PAPER Topics

... positive, happy side of life. A vain and spoiled person from her birth, Hagar never knew the problems of racism and poverty as other people in her small, midwestern town knew and felt. Hagar's life was completely devoted to Milkman, her cousin and lover. "He is my home in this world." (pg. 137) Her happiness, Milkman, would ultimately be her depression as "Ecclesiasties" finally turned her success into failure, though Hagar exaggerated the loss and apparently was not aware of the Biblical promise that her life would eventually regain confidence and prosperity. After Milkman no longer loved her, Hagar suddenly became a different p erson, "into a bright blue place where the air was thin ...

... Beth, dies. By the end of the book, they really have turned from little women into real women. Jo was the second oldest of the four sisters. Her birth name was Josephine, but she always thought that it sounded too feminine, so she shortened it to Jo. Clearly, Jo was one of the main characters of the story because many of the events centered on her and the audience learned more about who she was. She was a tomboy at heart and hated all the prim and proper ways of the ladies in those days. Jo was very blunt in her speaking and always said exactly what was on her mind. However, most people felt right at ease speaking with her because she had a way of making them feel ...

... (p.105). Oedipa¡¦s purpose in the novel, besides executing a will, is to find meaning in a life dominated by assaults on people¡¦s perceptions through the use of drugs and the muting of communications. Entangled in this chaos, Oedipa has to do what the Maxwell¡¦s Demon does: sort useful facts from useless ones. Pynchon involves his audience in that they also have to interpret countless symbols and metaphors to arrive at a meaning. One of the most effective techniques that Pychon uses to involve the reader in his fictional world is his use of details. His mixing of the specific history of Thurn and Taxis in his plot serves to overburden the reader with details that seems to have no ...

... Duncan. Murdering the king was an easier plan since the motivation in his dreams urged him on. Lady Macbeth also relied on the supernatural by her soliloquy of calling upon the evil spirits to give her the power to plot the murder of Duncan without any remorse or conscience(Act I, Scene V, ll.42-57). The three sisters are capable of leading people into danger resulting in death, such as the sailor who never slept(Act I, Scene III, ll.1-37). Lady Macbeth has convinced her husband Macbeth to murder King Duncan. On the night they planned to kill Duncan, Macbeth is waiting for Lady Macbeth to ring the signal bell to go up the stairs to Duncan's chamber. He sees the vision of the floating da ...

... the seas are silenced. This stanza establishes a cycle of darkness before creation and a darkness after destruction that lays a symbolic foundation for the rest of the poem. The next stanza depicts Thomas as he himself enters this cosmic cycle and reveals this tremendously cosmic cycle to be death. Thomas's word choice is crucial as he describes the death cycle in order to compress as much meaning into as few words as possible, because it is his words that allow the reader to comprehend death as a religious as well as natural and inescapable experience. The use of the words "round" and "again" in Line 7 confirm the fact that the poet is entering a cycle from which he initially came, and ...

... his depiction of torture and death at the outset. This has a compelling effect, and different uses of power. The first one being evident, that is the physical power. The other form of power is not so evident. It is the effect of this power on the mind of the individual. The punishment and extraction of information has gone from being a very physical and public ritual and evolving later to a private ceremony hidden behind walls, and consisting of mental torture. The individual wants to feel that punishment is carried out in some moral way. However, this way is not moral but simply a veil from society's view. This way one can pretend it is not going on. This book is intended as ...

... to be dignified by the name of love for the state" (Hathorn 59). These arguments, and many others, make many people believe the Antigone is the rightful protagonist. Many critics argue that Creon is the tragic hero of Antigone. They say that his noble quality is his caring for Antigone and Ismene when their father was persecuted. Those who stand behind Creon also argue that Antigone never had a true epiphany, a key element in being a tragic hero. Creon, on the other hand, realized his mistake when Teiresias made his prophecy. He is forced to live, knowing that three people are dead because of his ignorance, which is a punishment worse than death. My opinion on this debate is that An ...

... of tasteless artificial slop. The only available source of alcoholic beverage is, in 1984, a "sickly, oily smell[ing]" Victory Gin, and in The Matrix, an anonymous liquid used for degreasing engines (Orwell 8). The clothing and furniture is equally unappealing, being old, ragged, and looking as if it was salvaged from a junk yard. Moreover, not only do the protagonists have to eat unsatisfactory food, they are also unfulfilled sexually. At one point, Winston recalls his encounter with the prole prostitute, thinking about how he needed to use her services despite her elderly age because he needed an "outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed"(Orwell 57). In The Matrix ...

... is the kind of belt and buckle Drill Sergeant Mabel would wear during her inspection of Norma Jean’s house: "she inspects the closets and then the plants, informing Norma Jean when a plant is droopy or yellow. She also notices if Norma Jean’s laundry is piling up" (666). Everything must be in its proper place, having been ordered by Mabel’s strict discipline policy. Mabel’s discipline is the result of her anger against Norma Jean for getting pregnant out of wedlock, and the death of the baby a few months after birth; taking Mabel’s only grandchild. It is doubtful Norma Jean will give Mabel another grandbaby. She is thirty-four, and it has been fifteen years. Now, M ...

... Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ – which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:45-46) Darkness at Noon is a fictional account of the truth behind the Stalinist State at the close of the infamous Moscow Show Trials in 1938, where forty-eight of the fifty-four on the executive of the Communist Party were dead. All members of the party knew that Lenin and Trotsky had been the real leaders of the Revolution and consequently they did not accept Stalin as the successor to Lenin. So accordingly, as Stalin was aware of the aspirations against him, as he consolidated power it became more dangerous to have known Lenin. The result of this was that o ...