Gare du Nord

It was last summer. While browsing on the Wechat, I was captivated by a story. This story begins like that a couple broke up at the airport. The girl said: “every day I am waiting for you. It’s just exhausted. At first I thought you would come back if I just wait for one more minute, but now I know there’s no point to waiting for you any more, because just like you could never get on a train in an airport, I could never expect the wrong person on the wrong place in a wrong time.” On that day they broke up. However, few years later, the Hongqiao Airport and the Hongqiao Railway station was linked together, and the designer is the boy in this story. After reading this story, I was surprised not by the shocking ending nor by how heartbreaking this story is, but by how limited I knew about this train station. I used to think the Hongqiao Railway Station is one of my most familiar places, because for the last 5 years, I had visited it hundreds of times. However, the truth is that although in the last five years I went this station at least twice every week, I’d never paid attention to either its overall structure or its detail decorations. I didn’t know how many square meters it is, when it was built, and how many line it could carry, neither did I know there is a beautiful story about why the designer combines both the airport and railways station together until recently. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know this station in any usual sense, and this despondence stroked me.…

Archibald Prize winner for 2013 is Hugo by Del Kathryn Barton. It's a watercolor, gouache and acrylic painting on canvas of the Australian actor Hugo Weaving. It's a large painting sized, 200cm x 180cm. The painting is a portrait of Weaving holding a cat with a weeping lilli pilli and a intricate and colorful background. Weavings facial expressions seem serious but natural and he gazes off to his right. Barton painted the portrait in her studio over 5 months and 4 sittings in 2013. Barton…

The Chamber further found that Bemba knew that MLC forces were committing these crimes. Although he was not physically at the location of the atrocities, he was the leader of his forces and had ultimate authority over all military operations. Bemba was constantly informed via military and civilian intelligence services with “information on the combat situation, troop positions, politics, and allegations of crimes.” Additionally, the Chamber found that Bemba failed to take necessary and…

The Gothic Elements of Rebecca and Dracula Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, both possess many of the 9 characteristics that commonly identify a Gothic Novel. These characteristics all play a unique role in the plot and story of any piece of Gothic literature. While both books portray elements and qualities linked to those of a Gothic novel, Dracula displays these traits in a much more prominent way than Rebecca. One of the key characteristic of Gothic literature is the…

The Birds represents more than the threat post by nature Daphne Du Maurier’s 1952 novelette The Birds depicts a small town in England during WWII where all the birds inexplicably started to attack people. While it perfectly captured nature’s cruel mechanism, The Birds actually represents more than just the threat post by nature. In fact, It also represents the notion of a threatening presence, larger than human beings with unrivalled power, an example of this that people are more familiar with…

In many cultures, birds are used as symbols of peace, wisdom, hope, and eternal life. However, the 1952 short story The Birds by Daphne de Maurier and the movie produced by Alfred Hitchcock eleven years later portray these creatures in a much different way. They both depict a society suddenly being attacked by murderous birds. By looking deeper into each conflict, resolution, and interpretation on women’s roles, both similarities and differences can be observed. The conflicts of the novella and…

pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages”. In other words, history itself is highly textual and is always subject to critical interpretation. This essay will focus on historiographic metafiction in relation to ‘First lives club: Pretend Blood by Margaret Atwood and ‘The Birds’ by Daphne du Maurier and how historic fiction like this operates through the gap between…

Movies, books, and short stories all create and utilize suspense in many different ways, shapes, and forms. From the tension and worry feeling shown in movies, to foreshadowing about what will happen in literature. Author Daphne du Maurier and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock both used many ways to create suspense in their takes on the horror story, “The Birds.” However, only one author utilized suspense the best. Between du Maurier’s short story and Hitchcock's film, Hitchcock’s film did a better job…

In the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, the main character, Mrs. De Winter, grows immensely through her epiphanies. At the onset of the story, the main character is full of self-doubt and does not know herself. She believes that her husband does not love her and that she is inferior to his first wife, Rebecca. As the novel progresses, the main character has an epiphany and realizes that she is worthy of happiness and her husband’s love. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, also experienced an…

Flapping Complacency Can you imagine a place where birds, harmless creatures, could bring up such terror and fear. No? Well Mr. Hitchcock has indeed brought that thought into a cold, suspenseful, reality. Spoiled socialite, Melanie Daniels is shopping in a San Francisco pet store when she meets Mitch Brenner, who is looking to buy a pair of love birds for his young sister's birthday. He recognizes Melanie but pretends to have mistaken her for an assistant. She decides to get her own back…