«A common trend in American writing is to highlight gender differences. Authors appear compelled to hammer home the concept of women’s suffrage, representing women as nothing but the weaker, fairer sex. In a way, it’s almost a case of reverse...» Document abstract
$4.95
5 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 1 times
SummaryA common trend in American writing is to highlight gender differences. Authors appear compelled to hammer home the concept of women’s suffrage, representing women as nothing but the weaker, fairer sex. In a way, it’s almost a case of reverse sexism, proving the other side right by inversely separating the group in question from the rest. Ayn Rand focused also on the sexes. Instead of pitying her female characters, she raises them to extraordinary heights before reducing them to a level of trained obedience. In her opinion, a life full of servitude and compliance is a woman’s place in society. It is also the only happiness she should be allowed to experience in her life, as it was the only happiness she experiences in her own. Ayn Rand’s portrayal of women in her fictional works is a reflection of her own personal beliefs on gender roles.
«Romeo loved Juliet, Juliet loved Romeo, and in the end, they both died to prove it. Neither the Capulets nor the Montagues could understand such love, so neither could allow such love. Romeo and Juliet died to prove it. Yet centuries later,...» Document abstract
$6.95
7 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryRomeo loved Juliet, Juliet loved Romeo, and in the end, they both died to prove it. Neither the Capulets nor the Montagues could understand such love, so neither could allow such love. Romeo and Juliet died to prove it. Yet centuries later, William Shakespeare’s darker tragedy is still revered as one of the greatest love stories of all time. The politics of Elizabethan England that pitted family against family are not so prominent in the modern Western world, but the love created between Romeo and Juliet, a love that existed outside the boundaries of societal acceptance, still exists. Many homosexual youths stand on the edge of a lifelong battle for the right to love. But the only love they can ever hope for is one born of loneliness, of desperation, of suffering: the love of Romeo and Juliet; the love destined for end. The love that shatters the very sanctity that love has been expected to preserve. Léa Pool’s Lost and Delirious paints an accurate yet painful picture of a lesbian love torn apart by the predisposed expectations of a private high school. It paints the picture of two girls striving for an absolute acceptance that can never be. But the film is more than the tragic portrayal of an adolescent homosexual relationship; it is the tragic portrayal of this relationship as the embodiment of romantic love.
«One cannot discuss the concepts of gender without looking at the various frameworks in which it exists. In Paradoxes of Gender, Judith Lorber states that gender is “a process of social construction, a system of social stratification, and an...» Document abstract
$3.95
4 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryOne cannot discuss the concepts of gender without looking at the various frameworks in which it exists. In Paradoxes of Gender, Judith Lorber states that gender is “a process of social construction, a system of social stratification, and an institution that structures every aspect of our lives because of its embeddedness in the family, the workplace, and the state, as well as in sexuality, language, and culture” (Lorber 5). But gender is more than an institution; it is an institution governed by an institution. And this institution is globalization. Not only is economy a direct reflection of a country’s mindset and intent, but it is also alters gender roles and restructures gender hierarchies. It has the both the power to build gender relations and the power to destroy them.
«In a modern era of corporate tyranny and the disappearance of an independent creative market, the artistic longing for originality is often forgotten. Radio stations sell out to public opinion, Top-40 hits recycling the last generation of Top-40...» Document abstract
$3.95
4 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryIn a modern era of corporate tyranny and the disappearance of an independent creative market, the artistic longing for originality is often forgotten. Radio stations sell out to public opinion, Top-40 hits recycling the last generation of Top-40 hits, and the hand-published pages of timid literary endeavors little the back shelves of Barnes & Noble like corpses on the beaches of Normandy. Because the Danielle Steele’s and Dan Brown’s of the writing world bare the arms, an army of the greatest living plagiarists, tapping into to public domain and regurgitating their own themes in the hope of producing exactly what their audiences desire. A simple kind of art, a simple kind of intelligence. It seems that the human desire to be the first, to be an inventor instead of a recycler, has vanished within the boundaries of popular literature. Now, attempts to attain originality are born mostly of hybrid genres, poets desiring to angst unconfined by poetical limits and fictionists seeking to write of love with all the beauty and sound quality of Shakespeare. Modern poetry is almost absurd in a sense, the product of coffee houses and lesbians reading to their guitars. From published collections to college workshops, form poetry has become a thing of history, and only laziness can describe the inability of poets to be original without completely destroying the sanctity of poetical constraint, for it is a talent, a precarious balance between uninhibited thought and control. More importantly, it is a sacrifice. Interestingly enough, one of the forerunners of this so-called new-and-improved experimental poetry was also one of the most notable of modern formalists: E. E. Cummings. Known mostly for his abstract syntax and absurd punctuation, his love for the sonnet form is rarely remembered in comparison to his unrestrained free verse, and he “turned to [it] more often than to any other form” (Mason 313). In many ways, however, he was a master of balance between form and emotion. For being a formalist does not always mean that the thought must be altered in order to adhere to an austere code; instead, E. E. Cummings bent the rules of formalist poetry to compliment his ideas, as exemplified in his poem “twentyseven bums give a prostitute the once” from his 1923 collection, Tulips & Chimneys (Appendix A).
«Dante’s Inferno, while a fictionalized version of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, is in many ways an accurate portrayal of the doctrines of Christianity. However, this Hell he creates is a Hell the Bible never expected. Influenced by the growing...» Document abstract
$2.95
3 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryDante’s Inferno, while a fictionalized version of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, is in many ways an accurate portrayal of the doctrines of Christianity. However, this Hell he creates is a Hell the Bible never expected. Influenced by the growing mistrust of the Pope throughout his native Florence, he never hesitates to write with personal opinion in the forefront. He burns Church officials next to petty thieves, and his self-righteous pursuit of salvation creates an animosity toward sin, especially the sins of other less devout individuals. The Inferno is a vivid painting of eternal torment, punishments directly influenced by the crimes with a touch of Dante’s repulsive imagination. However, he is also quick to make his passion for the human body clear: he is completely disgusted by the disfiguration of any fellow man. His hatred of non-human shapes, echoed in the xenophobic attitude of the Church, is glorified by his use of monsters in his Inferno, monsters that are all distortions of humans. These pre-Christian monsters, presented as horrendous entities in contrast to living creatures, never had a chance for Heaven, and Dante never gives them a chance for redemption. Limbo is a place for virtuous pagans; Dante presents the monsters in the Inferno as purely blasphemous. He assumes this judgment to be common sense, that anything not created by God in his very likeness can never deserve sympathy. Yet a modern world, separated from Roman Catholic control, looks beyond original sin to declare damnation. Dante fails to prove that the monsters in the Inferno belong there beyond reason of their foreign birth, and in the numerous contradictions throughout, he proves the opposite.
«I picked It’s OK to Be Neurotic: Using Your Neuroses to Your Advantage by Frank Bruno from the bottom row on the third book case in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble because the title on the spine was so obnoxiously bold and it was shelved at...» Document abstract
$2.95
3 word format
Language : english
literature
book review
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 5 times
SummaryI picked It’s OK to Be Neurotic: Using Your Neuroses to Your Advantage by Frank Bruno from the bottom row on the third book case in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble because the title on the spine was so obnoxiously bold and it was shelved at the wrong end of the alphabet. They say not to pick a book by a glamorous color, and I don’t think you can get any less glamorous than plain old bold, white, block letter font in the family of Times New Roman. I am pleased to say my haphazard selection process proved fruitful in the end. It’s OK to Be Neurotic is exactly what it seems: an aide to being neurotic. That’s right: a self-help book that is not trying to force upon its readers ten easy steps to changing their entire lives. As the author states, he does not want to “cure [the reader] of [his or her] neurosis,” but instead “provide guidelines for living with [a] neurosis” (Bruno 3). I honestly did not expect such a book to exist let alone prove successful, but Frank Bruno presents an honest case that is undeniably helpful to everyone, neurotic or not, even in the smallest of ways.
«Any author to have ever written, from poetry to prose to every other genre in-between has been confronted with one universal question: where do you get ideas for your characters? And really, the answer is just as universal. It is impossible to...» Document abstract
$1.95
2 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryAny author to have ever written, from poetry to prose to every other genre in-between has been confronted with one universal question: where do you get ideas for your characters? And really, the answer is just as universal. It is impossible to create a completely original character, for the way people characterize is through traits. So the entire concept of a character is an imaginary person built from the ground up with desired traits. And a trait is always predefined by its existence in others, and in the author himself. This is why, we as readers, can love or hate characters, because we see pieces of our friends, our families, ourselves in them, both the positive and the negative. Through exploring the traits and characteristics of these imaginary beings, we can better learn who we are and who we may become.
«According to newspaper headings and television reports, every man and woman who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is a hero. Even three years later, memorials are still built, hymns are still sung, and candlelight vigils are still...» Document abstract
$2.95
3 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryAccording to newspaper headings and television reports, every man and woman who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is a hero. Even three years later, memorials are still built, hymns are still sung, and candlelight vigils are still held in remembrance of the bravest individuals modern America has ever known. The ancient Greeks would be all too happy to disagree. In fact, they would find the blind sacrifice of life in the name of a social duty to be a waste. Morality as a system of reasoning is a contemporary phenomenon; the extremities of right and wrong did not become a true force in the decision-making process until the influx of Christianity. The “common good” did not matter until the Romans placed society above the individual. The Greece of Homer’s Odyssey is a lawless Greece, and any kind of morality based on lawlessness is not morality recognizable by any ethicist. Greeks, as a reflection of their cultural beliefs, use their literature to stress the importance of two traits common to all epic heroes: the fulfillment of Xenia and Kléos. Xenia, an extravagant form of hospitality, divides the civilized from the uncivilized, while Kléos, an emphasis on death with honor above all, divides the heroic from the ordinary. The Greek hero is ultimately selfish; consequently, the greatest hero in all of epic history, Odysseus, is the most selfish man of all. In the shadow of terrorism, it is hard to admire a man who reputes any sense of humanity. However, Odysseus remains the truest embodiment of epic heroism, not based on any duty to society, but on his strict adherence to the Greek ideologies of Xenia and Kléos.
«If Holocaust literature strives to portray the paradoxical (the representation of the unrepresentable, the expression of the inexpressible), maybe it too is a paradox. Confessions of the unspeakable, the unthinkable in written word. And yet it...» Document abstract
$2.95
3 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 1 times
SummaryIf Holocaust literature strives to portray the paradoxical (the representation of the unrepresentable, the expression of the inexpressible), maybe it too is a paradox. Confessions of the unspeakable, the unthinkable in written word. And yet it exists, tangible, published. In memoir and fiction and essays, these expressions and representations brought to life by countless authors, countless survivors. The witnesses to apocalypse found. No, Holocaust literature is only a paradox when it is misunderstood, when the intentions of these authors, men and women like Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, are mistaken for historical value alone. To represent the unrepresentable, to represent the Holocaust, would be paradoxical; but Holocaust literature only represents personal experience. The Holocaust in its entirety is inexpressible, beyond comprehension. But individual stories and the individuals themselves are not. We, the readers, who hunger sixty years later to understand the Holocaust, we are responsible for creating this paradox, for we expect the impossible from these texts. These works are pieces of human experience, maybe even pieces of humanity itself. Experience, not explanation. Holocaust literature is unique to each author, for each experience is unique, each story lived differently, told differently. In a sense, maybe the term “Holocaust literature” is the paradox: it is literature instead about individuals transformed in the face of inhumanity’s darkest hour.
«There is a lot to be said about love. It saturates literature, Hollywood, every means of creative output known to the history of this planet. There is something mysterious about it, something undiscovered. So desperate have populations been to...» Document abstract
$1.95
2 word format
Language : english
literature
school essay
date published
19/10/2007
review : not yet assessed
level : Advanced
requested 0 times
SummaryThere is a lot to be said about love. It saturates literature, Hollywood, every means of creative output known to the history of this planet. There is something mysterious about it, something undiscovered. So desperate have populations been to answer the timeless questions of love that it can bring a group of men to a single meeting place to discuss the darkest regions of the heart and psyche. Plato’s Symposium has been hailed as one of the greatest discourses on love ever written. The language, the imagery, it contains quotes and stories that are so embedded in modern thought that they could never be separated again. The dialogue basically serves as a competition between philosophy and poetry; the premise is that the former is correctly educated in the ways of love while the latter is misguided. Symposium is not just an exploration of love; it is an exploration of what it means to be human. The speeches delivered in the honor of Eros go beyond mere contrast. They are used to chronicle one man’s flawed desire for immortality.
knowledge network
Sort by
Results 131 - 140 out of a total of 284
Subject :
Type :
Extension :
Language :
Size :
Document>literature