Literature is an art form unlike any other, with a special ability to allow us to peer into the lives of others. In turn, we then are able to peer into the lives of these characters, revealing a more nuanced, complex portrait of human nature. The two books, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry both allow the reader to experience this complexity, by contrasting the characters reactions to the extraordinary and mundane events in their lives. By doing so, they both provide the same insight into human nature: the key to achieving one’s dreams is balance, and it is only by accepting the complexity of one’s own life, that one truly gets what they desire.…
Hope is the very essence of humanity. Without hope, without a “balm in Gilead,” what is the point of life? There is no greater punishment than the total loss of hope; the absence of hope is hell. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” the “ghastly grim and ancient” (46) Raven destroys the narrator in a way far more tortuous than a simple slit to the throat.…
Well then story doesn’t tell you what happens when she gets home. But I assume she started her long walk back to her grandson and gave him his medicine.…
Poe’s use of first person point of view gave the audience an insight on Montresor’s perspective, unreliability, and finally his manipulative personality. To begin with, Poe allows the readers to be connected with the thoughts and intentions of Montresor. The text states,”…
Determination, strength, hope, endurance, perseverance, and love are only a few words to describe the readers feelings while reading this story. The author, Eudora Welty, screams-silently through her gently placed words in story, “A Worn Path”. The inspiring and encouraging phrases spoken to someone, “never give up”, “keep fighting”, “never back down”, are the unspoken feeling through the characters perseverance, determination, and love. The tone in the story is displayed through life of a black, negro-woman, who faces daily obstacles, during a time when black Americans were treated unjustly and unfairly. The traveled path she is traveling parallels the obstacles that African Americans experienced while on their journey for racial equality.…
One of the most celebrated American Poets of the nineteenth century is Edgar Allen Poe. As a reader of his poems and short stories, it is evident that his “life had many hardships that inspired his work” (“Edgar Allen Poe’s Inspiration” 1). There is a clear “connection to Poe and the other people in his life to the characters in his poems and stories” (“Edgar Allen Poe’s Inspiration” 1). Specifically, “The Raven”, which was published in 1845, Poe himself considers it to be “the greatest poem that ever was written” (Ackroyd 119). Examining this poem, it is clear, that Poe’s writing of “The Raven” was greatly influenced by the events that took place in his short and tragic life.…
Through extended metaphor, the poet shows how facing something very difficult—some all encompassing problem—can lead to a triumphant, even exultant outcome, a chance for renewal which defies the enervating effects of time, and the negative, self-fulfilling prophecies of fear and stagnation.…
In literature, Edgar Allen Poe is widely known for his short stories that all have common dark, non-moralistic theme. Considering, Poe’s “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” have no exceptions. Theses works show exemplementry stories of narrators who have gone mad, murdered out of wickedness, and seek redemption from those who’ll listen. Poe’s unique writing styles and plot grabs hold of the reader’s attention and takes them down a dark, spiraling path of the narrators’ minds. From different theories from many acquiring minds, to the simple impressions given form the characters themselves, one can see the war between characterizing them as mad or thriving for deep redemption. However, in both these short stories, Poe’s narrators represent…
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, the themes of pride and revenge are deeply intertwined. They say pride comes before the fall, and it is evident that Poe was a firm believer in this concept. In his tale, it is the sin of pride that ultimately leads both characters down the path to ruin. The two main characters embody and express these themes. The protagonist, Montresor embodies revenge, his motives thoughts and actions are driven by it, his every move clearly calculated to “not only punish, but punish with impunity” (Poe). Fortunato, “the fortunate one”, our hapless antagonist, is led to his ultimate resting place because of an inherent weakness, his pride.…
Cited: Welty, Eudora. “A Worn Path.” American Literature. Vol. 2. Ed. Williams E. Cain. New York:…
1. What do you think Rodriquez is saying now that you have read his entire essay?…
Of Montresor’s noble family’s honor, pride, and tradition of perfect revenge and Montresor’s fixation of revenge that led to a downward spiral into insanity, neither is greater than the other. To truly find out one would have to ask Edgar Allan Poe himself. Even if one could ask Poe, Professor Amper would say, “In regard to Poe in particular, our understanding has come a long way. Research on Poe tells us that there is a great deal more to Poe than first meets the eye. It certainly provides a picture of Poe's work very different from what most readers conceive. Research has revealed, indeed, a bewildering tangle of contradictions in his work, which leaves us with astonishingly little consensus about what Poe is all about. Most scholars would…
Richard Rodriguez’s essay “The Achievement of Desire” can be described as an autobiographical text in which the author includes some self analysis in comparison to what he describes as the only description of “myself”(Rodriguez p.547): The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart. What Rodriguez is doing by writing this essay is to add further notion of the “scholarship boy syndrome” for future scholarship boys. His motif for doing this could be to make the reader reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of starting this profound experience as scholarship boy. At the end of his educational career Rodriguez makes it clear that he has suffered too much for the detachment from his family. This separation led him to miss out on a vital part of his life: family and friends. He does not want other people to experience this “loss” and his writing serves that purpose. The incorporation of Hoggart’s views shows us that besides being a good writer, Rodriguez is an excellent and tenacious reader. My personal opinion is that Rodriguez radically changed after having read The Uses of Literacy, his life goal has been to get an education and when he finally gets it he feels like he left something behind.…
Ambition is not so much the desire to achieve, but the action or method of getting to that desire, without the action it is merely a dream. When an individual speaks about ambition there is a straight idea of positivity embedded into it. Carol Anne Duffy’s education for leisure and Shakespeare’s Macbeth both have a very strong link to ambition and power, but they are by no means positive ambitions. In this essay I am going to analyse and compare the two piece of text.…
A middle class Spanish boy from Sacramento, who calls himself the “scholarship boy”, overcame a whirlwind of emotions, decision and regrets in trying to become an educated man. He looked to his teachers as his parent figures, mimicking and idolizing them. To him education was imitation. He became very puzzling to his family because he wanted to change who he was by trying to cover all trace of his Spanish heritage and soon even lost his accent. He was teased by his siblings and parents for spending numerous hours with his head buried in different books. Richard was embarrassed by his mothers and fathers lack of grammar and education. He would ignore his parents and isolate himself from the family, but they were still very proud of him and wanted him to have a good education. They sent Richard to parochial schools and to a college they couldn’t afford. For years, reading was a pleasurable activity for him, but soon after grad school he became scared of the silence in his life and grew impatient with books and realized that he wanted something more pleasurable out of life. He was tired of being alone and realized that being who you are is never something you should change or be ashamed of.…