«Humbert, throughout Lolita, creates an inescapable defeat through his interactions with Lolita and his antagonist, Clare Quilty. These interactions contradict his early confidence in possessing Lolita. These characters consciously threat Humbert’s...» Document abstract
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Language : english
literature
book review
date published
05/05/2008
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SummaryHumbert, throughout Lolita, creates an inescapable defeat through his interactions with Lolita and his antagonist, Clare Quilty. These interactions contradict his early confidence in possessing Lolita. These characters consciously threat Humbert’s exclusive relationship with Lolita. Their successful efforts, especially those of Lolita herself, against Humbert’s idealized romance with Lolita stand as manifestations of inherent vulnerabilities within committed relationships, exposing a common thread between masochism and monogamy.
«Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is an attempt to offer an example of the true result of egoism, as opposed to the rational egoism of Western European Enlightenment literature. It became the intellectual fashion at this time to believe that natural law...» Document abstract
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Language : english
humanities/philosophy
book review
date published
29/04/2008
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SummaryDostoevsky’s Underground Man is an attempt to offer an example of the true result of egoism, as opposed to the rational egoism of Western European Enlightenment literature. It became the intellectual fashion at this time to believe that natural law was the only law, and that if men acted according to what was in their natural best interests, society would be better off. With Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky sought to fight against the moral corruption of the Russian people by these naturalist European theories. The Underground Man is a true egoist who makes full use of the free will that the rational egoists deny, and because of that is shown to be morally reprehensible. I think it is a mistake to read the Underground Man as being in intellectual agreement with the rational egoists, with emotional contradictions. It seems to me that he feels his form of egoism to be truer and fuller than the form represented by the “good men” who (claim to) act according to the laws of nature. Even a man as sick and wicked as the Underground Man wouldn’t be believably human unless he had a moral conscience, even if he doesn’t behave according to it.
«The Earle Perry Charlton biography, the Charlton Story, is about one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, in the early 1900’s. The book chronicles Charlton’s life from birth to death, and explains in detail his business relationships and tactics....» Document abstract
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Language : english
literature
book review
date published
25/04/2008
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SummaryThe Earle Perry Charlton biography, the Charlton Story, is about one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, in the early 1900’s. The book chronicles Charlton’s life from birth to death, and explains in detail his business relationships and tactics. Overall the main topic of the book was how Charlton amassed an empire out of virtually nothing and how he became one of the five founders of the F.W. Woolworth Company.
«The abolitionist movement in slave-era America was clear-cut and its ethos was simple: Free all slaves in the name of human rights. Looking back centuries later at those who argued for slavery, most would find holes in their argument that Africans...» Document abstract
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Language : english
humanities/philosophy
book review
date published
25/04/2008
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SummaryThe abolitionist movement in slave-era America was clear-cut and its ethos was simple: Free all slaves in the name of human rights. Looking back centuries later at those who argued for slavery, most would find holes in their argument that Africans were meant to be slaves because of their racial inferiority and lack of civilization. The great golden empires of Mali were obviously ignored, as well as the fact that mothers were screaming and crying for their children as they were thrown into nets and hauled away from their villages. Africa had numerous political systems and governments before the age of slavery, and it’s obvious that an African person can feel physical and emotional pain and distress like any other human being. As for intelligence, Africans and African-Americans merely needed to be given a chance to produce such minds as George Washington Carver and Thurgood Marshall. Can any argument on so-called racial inferiority be offered today that can’t be refuted by a non-Eurocentric look at history and biology?
«Edna Pontellier is a victim of the mother/whore duality, unable to escape the conditions of her culture that prevent her from being capable of self-actualization, and so walks into the ocean and never comes out again. This is the conclusion to Kate...» Document abstract
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Language : english
literature
book review
date published
24/04/2008
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SummaryEdna Pontellier is a victim of the mother/whore duality, unable to escape the conditions of her culture that prevent her from being capable of self-actualization, and so walks into the ocean and never comes out again. This is the conclusion to Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, in which she creates a character struggling to reinvent herself in the midst of oppressive expectation, to discover that such reinvention is impossible. It is easy to derive hopelessness from such a dismal ending, or a sense of moral redemption for Edna’s sinful character (as many critics of her time did), but it is important that Chopin’s readers instead consider how the story of Edna Pontellier lends itself to the larger discourse of and about women in a male-dominated society, as she both adheres to and strays from traditional depictions of women. It is through Edna Pontellier and the people in her elite sphere that Chopin makes room for dialogue about what women are up against in seeking liberation from male dominance by trying to level the playing field (sexually and otherwise).
«The explicit mention of fate occurs only once in regard to Dave Boyle in Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, but the battle between fate and free will in his life is evident throughout the novel. Dave Boyle, a tragic character, has little free will to...» Document abstract
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Language : english
literature
book review
date published
24/04/2008
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SummaryThe explicit mention of fate occurs only once in regard to Dave Boyle in Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, but the battle between fate and free will in his life is evident throughout the novel. Dave Boyle, a tragic character, has little free will to change the pre-determined forces that have shaped his life. The opening line of the novel “When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids…” reflects the plotline and the characters. This opening fatefully situates Dave Boyle into the slot of a less significant person. Before he peaked as a baseball star in high school, he was the sort of kid who was only invited to the movies because he knew all of the lines and could recite them as entertainment, not because anyone particularly liked him.
«According to Weber, industrial capitalism emerged in the west though the convergence of a number of key factors. Capitalism itself had existed in areas of the world prior to the west and had even shared some of the same key factors. For instance,...» Document abstract
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Language : english
economics
book review
date published
23/04/2008
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SummaryAccording to Weber, industrial capitalism emerged in the west though the convergence of a number of key factors. Capitalism itself had existed in areas of the world prior to the west and had even shared some of the same key factors. For instance, capitalist enterprises were found to have developed in places like China, and Egypt yet they failed to become perpetual and broke down into a series of smaller enterprises. One could argue that they lacked the union of Weber’s proposed factors, as well as a social carries to guide the required moral framework on a grand scale. According to Weber the main factors which gave rise to industrial capitalism in the west were the convergence of accounting practices, separation of the home from work, formally free wage labor, predictable law, and distinctive social carriers.
«In “The Little Glass Slipper”, Cinderella is undergoing what anthropologist Victor Turner, in his theory regarding rites de passage, would regard as a transitional period between being a girl under the protection of her mother and a woman under the...» Document abstract
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4 word format
Language : english
literature
book review
date published
23/04/2008
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SummaryIn “The Little Glass Slipper”, Cinderella is undergoing what anthropologist Victor Turner, in his theory regarding rites de passage, would regard as a transitional period between being a girl under the protection of her mother and a woman under the protection of a husband. During this transitional, or liminal, state, Cinderella is prepared for her new role by a series of instructors so that she may become what her culture views as an ideal wife. She is first instructed by her stepfamily, which teaches her through forced labor and maltreatment to become the ideal passive, hard working, domestic housewife. Once this training is complete, Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother further transforms Cinderella into the other womanly ideal, that of the pure, beautiful, desirable socialite.
«Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is her first book dedicated to “all the strong black birds of promise who defy the odds and gods and sing their songs.” The cage represents a life of racism, poverty, illiteracy and dysfunction. The...» Document abstract
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3 word format
Language : english
humanities/philosophy
book review
date published
22/04/2008
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SummaryMaya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is her first book dedicated to “all the strong black birds of promise who defy the odds and gods and sing their songs.” The cage represents a life of racism, poverty, illiteracy and dysfunction. The black birds represent the certain people in the book who overcome these odds and still sing their songs. In this book, Angelou tells us stories of her dysfunctional family, her low self-esteem and her experience with rape and abuse. After all that she goes through, she still rises above this way of life and becomes someone great and successful. She still “sings” even though her life is that of a “caged bird.” In her novel, Angelou writes about herself and others that have risen above the odds to become quite remarkable people considering the resources and circumstances that they were afforded.
«In the Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe paints a picture of the perfectly dysfunctional family in The Bradys, who are shown in stark contrast to the perfectly normal family, the Nugents. From the start, Francie Brady’s family was the epitome of unstable....» Document abstract
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5 word format
Language : english
literature
book review
date published
22/04/2008
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SummaryIn the Butcher Boy, Patrick McCabe paints a picture of the perfectly dysfunctional family in The Bradys, who are shown in stark contrast to the perfectly normal family, the Nugents. From the start, Francie Brady’s family was the epitome of unstable. Francie’s father was an alcoholic who abused his wife, and she ended up going to a mental institution after a suicide attempt. The hero of the family, Uncle Alo, turned out to just be another phony whose stories were fabricated. Francie had no proper influences in his upbringing to tell him what was right and wrong, which left him to basically take care of himself. Francie wanted to be proud and honor his parents, but at the same time, the only reason he became alienated within the community was because of his family.
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