The victimized villain: Shylock
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare portrays Shylock as a ruthless, greedy Jewish villain and thus establishes a barrier between him and the other predominantly Christian characters. Throughout the play, this alienation, as a result of Shylock's resentful character and bitter actions, and the...
The Count of Monte Cristo
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
A classic tale, The Count of Monte Cristo has been adapted to many forms of media. One of the more recent retellings is the 2002 film version starring Jim Caveziel as Edmund Dantes. A main reason The Count of Monte Cristo has proved to be so popular and enduring as a story is that it is a...
Jihad and Western perspectives of Muslim identity
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
Jihad is one of the most misunderstood topics in the world today. Much of the West believes that the word means Holy war and that it is fundamental to Islam and its ultimate goal of world domination. The Muslim world, of course, knows better what Jihad means, but even among Muslims there exists a...
Liberation theology and the life of Archishop Oscar Romero
Thesis - 8 pages - Philosophy
As Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero was chosen in order to avoid interference from the church in the coming political unrest. Because Romero saw the plight of the poor and down-trodden and the brutality and disregard for human dignity and life by the government; he realized that the church...
Mormon persecution in Missouri
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
In modern America there exists a delicate balance between church and state. We have a constitution that protects us from interference from churches in government affairs, and vice versa. However the constitution is very brief and somewhat vague on the subject. This creates many problems, with...
Abraham: Father of monotheism
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The story of Abraham is one of the most important and prominent stories in Islam, Christianity and Judaism. This can be clearly seen by the fact that these three religions are often referred to as the Abrahamic religions. Abraham is often considered the father of the great monotheistic traditions...
A means to an end: Reconsidering the use of stereotypes in the graphic narrative
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
After reading the first fifty-two pages of Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese, one may wonder if the reviews that appear on the back are even referring to the book on which they are printed. While Derek Kirk Kim proclaims, “As an Asian American, American Born Chinese is the book I've...
America: No place for free blacks? Navigating "freedom" in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Since my first experience with Uncle Tom's Cabin in high school and in further studies, I've struggled with the question of abolitionism and the societal value of the African-American characters in the novel. More broadly, one of the reasons I enrolled in this course was my interest in...
The politics of race and female empowerment in wide Sargasso Sea
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Miscegenation, an act that was illegal in America until the 1967 ruling of Loving vs. Virginia, is not uncommon in literature and not limited to the human species. We know of Moses marriage to an Ethiopian woman (King James Bible, Numbers12:1); in the Arabian Nights we know of King Shahryar's...
Split personalities and an odd love triangle in Ford's The Broken Heart
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
John Ford's The Broken Hear t has been said to be written as homage to Sidney's Astrophel and Stella and to his love affair with Penelope Rich. While this could be true, Ford offers a similar love triangle between Orgilus, Penthea, and Bassanes. Orgilus and Bassanes have clear parallel roles to...
Classical cannibalistic myths: Revenge as an appetite in Titus Andronicus
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
Vengeful acts, especially in Renaissance drama, are often countered by a more heinous act of violence. Titus Andronicus plays by this common rule with its climatic scene involving a mother forced into cannibalizing her children. The mode of this final vengeance is inevitable due to the fact that...
David Hume and the compatibility of necessity and liberty
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The mind, according to David Hume, is not a truth-tracking device, and according to him, we misuse it if we think it can bring us to metaphysical conclusions. To Hume, the science of the mind can describe how the mind works and why it reaches the conclusions it does, but it cannot take us beyond...
A double paradox story
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Philosophy has three major realms: the study of the physical world, the study of morals, the study of logic and reasoning. Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals focuses on the study of morality and tries to give a clearer understanding of moral principles so that people can...
Never put Descartes before de horse
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Rene Descartes used doubt to prove his beliefs to be true. In his most famous work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes enters into his most radical phase of methodological doubt when he introduces his evil genius hypothesis, also known as the evil demon argument. Descartes' demon...
The plot against people: Critical analysis
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In “The Plot Against People,” Russell Baker writes about inanimate objects and the three major categories they can be classified in; those that don't work (A), those that break down (B), and those that get lost (C). The way this essay works is that Baker describes various objects with...
How the ex-colored man's identity is constructed
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
From the beginning of his tale, the ex-colored man admits to a vague feeling of “unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse.” As the story is told, it becomes clear that these confused emotions are the result of a confused identity. The narrator struggles not so much under the...
Reginald Rose biography
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Understanding Reginald Rose's life goes a long way toward understanding the recurring themes within his work. Indeed, most biographies on Rose focus almost exclusively on his work. Considering how prolific of a writer he was, it is safe to say that in many respects his life and his work were...
An essay on Chess by Rosario Castellanos
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
In this essay I will be analyzing and interpreting the poem “Chess” written by Rosario Castellanos. The analysis will explore the elements of poetry found in the poem as well as the style and structure of the poem. The interpretation will cover the poem's theme, emotional tone, and...
"I Am We": The duality of being one
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
Who am I? Asked, the response begins: “I am…,” followed by the concept upon which the individual forms his or her identity. America has built itself upon this exchange, accenting the importance of the “I,” of the individual, and his or her ability to construct his or her...
Through space and time: Reality and experience in the modern age
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Modernism marked the collapse of structures that had defined the individual and the relationship of that individual to the world. Rapid changes in religion, science, and politics revealed the gaps in society's ideologies. The institutions that had once provided the foundation of English society...
Reading a reader: Deconstruction and the Prophetic imagination
Thesis - 6 pages - Philosophy
A prophet is a voice, a man that becomes a word, whose message has the power to transform, reveal, destroy, and ultimately, re-imagine our perception of just who we are and why we are here. Arnold writes, the prophets were “instruments a revelation through which God discloses his will to the...
Catcher in the Rye
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
On the surface, Holden Caulfield, a dejected surly teenager, from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Oskar Schell, an outgoing nine-year-old boy, from Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close could not be more different. However, both boys have undeniable connections to...
Lolita in book and film
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
The difference between the character Clare Quilty in book and film of Lolita are huge. In the book by Vladimir Nabokov, Quilty is hardly seen or heard of until the very end of the book. However, in the film directed by Stanley Kubrick he is anything but subtle. The reasons for Kubrick wishing...
Hierarchies, judgment, and god in their eyes were watching God
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the world which she portrays is one revolving around hierarchal order. Hurston illustrates the city of Eatonville as a self-contained black community; however, the exclusion of white characters from the novel does not elicit a lack of...
Dynamics and characteristics of language evolution
Thesis - 2 pages - Linguistics & languages
The development of language was both supported by and supplementary to the evolution of “fully modern” human intelligence. Lingual evolution can be divided into its anatomical and social developments, so that there is a distinction between language as an anatomical capacity, and...
The importance of conflict in the short stories we have read
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Conflict is the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction, (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary). A conflict is the fire that drives a story; it develops the characters and draws the reader into the story. Without a conflict a story would be a...
Black Othello: A question of definition
Thesis - 2 pages - Literature
Is William Shakespeare's Othello really black? That depends. It depends on the specific definition of the word "black." Taking the word at face value in our contemporary society, the word tends to describe a specific cultural community of peoples derived from or near the continent of Africa....
Modernism and the odor of Chrysanthemums by D.H. Lawrence
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
The modernism model challenged pre-existing socio-cultural norms and was exemplified by the discussion of social relationships in early twentieth century literature. This paper examines the interrelationship between D. H. Lawrence's Odor of the Chrysanthemums and modernism and submits that D.H....
The inter relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
The contemporary framework of religion, social behavior and global governmental structure are often traced to the inception of the three central belief systems of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Grayson, 2006, p.40). Whilst there are numerous alternative religious organizations in the world,...
The philosophy of non-violent protest
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
The concept of non-violent protest or “civil disobedience” is based on the premise of using non-violent means to effect socio-political change. The concept of civil disobedience has its roots in the philosophical writings of Henry David Thoreau and in 1848, Thoreau gave an infamous...
