The Hell of No Exit Existentialism has always been a new way to view life. To live – to exist – without context, without labels, without definitions given by everyone else is a notion that is relieving for some and distressing for others. Written by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1944, the French play No Exit, paints a vivid and imaginative picture of an existentialist’s hell. By trapping one’s greatest fears in a room for eternity, Sartre’s intricately woven depiction of modern Hell introduces a new…
Witches Bewitched Practice and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups, the definition of witchcraft. Witch trials series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft. In the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, many people were accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials that lasted from 1692 until 1693. These people were accused by children who sought for attention and were overcome with fear. It’s evident that many people played a role…
Impact of Loyalty in The Crucible The deaths of thirty-seven innocent Salem community members in a three-month span resulted from the witch trials of 1692. These deaths resulted from false accusations for selfish reasons supported by an oppressive Puritan based government in the Salem area. These so-called witch trials are so famous that there have been many works of literature as well as movies based off of them. The most notable of these is Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It is a story based on…
Being shunned in your own home can make you go crazy, but Hester Prynne pushes through her rough life after committing adultery and shows the Puritans that she isn’t all bad. After committing adultery, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet letter to show the crime she committed. Hester and the minister committed adultery and for this Pearl will never know her father and they will live their lives in loneliness. Growing up as a Puritan that was all Hester knew of, but after committing her sin…
Pola Matoga IB 1B English A Abigail As A Victim Of Her Society In The Crucible The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, is a play with many complex characters, and sends multiple messages. One of those dynamic characters is Abigail, a seventeen year old girl. At first glance it is easy to blame Abigail for the witch trials in Salem, as she is a devious and manipulative girl, however, the truth is that Abigail is a victim of a strict, Puritan society. Her upbringing and past led her to be the person she…
The article “When School Was Scary” and the poem “The Ballad of Birmingham” both show very harmful events. The event that happened to the little girl in “The Ballad of Birmingham” is very different and more effective/powerful compared to what happened in “When School Was Scary”. In the article, Elizabeth got verbally and physically abused, but in the poem, the little girl walks into a church and then it gets bombed. Getting blown up is more destructive than getting bullied. In the article “When…
2. The Crying of Lot 49: modernism or postmodernism? In my arguing that The Crying of Lot 49 can also be construed as a late-modernist text, I will turn to Harvey’s essay ‘The Cry from Within or Without? Pynchon and the Modern – Postmodern Divide’ where he fervently argues against McHale’s ‘claim’ that The Crying of Lot 49 is fundamentally a modernist text by presenting two core arguments relating to a) intertextuality and b) Oedipa’s search for truth. Before I will dispute any arguments of…
The word witchcraft sounds like witches casting their mysterious spells. In reality, according to a Professor of International Studies, Robert Priest and his article On the Meaning of the Words “Witch,” “Witchcraft,” and “Sorcery”, he claims, “Under...not only the traditional healer...who has used a charm or amulet...identified as practicing “witchcraft” — and may be suspected of what witches traditionally are thought to do, bringing harm and death to others.” Priest mentions the comings of the…
The Pilgrim’s Progress Sin is the act of transgression against divine law. During the 1600s in England, there were two Conventicle Acts that made it a crime for any five people of the same family to meet in a private house under color of religion. John Bunyan, an evangelical Baptist preacher, was incarcerated for twelve years at the Bedford jail because he insisted on preaching the word of Christ. During his incarceration, he used his time wisely to write a novel called, The Pilgrim’s Progress,…
Throughout Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work, Notes from Underground, the protagonist, the underground man, portrays himself as a spiteful, self-contradictory, and overly conscious melancholy man. He continuously over analyzes and questions everything, and this prevents him from taking any real action. The underground man is lonely and constantly vacillates between wanting society’s acknowledgment or to be socially desired and wanting to be completely isolated from society. He gives off the impression…