Choose three contrasting poems that you feel show the difference in the attitudes and experiences of those people who were part of World War One. Analyse them in relation to how they demonstrate the experiences and feelings towards war at the time.

Choose three contrasting poems that you feel show the difference in the attitudes and experiences of those people who were part of World War One. Analyse them in relation to how they demonstrate the experiences and feelings towards war at the time. The three poets that I am choosing to write about are, Wilfred Owen, Thomas Hardy, and Rupert Brooke. The reason that the three poems contrast is the tone and content of the poem. Rupert Brooke had idealistic views of the war; his poems were seen as moral support for the soldiers. Siegfried Sassoon's poems showed the realistic view of the war, the brutal truth. Thomas Hardy is more unique than the other two writers he wrote about idealistic views, but he never actually went to war, he never had the first hand knowledge that the other two poets had, his poetry was speculation and imagination. In my essay I will analyse a poem from each poet and try to demonstrate the feelings, emotions and experiences towards war. Siegfried Sassoon's 'Suicide in the Trenches' is written realistically in its views of the war. Sassoon had been born into English aristocracy and privilege and was educated in England's finest universities. When WWI broke out, Sassoon enlisted in the army and distinguished himself as an officer. Within a short time, however, his attitude about the war changed as a result of the brutality he witnessed in the

  • Word count: 1983
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter - With close reference to one of the tales, discuss how Carter draws upon and subverts conventions of the fairy tale

"The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter "With close reference to one of the tales, discuss how Carter draws upon and subverts conventions of the fairy tale" Usually fairy tales are told to children to teach them a moral lesson in life or as is mostly the case, help them tell the difference between good and bad. Angela Carter is someone known to take elements from fairy tales and turn them into well written, exciting, compelling complex dramas of a Gothic nature filled with sexual innuendo, a combination of different narrations (mainly first and third), strong heroic female characters and the evil villain - the male. "The Bloody Chamber" is a modern interpretation of the "Blue Beard" (character below) fairy tale which uses this very formula to create an exciting and dramatic story. In a nutshell both stories are about young women (in their late teens, on the verge of turning into womanhood) who marry a wealthy man and leave a life of modesty behind them. The young women are given a set of keys which allows them to explore every room in the house - except one (the 'bloody' chamber) , if that room is entered, dire consequences shall follow (death). Naturally the young women ignore the advice of their intimidating, menacing and much older husbands to enter the room and fall into the trap set up for them and like every disobedient child, they MUST be punished. With reading the

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  • Word count: 1382
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The British are bad news to the Irish" - "Explore critical views and explain your own viewpoint as to whether this is the point Brian Friel is making in his play Translations."

"Translations" By Brian Friel "The British are bad news to the Irish" "Explore critical views and explain your own viewpoint as to whether this is the point Brian Friel is making in his play Translations." The quote "The British are bad news to the Irish" is taken from the article "What's On in London" and it was the writer Kenneth Hurren who wrote the column. Kenneth Hurren also wrote in this column, "With Translations it transpires that Friel is not at all foolish and has shrewdly cottoned on to where he was making this mistake in pressing for the withdrawal of Britain and her troops from his country. Fundamentally he is still making the same points, he is still saying that the British are bad news to the Irish; but he is saying it subtly and persuasively in terms of a marvellously eloquent and ostensibly fair - minded play, full of humour and humanity, instinct with grace and understanding." Brian Friel was born in 1929 and has had a successful career as a play-writer he is known for his famous plays "Philadelphia here I come", "Lovers", "Freedom of the city", "Faith Healer" and many more excellent plays. All of Friel's work has had something to do with Ireland and Irish themes. Brian Friel's "Translations" is a play, which is an interpretation of Ireland in the 1830s and the play shows a great change in the society at that time. At the time "Translations" was

  • Word count: 3430
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Long Days Journey into night - Analysing a scene The place of the scene is the dramatic resolution of the play, to be more exact, the end of it. In this scene, the conflict

Long Days Journey into night - Analysing a scene The place of the scene is the dramatic resolution of the play, to be more exact, the end of it. In this scene, the conflict completely revealed, the reader knows the past and the conflict as well. All the four characters has been there. Jamie and Edmund are in the room, Jamie is sleeping and simultaneously James is coming into the room. He wanted not to speak to Jamie, however the drunken Jamie woke up and started to say poetic sentences and cite from different works in order to make his father furious and start an argument. Edmund is the one who makes them to stop that before Mary comes from her room with full of morphine. Jamie starts to make comments on his mother and creates another conflict with Edmund and James. Mary starts to speak to herself ignoring everyone in the room while the others are staring at her. They are trying to make contact with Mary, without any result. The men start to drink and ignore her; Mary is still speaking to herself. The tensions are very obvious, because in that part of the plot everyone knows what happened to Mary and what is the relationship among the family members. Like in the beginning James Tyrone doesn't want to be with Jamie in the same room, and later their conversation full of anger and hatred, these acts are revealing that they don't like each other. Later on, when Mary comes into

  • Word count: 538
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Long Days Journey into Night: Character Analysis

Long Days Journey into Night: Character Analysis In this essay I shall be examining two characters and their actions and roles in the book I shall also be comparing the two characters and examining their relationship with one another. I have chosen to examine Jamie and Edmund. Jamie is considered a failure by our standards; he was neglected as a child by his parents and never loved. He has become an alcoholic, like his father, and has no prospects for the future. He is often described as a 'whoremonger' as he resorts to brothels to make up for the lack of love he receives at home. He is blamed for killing his brother Eugene who died as a baby from illness. Edmund has been ill since he was born and this is often blamed on Jamie. He is the child born after Eugene and is mollycoddled by his mother, Mary who is afraid to let him go. He is beginning to become an alcoholic through his brother's bad influence. He is Eugene O'Neill's double in the play, and has sailed around the world but is now sick with consumption, even though he has no more lines than anyone else the play tends to revolve around him with it climaxing at the forgiveness of his father and brother for all the bad things he has done to him. Both Jamie and Edmund are deeply aware of their mother's drug problem. The first point I am addressing with Jamie is his role as a 'failure'. During the book Jamie is always

  • Word count: 1219
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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Choose three significant scenes during the course of Romeo and Juliet to illustrate Juliet's character - Looking closely at Juliet's words, behaviours and responses indicate how she develops as the play progresses towards its tragic conclusion.

Choose three significant scenes during the course of Romeo and Juliet to illustrate Juliet's character. Looking closely at Juliet's words, behaviours and responses indicate how she develops as the play progresses towards its tragic conclusion. Juliet's character is dramatically portrayed in this play. The two main characters, Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague both change and mature over the progress of the play but Juliet changes from what could be seen as 'girl to woman' in just under a week. There is a definite difference in her personality from the meeting of Romeo to her marriage to him. As the play progresses, we see Juliet maturing and developing into an independent young woman, which is quite different from the beginning of the play when Juliet never thought of marriage or of defying her parents and family. In Scene 1 Act 3 Juliet enters the play alongside Lady Capulet and the Nurse, who approach her to talk about a forthcoming marriage that Lady Capulet and her husband have planned. They want her to marry Paris at the age of thirteen, however with Juliet being so young and unsure of herself, and of what marriage entails, she does not really have anything to say on the issue. Before they start to talk about this subject, the Nurse and Lady Capulet talk about Juliet's age, and Shakespeare seems to make sure that the point she is only thirteen stand out among all other

  • Word count: 1914
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The Catcher In The Rye" is a novel that has always attracted controversy.

"The Catcher In The Rye" is a novel that has always attracted controversy. When J.D. Salinger's novel, "The Catcher In The Rye" was first published in 1951, it caused a storm in both the literary world, due to its unusual content and style, and the American social scene. In a list of the most controversial books ever written, it is claimed that, "this immediate best seller almost simultaneously became a popular target of censorship" (1) and that it was banned due to its "profanity, reference to suicide, vulgarity, disrespect, and anti-Christian sentiments" (1) . The main aspects of this novel which make it controversial are; the language and style Salinger chooses to use, the comment he makes on 1950's capitalist America, Holden's state of mental health, Holden's opinions on sexuality and treatment of women, his relationships with children and his portrayal as a Christ-like figure. Many of these issues are still controversial today and more recent events, such as the assassination of John Lennon in 1980 by a man carrying a copy of the novel and wearing the red hunting hat that Holden talks about in the book, have only served to attract further controversy to "The Catcher In The Rye". It is still a controversial novel containing issues and language that still offend. The language Salinger uses in the novel is immediately recognised as controversial, even in today's society

  • Word count: 2152
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The Changeling" is a striking illustration of how the genius of a great dramatist can transform the most unpromising melodrama into the subject matter of a memorable and harrowing psychological tragedy.

THE CHANGELING: "...Beware of off'ring the first-fruits to sin..." "Women Beware Women"- Thomas Middleton "The Changeling" is a striking illustration of how the genius of a great dramatist can transform the most unpromising melodrama into the subject matter of a memorable and harrowing psychological tragedy. Una Ellis- Fermor, in "The Jacobean Drama: An Interpretation", describes the tragedy as the "most compact and pitiless in this drama", containing "elements of great beauty and subsequent action", resulting in their disintegration by the "spiritual evil set at work within them". Belonging to the decadent period of Jacobean tragedy, it is a key study in the history of post- Elizabethan drama- one that is psychological and realistic. It portrays a sombre and disturbing world, where driven by impulses and passions they can scarcely comprehend, leave alone master, Middleton's and Rowley's characters gradually disintegrate as moral beings. As T. S. Eliot has commented, it is the "tragedy of the not naturally bad but irresponsible and undeveloped nature, caught in the consequences of its own action." The play deals with complex ideas and feelings in such a way that the whole structure appears to rely on a sustained sureness and quickness of mind. It offers us a picture of the operation of folly and madness within the mind, and in doing so it explores 'abnormal' mental states;

  • Word count: 2104
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Tennyson - War Poetry

War Poetry Coursework, By Matthew Stronge. War Poetry is written to express a writers feelings towards war in general. Some writers express total glorification of the war, while others convey the inanity of confrontation. One of the poems that I have studied "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Tennyson is a poem that tells of a 19th century battle between the British and the Russians during the Crimean War in Russia. During this war, Great Britain, France, and Turkey were fighting against Russia. This battle was particularly disturbing because the lightly armored British, obviously misled, charges a line of heavily armed Russian artillery unit. The poem describes how many soldiers died due to a mistake made by a commander, a message was perceived incorrectly, and many died. They all charged straight into the centre of the Russian artillery unit, and two thirds of them were massacred in minutes. The remaining soldiers managed to realize the mistake and retreat quickly. The poem seems to describe the heroism and patriotism of the soldiers... Although many died because of an obtuse mistake. Repetition is an important element of poetry. "Rode the six hundred," shows the importance of the soldiers as a unit (stanza 1). A small group of soldiers like these must be elite. Only six hundred men of the British army were lucky enough to be part of this special force. "Cannon

  • Word count: 2016
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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What does Jane Austens The Three Sisters show us of the lives of women in the nineteenth century through the letters of Mary and Georgiana?

What does Jane Austen's "The Three Sisters" show us of the lives of women in the nineteenth century through the letters of Mary and Georgiana? Jane Austen's The Three Sisters is a short story written in epistolary form around 1792. It deals with the situation of three young sisters, of whom the eldest, Mary, receives a proposal of marriage. As the story is written in epistolary form, the reader is given a personal insight into the mind of the character and subsequently the story becomes more real. The theme of marriage is extremely common among Jane Austen's works including Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. She was fascinated by the question of who married whom and why. In her writing she examines all sorts of types of courtship thus showing how important marriage was in society at the time. The story begins with a letter written by Mary, the eldest of the girls. She has just received an offer of marriage from 'Mr Watts' and it is the 'first' Mary has ever had. This suggests that was not uncommon for young women to receive many offers of marriage. In Jane Austen's time there was no real way for young women of the 'genteel' classes to strike out on their own or be independent, the real purpose of life was marriage. Jane Austen was herself seventeen years old when she wrote the story, and therefore only just entering onto the marriage market. Along with the fact

  • Word count: 2104
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: English
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