the citizens of Rome with an ethnic identity (Mianowski 68). To fulfill this purpose, throughout the poem, the themes and events Vergil presents are distinctly Roman. In The Aeneid, the scenes detailing Laocoon and his sons’ deaths, and Creusa’s suicide, show that Romans view the concept of death as a tool to serve the Gods’ purposes. Not only did The Aeneid provide the Roman citizens with a common cultural bond, it also influenced the image of the afterlife in other notable works. Creusa’s death, which...
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...He seemed to be on an entirely different level than the rest of the boys, as he was the only independent thinker. Simon’s exceptional thought process led him to make sense of the beast even though it was not a physical entity. His sophistication and acute knowledge allowed him to reach conclusions that the group could not comprehend. Though introverted and passive, Simon did not follow the crowd and resisted becoming a hunter. He was not afraid to break free from his past in order to stand for his own values. He kept his innocence by refusing to hunt and torture pigs. Interestingly, Simon’s death played an entirely different role. This brutal murder was a climactic point in the novel, as the boys succumbed to the evil that lay idle within them. It functioned to provide the turning point, where savagery led to absolute turmoil on the island. Simon’s role of hope and grace unfortunately died with him, thus allowing temptation to drive the boys’...
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...Eshana Batra WR 100 Byttebier Manhood by the virtue of Martyrdom The mental and physical suffering of the protagonist, Henry Fleming, in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage drives him to his ultimate quest for manhood. Henry, often referred to as ‘the youth’, enlists in war with the belief that he’ll achieve manhood through a valiant soldier’s life. The premise of his enlistment is his endeavour to attain self-worth and a heroic stature, a microcosm of the need for human beings to achieve recognition. The novel is spanned across two days of heated battle between the Confederate soldiers and the Union during the American Civil War (schmoop,2012). This essay will bring to light Michael Walzer’s opinions on the rules of war and moral decencies in battles in situ to Henry’s red badge of courage. Walzer, a political theorist, insists on the importance of ethics and need for conventions for the abolition of war rather than it’s toleration. As Henry is exposed to the realities of war, his conceptualization of manhood evolves from a naïve lust for glory to a noble and selfless rationale of life. This essay will identify the changes in Henry’s perception of manhood as a result of his experiences on and off the battlefield by analyzing his inner turmoil of self-doubt and insecurity. The heroism associated with military exultance intoxicates and thus misleads Henry into believing that war brings glamour and honor. This resonates with Walzer’s argument that “military honor...
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...in the drawing room after an excellent dinner, they hear a recorded voice accusing each of them of a specific murder committed in the past and never uncovered. They compare notes and realize that none of them, including the servants, knows “Mr. Owen,” which suggests that they were brought here according to someone’s strange plan. As they discuss what to do, Tony Marston chokes on poisoned whiskey and dies. Frightened, the party retreats to bed, where almost everyone is plagued by guilt and memories of their crimes. Vera Claythorne notices the similarity between the death of Marston and the first verse of a nursery rhyme, “Ten Little Indians,” that hangs in each bedroom. The next morning the guests find that Mrs. Rogers apparently died in her sleep. The guests hope to leave that morning, but the boat that regularly delivers supplies to the island does not show up. Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong decide that the deaths must have been murders and determine to scour the island in search of the mysterious Mr. Owen. They find no one, however. Meanwhile, the oldest guest, General...
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...The definition of the human condition is that it encompasses the unique features of being human without having to consider one’s gender, race, culture or class. It captures the unalterable part of humanity that is inherent and innate to human beings. This consists of concerns such as the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation or awareness regarding the inescapability of death. It can be summed up as the fundamental issues of human existence. My personal perspective on what the human condition is, is the state we are in. It refers to what we need as humans and the experiences we go through for instants the need for basic necessities like food, shelter, drugs, sex etc. We want to experience love and the feeling of belonging to someone, we need that sense of security. Maya Angelou, a remarkable renaissance woman who is hailed as having one of the greatest voices of contemporary literature explores in depth the different elements on the human condition in her anthology, ‘And Still I Rise’. From the first section, ‘Touch Me, Life, Not Softly’, we are immediately introduced to the painful aspects of being in a romantic relationship. In her poem, ‘A Kind of Love, Some Say’ it discusses the complexity of being abused by the one you love. The title itself suggests it’s still considered as love however it’s a different “Kind”. This shows how humans, despite how bad some circumstances are, need to feel like they are loved...
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...in 1955, He went to ‘a pretty rough school and at the age of 14 participated in workshops at Australian Theatre for Young people as both an actor and a writer. Gow’s plays have been popular with both critics and audiences alike. Away was produced several times throughout Australia after its initial presentation in 1986. Away is typical of Gow’s work in that it is rich in literary allusion. The quotes from Shakespeare mingle with numerous references to more modern culture. His style juxtaposes contemporary realistic situations with non-naturalistic theatrical elements. The plays explore lower-middle-class family life in Australia since the Second World War. Humorous sequences are mingled with painful situations often involving illness and death. These themes are always dramatized in the social context. Conflict between generations is a reoccurring them, typically involving the clash between attitudes formed through the Depression and Second World War and the changing values engendered by post-war prosperity. This conflict is more harmoniously resolved in Away than anywhere else. Gow says that the Sydney suburbs and the beaches of northern New South Wales are important settings for his play because that’s where he spent his childhood, and idealized versions of these places are in the background of his imagination. In the plays these settings are transformed into places representing more universal ideas. For example, the beach in Away is an almost abstract place where people can be...
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...novel Build My Gallows High, a book that consciously imitated Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1941). (An uncredited James M. Cain wrote some of the script.)” Tourneur was an established director whose oeuvre was predominantly what we should call B Movies but all of which had a striking visual style. His three most famous movies before Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man are all about transformation, the night, perversion, the corrosive effects of evil, and the powerful link between violence and sex. Both he and Mainwaring were unapologetic left wingers (Mainwaring had to operate under a pseudonym during the McCarthy witch hunts) who saw evil in greed. Mainwaring’s most famous film script was the “reds under the bed” masterpiece The Invasion of the Body snatchers, another film about changes in people. Out of the Past is such a rich visual and verbal feast that one has a number of problems in analysing it. This is caused by a number of issues, firstly Tourneur is from a generation of directors for whom every scene and shot clearly counted, and each moment has to be looked at for plot and motivational signposts. Secondly the film itself is open to many interpretations from the superficial (It’s a great romp) to interpretations based...
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...or for its continued commendation of Hitler on the one hand and its thunderous silence regarding the Jewish question on the other hand. . . . [The popes] continued in the alliance with Hitler until the end of the war, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in payments from the Nazi government to the Vatican."[1] Jack Chick, infamous for his anti-Catholic comic books, tells us in Smokescreens, "When World War II ended, the Vatican had egg all over its face. Pope Pius XII, after building the Nazi war machine, saw Hitler losing his battle against Russia, and he immediately jumped to the other side when he saw the handwriting on the wall. . . . Pope Pius XII should have stood before the judges in Nuremberg. His war crimes were worthy of death."[2] One is tempted simply to dismiss these accusations, so wildly out of touch with reality, as the deluded ravings of persons with no sense of historical truth. This would underestimate the power of such erroneous charges to influence people: Many take these writers at their word. Stepping out of the nightmare fantasyland of Hunt and Chick and back into sunlight of the real world, we discover that, not only was Pius XII no friend of the Nazis, but that his opposition to them began years before the War, before he was elected to the papacy, when he...
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...Sometimes justice occurs, but usually only by accident, and even then it comes wrapped up in irony. Good is punished and evil triumphs. The hero, instead of enjoying the fruits of his victory, is brought low by some tragic flaw. Homer’s portrayal of the gods and of hell in the Odyssey…[big long quote] For Dante, in sharp contrast, the universe is ordered and just. The wicked are, eventually, punished and the righteous are rewarded, if not in this life, then in the next. Existence, while often painful and scary, is not arbitrary, but proceeds according to a mysterious divine plan devised long ago by an eternally all-knowing, loving and merciful Creator. For Homer, Hell is a place where all the dead must go. There is an order and inevitability to this vision of Hell for the non-living. This is in contrast to the capriciousness and arbitrary nature of existence for the living, who must live on a world controlled by the gods, who, because they are immortal and endowed with super-human...
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