The Ongoing Conflicts of Gender: A Prominent Theme in Things Fall Apart There are constant struggles between gender, identity, commodification, and class. Among the men and women in many African tribes that still exist today, there are divergences, which will always remain intact because of the...
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Nobel Laureate William Faulkner’s short story centers on a unique character – Emily Grierson mirrored in the fish -eye vision of the townsfolk of Jefferson. Miss Emily was a celebrity in her own right, with her sense of haughty lineage and her mysterious closeted life. “Alive, Miss Emily had been...
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THE QUALITIES OF CREON As readers, we have to make judgments and interpretations of different characters. In the book, Antigone, translated by David Greene, there is a character by the name of Creon. While reading Antigone, some important descriptions about Creon become apparent. He views himself...
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Imagine being stuck in a box with absolutely no way out. Everyday becomes another struggle to escape only to find that you are being controlled and confined for no apparent reason. One would eventually let reality slip through their hands and welcome insanity into their empty minds. This is the...
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Ethan From is the main character of Edith Wharton's tragic novel. Ethan lives the bitterness of his youth's lost opportunities, and dissatisfaction with his joyless life and empty marriage. Throughout the story Ethan is trapped by social limits and obligations to his wife. He lives an unhappy life...
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“Hedda Gabler:” Dealing with Men and Doing So “Beautifully” Henrik Ibsen’s play, “Hedda Gabler,” is an interesting story of a peculiar woman’s boredom with life. Hedda Gabler’s boredom and need for enjoyment causes her to manipulate the lives of those around her. Men love her; women envy her. This...
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Today in our modern world women allegedly have the same rights as men, but women really aren’t looked at as equals. In fact, many women around the world are oppressed by their patriarchic societies, including in the United States. It’s tragic that half of the human population is oppressed just...
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In Elie Wiesel"s novel Night, the main character Elizer goes through a series of changes. Elizer, "Elie", is born in a town in Transylvania Hungary by the name of Sighet in 1928. Elie lives in a very highly orthodox Jewish family, and this shows in many of his personality traits and interest as a...
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Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion primarily highlights the definitive contrast between different levels of modern society. Though people generally accept that there are distinct social classes present in their lives, they rarely consider what makes this distinction so clear. In the play, Shaw illustrates...
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?Fizzah Abid Warris October 22, 2013 Tess of the D’Urbervilles If Fate is behind Tess’s Tragedies, why does Angel find it difficult to forgive her given the fact he ‘loved’ her? “You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit. ” These were the words spoken by Angel in Chapter Thirty-Five...
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Offered’s Lost of Identity The main character of this book is Offered, one of the faceless many of the new Republic of Gilead. Each day she is removed farther and farther from her true self, to a complete no one. Expected to feel nothing, think nothing, and want nothing, she is used only as...
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Thomas, an Incidental Hero A hero is a person of distinguished courage or ability, who sacrifices himself for other people, and leads people through difficult situations. In the book, The Maze Runner, there were many heroes but Thomas was the most heroic character. Even though Thomas was a new...
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In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, August acts as the unorthodox religious leader of the Daughters of Mary and contributes to Lily’s character and growth. August proves to be a leader, and a positive influence towards Lily in every action she performs. She welcomes Lily, a white girl...
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This essay will provide a brief overview and personal opinion of the Modern African Literature of "Things Fall Apart", "Efuru", and "So Long a Letter". These books directly identify the transformation required by each individual for their survival within the groups/clans where they resided. The...
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“Barn Burning” and “A Rose for Emily” each tell a story from both side of the class divide. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the grandeur of the Old South begins to fade away and the seamy underside of the upper crust begins to literally seep through the floorboards with an intolerable...
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In 'Antigone' written by Sophocles, Creon is the tragic hero. Creon is the tragic hero because of his error in judgement, stubborn way of ruling Thebes, his change, and all the tragedy brought on by his actions. Although Creon changed only when a messenger told him there would be a tragic...
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In life, we may all at times experience our own version of a catch-22; a frustrating situation in which one is trapped by contradictory regulations or conditions. (Dictionary. com). Our desired outcome of the situation appears unattainable due to the ridiculous rules we are to abide by. In the...
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Crystal Spears Professor Brown American Classics April 27, 2008 Frome’s Desire and the Path to the Elm Of the many themes present in Edith Wharton's tragic novel, Ethan Frome that could be discussed at length, one of these that above all seem to drive the plot of the novel from event to event...
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In Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, the oppression of women in the victorian era is shown through Hedda’s resistance of those societal norms that limit her to a domestic life. It is fitting that the title of the play is Hedda's maiden name, Hedda Gabler, for the play largely draws upon...
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Lolita, the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, tells the story of Humbert Humbert, who is a perfect example of a pedophile. Dolores "Lolita" Haze becomes the sexual object of a pedophile's desires and is left unprotected with the sudden death of her mother. Although the character Humbert Humbert describes...
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In one of the most original plays ever written, “No Exit” illustrates the modern day interpretation of hell; “Hell is other people,” being its central Sartrean existentialist theme. As the title suggests, it is a play about the consuming, inescapable gaze of the other and the inevitability of...
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How Higgins and Pickering treat Eliza Different but yet the same! The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is about how a poor simple woman is taught how to become an elegant flower girl by professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. How come that although Mr Higgins and Colonel Pickering treat...
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“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.” — — “Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.” — — “Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?""Yes.""All like ours?""I don't know, but I think...
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War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. The party slogan of Ingsoc illustrates the sense of contradiction which characterizes the novel 1984. That the book was taken by many as a condemnation of socialism would have troubled Orwell greatly, had he lived to see the aftermath of his...
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Maze Runner is a science fiction book by James Dashner. It takes place in a testing facility that is a giant maze in a post apocalyptic world. The main character Thomas' greatest fear is being stung by a griever. Grievers are large half mechanic half slug monster with mechanical arms and if it...
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The Secret Life of Bees Essay “There is nothing perfect, there is only life,” is one of the most inspiring aphorisms that August uses in the book The Secret Life of Bees. August says this to Lily to teach her about life and how it is not perfect. This lesson is shown in many ways, one being when...
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"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe vs. "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats When comparing the novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe and William butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming", at first there seem to be no similarities except for the phrase "things fall apart" which is used in...
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It is very inevitable that somewhere in our lives, we have been touched by a special bond called “friendship”. That special bond might happen in the most unusual time and place. It might even be connected not just with love, but also with envy and selfishness. A Separate Peace is a timeless novel...
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Antigone vs. Socrates In the plays Antigone and the Crito the two lead characters, Antigone and Socrates, showed completely different ideas regarding their responsibilities to the State. Antigone believes in divine law and does what she thinks that the Gods would want her to do. Socrates, on the...
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The critical reputation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) is a curiosity. The book is often praised, even celebrated, yet most critics are still puzzled by such basic matters as the structure of the novel. Friends and foes alike tend to agree that the novel is hilarious but also that it is...
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The novel Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, is a tale of a man and the eventual downfall of his life and well-being. Ethan emerges as the main protagonist and hero of the story. He is a proud man of tall stature and good nature. Although Ethan is not of noble blood and is very poor, he is still seen...
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Hedda Tesman’s motivation in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler has been subject to much attention in critical scholarship. Many critics have argued what they believe to be a motivation for Hedda’s behaviour; however some seek to deny any motivation actually exists. This essay will...
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Reading Lolita in Tehran In the memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, it talks about all the extreme risks the women of Iran are taking just to be able to do simple tasks, such as reading westernized literature (The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice). It documents the experiences of women in Iran...
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In his play, No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre examines basic themes of existentialism through three characters. The first subject, Garcin, embraces existentialist ideas somewhat. The second character, Inez, seems to fully understand ideas deemed existential. Estelle is the third person, and does not seem...
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The play of Pygmalion, written by George Bernard Shaw is an appropriation of the famous story of Pygmalion in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The main character of the tale, as the title suggests, is Pygmalion. Pygmalion, repulsed by the apparently loose and reprehensible lives of the women of his era...
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Injustice and Fate The theme of fate is one of the major ones in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”. Tess is a generally good person and doesn’t deserve even a tenth part of the misfortunes that happen to her. It is more of a fate than her own responsibility: Tess is sent to Trantridge against her will...
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James Fils-Aime The Handmaid's Tale Fact or Fiction The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel in which Atwood creates a world which seems absurd and near impossible. Women being kept in slavery only to create babies, cult like religious control over the population, and the deportation of an entire...
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Maze runner Essay By: Brandon Stewart In the maze runner the world was hit by a massive solar flare which ruined a lot of the land on Earth. Because of this there was not enough food and supplies for everyone to have enough to eat and survive so the government created a disease called the “flare”...
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Secret Life of Bees Book Journal Chapter 1 Lily Owens is lying in her bed watching bees squeeze in and out of cracks in her walls. She thinks about her mother, who died when Lily was a child. She also thinks about Rosaleen, a black woman who looks after her and her father, T. Ray. When the bees...
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When turmoil comes about, many have merely one attribute to rely on to help them overcome certain disasters: their faith. The characters of Things Fall Apart are no exception. The people of Umuofia call upon representatives of the spirit world as a means of hospitality. They rely on their religion...
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A Separate Peace: Social Stereotypes Thesis: The five main characters in John Knowles' A Separate Peace represent social stereotypes, according to some people. In his book A Separate Peace, John Knowles represents jocks with Phineas, a character who believes that sports are the key to life...
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In the play Antigone there are many references that link to the oppression of women. Creon made many convictions insulting womenkind. His convictions seemed true to a large population of men. I believe the majority of men, in the ancient Greek times believed in the undeniable domination of...
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I Can See Clearly Now Flannery O’Conner argued that “[Distortion] is the only way to make people see”. This famous statement is initially contradictory and incongruous, but in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 it is easy to see the truth of this paradox. The pages of Catch-22 are...
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Many have experienced the miserable dilemma that two conflicting desires can create. The eighteenth-century British novelist Laurence Stern once wrote, “Nobody, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength...
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In Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler,” the title character surrounds her life with three different men, each serving a different purpose. Hedda’s first romantic interest was with Eilert Lovborg. She first met Eilert when he came to visit the General, her father. During these visits...
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Vladimir Nabokov’s choice of subject in his novel Lolita shocked readers, but that was essentially why he chose it. Beetz, states that Nabokov’s first inspiration for the novel came from a newspaper story about an ape “‘who after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever...
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I would like to take this opportunity to discuss Jean Paul Sartre's philosophy and it's integration into his play "No Exit". Embedded within the character interactions are many Sartrean philosophical themes. Personal attributes serve to demonstrate some of the more dominant ideas in Sartre's...
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Twentieth century Britain is dubbed the victorian era in which the woman is just the female of humanity, and that they have certain things to do in society. It is socially accepted that women care solely for the children, the house, the cooking and the cleaning and the men are the breadwinners and...
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel that was written by Mark Twain. The novel was published in 1884 in England and a year later in the United States. The book chronicles the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a boy running away from being “sivilized” and Jim, a runaway slave. The book...
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The Handmaids Tale The first two paragraphs of the book The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood have great importance to the rest of the book. It introduces the main character and the world that she used to live in. The two paragraphs are written with many clues that suggest what time it played in...
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