Skip to main content

Home/ APLit2010/ Group items tagged where

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Nicholas Jensen

The Good Soldier - Where Men Win Glory Criticism - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: Dexter Filkins, of the New York Times Book Review, delivers a tough critique of Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer. Filkins believes that "This would have been a better book had it been a hundred pages shorter." Claim: Much of the background about Pat Tillman's life is unnecessary. Also, the tiny details that Krakauer recounts are "banal and inconsequential." Evidence: "Tillman doesn't arrive in Afghanistan until Page 230." The book is supposed to be about the death of Pat Tillman, and the ensuing cover-up, but Krakauer talks too much about Tillman's early life and the NFL. However, once Tillman reaches Afghanistan and Krakauer starts telling the story he promised, the book takes a turn for the better. Filkins writes "The death of Tillman is handled deftly" and that "Krakauer performs a valuable service by bringing them [facts] all together". http://go.galegroup.com.lib.chandleraz.gov/ps/i.do?id=GALE|A207732676&v=2.1&u=chandler_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Joyce Zhang

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: Jude the Obscure - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: Thomas Hardy often wrote novels set in locations familiar to himself, allowing him to know their true culture and thus write more true, compelling, profound plots. Claim: Thomas Hardy based the locations in his novels off real locations. He channeled the reputations of the real cities in order to write his novels. The locations not only correspond with real places, but with distinct portions of the plot. Evidence: "Hardy freely constructs a partly real and partly fictional locale to accommodate a series of 'local' novels." "This village [Marygreen] is based on Great Fawley, Berkshire, where some of Hardy's ancestors are buried and where his grandmother lived." "This town [Christminster] is modeled on Oxford with its many colleges and exclusive intellectual atmosphere." "Christminster represents a typical university institution." "Village [Shaston] modeled after Shaftesbury in Dorset that Hardy uses as the backdrop for Jude and Sue's troubled reunion." http://search.ebscohost.com.lib.chandleraz.gov/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=MOL0300100593&site=lrc-live
Ashley Cox

My Name Was Salmon, Like the Fish': Understanding Death, Grief, and Redemption in Alice... - 0 views

  • As with so many other works of contemporary fiction and film, Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones (2002) fulfills our fundamental and indelibly human desires for establishing vital interconnections with the lost friends and loved ones who adorn our personal pasts.
  • Time and time again, the most cherished works of our literary and popular culture reflect this abiding need to seek out our lost siblings, parents, and grandparents.
  • we long for the opportunity to wade back into the recesses of time in order to enjoy impossible reunions with the people who left their imprints upon our very souls
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • By narrating the events surrounding the Salmon family's tragic dislocation and heart-wrenching reunion, The Lovely Bones deftly taps into our yearnings to eclipse the laws of space and time. Even more powerfully, the novel depicts the many ways in which interpersonal tragedy possesses the capacity for tearing survivors' lives apart at the very moment in which they need familial companionship the most. The parlance of family systems therapy--with its accent upon the interpersonal dynamics that shape literary works as well as our own senses of self--provides us with a useful lens for understanding the Salmon family's trials and tribulations in The Lovely Bones.
  • as an inherently open system, the family must at once provide support for its individual members' integration into a solid family unit, as well as their differentiation, or emotional and psychological separation, into relatively autonomous selves. This mutual developmental process possesses the capacity for producing functional and dysfunctional families. In functional families, individual members evolve into fully realized selves that allow them to act, think, and feel for themselves. In dysfunctional families, however, family members develop pseudo-selves--often fostered by fear and anxiety within the system--and thus, such individuals frequently remain unable to maintain any real equilibrium between their inner feelings and their outward behavior
  • In the novel, Susie can only watch in horror as her family devolves from a functional system into a dysfunctional shadow of its former self. Family therapists describe the fashion in which the Salmons maintain their systemic dysfunctionality as a psychological state of homeostasis, which Barnard and Corrales define as a family's tendency
  • "In order to perceive change in one's life--to experience one's life as progressing--and in order to perceive oneself changing one's life, a person requires mechanisms that assist her to plot the events of her life within the context of coherent sequences across time--through the past, present, and future" (35). These mechanisms--works of narrative therapy--offer cogent methodologies that assist clients (or readers) in simultaneously identifying with and separating from the dilemmas that plague their lived experiences.
  • At the beginning of the novel, the Salmons' interpersonal relationship exists as a functional family system. Jack and Abigail Salmon enjoy a busy, albeit satisfying family life in eastern Pennsylvania, where they raise their three children--fourteen-year-old Susie, her younger sister Lindsey, and their four-year-old brother Buckley. After Susie's rape, murder, and dismemberment in December 1973, the family lapses into a dysfunctional spiral as they attempt to cope with a stultifying sense of grief. The effect of Susie's untimely death is rendered even more painful by the disappearance of her body save for a stray elbow, as well as by Jack's suspicions that a reclusive neighbor, George Harvey, is responsible for her demise.
  • "The reflective awareness of one's personal narrative provides the realization that past events are not meaningful in themselves but are given significance by the configuration of one's narrative," Polkinghorne observes. "This realization can release people from the control of past interpretations they have attached to events and open up the possibility of renewal and freedom for change" (182-83).
  • Told entirely from Susie's perspective, the novel details the post-traumatic experiences of her family as they attempt to make their various ways among the living. Existing in a form of atemporal limbo that she describes as a kind of heaven, Susie observes her family and friends as they try to understand her loss in terms of their own survivorship. In addition to her significant role as witness, Susie must also contend with her own anxieties about her untimely separation from her family unit, as well as her severance from the young life that she was only just beginning to comprehend.
  • "There is no question," they write, "that families devote considerable energy to maintain a certain amount of order and stability. Security," they add, "seems to be tied with a certain amount of stability and predictability"
  • In The Lovely Bones, Susie composes her narrative in an explicit attempt to make sense of her family's dysfunctionality and to explode the homeostasis of her former family system, thus allowing them to effect their own "new levels of functioning." Although feelings of morphogenesis for Susie will always be tempered by the finality of her death, she intuitively realizes that the sublimation of her family's homeostasis will allow both herself and her family to continue their progress toward selfhood--although obviously in decidedly different locales and through highly disparate states of being.
  • The particular manner in which Susie sorts through the tragic events of her family's post-traumatic experiences can be usefully understood by interpreting her act of narrative therapy in terms of the five "attitudes" toward death that Kübler-Ross postulates in On Death and Dying. These attitudes--which themselves mirror the five stages of dying that terminally ill patients undergo--include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. "The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope," Kübler-Ross writes. "It is the feeling that all this must have some meaning, will pay off eventually if they can only endure it for a little while longer" (139).
  • Abigail isolates herself by delving into the workaday world of the suburban housewife. Her obsession with the preparation of the family's meals and her daily chores allows the time to pass more quickly, thus limiting her ability to reflect upon her daughter's ordeal.
  • In The Lovely Bones, the first portion of Susie's narrative highlights the narrator and her family's struggle with denial and isolation as they simultaneously come to grips with and attempt to disavow the unsettling reality of her murder.4 Their feelings of denial and isolation function as "coping mechanisms," according to Kübler-Ross, as well as the result of the "inability of [clients] to look at their situations realistically" (37, 41). Unable to make sense of Susie's sudden disappearance from their lives, the Salmons initially cleave to each other, hoping against hope that somehow she will return to their midst. After the police report to the family that Susie must be dead, given that so much blood had been found at the scene of the crime, they begin the difficult work of having to confront her fate, as well as their own. Like her family, Susie finds herself unable to accept her passing: "I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother," she reports. "That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it" (27).
  • While her father purposefully refuses to allow himself to cry for her loss--to do so, he reasons, would make Susie's death seem all the more real--Jack copes by attempting to establish normalcy in the Salmon household within only a few scant days of her disappearance.
  • Meanwhile, Lindsey and Buckley act as their father's accomplices in his efforts to trap Susie's killer. In one particularly harrowing instance, Lindsey slips into Mr. Harvey's house in order to search for evidence. She narrowly escapes from his clutches, ultimately becoming the object of Mr. Harvey's sociopathic fantasies herself. In each instance, the family members' behaviors serve to exacerbate their ability to come to terms with their grief, rather than to sate their enduring despair.
  • In this fashion, Jack, Abigail, and Lindsey each develop pseudo-selves in order to quell their devastating senses of anxiety and pain. As the youngest member of the family, little Buckley can hardly begin to comprehend his sister's fate. He only begins to understand the extent of her absence from his life during a game of Monopoly, when he realizes that there is no one to play with the shoe, Susie's favorite game piece. Unable to cope with the significance of the moment, Buckley hides the shoe in his bedroom. As with the rest of his family, Buckley can only consider the depth of her absence in isolation from the rest of the unit. To do anymore, it seems, would force them to contend with the awful reality of a world in which Susie simply no longer exists.
  • In the second stage of their confrontation with Susie's death and the slow, almost imperceptible collapse of their family system, the Salmons experience the anger about which Kübler-Ross remarks in On Death and Dying. "When the first stage of denial cannot be maintained any longer," she writes, "it is replaced by feelings of anger, rage, envy, and resentment." According to Kübler-Ross, people in such situations often find it difficult to control their anger or to differentiate logically between the various objects of their animus. "The reason for this," Kübler-Ross observes, "is the fact that this anger is displaced in all directions and projected onto the environment at times almost random" (50).5 In The Lovely Bones, the family's anger takes many
  • forms. Susie's own anger reaches a fever-pitch when she learns the maddening extent of her killer's depravity. As she recognizes that her own death was just the latest in a series of unsolved homicides, Susie seethes as she realizes that Mr. Harvey's house exists as a "town of floating graves, cold and whipped by the wind, where the victims of murder went in the minds of the living. I could see his other victims as they occupied his house--those trace memories left behind before they fled this Earth" (182).
  • While Susie's anger rages in heaven, her father's inability to come to terms with her death pushes the Salmon household to the brink of psychological disaster. His suspicions about his daughter's killer begin to emerge after he visits Mr. Harvey's home and assists his reclusive neighbor in the construction of a backyard bridal tent. Mr. Harvey's bizarre behavior--including his odd remark that "the neighbors saw us. We're friends now"--culminates in Jack's nearly round-the-clock surveillance of the murderer's behavior. Egged on by another neighbor's advice that he should find a covert way of avenging his daughter's homicide, Jack begins casing the cornfield where his daughter died. After he mistakenly accosts a young couple in the field, an altercation ensues that nearly results in Jack's own death. "
  • I wanted my father's vigil," Susie reports, "but also I wanted him to go away and leave me be" (140).
  • Having sublimated her grief for so long and with her husband's increasingly risky behavior testing the boundaries of her patience, Abigail indulges in an extramarital affair--with the local homicide detective, no less--in order to stave off her guarded emotions.
  • Lindsey and Buckley respond to their mother's departure by rallying around their father, whose physical deterioration in the wake of his daughter's murder has rendered him into a shadow of his former, pre-trauma self. Yet by opting to become their father's protector and ally, Lindsey and Buckley also succeed in erecting complicated emotional walls between themselves and their estranged mother.
  • In the third stage of their post-traumatic experiences, the Salmons engage in the act of "bargaining," the grieving phenomenon that Kübler-Ross describes as the product of a given client's irrational fears about the future and his or her "attempt to postpone," if only temporarily, the inevitable processes of life and death
  • In the Salmons' case, the third stage involves very explicit efforts to delay their acceptance of the finality of Susie's death. In so doing, they postpone their capacity for achieving morphogenesis and become typecast in their familial roles.6 Such self-imposed constraints inevitably lead to identity diffusion.
  • Abigail, the overwhelming anxiety over her daughter's loss and the psychological disintegration of her surviving family prompt her to seek refuge by fleeing the Salmon household. When the first anniversary of Susie's death arrives, Abigail can simply no longer fathom the mind-numbing flow of the grieving process:
  • After spending the winter in her late father's cabin in New Hampshire, Abigail drives across the country to California, where she finds a job as a day laborer in a winery. As Denis Jonnes notes,
  • Abigail seeks to empower--or, perhaps more accurately, re-empower--herself by effecting her escape from the larger Salmon family system.7 Yet mere distance can hardly provide her with the emotional sustenance that she so desperately desires:
  • Lindsey attempts to lose herself in the business of living. Opting to go to school the first Monday after Susie's death, Lindsey begins steeling herself against the world. In class, Susie observes, "my sister did not look at Mrs. Dewitt when she speaking. She was perfecting the art of talking to someone while looking through them. That was my first clue that something would have to give" (30).
  • Buckley's youth is understandably complexified by his psychological over-identification with his father, and their intensely close relationship results in Abigail's triangulation after her return from the west coast.
  • About Literature Resource Center Contact UsCopyrightTerms of UsePrivacy Policy
  •  
    This article takes the coping mechanisms in the lovely bones and is connecting it to real life and gives more insight to why the acted the way they did and also how their different ways of coping lead to a divided family. 
Sierra Chrisman

Nine Stories - 1 views

  •  
    Claim:"where his Zen interests coalesced with his emerging themes, where he gave new life to the American short story." Argument: J.D.Salinger reveals what the new American life with the characters and families who chooses to make in his novels. Evidence: "Thornton Wilder published a magazine piece on the declining moral standards of America's youth, and John Cheever, as if to chronicle these uncertain times, published The Enormous Radio and Other Stories--featuring such emblematic titles as "The Season of Divorce," "O City of Broken Dreams," and "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor." Nine Stories tapped into this ambivalent milieu [(being in a area where there is a positive and negitive feeling towards one person)]: the stories dealt with genius, spiritual integrity, moral corruption, and the occasional ability of innocence to transform our lives."
trcqnsi

Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views

  • Burma exp
  • Orwell's Burma experience heightened his suspicions of social inequities and his sympathy for oppressed peoples. On his return to England in 1927 he aggressively transferred this suspicion and sympathy to the British class structure.
  • In 1936 Orwell wrote that his desire to "submerge myself, get right down among the oppressed" reflected the
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A first version, titled "A Scullion's Diary,
    • trcqnsi
       
      why would he name it first this??
  • bad conscience" he had acquired from the Burma experience
  • where the narrator is employed as a dishwasher. Here Orwell reverted to a favorite strategy: illustrating through analogy so that British readers might apprehend a lesson about class structure.
    • trcqnsi
       
      evidence??
  •  
    argument: Orwell's Burma experience heightened his suspicions of social inequities and his sympathy for oppressed peoples. On his return to England in 1927 he aggressively transferred this suspicion and sympathy to the British class structure. Claim: In 1936 Orwell wrote that his desire to "submerge myself, get right down among the oppressed" reflected the " bad conscience" he had acquired from the Burma experience. Evidence: where the narrator is employed as a dishwasher. Here Orwell reverted to a favorite strategy: illustrating through analogy so that British readers might apprehend a lesson about class structure.
Jon Collins

Stillness is the move - 3 views

Argument- People are never truly satisfied with themselves. Always trying to one up what they have and not focusing on the items, physical and mental, which they already have. There for people who ...

lit cricism

started by Jon Collins on 03 Feb 11 no follow-up yet
liza sejkora

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: Love in the Time of Cholera - 3 views

  •  
    This is where I as a researcher would put the main arguments proposed by the criticism, the main claims made by the author, and any potential pieces of eveidence I may want to remember for my research paper. At minimum, you would have one each. http://search.ebscohost.com.lib.chandleraz.gov/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=MOL9820000155&site=lrc-live
stephiesal853

Ernest Hemingway His Life and Works - 0 views

  • Hemingway recounted his experiences in "A Farewell To Arms," his 1929 novel about an affair between a wounded World War I soldier and his nurse
    • stephiesal853
       
      In "A Farewell To Arms," the protagonist Frederic falls in love with Catherine Baker, a nurse. Evidently, Hemingway is retelling a story about an affair that he had during his life with a woman he met in a hospital. Hemingway's life is told through his books in a similar manner, only with different characters. The story between Hemingway's real life and his novel, "A Farewell to Arms," also contain a similar ending, because his relationships never worked out in his novel or in his real life.
  • he met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky. Agnes and Hemingway spent some time together (see the category Agnes Von Kurowsky) but she dismissed him as being too young for her. She later wrote to him after he had returned to the States telling him that she had found someone else
    • stephiesal853
       
      This is one of Hemingway's first heartbreaks in life. Many of his heartbreaks are showcased in "The Sun Also Rises," as well as " A Farewell to Arms." In "The Sun Also Rises," the main character, Jake, faces a multitude of problems with his "lover" named Brett. She can't love him because of his wound he received in the war. However, this section refers to "A Farewell To Arms," where Frederic (portraying Hemingway) is heartbroken because of Catherine's death. The similar situation happens to Hemingway in real life where he is heartbroken because his beloved woman leaves him. In both situations, he is left by his woman due to death or pure lack of interest. This signifies why Hemingway writes often about love situations not working out in his books.
stephiesal853

Literary Analysis # 2 ("A Farewell to Arms") - 1 views

  •  
    Argument: Lists and explains in detail the characters that play a role in Ernest Hemingway's novel, A Farewell to Arms. Justifies that the protagonist of the novel is Lieutenant Frederic Henry, and that the woman he loves is named Catherine Barkley. Argues that the protagonist, Frederic Henry, feels pity and sorrow at the end of the novel (similar to the sorrow that Hemingway feels in his life). Evidence: "Henry is a protagonist who is sensitive to the horrors and beauties of life and war" ("A Farewell to Arms"). "Henry feels sorrow and pity…" ("A Farewell to Arms"). "When she falls in love with Henry, she gives herself freely to him" ("A Farewell to Arms"). Thoughts: The two main characters, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms are reflections of Ernest Hemingway in real life and of the love affair he once had with an Italian nurse, Agnus Von Kurowsky. Both characters in the novel are mirror images of what once existed in Hemingway's life. He nearly tells his life story over again A Farewell to Arms. However, he uses other characters to present his story. For example, he plays the protagonist character (Frederic Henry), and his one-time lover, Agnus, plays Catherine Barkley. Because of this, Hemingway has the opportunity to recount his life, let his feelings out, and put a little twist on the story if he pleases. However, the story of his life is tremendously similar to his books. He changes little of his real life and puts it into novels, and merely changes the characters' names. Quotes: "American who has volunteered to serve with an Italian ambulance unit during World War I. Like his Italian companions, he enjoys drinking, trying to treat the war as a joke…" ("A Farewell to Arms"). "…he is wounded, has an operation on his knee, and is sent to recuperate in Milan, where he again meets Miss Barkley, falls in love with her…" ("A Farewell to Arms").
Gisela Ortiz

Carson McCullers: Marxism - 0 views

  • Hunter portrays oppressed classes of the South, such as blacks and women, describes the "fascist" ideology in which they live, and uses Marxist ideas about religion as a central theme.
    • Gisela Ortiz
       
      Carson McCullers uses the same theme in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as in The Member of the Weddding; oppression in the South, racism, etc.
  • For Karl Marx, literature and art are products of an artist's labor that show oppressed people a picture of where they stand in their society. A work should "describe the real mutual relations, break down conventional illusions about them . . . but not offer any definite solution . . ." (Eagleton 46) . McCullers' novel exposes the ideology of the South in the 1930s as one in which blacks, textile workers, and women are oppressed. It portrays their individual struggles without offering a solution to them.
    • Gisela Ortiz
       
      Like in The Member of the Wedding, McCullers mixes in a variety of racist ideas and the belief of "equality" and uses irony to contradict these themes. She shows how oppressed the blacks are, but she keeps them in the struggle and she shows their hardships throughout her novels.
  • He mentions Jesus as an important historical figure, but then devotes the rest of his time to speaking of Karl Marx, whom he describes in religious terms.
    • Gisela Ortiz
       
      In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Singer is represented as a Jesus-figure. This is so, because the deaf-mute man is always there to "listen" to everybody's stories, hardships, etc.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Jake calls it "The strangled South. The wasted South. The slavish south" ( Hunter 254).
  • She argues that the book includes social and religious issues together because McCullers offers both white and black Christ figures. Champion writes that the black Christ is persecuted more severely than the white Christ, but the significant point is that they are both crucified: "Spirituality, loneliness and human isolation "crucify" all members of society" (Champion 52).
    • Gisela Ortiz
       
      Christ figures:black and white. States that even though these two "Christ's" are of different racial entities, they are both judged the same in the ending, "crucifixion" (being alone in life, isolation, etc). Not real death, but both live miserable lives.
  • McCullers states that the main theme of the book is "man's revolt against his own inner isolation and his urge to express himself as fully as is possible" (Smith 124).
  • Marxism in Carson McCullers' "Strangled South"
    • Gisela Ortiz
       
      Argument: Call states that in McCullers novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, use Marxist ideas and the theme of racial equality. Not only does she state that Carson uses oppression in blacks, but she never gives them an opportunity to end their struggle. She writes about it. Call also argues that she saw Singer as a Christ figure "with a different context" as in there was a black and a white "Christ". Of course, the black one is prosecuted more than the white one is, but they both live miserable and lonely lives.Evidence: "Hunter portrays oppressed classes of the South, such as blacks and women, describes the "fascist" ideology in which they live, and uses Marxist ideas about religion as a central theme.""...the black Christ is persecuted more severely than the white Christ, but the significant point is that they are both crucified: "Spirituality, loneliness and human isolation "crucify" all members of society."Thoughts: "For Karl Marx, literature and art are products of an artist's labor that show oppressed people a picture of where they stand in their society. A work should "describe the real mutual relations, break down conventional illusions about them . . . but not offer any definite solution . . ." (Eagleton 46) . McCullers' novel exposes the ideology of the South in the 1930s as one in which blacks, textile workers, and women are oppressed. It portrays their individual struggles without offering a solution to them."Call shows many viewpoints that showcase her argument that McCullers uses marxism in her novels. Even though Call uses many examples in portraying her argument, she uses mostly what other critics have said about this book and not much of her own voice. This feels as if it's more of an accumulation of many critiques put into one. Now that I have read this critique, however, I can see the different uses of Marxism in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Rianna Forcelli

The Philosophy of Beauty-- Ingleby - 0 views

  •  
    "The Philosophy of Beauty" is an essay that delves into Aestheticism, Wilde's life, and his works. He criticizes Wilde for his outlook on Aestheticism and how his philosophy of beauty was "never quite sincere," and that he did not write with "his heart in his mouth, but merely with his tongue in his cheek." He also criticizes where the writing, in the end, had gotten him, implying that the movement was in vain: after all, it did not help him towards the end of his life. It wasn't something that would become quite a revolution. This is perfect for a Literary Criticism because it looks at the other side of the argument, that Aestheticism really isn't as grand as Wilde or others had believed or still believe
Lauren Regester

Literary Analysis #4-Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: Author Sarah Hackenberg presents the opinion that women are only hiding behind their servant attitudes in order to get where they would like. She presents the sequence of events that led up to the initial true image of Jean Muir, not that of a nineteen year old but in fact of a haggard old woman. Hackenberg also gives certatin prominence to the idea of womens' highest achievement would be their marital status. The entire story epitomizes a servant of a governess that exhibits the standard female behaviors up until the very end where the maanipulative and devious women unmasks her self, hypothetically and literally. Evidence: "Most critics of "Behind a Mask" attend closely to the tale's radical gender and class dynamics: the way Alcott overtly aligns operating behind a mask with female power" (Hackenberg) "the fact that the governess's ultimate ambition, despite all her formidable powers of artistry and perception, is to "trick" a man into marriage..."(Hackenberg) Thoughts: Hackenberg raises many interesting points. Jean Muir was the ultimate woman. She only lacked in one area and that area was her status. Her only hope of climbing up in the world would to be marrying someone of a higher class. She said multiple times in the story that if this did happen to her that she would be completly content and only honor and follow her husband's rules. However, with the history that she has and what we know of her from reading this story we can be almost certain that Jean will not be content and will have to stir up some troulbe somehow. The story leaves off at a crucial point that leaves the readers contemplating all the different outcomes it could have.
Tara Toliver

Article Analysis #1 - 0 views

  •  
    The Survival of the Fittest Throughout The Handmaid's Tale, a major ideal is a strong feminist stance. The author is trying to convince other critics that Offred, a character in the novel, portrays a strong woman fighting for survival against politics. While others believe that Offred is "no hero," "a wimp," this author is convinced that she continuously "proves her consistent efforts not only to survive, but also to maintain her individuality." With the evidence the author has given to support his ideas about this ideal to survive, the evidence he provides proves to be logical. When the author states, "an examination of her more subtle rebellion against the oppressive totalitarian regime," he is persuasively showing that Offred portrays the strong nature of the human spirit. The focus the author commits on the argument is obvious. The author repeatedly compares Offred to other strong characters in other Margaret Atwood novels and in The Handmaid's Tale itself. This proves the author's consistency with the evidence he provides to prove his purpose. These also help show the pros of his persuasive side of the argument about how strong a feminine hero can be through human spirit. The evidence this author provides significantly supports his perspective. He starts out by attacking other arguments that have been stated, using it as a tactic to show that his perspective is more "correct." There is plenty of evidence provided in this article to help support his argument. With statements like "the Republic of Gilead is a typical totalitarian society in that it promotes terror tactics while enforcing its rigid dogmas," the author is setting up for his next piece of evidence. He uses the typical case where he sets you up for the next argument, uses evidence from text, and then attacks the opposite side of the argument, but all with a twist. Most authors would have used quotes from the novel itself or a source to attack the opposite s
Tara Toliver

Article Analysis #2 - 0 views

  •  
    The "Killers" In Margaret Atwood's novel, The Blind Assassin, there are many struggles that the main narrator addresses to represent the "killers" in the novel. The "killers" are all of the characters in the novel because they are blinded by love, family, duty, jealousy, vengeance, and other inescapable, socially defined tyrannies that comprise the fabric of life. These represent human nature and how much simple emotions can affect that fabric of life. J. Brooks Bouson criticized that Iris, the main narrator in the novel, had "linear but interrupted installments of her family and married history with her comments on her present daily life as an octogenarian" (Bouson). Iris's comments about family throughout the novel about her life are crucial to the fact that she is blinded by her duties to her family. When she was young, she was forced to marry a wealthy man in hopes that the union would save her father's factory. In fact, it did not, but Iris let herself be blinded to the fact that she would be miserable and that it would make her life more stressful. Also, within society, human norm is to "carry ourselves perfected--ourselves at the best age, and in the best light as well" (Atwood 311). Iris's comment shows that in society, even she keeps a shield on reality and that this bliss is an inescapable tyranny that keeps others from accepting who they are. Another societal tyranny shown in this novel was jealousy. "Iris's guilt stems partly from jealousy and partly from conventionality" (Watkins). She found it hard to find reason on why it had to be her that had to watch over her younger sister, Laura. In the confines of her relationship with Richard, Iris finds herself not actively participating. She was blinded to the fact that Richard was the one who progressed Laura's illness because she was jealous of Laura during their sibling rivalry throughout the beginning of the novel. "The nove
Austin Joy

Analysis of A Thousand Splendid Suns - 0 views

  •  
    A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book about women in Afghan and their struggles. In the article Harvey Thompson discuses the problems women face in Khaled's book A Thousand Splendid Suns. "At first, Mariam shows only contempt towards the "interloper," but slowly a friendship develops between the two women. They make common cause and endure degradation, starvation and brutality at the hands of their husband until they are forced to take up a desperate, joint struggle." This shows how women are treated. These women lives are mostly like property being married off to much older men, and having their children. Why have to be a mother at the age of 15 is beyond me but this it's their religion and they are not able to change this life. Thompson also discusses the problems of relationship destroyed at such young ages. For example, Mariam and her father. "The story begins in 1974, as Mariam, an illegitimate child of a wealthy businessman from Herat, is growing up. Her father did not have the courage to marry her mother after "dishonouring" her" (Thompson). The tragedy behind this lost relationship is that her father was the one to marry her off Mariam. Many problems are seen throughout both of Khaled's book. The main factor of both is relationship problems. "Hosseini was born in Kabul, where his father worked for the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry. In 1970, the family moved to the Iranian capital where Hosseini's father worked for the Embassy of Afghanistan. In 1973, Hosseini's family returned to Kabul" (Thompson). It almost seem that he has had some problems within his own family making him want the world to know what happens behind close doors.
Marisa R

Eleanor Rigby Lyrics - 3 views

Argument: The Douglas Coupland Book, Eleanor Rigby has a similar theme of depression and loneliness as the Beatle's song, Eleanor Rigby Claim: The woman Eleanor Rigby is extremely depressed and lo...

eleanor rigby lyrics

started by Marisa R on 23 Jan 11 no follow-up yet
Amanda Beinlich

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com - 0 views

  •  
    Source #3 Argument: Connection is why we're here. Claim: Shame is the fear of disconnection which leads to vulnerability. The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe their worthy of love and belonging. We fear we're not worthy of connection. The people who thought they were worthy had courage, compassion, connection, and embraced vulnerability. We numb vulnerability however we cannot selectivly numb emotion. Evidence: Between the main characters in both novels they feel this way as described in the claim. They both get to that numb vulnerability stage where they don't exactly know how to handle it.
Lorynn Cancio

Wealth Breeds Alcoholism - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: Wealth is dangerous to society because it leads to moral deterioration in the form of drugs and alcohol. Claims:-Wealth skews personal identity leading to feelings of superiority and entitlement -Wealth provokes an unattainable desire for happiness through the forms of luxury and indulgence Evidence: -"Alcohol or drugs are used to escape the pain brought on by a warped perspective, and the rich have no trouble getting more, whenever desired." -"For example, in cases of inheritance, where wealthy individuals didn't really earn their money at all, there are high rates of abuse and addiction." -"However, happiness soon becomes an unattainable ideal when it gets tied up with an insatiable desire for personal possessions and luxurious living. When you always want more, you're never satisfied, and the dissatisfied are more likely to turn to drugs or alcohol."
Joyce Zhang

Literature Resource Center - Document - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: In writing Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte was divinely inspired by her surroundings, enabling her to create eerily realistic characters and a dreary, yet true setting. Claim: The moors in Wuthering Heights are based on the moors that stretch around her home. She knew her surroundings well. Joseph is based on hill-farmers that lived in the moors around her home. Emily Bronte was a very down-to-earth person. Evidence: "She was a very private person, rejecting such contacts with the world as were offered her through her sister Charlotte and her London publishers." "The author's close familiarity with the local rustic types, the fiercely independent hill-farmers living about the moors, enabled her to create the old curmudgeon Joseph." "In creating such a character as Joseph, Emily Brontë showed that, undoubted visionary as she was, she also had her feet firmly planted on earth." "All the source of her health and happiness, and the inspiration of her writing, were the moors that stretch 20 miles round about her home, Haworth, where she spent her whole life. Her intimate knowledge of the moors at all seasons of the year, and of the wildlife inhabiting them, gave her all the stimulus she needed to enrich her imagination and inspire her writing." http://go.galegroup.com.lib.chandleraz.gov/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CH1420001074&v=2.1&u=chandler_main&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
James Cadena

Literary Analysis #4- Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien - 0 views

  •  
    Argument: In his criticism, Froelich states that the novel Going After Cacciato gives the true realities of war through the experiences of the main characters in the story. He believes that O'Brien described the events in way that actual veterans of the war would. He also appreciates the technique where O'Brien combines the confusion in the story where the characters go back and forth between actuality and imagination. He would go onto agree that the book was well deserving of the National Book Award it received. Evidence: "…it innovatively combines experiential realism of war with surrealism, primarily implemented in the fantasy journey of escape by the novel's protagonist, thoughtful and sympathetic soldier Paul Berlin." Thoughts: I would go onto agree with all of the claims that Froelich made in his criticism. I believe that the way O'Brien explained the events, as if a veteran was telling the story, brought much life to the novel and characters. He showed true confusion, emotions, and thoughts that shows how truly harsh war is and was in Vietnam.
1 - 20 of 53 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page