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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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GEORGE ORWELL A comparative study of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four

GEORGE ORWELL A comparative study of "Burmese Days", "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty- Four" Biography Eric Arthur Blair (later George Orwell) was born in 1903 in the Village Motihari, which lies near the border of Nepal. At the time India was part of the British Empire. His father, Richard Blair, was an agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. Eric's mother, Ida Mabel Blair was about eighteen years younger than her husband. Eric had an elder sister called Marjorie. The Blair's had a relatively priveleged and fairly pleasant existence. Orwell later describes them as "lower-upper-middle class". They owend no property and had no extensive investments. They were like many middle-class English families of the time. In 1907 moved with his mother and his sister to England. Richard Blair stayed in India. With some difficulty, Blair's parents sent their son to a private prepartory school in Sussex at the age of eight. At the age of thirteen he won a scholarship to Wellington, and soon another to Eton, the very famous public school. Since the age of five or six, he had known that he would be a writer. He neglected to win a university scholarship, and in 1922 Eric Blair joined the Indian Imperal Police and was trained in Burma. He served there for nearly five years but he resigned in 1928. There have been at least two reasons for this: firstly, his life as a

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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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

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Of Mice and Men - Full Summary and Analysis

Of Mice and Men - Full Summary and Analysis Chapter One: Two men emerge from the path along the Salinas River that runs a few miles south of Soledad, California. Travelling to a nearby farm for work, they were let off by the bus driver several miles away. The two men walk in a single file path down to a deep pool near the river. Both men, George Milton and Lennie Small, wear denim trousers and coats. George is small and quick, dark of face with restless eyes and strong, sharp features. Every part of him is defined. Lennie, who walks behind him, is an enormous man with wide, sloping shoulders. Lennie drinks long gulps from the pool, and George admonishes him, telling him that he will get sick again, for the water may be dirty. George warns him that he should never drink water that isn't running. Lennie imitates the way that George wears his hat. Lennie, who is mentally deficient, asks George where they are going, and George in turn scolds him for forgetting. Lennie claims that he remembers about the rabbits, the only part of their plan that he can ever remember. George notices that Lennie has his hands in his pockets, and asks what he has. It is a dead mouse, which Lennie kept to pet with his thumb as they walked. George explains to Lennie that they are going to work on a ranch like the one in Weed from which they came, and tells Lennie not to speak when they get to the

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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In her essay "Flight," Doris Lessing illustrates the story of an old man who is learning to let go his granddaughter as she grows into an adult

Essay on "Flight" It is always hard to get separated from someone you love and with whom you have shared every moment of his life until he decides to walk on a different path than yours. You don't know how to react and confusion dominates your mind. Should you be angry at him for leaving you, or should you support and respect his decision ? In her essay "Flight," Doris Lessing illustrates the story of an old man who is learning to let go his granddaughter as she grows into an adult and is about to get married. Lessing wisely delivers this particular old man's situation to her readers through her use of literary techniques and devices. Thus, she greatly succeeded at making her readers feel and live the grandfather's difficulty to get separated from his granddaughter. Throughout the story, Lessing skillfully uses narration and description to catch the readers attention, making us feel the grandfather's state of emotions. Hence, in the beginning of the story, we first meet his granddaughter Lisa through his eyes that "travelled homewards along the road until his granddaughter swinging on the gate underneath a frangipani tree. Her hair fell down her back in a wave of sunlight ; and her long bare legs repeated the angles of the frangipani stems, bare, shinning brown stems among patterns of pale blossoms." We follow the movement of his eyes that see her as a shinning light that

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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The story "The Company of Wolves" written by Angela Carter taunts the reader's imagination by elaborating on their idea and point of view of gender roles.

The story "The Company of Wolves" written by Angela Carter taunts the reader's imagination by elaborating on their idea and point of view of gender roles. Angela Carter's characters portray these roles very similar to the way modern day Americans view gender roles. Males and females are both Collection of grown-up fairy tales. I first read this book in college and it has become one of my all-time favourites. In this collection of short stories, Angela Carter takes the fairytales, nursery rhymes, and the images and themes they contain and perverts/illuminates them. What is most striking about this collection is Carters writing style. Her language is simultaneously poetic and profane. The stories are heavy with her purple language, which is what makes them so satisfying to read. In additon to the exquisite language, Carters re-telling of classic tales such as "Snow White," "Red Riding Hood," "Puss in Boots," etc., never fails to pay off. Carter creates a world in which Red Riding hood is the savvy hunter, not the innocent hunted. These stories make us focus on the overly simplistic (and often slanted) messages we were taught as children when these tales were first presented to us. In particular, Carter makes us question what fairytales have taught us about gender roles, marriage, and sex. For a trip into the fantasic that will make you laugh and make you really THINK, read

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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