Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein and Ridley Scotts film Blade Runner, demonstrate a myriad of social criticisms of their time on issues of science beyond moral conventions.

Although perspectives and values change with time, ideas and concepts can transcend. The gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the science fiction film Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott although composed over one hundred years apart contain the same perennial concepts on the nature of humanity. This is portrayed through notions of dehumanization, monstrosity and redemption, of the "indistinguishable" creator and creature relationship. The romanticist Shelly wrote her gothic novel the enlightenment era which posed questions concerning the mystery of life and nature of humanity. Scott on the other hand composed in the post-industrial age, where technology and morality played a dominant role in society. The composers explore their contextual values while upholding transcendent concepts of humanity incorporating morality and creation though unique techniques in accordance to their text type. Both Frankenstein and Blade Runner, although established within different contexts, communicate the universal notion that knowledge, beyond the morally conventional limits of society, initiates the human desire to understand and manipulate the natural world. Shelley's novel, influenced by romantic writers such as Coleridge and Percy Shelley, sees her examine and hyperbolize the obsessive passion of the scientists of her day. Thus, her archetypal scientist, Victor, is characterized

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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What similarities can you find between Cormac McCarthys The Road and John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath?

What similarities can you find between Cormac McCarthy's The Road and John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath? The opening of The Road immediately captures the dark mood of the novel. "Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before." This sentence suggests the desolation of the world. Grapes of Wrath similarly starts off with the author describing in vivid detail the setting of the novel. He emphasises the importance of nature and how it can affect the lives of people and force them to become helpless victims. Both authors use compound sentences linked by the coordinating conjunction 'and' to create a deliberately flat style and one reflecting the bleak world the characters find themselves in. Moreover both authors create a foreboding atmosphere by using very desolate phrases to describe the surroundings. For example Another similarity in both novels is the use of pathetic fallacy. There is lots of visual imagery being used in the opening of both novels. Another literary device used is personification. Steinbeck writes "the last rains falls on the "scarred earth". Moreover there are lots of similes being used by both writers. For example McCarthy writes "the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." Similarly Steinbeck writes "the sun was as red as ripe new blood". Both these descriptions seem to be very negative and

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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The Male Suppression of Female Power: Antoinettes Downfall in Wide Sargasso Sea

Lauren Gallegos Professor Boscagli English 114WR April 20, 2011 The Male Suppression of Female Power: Antoinette's Downfall in Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is much more then an appropriation of the classic novel Jane Eyre. It evokes poignancy because it serves as a metaphor for female oppression in patriarchal society. Set in the Victorian era, and written during the first wave feminist movement, Wide Sargasso Sea explores the destructive control that civilization pressures men to posses over women. Forced to marry someone subordinate to himself and rely on her economically, Mr. Rochester suppresses Antoinette in order to regain his sense of power and identity. The control driven relationship between Antoinette and Mr. Rochester juxtaposes the two characters' antithetical philosophies, forming Rhys' main leitmotif-the potency of despotic power and its interconnection to sex and culture. Through Rochester's anguish over Antoinette' s economic and sexual dominance, Rhys examines the male tendency to reduce powerful women to objects, stripping them of all emotion, in order to regain their "mandatory" feeling of superiority. Almost immediately upon his arrival at Granbois, Rochester begins to question his hasty and financially motivated marriage to Antoinette. Threatened by the lack of power he holds in his new home, Rochester begins to

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Both A Passage to India and Heart of Darkness can be interpreted as portraying Imperialism in a critical light, as a dark force which spreads from England into foreign environments

The Hollowmen and the Horrors of the Abyss: An exploration of Forster's views of Imperialism in 'A Passage to India' explored via and compared with Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. Both A Passage to India and Heart of Darkness can be interpreted as portraying Imperialism in a critical light, as a dark force which spreads from England into foreign environments, and conveying the negative aspects of it, such as racism, cruelty and exploitation. As this is such a huge topic I will in this essay attempt to explore Forster's portrait of imperialism by using Conrad's novella's running theme of the "Heart of Darkness" - I am going to use the interpretation of the inner "Heart of Darkness" within all people- as a key to interpret Forster's views on imperialism and to see if they were similar to Conrad's. Morgan Forster's idea of the "Undeveloped heart" - being the lack of compassion and inability to understand or express feelings and emotions in the English public school boy - for me is a key similarity with Conrad's novel and his idea of the "Heart of Darkness" as the dark side of man. It seems throughout 'A Passage to India' that the defect is present in all people, but that the morally grey force of imperialism encourages it. For Forster, human defects thrive and are brought to the forefront by the force of imperialism. For men and women living in Forster's England, the defects

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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The childs inability to interpret the adult world is often central to the presentation of childhood in adult literature. Compare the presentation of childhood in Spies and Ato

"The child's inability to interpret the adult world is often central to the presentation of childhood in adult literature." Compare the presentation of childhood in 'Spies' and 'Atonement', considering to what extent you feel this comment is applicable to these texts. As is frequently the case with novels written for adults with children as the main protagonists, the presentation of childhood emphasises the innocence of those at a young and often tender age. When the real world is like a dream, everyday activities are play and adults are a separate species with baffling social conventions, a child will often try to understand grown up aspects of life, but will make genuine misunderstandings instead. Many writers look back on their youth with fondness and use these misunderstandings for either comic intent, such as in Frayn's Spies, or for life-altering tragedy in McEwan's Atonement. In these two novels, as well as the prominence of childhood and memories being recalled as an adult, there is also the historical context to be considered in how this affects the presentation of childhood. Both novels are set during the Second World War. Life in Britain in the 1930s and 40s was an era of transition for society, during which the rise of the urban working class had led to significant changes in politics. Because of the war and the sudden absence of huge amounts of the

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Throughout both Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Carroll shows that the lessons taught in Victorian schools are inapplicable and unrealistic.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll rejects the typical Victorian society to show the absurdity and nonsense of that era. The Victorian era encompassed many beliefs in areas such as education, social theory, etiquette, and politics. The whimsical and illogical creatures of Wonderland satirize the vice and folly of these concepts. Throughout the novels, Alice interacts with things commonly seen in her Victorian world. The education system in England teaches knowledge that is useless to the real world. The morals and constructive tales that children learn are irrational and have no clear meaning. Carroll's use of puns shows the silliness in everyday English etiquette. Through the characters in Wonderland, Carroll mocks English politics by proving them to be corrupt. Throughout both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Carroll shows that the lessons taught in Victorian schools are inapplicable and unrealistic. Though Alice is proud of the knowledge she acquired through her education, the information she remembers from her schooling is either completely useless or inaccurate. Alice absorbs the lessons but has trouble putting them in context or understanding their real-world applications. This can be seen when Alice falls down the rabbit hole. She says: I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Otherness in The merchant of Venice, The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible

Oliver Denholm 13L English Literature Coursework Analyse how Shakespeare, Hawthorne and Miller explore the tensions between individual desires and wider community values in The Merchant of Venice, The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible respectively and discuss different interpretations of the writers' intentions. The struggle between individual will and community values, described by Arthur Miller as "the balance between order and freedom" is the central theme of Miller's The Crucible, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In all three texts, community values are defined not by what is deemed to be 'normal', but by its antithesis: the 'abnormal' and the incongruous. Whilst they write from greatly differing socio-historical backgrounds - Miller, Shakespeare and Hawthorne all share an interest in the role of "the other" in society, a concept which Edward Said expanded upon in his book Orientalism. Said used the example of underlying western prejudice towards the Middle East, its peoples and its culture; defining "the orient" as "existing for the west, being controlled by the west, in relation to the west". In other terms the concept of otherness here is largely based upon self perception, and one's own place in society; with these ideas being used to subordinate others who do not fit into their society, and these three writers all

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Comparing Macbeth to Victor Frankenstein

Key Question #37 #1 - Comparing Macbeth to Victor Frankenstein Macbeth and Frankenstein are two classical and highly known stories in English. Macbeth is a good man that has taken the wrong path. He is highly influenced by those around him and eventually turns into a monster himself. Victor Frankenstein is a knowledge hungry man who lusts for any new information in the world of sciences. Both characters make an error which causes severe consequences. In addition, both characters also make these errors without thinking of the consequences properly and thoroughly. With this combination, one would think that they brought this upon themselves. However, for both stories this is not the case. The reader can feel sympathetic and empathetic at the same time for these characters. In a way, both characters are insatiable. In Macbeth, upon being told by the three witches that he will become King of Scotland, he becomes crazed over the idea. He desperately wants to be King of Scotland that he even dreams of it. As well as being under the strong influence of his wife, Lady Macbeth, the audience can feel sympathetic to this because Lady Macbeth is irrational about the situation. She is completely behind the idea of Macbeth being King that she plans his death and then belittles Macbeth for not being able to process it. Clearly Macbeth is not ready to kill a King whom he is friends with.

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Compare and contrast how the destructive nature of love is presented in Shakespeares Othello, Websters The Duchess of Malfi and Mcewans Enduring Love

Compare and contrast how the destructive nature of love is presented in Shakespeare's Othello, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and Mcewan's Enduring Love Literature through the ages has presented love in many different forms; from friendship to lust or platonic love to romance. Be it love for another person, love for pleasure or love for power; love can be seen as an origin for a multitude of emotions and motivations. It is not uncommon in literature to show how love can be ultimately destructive. My selected texts all suggest that the destructive nature of love is evident. Othello is driven to madness and consequently murder out of the jealousy of his wife Desdemona; Othello loved her so much that he could not bear to accept the fact that his wife had apparently been unfaithful to him. This also occurs in The Duchess of Malfi; Ferdinand is a character with presumed incestuous desires and the jealousy of his sister's unknown lover drives him to murder. Ian McEwan's Enduring Love tells the tale of the hopeless stalker Jed Perry who becomes suicidal when he cannot be loved by the protagonist of the novel Joe Rose. Jealous love is seen in all three texts. Othello is falsely persuaded into jealousy by Iago who states in act I scene I 'I am not what I am'(A1 s1 l64); Shakespeare uses this as the basis of the dramatic irony throughout the play to show that Iago is deliberately

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Published in 1792, twenty-one years before Pride and Prejudice, Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women is a radical argument for women's equality.

Roma Gandhi AP Literature and Composition Period 2 October 17, 2011 Class and Status of Women Central to any study of 18th century society is social class. At the top were the independently rich, next came the professionals, then the working class. At the bottom of the heap was and "underclass". It is commonly believed that all the wives were kept by husbands until the mid-20th century. It is true that women married to wealthy or professional men were usually supported by him, a symbol of status to which the 'upper' working class also aspired. Both Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft have resembling thoughts in the status of women in the eighteenth century. Both authors believed women were not equal to men and believed education is an important factor in that. One of the central themes in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the role of class in early nineteenth-century England. Austen is interested in how social class shapes individual experience as well as the interactions among people of different classes. To Jane Austen it is important to satirically acknowledge the social status of women so the gender differences are clear. While some feminist scholars openly blame society for women keeping quiet when men speak, Austen never challenges patriarchy for rendering women silent. However, from her novels we can infer that she lived in a society which rendered women

  • Word count: 1495
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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