In Deborah Samson’s child and teenage years were rough because she lived in poverty. It didn’t make anything any better when her father left on a expedition at sea and never came back. She was taken from her mother and was in the care of her grandparents. When her grandparents passed away she moved in with a farmer living in Middleborough. She was only ten years old and was expected to work as an indentured…
According to Duff and Garland, what are the central differences between ‘consequentialist’ and ‘non-consequentialist’ (often referred to as ‘retributivist’) theories of punishment?…
This story of inequality between the sexes appropriately opens with a detailed account of the narrator's father. The narrator describes every aspect of her father's life, including his occupation, and even his friends. Throughout this first part of the story, the narrator's mother is virtually inexistent, outside her disapproval of her husband's pelting business. The reader is left uncertain about the mother's whereabouts, but is aware that the father figure is somewhat of an idol in the narrator's mind.…
Life is not only stranger than fiction, but frequently also more tragic than any tragedy ever conceived by the most fervid imagination. Often in these tragedies of life there is not one drop of blood to make us shudder, nor a single event to compel the tears into the eye. A man endowed with an intellect far above the average, impelled by a high-soaring ambition, untainted by any petty or ignoble passion, and guided by a character of sterling firmness and more than common purity, yet, with fatal illusion, devoting all…
In the memoir "Things that Went Bump in the Night," by Anna Bella Kaufman shares her story of having to watch her son slowly reach death. With the use of themes and symbols, Kaufman personifies death and the feelings associated with this experience to bring it to live and draw a vivid picture in the readers' minds. Her writing of this tragedy does not only captivate the feelings of the audience but it does a good job of sharing a personal story in an interesting fashion.…
Social inequity is an arising issue has been affecting billions of people around the world for centuries, and it needs more attention! Even innocent teenagers have been exposed to these types of prejudices. Of course, the effects of it are not good. Different kinds of literature are useful tools for shining a light on social injustice, and writers are taking advantage of this fact and writing many novels about social inequities. Authors have been writing articles and stories about racial, social, financial and gender inequities which reflect to today’s society to try and galvanize readers into action.…
In this essay, I evaluate the validity of David Walker’s central argument introduced in Article II of his controversial pamphlet, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. This argument, in which Walker contends that African Americans are complicit in their own domination, is clearly suggested in the rhetoric of the chapter title, Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance. Though he explicitly states that black American’s ignorance is the cause for their perilous subordination, Walker’s description of ignorance is not simply the nature of bewilderment that the white Americans adopt and enforce throughout the illogical system of slavery. Rather, Walker is referring to African Americans’ ignorance of their God-ordained nature that craves freedom. Walker expands on this notion through the way he frames freedom. According to Walker, freedom is not self-executing but relies on performativity; freedom requires action and resistance. Reflective of all African Americans, Walker depicts black people’s detrimental ignorance in his analysis of the the treacherous slave woman and…
Intersectionality is a theory that explains the interlocking relationships between our social attributes such as race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. I have learned through researching this issue that each of these attributes cannot exist without the others, and that every individual’s life chances and life experiences are affected by these connecting systems of oppression. Here is a quote by Bell Hooks which perfectly explains this:…
As a child, we are more inclined to indulge in selfish behaviors. When we want something such as food or nurturing we expect to get it immediately regardless of the situation of the people around us. As babies grow up, a majority of them tend to come to the realization that selfishness just results in conflict. This is evident in the stories The Open Window, Like the Sun, and Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket. These three stories clearly depict that when characters begin to lose consideration for others and act in a selfish manner, conflicts tend to arise, and it often does not end well.…
The story of the Invisible Man is told from the point of view of a negro man that is completely withdrawn from society and it is one of gradual disillusionment. In Invisible Man, the narrator makes a complete U-turn from his naive younger self to his disillusioned older self. This drastic change can make the narrator almost be considered two different characters: the narrator at the beginning and end of the story and the young man who experiences life in the story. Representing the all-too-well known case of the “mis-educated Negro”, the narrator is brought up to hate his own people and because of this he is insistent on distancing himself from whom he views subsidiary. Disregarding the racial aspect of the narrator, he exemplifies the archetypal…
The invisible man is a novel diving deep into the social and political issues of society. While doing so, it follows the experiences and obstacles of one particular blank man who is the “invisible man” (IM). Chapter to chapter, he comes across a new individual who has a completely different definition of him and that gives him a completely different role to play in society. By the end of the novel, the invisible man has a sense of moral reconciliation and he has some sense of his identity. His interactions with other characters, along with his attitude, and the use of several literary techniques used by the author make this moral reconciliation completely evident and obvious. In the epilogue, the IM realizes everything that has happened and can distinguish between the lessons that he has learned. The book shows a long, tedious, and struggling transition from an IM to someone on their way to an identity.…
The story positions the reader to question the society Leonard Mead (the protagonist) lives in as the scenario’s he faces are unusual and different and in a sense cause the responder to evaluate their own life and their position in it. There are particular scenes in this story of unfair behavior and discriminative acts that cause the reaser to become, involved making personal judgments as well as getting them to make relations to their own life. Normally, we view the shared values and behavior in a society as strength, creating belonging in the sense of a united society. However in this story the nature of the crime, and the severity of the punishment are so great that we are led to question and criticize the ideal.…
I found myself constantly making changes to correct terminology that I had gotten wrong or having to be taught about certain concepts because I need to know why something was significant to the story. This technical knowledge presented a challenge no dissimilar from the emotional aspects of this piece. Furthermore, my own writing has a tendency to focus on thoughts and emotions, but it can be uncomfortable to focus on such things when I am writing from another person’s point of view. I didn’t want to misrepresent what Dezerae was feeling during a time that was so vital to her becoming the person that she is now. It is for this reason that I centered in on the emotional upheaval that she experienced. When she started the story she told my that it was “the only other occasion that her life had taken a complete one-eighty,” and this is what I wanted to depict in my writing. I wanted the reader to see that it alter who she was, and I was delighted that Dezerae had noticed this in my writing. Through our email correspondences, I sent her my paper and she explained that she enjoying my expression of this emotional upheaval she…
The dignity of difference is the theme in which I have based my project on it…
At times, the essay makes the reader laugh and feel concern for her struggles. Dumas tries to earn our sympathy by describing the situation of her family’s difficult names. To avoid setting an over serious tone, she attempts to reflect her humorous perspective through laughable quotes such as, “She Whose Name Almost Incites Riots” (page 751). This wise introduction lets the audience know that the essay will be an enjoyable one to read with plenty of humorous lines and content. This use of pathos makes the reader learn the message of the essay without even noticing it. Another classic example of her making the audience feel sympathy is when she said people used to think her brother’s name (Neggar) sounded like a derogatory name for African Americans. The strategy of making the audience feel sorry for the author let’s them feel as if they are somehow connected to what she is saying. They feel the urge to know what happens next and their curiosity becomes stronger with each step of her life. Because readers can become tired of hearing “sob” stories, she decides to blend in the humor throughout the main portion of the…