Full name Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie de Beauvoir, better knows Simone de Beauvoir is a very well celebrated twentieth century French philosopher, novelist, autobiographer, story writer, editor, and dramatist who is known as a vital contributor to the French intellectual movement, existentialism. This movement strived to describe human existence and the individual's position in an irrational and meaningless world.…
The Lais of Marie de France are a collection of short stories that depict situations where love arises. The author presents love as a complex emotion and demonizes it and praises it in certain instances. She is not always in favor of love as is described by the outcomes by some of the lovers in the story, such as when they either end up dead in the end or banished because of their love. The author presents this notion of love because she believes it is not always justified to love someone. In the book, two distinct types of love are shown. There is selfless love and selfish love which are compared throughout the multiple stories in The Lais of Marie de France. By comparing the two distinct types of love, a universal truth about love can be derived to explain when love is and is not justified.…
However as Zamperini points out; “The difference between recognition and attention is self esteem.”(Zamperini 21) Do people seek attention or recognition? The key lies in whether the individual has self esteem, whether or not they feel worthy of positive attention. One can break the detrimental cycle of self loathing “through hard work and accomplishments” (21) as Zamperini notes. Everyone deserves the sense of bliss that accompanies high self-esteem, they just might have to work for…
From past experiences I have learned the real meaning of respect. This word is more powerful than one can imagine. With respect comes unselfishness. When people respect others, they are treated equally. My mother and father always told me to be tactful in the way I treated others, so I would also be respected. It has worked in the past and will always hold true in the future. If someone respects another with proper judgment, people feel good inside which gives them a sense of integrity. When I give respect and witness how it makes others feel, I feel like more of a person. I feel proud. Honored.…
Nathaniel Hawthorne finds in colonial New England a compelling setting for his dramatization of the paradox of individualism—America was founded on the principle that to be an individual is to be separate from the state, thus creating a community, or country in the United States’ case, formed completely of separatists. The Scarlet Letter dramatizes the individualistic dimensions as this tendency of democracy that “relieve(s) the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow” (Hawthorne 29). The Puritans were a group of dissident voluntary exiles who sought to strengthen and reform the Christian community in England by leaving it—setting out across the sea for a New World, a New England that would furnish a model for reconstructing the old one. “The Scarlet Letter agrees with the doctrines of the Puritans” and envisions this moral and political paradox in terms of individual…
Compare the poets attitude to war in ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Who’s for the game?’ by Jesse Pope…
It is what keeps one noble and without it one becomes corrupt. Self-regard shapes a person and develops their character. The contrast of the strong and the frail are portrayed in Mr. Ewell and Mrs. Dubose’s ways to retrieve their vaule. Mr. Ewell’s failure to regain his self-worth led to his downfall. In his attempts to re avenge his dignity, he became a wicked man. However, Mrs. Dubose’s plan for self preservation made her a better, stronger person. She was free from her captivity. The quest to repossess self-respect is a long one, it made some characters stronger and tougher, however, others were weakened. Dignity is important to humans to carry on their influence and legacy for…
Both, Madame Loisel and the daughter from two kinds, find themselves in similar situations. The situations seem different but in reality they aren't, as both of them are expected to do certain things, the only different is that the daughter from to kinds in forced to do thing and Madame Loisel just feel like she had to do or to have a certain thing.…
It was once said by Barbara Jordan that “We as human beings must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.” Jordan could not have been closer to the truth. From race, to religious views, to ethnicity, no two people are the same. Without acceptance, people turn on one another. We must accept those who are different from from ourselves because if we do not feelings get hurt as shown in “Without Title”, violence occurs as does in “The Wife’s Story”, and wars are even declared as shown in My So-Called Enemy.…
In Joan Didion’s story, “Goodbye to All That”, she describes in detail her experiences in New York which were great in the beginning, but also caused her to leave after 8 years. So, when she said in the middle of the story that the “lesson” she learned is that it’s possible to stay too long at the Fair, she was referring to the fun times she experienced in New York which became tiresome, were no longer fun or exciting, and therefore, the party was over and time to go home. If the author had left New York the year before she started having negative feelings about it, she may have been able to hold on to the positive impressions she once had, without turning depressed which caused her to leave.…
I believe that having self respect is very important to being an American because if none of us had self respect then we would all be twice as hateful and aggressive to each other. Having self respect is really important and the way that most Americans see it, it’s not as important as most other feelings which is not true, But we also need to have courtesy for others so that we can get along, we might not all be friends but we can atleast be nice to each other to make some situations be figured out a lot faster and with less violence. Self respect is needed because as Americans we have certain rights, if we don’t have courtesy then a lot of our conflicts with each other will end in violence and hatred that we already have too much of in this…
Self-worth is “the sense of one's own value or worth as a person; self-esteem; self-respect,” or the way people view themselves in comparison to others, including, but not limited to, their reason to be. It seems that people’s self-worth is directly related to their reputation, even though it is what you think of YOURSELF, not how others think of you. The blurred lines between self-worth and self-esteem make such a topic rather difficult. Self-worth stood out to me as a different approach to reading this book. Since it is from the author’s point of view, the way she sees herself in her childhood and the way she is looking back at how she saw her life gives the storyline a whole new, interesting twist.…
The State of the Union address is portrayed as a “master class” in public speaking, as a result of the collaboration of stories embedded into the speech that contribute to a persuasive, antagonistic nature, as categorized by Joan Didion. In the essay, “Why I Write” Joan Didion, confesses to having stole the title from George Orwell, due to her appeal of the “I” sound. Immediately following this confession, Didion portrays the act of writing as being narcissistic, when she states, “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind” (Dision 4). The introduction of this idea, may cause the reader to question the act of writing, and reflect on previously read novels or…
Being one of the central themes in Othello and Hamlet, honor is used in very strange ways by Shakespeare. He has a way of showing how his characters can be very honorable or have a lack there of. He displays how honor is interwoven with personal integrity and how acts of attempting to keep a reputation can be confused with the acts of personal integrity. Lastly, he also displays how honor relates to the foresight seen by his characters. Honor can be connected to almost any actions made by any of the characters in these plays. He really keeps the readers/viewers guessing at what the motivations are for all of his characters. I will take a look into these motivations and explain my thoughts on such things.…
The study of honor in Renaissance cities presents an intriguing paradox. On the one hand, honor seemed ‘more dear than life itself’, and provided one of the essential values that shaped the daily lives of urban elites and ordinary city folk. For wealthy merchants and aspiring artisans, honor established a code of accepted conduct against which an individual’s actions were measured by his or her peers, subordinates and social superiors. Possessing honor helped to locate a person in the social hierarchy and endowed one with a sense of personal worth. The culture of honor, which originated with the medieval aristocracy, directed the everyday activities of urban-dwellers of virtually all social groups from at least the fourteenth century on.…