“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit” — Page 151 — “Believing takes practice.” — — “We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.” — — “I do not...
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Bartleby is a scrivener who suddenly decides to leave his work aside and not do it ever again. He was employed by a lawyer to perform labors as a law-copyists, his new boss assigns him a place near the office window. Initially, everything goes well as for Bartleby's performance, but one day...
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Throughout Edmond Rostand's classic play, Cyrano de Bergerac, the title character, Cyrano, is a passionate writer whose complex and rich personal qualities are the foundation of his peerless eloquence. Cyrano's unrivaled sense of humor is a defense against those who humiliate him for his...
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"If your smart you can have lots of frends to talk to and you never get lonely by yourself all the time" - Charlie This quote is from Daniel Keyes novel, Flowers for Algernon. I chose this quote, because I really think it show how cruel some people can be and shows how some people think that if...
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Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man depicts a realistic society where white people act as if black people are less than human. Ellison uses papers and letters to show the narrator's poor position in this society. Many papers seem to show good fortune for the narrator, but only provide false dreams. The...
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Macbeth: Lady Macbeth and Evil In a play that is abundant in evil occurrences, Lady Macbeth is the overriding source of evil in the first act. Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan, despite Macbeth listing eight reasons against the murder. When Macbeth is alone, we discover that he is a...
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Naomi SmithSummer 2013 Reading AssignmentHonors English 8/3/13 Characterization Analysis In Looking for Alaska by John Green, the protagonist, Miles “Pudge” Halter, is very dynamic. In the beginning of the book, Pudge had no friends and was looking for what he calls the “Great Perhaps. ” So he...
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Fate in Romeo and Juliet In modern times, and in the Elizabethan era, fate plays an important role in people's lives. Many people believe it to be written in stone, and unchangeable. Many others believe it to be controlled by a person's own actions. In Romeo and Juliet, fate is one of the main...
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The Alchemist "A Fable About Following Your Dreams. " By Paulo Coelho The Alchemist I. Life of the Author Paulo Coelho was born on 1947, Brazilian writer, best known for mystical fables told in simple yet symbolic language. He has received wide popular acclaim both in Brazil and internationally...
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Anne's optimism contrasts Peter Van Daan's initial pessimism. Rather quiet and bewildered by the sudden turn in his life, he spends much time locked in his own room. Anne gradually develops a romantic interest in Peter and convinces him not to succumb to pessimism but to hope for a better future...
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Wars are often complex in nature and are fought for diverse reasons. In the Iliad, powerful gods, great nations, and heroic people all fight for different reasons. Each has private motivations to fight the war. These private motivations are of special interest, because they help define the...
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Santiago, an old fisherman, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. For the first forty days, a boy named Manolin had fished with him, but Manolin's parents, who call Santiago salao, or "the worst form of unlucky," forced Manolin to leave him in order to work in a more prosperous boat...
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The stranger Chapter one commentary Meng Hua In chapter one of the stranger Camus have used special techniques and skills to portrait Meursault’s inner character without direct reference. Camus has achieved this using different diction, sentence structure, metaphors, contrasts and other types of...
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"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. " (82) '' Morrie. Morrie thinks that people reject to accept as true that they will one day depart this life, and for that reason, they do not live their lives as completely as they wanted it to be. Also, they represent many regrets as they grow...
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Nora of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Antigone of Antigone (by Sophocles) have all had circumstances pitted against them, yet within these unfavourable circumstances they have duties to perform. Their constraints as women or as people whose destinies are governed by fate have caused them to...
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Much can be expressed about the age old saying that the punishment must fit the crime, that if actions are committed, there must be an equal response, and that in all things there must—and will be—recompense. In the “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus, and later in the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” by Homer, the...
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In Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, the lawyer—who also functions as a narrator— experiences internal struggle between religious morals and the modern capitalism ideas, but eventually chooses capitalism ideas over religious morals. Bartleby’s peculiar actions of refusing to do every activity...
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The word sacrifice is defined as the act of forfeiting one thing for another thing considered to be of greater value. The theme of sacrifice is one that is exemplified throughout both Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, the story of a selfless hero, and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, which...
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Flowers For Algernon William J. Brennan of the Supreme Court stated, "If there is bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. " Flowers For Algernon by...
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Invisible Man is a story told through the eyes of the narrator, a Black man struggling in a White culture. The narrative starts during his college days where he works hard and earns respect from the administration. Dr. Bledsoe, the prominent Black administrator of his school, becomes his mentor. Dr...
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Macbeth: Witches Influence on Macbeth's Decisions In the Shakespearean play, "Macbeth," the witches influence on how Macbeth made his decisions played a crucial part in contributing to his eventual destruction. The witches were trying to create chaos by prophesying to Macbeth in order to get him...
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?I have recently read a wonderful book by John Green which is titled ‘Looking For Alaska’. The book is about a boy who is new to a boarding school; where he meets new friends and goes to “seek the Great Perhaps”. I think it’s a great book in which the author portrays the fragility of life, the...
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Romeo and Juliet vs Much Ado About Nothing As illustrated by the two plays Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare was a true romantic. In each play, his characters suffer great hardship, but in the end, he delivers them to a life of eternal love. Characters plot against...
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This assignment analyses the novels “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and “The Old Man and The Sea” by Ernest Hemmingway on the aspects defined in the book “Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By” by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall. First we analyze “The Alchemist”. A major feature of the book by...
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Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank What I am about to write is a summary of The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank. This book starts from when Anne gets her diary on her thirteenth birthday. The book is about when Anne and her family have to live in the “Secret Annex. ” On her thirteenth...
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Homer's Iliad is commonly understood as an epic about the Trojan War, but its meaning goes deeper than that. The Iliad is not only a story of the evolution of Achilleus' persona, but at times it is an anti-war epic as well. The final book proposes many questions to the reader. Why not end with the...
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Old man and the Sea: Parable of Man's Struggle with Natural Forces The "Old man and the sea" is about ? life', which is the finest and most ambitious thing for a parable to be about. Hemingway has written about life: a struggle against the impossible odds of unconquerable natural forces in...
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The Stranger The book that I read was called The Stranger written by Albert Camus. The book is globally famous and was translated to many different languages and texts. The original was called L’Etranger which was written in French in 1942. The plot of this story involved a man in his late...
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One part of Morrie’s personality is his ability to draw human spirit and genuine emotion from everyone he befriends. Morrie believes that love and compassion are key methods of communication. During their meetings, he tells Mitch stories about his life and about his personal beliefs; he teaches...
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From day one birds are born curious, but helpless. However, they grow and develop until one day they finally gain the confidence to leave the nest and fly away. In writer Ibsen's drama A Dolls House readers witness a very similar cycle happen to the character Nora. She is helpless and careless...
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Agamemnon Agamemnon is the first book in the Orestiean Trilogy written by the famous Greek tragedy writer, Aeschylus. Agamemnon is a story of justice and revenge. The story takes place in a city called Argos. It starts with Agamemnon, the king of Argos, away at the Trojan War. The city is eagerly...
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Bartleby’s Isolation and the Wall Introduction: “Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall Street” is a short story by Herman Melville in which the narrator, a lawyer who runs a firm on Wall Street, tells the story of a rebellious scrivener who worked for him named Bartleby. One day, Bartleby simply...
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Balcony Scene Comparison Shakespeare and Rostand employ unique writing methods in order to show the battle the characters in each of their plays, Romeo and Juliet and Cyrano de Bergerac partake in to express their true feelings for one another. Each play utilizes the motifs and themes of light...
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Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a classic science fiction set in southeastern New York, New York City. The fictitious prose traces a man's inner psychological journey within from a world of retardation to a world of great intelligence. Narrated through a series of empirical "Progress...
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"Who the hell am I? " (Ellison 386) This question puzzled the invisible man, the unidentified, anonymous narrator of Ralph Ellison's acclaimed novel Invisible Man. Throughout the story, the narrator embarks on a mental and physical journey to seek what the narrator believes is "true identity," a...
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Macbeth: Macbeth A Tragic Hero In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, we discover that Macbeth is a tragic hero. Macbeth is very ambitious, courageous, and a moral coward: all these things lead to his tragic death at the end of the play. At the beginning of the play, Shakespeare defines...
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Looking for Alaska I have read ”Looking for Alaska” by John Green published in 2005. Looking For Alaska is about sixteen-year-old Miles who lived a very dull life in Florida until he decided to move to a boarding school in Alabama. There, he meets new friends, ”The Colonel”, Lara, Takumi and Alaska...
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Romeo and Juliet: A Timeless Tragedy William Shakespeare wrote his ever famous play, Romeo and Juliet, in 1595. Like many of Shakespeare’s plays, the story of Romeo and Juliet is timeless and has proven to remain perhaps the most popular story of tragic love. In 1968, 373 years after the...
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Learning real life lessons and finding your place on Earth through your actions and thoughts is one of the most important things in life. For example, in the book “The Alchemist” written by Paulo Coelho the quote “Whoever you are, or whatever it is you do, when you really want something, it’s...
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Early yesterday morning, I saw that Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post had a story up about the years-long fight for white spaces entitled: Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks. It struck me as odd, because so much in the article seemed... wrong or misleading...
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THE IMPORTANCE OF HONOR AND GLORY IN THE ILIAD Honor and glory are central to the Greek character. Since heroes are the essence of the society from which they come, Greek heroes live their lives according to honor and glory, in all their varied forms. Honor and glory trigger an epic war that takes...
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The Old Man and the Sea In the novel, The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago the fisherman can be viewed as either a failure or a success. In the aspects of Rishi, Devata, and Chhandas we can see that Santiago is not a failure. He has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish, and he is the...
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Many people often base their opinions on a person by judging his whole life in general and his attitude towards life without caring about who the person really is deep down inside. This unfair reasoning can occur in the courtroom when people are put on trial and the judge and the jury must delve...
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Tuesdays with Morrie, written by Mitch Albom is a story of the love between a man and his college professor, Morrie Schwartz. This is a true story which captures the compassion and wisdom of a man who only knew good in his heart. A man who lived his life to the fullest, even until the very last...
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The central theme of this play is Nora's rebellion against society and everything that was expected of her. Nora shows this by breaking away from all the standards and expectations her husband and society had set up for her. In her time women weren't supposed to be independent. They were...
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Throughout the ages of literature, darkness has often been used as symbolic in representation for evil, concealment, and blindness. In the opening of Agamemnon, the darkness that consumed the scene was used for effect in order to convey indirectly, themes of evil, concealment, and blindness. The...
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Bartleby the Scrivener The narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener" is the Lawyer, who runs a law practice on Wall Street in New York. The Lawyer begins by noting that he is an “older gentleman” whose profession has brought him "into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and...
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12/30/11 The Real Relationship Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals...
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American Lit 2 Flowers For Algernon By Daniel Keyes Pp. 149-216 Here is a quick overview of the plot for this section. Charlie goes back to the lab and he takes over the experiment. Burt tells Charlie that Algernon is losing his intelligence. Charlie goes to the Warren home to see what it is like...
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Dolls. We are surrounded by dolls. G. I. Joe, Barbie, Polly Pocket, and WWF action figures. Prior to our plasticene friends we had paper dolls, marionettes, and delicately featured porcelain dolls. We are strangely fascinated by these cold, lifeless objects that look so much like ourselves...
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