The Mayor of Casterbridge - Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: Summary: The novel opens in the early part of the nineteenth century. One summer evening, a young family is walking towards the village of Weydon-Priors, in the region of England known as Wessex. From the beginning, it is obvious that something is strange about this family. Although the man, woman, and child are not poorly dressed, the dirt that has collected on them during their journey makes them look shabby. In addition, the man and woman do not regard each other at all, even though they are clearly traveling together. Eventually the family stops to rest. While they rest, a turnip-hoer speaks to them. From him, the family learns that there is no work and no housing available in Weydon-Priors; however, since it is Fair Day, there is some excitement in the village. The family goes to the fair-field, but ignores all the goings-on in favor of finding food. They decided to stop in a furmity tent, a place where they can buy some pudding. The man demands some liquor for his furmity, and drinks it lustily, ignoring his wife's pleas for lodging. Soon the man, who has been called Michael, complains loudly about his marriage and his poverty. Outside, Michael hears an auction of horses, and he wonders why men can't sell their wives at auction. Some people inside the tent actually respond favorably to this question, and Michael openly offers his wife for sale (with the
scarlet Letter.
scarlet Letter It has been said that Hawthorne condemns the Puritan society of Boston and at the same time presents it as a stable necessary environment for the New England settlers at that time. In the scarlet letter the core of the story line revolves around a movement known as the Puritan. The Puritan movement began when King Henry declared England's independence from the Church of Rome and he appointed himself head of the new Church of England. King Henry did this because he wanted to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. By appointing himself head of the Church of England he was able to grant himself his own divorce that the pope would not give him. At first there was little difference between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic but later with the spread of Protestant reformers such as John Calvin the church began to change. Some people thought the church of England retained too many of the superstitious practises of the Roman Catholic Church. They wanted simpler truths and less structured forms of worship like the earlier Christians, because they wanted to purify the Church of England, they got the name of Puritans. John Geree describes the puritans as "one, that honoured God above all, and under God gave every one his due"! These Puritans followed a very strict code of practise; they were greatly influenced by the bible, their
Could I Have Lived My Life Differently? : The Diary of Bigger Thomas.
Could I Have Lived My Life Differently? : The Diary of Bigger Thomas Osarieme Erhunmwunsee Computational Literature 2/2 Dr. Hoffman 30 May 2003 Could I Have Lived My Life Different? : The Diary of Bigger Thomas Winter of 1930: Fear It was a harsh winter in the "Black Belt" of Chicago. Me, a twenty-year-old, black man who lives in the ghetto my momma, Vera and Buddy has to wake up to a huge rat trying to snip at us. So I take my momma's heavy iron skillet, and kill the rat right after if tries to bite me and rips my pants. Vera started to cry after I shoved the dead rat in her face, swinging the animal's body by its tail. All momma could do after Vera passed out was nag, nag, nag and tell me to throw it outside. When Bigger re-enters, Ma continues her tirade, reminding him that he has a job interview that evening and if he has any "manhood" in him, he will take heed of the welfare relief agency's threats to discontinue the family's aid and living arrangements. After she is revived, Vera is worried that she will be late for her sewing class at the YWCA, but her thoughts turn to her mother's depression and she seeks to console her. Ma is worried that her son appears unconcerned about her welfare and at breakfast, she "prophecies" that Bigger will go to "the gallows" unless he discontinues associating with his gang. Bigger quickly eats his breakfast and unsuccessfully
Critical review Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 has itself been threatened and censored in various school systems, mostly due to the appearance of words like "hell" and "damn" in the novel, and has now taken its proud place on the list of books which have been censored or banned in America. Main Characters Montag, the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451, starts out as a typical "fireman": he takes a primitive joy in his job -- which is burning books -- and never stops to question why things are the way they are. But after a series of reversals makes him question his assumptions, Montag begins a painful metamorphosis, eventually becoming first becoming a full-fledged rebel against his repressive society. At the beginning of the book, Montag is living what Henry Thoreau might call an "unexamined life": He believes what he's taught, respects his Fire Captain boss, and thinks that he is happy. But, after he meets young Clarisse McClellan, Montag's "happiness" crumbles away, and he finds himself left with a profound void inside. For the first time he lets himself be aware both of the problems of the world and of his own unsatisfied desires for knowledge, philosophy, and intimacy with other people. Finding that everyone else in his consumeristic culture is also skating on the thin ice of denial, Montag seeks friends and mentors in the thinking outcasts of society -- people like Clarisse, Faber, and Granger's
Argue that the theory of common sense structures provides an important and hitherto unappreciated link between early Gestalt psychology on the one hand and contemporary developments in philosophy and in artificial intelligence research on the other.
Introduction In the works of Aristotle or of the medievals, as also in the writings of later common-sense philosophers such as Thomas Reid or G. E. Moore, we find a family of different attempts to come to grips with the structures of common sense and of the common-sense world that is given to us in normal, pre-theoretical experience. We shall argue in what follows that the theory of such structures provides an important and hitherto unappreciated link between early Gestalt psychology on the one hand and contemporary developments in philosophy and in artificial intelligence research on the other. The notion of providing an adequate theory of the common-sense world has been taken seriously of late above all by those, such as Patrick Hayes or Kenneth Forbus, who see in such a theory of what they call `naive' or `qualitative physics' the foundations of future practical successes in robotics.(2) This naive physics is, however, like cognitive science in general, in a state of flux, and a serious philosophical investigation of its presuppositions and achievements has hardly been attempted. Yet it is already at this stage possible to point to a certain apparent defect or one-sidedness of current research in this field that is due to the predominant assumption that it is set theory and related instruments of ontology that are to provide the basis for naive-physical theorizing. The
How does Jane Austen present the themes of love and marriage in the novel Emma?
Emma Question: How does Jane Austen present the themes of love and marriage in the novel Emma? Answer: Jane Austen's novels incorporate her observations on the manners of her time and class, and while they often relate courtship, love, and marriage, Austen herself never married. In the essay below I will be discussing how the author, Jane Austen, presents the themes of love and marriage in the novel Emma. The novel Emma is about a young woman who is interested in matchmaking. Emma is the central character, who is the daughter of wealthy gentleman, her mother died when she was young leaving her to be brought up by Miss Taylor. The novel is essentially a story of how Emma matures from a clever young woman to a more modest and considerate woman. By using Emma as the central character, using authorial comments, beginning the novel with an example of what makes a perfect marriage and through couples who get married and couples who might have got married, Austen has chosen to present the themes of love and marriage. At the novels beginning Jane Austen introduces things she sees as the fundamentals of a marriage, which are always echoing in the back. In the first chapter the novel's title character, Emma Woodhouse is introduced. She is the youngest of two daughters. She has no mother and a father who imposes no limits on her behaviour or self-satisfaction. While her mother died
Critical Analysis of Huckleberry Fin
American Literature Critical Analysis of Huckleberry Finn Marina Pindar In outlawing reading for motive, moral, and plot, the notice proleptically--if unsuccessfully--attempts to ward off what in fact has become an unquestioned assumption behind most interpretations of Huckleberry Finn, namely, the premise that the text affords a critique of its extraliterary context by inveighing against the inequities of racism. In Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor James M. Cox analyzes why such readings of the novel are problematic. His contention, anomalous with respect to Mark Twain criticism in general, is that the novel mounts an attack against conscience, specifically the conscience of the moral reader. He locates this attack in the last ten chapters of the novel--the famous Phelps farm episode--and maintains that the discomfort and disapproval readers feel about Tom's cruelty toward Jim stems from their own identification with Tom: If the reader sees in Tom's performance a rather shabby and safe bit of play, he is seeing no more than the exposure of the approval with which he watched Huck operate. For if Tom is rather contemptibly setting a free slave free, what after all is the reader doing, who begins the book after the fact of the Civil War? . . . when Tom proclaims to the assembled throng who have witnessed his performance that Jim
Consider atmosphere and setting in the 19th century stories you have read, and discuss how the authors have created fear and atmosphere.
English Coursework Consider atmosphere and setting in the 19th century stories you have read, and discuss how the authors have created fear and atmosphere. I am going to discuss how three Gothic stories written by authors in the19th century create fear and atmosphere. The three stories which I will be considering are The Monkeys Paw, by WW Jacobs, The Body Snatchers, by Robert Louis Stevenson and also The Signal Man, by Charles Dickens. The gothic genre was very popular in the late 18th and 19th centuries and was a very fashionable aspect of lives in that era. Almost all gothic stories included similar aspects which made the atmosphere spooky and scary. Most gothic stories included elements such as grave yards and dead bodies creating a sense of death and killing of people. The weather in gothic stories is often the kind that scares you for example thunderstorms, fog and almost all gothic stories are set in the dark of the night. Some gothic stories may include a supernatural aspect, curses, spells, wishes, ghosts , this was very popular in this era because the Victorians were very in touch with the supernatural side of their lives and believed strongly in the presence of ghosts and life after death. Gothic stories would usually include elements of surprise and realism to make the story more believable. A gothic story will always be full of suspense and tension to make the
Oscar Wilde
REALISM Great economic and political changes started in the beginning of the 19th century. Trading class began to struggle for radical political changes. As the political power was placed in the hands of the property - owning class, labor became cheep and living conditions grew worse. Disappointed and haggard working class decided to fight for their rights. People held uprisings, strikes, mass meetings and demanded more democratic reforms to improve their own conditions. All this stimulated the growth of realism and in the presentation of reality Romanticism became too abstract and symbolic. The realistic novels became the most important and most popular genre (7). Realism in literature is an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers, it is most often associated with the literary movement in 19th-century France, specifically with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac. George Eliot introduced realism into England, and William Dean Howells introduced it into the United States. Realism has been chiefly concerned with the commonplaces of everyday life among the middle and lower classes, where character is a product of social factors and environment is the integral element in the dramatic complications (13). In the drama, realism is most closely associated
How does the writer of the play 'A Kind of Alaska' show the struggle in Deborah's awakening?
How does the writer of the play 'A Kind of Alaska' show the struggle in Deborah's awakening? The awakening of Deborah in the play 'A Kind of Alaska' is a very slow progressing process, causing it to be one drawn out tense moment throughout the play. The struggle that is happening throughout the play conveys how difficult it is for Deborah to come to terms with herself and things that have happened without her influence. Confusion, reality and truth are the key points in causing the struggle for her, and decide on how she comes to terms with her life. Deborah succumbed to a 'sleeping' illness when she was fifteen. She has been in that illness for twenty-nine years and is not aware of anything that has taken place since the point she fell asleep. At the opening of the play, Deborah finds herself awakening in a plain room with two chairs, a table and the doctor. This causes Deborah confusion and distress, as she is struggling to come to terms with herself, her location and who the doctor is. Because this is the first time she has awoken in twenty-nine years, a fuss is made of her by the doctor. He is patient and waits for her to make the first move before he decides to question her about her 'sleep'. Deborah struggles with her words due to her not being provoked to make the first move. First she whispers, for this is all she can do due to her voice lying dormant for
