A view of a view
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Elizabeth Bishop's poem “View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress” possesses profound imagery and, when it is read, the reader immediately gets transported into the speaker's serene vision. Bishop takes the reader on a journey with her words, and through this journey a speaker...
Marvell's "Horatian Ode": Conflicts and ambiguities
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Analyzing the poem “An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland” by Andrew Marvell was difficult, because the poem is constantly undermining its own constructions. Also, reading the poem in the Broadview Anthology, one cannot help but glance at the footnotes, to gain further...
An American as a melting pot
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
A definition such as this is rare, especially among early American literature. To clearly state an exact concept so simply is difficult, however defining what is an American is near impossible. J. Hector St John de Crevecoeur was one of the exceptions. In his book, Letters From an American...
Antigone vs. sartre
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Evil is generally characterized as morally wrong, wicked, or immoral. Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, discussed evil as an absolute evil where a person purposely debases another into an object; Sophocles' and Anouilh's version of Antigone both demonstrated two characters that, at times,...
The imagination's art
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Art is life and life is art. There is no difference, at least not when literature is at hand. Three key elements exist in the realization of a written work of art. There is the author who gives the unintentional start to the creation of literature as an art form. Also there is the reader who...
Summary of Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut is the fictional story told by Leon Trout, the ghost of a man who died during the construction of the ship “Bahia de Darwin.” Trout observes the passengers of this ship as they make their way on the “Nature Cruise of the Century.” Excited to travel...
Christian scriptures
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The Bible can be called an “artifact of social memory” because first off, an artifact, by definition, is anything made or used by mankind. The Bible is considered by many be produced by the plenary verbal inspiration, which states that the scripture came from the Holy Spirit and that...
Human sacrifice-totally crazy or crazily reasonable?
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Is there any way of truly justifying whether one society's practice is wrong because our society looks at based on their own “standards”? The human sacrifice was considered a religious act that showed the Aztecs' true affection and admiration for their gods; however, today, our society...
Gospel of Judas
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
I believe the Gospel of Judas should be added to other books in the bible because it contains very important religious information. Even though the plot leading up to Jesus' crucifixion is contradictory to way it was written in the previous books already in the bible, the story behind Jesus'...
The story of Abraham and Isaac
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
God decided to test Abraham's faith in him by telling Abraham to sacrifice his most important possession, his very own son, Isaac. Abraham was basically told to give up his future because he made a promise earlier in the book of Genesis that he would be the father of a great nation, referring to...
Jonah and the Whale
Thesis - 1 pages - Philosophy
The story of Jonah and the “Whale” is one of the most famous and retold stories in the Bible. It tells of the prophet Jonah, a fisherman who gets swallowed whole by a great fish. The story goes that Jonah was fleeing God when God called upon Jonah to proclaim judgment to Ninevah, the...
Interpreting the Bible
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
I believe that calling the Bible an “artifact of social memory” implies that is a creation of collected thoughts and stories over time. As religion became more and more popular, people began hearing stories about God, Jesus, etc. and began to collaborate with others about the works...
Abraham: Genesis 16: 1-12
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
In Genesis 16: 1-12, Abram is worried about carrying on his bloodline. He has no son to speak of and is already around 90 years old. God has promised Abram that he would be the “father of many”. His wife Sarai knows this and also knows that he is not happy and would like a son, but she...
Comparison and contrast between Rober Lawell's "Man and Wife" and Gretel Ehrlich's "A match to the heart"
Essay - 1 pages - Literature
It was 1959 when Robert Lowell completed an amazing set of poems included in a collection named “Life Studies”. The most conspicuous among them - “Man and Wife”, tackles the problems of personal tragedy. The main accent is put on the troubled marriage, as the author reviews...
The nature and the role of women in Shakespeare's Macbeth
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare's Macbeth is among the few of Shakespeare's plays where a female character plays a catalytic role. The female characters in this play are Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, the Three Witches, and Hecate. Lady Macbeth and her husband, Macbeth are the chief protagonists of the play....
Important people in Taoism: Zhang San Feng
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Taoism, also known as Daoism, is a philosophical religion that is widespread among eastern parts of Asia as well as parts of the western world. Taoism has involved several important people, namely Zhang San Feng. San Feng has also been known as Zhang Sanfeng, Chan San Feng, and Chan Sanfeng....
On Chrétien de Troyes' The knight of the cart
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
In The Knight of the Cart, after Lancelot disposes of an opposing knight and saves a fair damsel, she offers a place of refuge so long as Lancelot sleeps with her. However reluctant, Lancelot agrees and to kill the time between dinner and sleep, he roams around outside the house. When he returns,...
Rationale behind silence and Queen Eufeme's Chaste Kissing
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
What a scandalous scene in Silence when Queen Eufeme and the protagonist, whom the story is named after, come close, very close to sleeping together. It is such an emotionally charged scene: a predator chasing its unwilling prey. Will Silence succumb to the Queen's advances to keep up...
Doing gender: Reasserting masculinity
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Gender is a socially constructed status. Based on how others perceive us we are labeled as men or women, the only two genders recognized in Western society. Walking to class I notice everyone is ‘doing gender,' or they display evidences of masculinity or femininity. I see a heterosexual...
Tess of d'Urbervilles: The dark shadow of death
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of d'Urbervilles tells the story of a young girl named Tess Durbeyfield who is seduced by, Alec d'Ubervilles, her distant relative. The loss of her virginity, and the birth of a child, haunts her and makes it impossible for her to succeed in marriage with the man she...
The rhetorical application of pity in 'We Shall Overcome'
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Painting an image of the role emotion plays in human cognition, American thinker William James once said, “emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.” The correlation of emotion and action is applicable to rhetorical...
The significance of Isaiah 45:1-13 for Yahweh and the exiled
Thesis - 7 pages - Philosophy
Isaiah 45:1-13 is, in many ways, a microcosm of Second Isaiah as a whole. Anchored firmly in historical context, this passage portrays people still confined to exile, yet also looking forward to the possibility of future release and redemption. In tone, it is strikingly different from the...
Capitalism and Christianity: Weber's capitalist spirit and potential Christian influences
Essay - 9 pages - Philosophy
The questions of what is capitalism and how did it arise have been of central concern to Western economists and sociologists since the 1840s. At that time, commentators began to recognize that a fundamentally new economic and social order - with the expansion of machines in manufacturing and...
Postmodern American literature: Transformation and commodification within The Crying of Lot 49
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
A prominent theme among the writings of many postmodern analysts in characterizing postmodernism is the notion that the age of post-modernity is essentially the age of commercialism and commoditization. In his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean- François Lyotard contends...
Fallacies in Descartes' Dream Argument
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Descartes begins his Meditations with a discussion of doubt, believing it to be the tool by which knowledge can be verified. Betrayed by “the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood (Descartes, 12),” the philosopher seeks a decisive mode of...
Freedom and the self
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish, “The Body of the Condemned” is a section dedicated to the concept of power and its relationship to modern punishment, which focuses primarily on the soul of the criminal, a sharp contrast to the punishments aimed to inflict pain on the...
Heroism in Beowulf and Macbeth
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Grendel first appeared in Herot, the mead hall of the king of the Danes, Hrothgar. Disturbed by the feasting and celebration taking place in the evenings by Danish warriors and heroes, who often met in the hall to tell exaggerated tales of glory and drink mead, Grendel stole in during the night...
Literary analysis of "The Dead"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
James Joyce was born on February 2nd, 1882, in Dublin. His lifelong obsession with his own Irish culture, and the local city of Dublin, inspired many of his works. In particular, Dubliners, a collection of short stories taking place in Dublin, published in 1914, testifies to this obsession....
Domination and submission in Jane Eyre: An essay on power play
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
In a manner of speaking, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre reinvents the concept of romance. One hardly expects a sordid tale of domination and submission from a sickly country girl, yet Bronte dabbled experimentally with the idea of feminism and power play in her hugely successful first novel. Jane...
In the hands of Yankees: Fitzgerald's "The Ice Palace" as a Northern American captivity narrative
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The effective removal of the American Indian from North America failed to kill off the American tradition of captivity narratives established by the primarily female Anglo-American authors of Indian captivity narratives. In these memoirs of life among the “other,” Anglo-American women...
