Trighton Warren Mrs. Grilli AP Lang Period 3 3 August 2015 “Amusing Ourselves to Death” Summer Assignment When writing any novel, the first chapter is extremely important because it must be written in such a way that it gives the reader a reason to read the book. In “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” by Neil Postman, Postman effectively uses different rhetorical devices to get his message across. In Postman’s first chapter, “The Medium is the Metaphor”, Postman identifies the “discourse” of generations and compares our country’s ambitions to the city of Las Vegas.…
Elia Kazan’s film ‘On the Waterfront’ and Reginald Rose’s play ‘Twelve Angry Men’ both represent the political issues in the 1950’s of American society from two different concepts/perspectives. Both Kazan and Rose explore the issues by using their protagonists and antagonists to exploit themes such as justice, prejudice and conflict. Kazan employs the protagonist Terry Malloy and the antagonist Johnny Friendly to have a friendship at first, although as the film progresses conflict is expressed between the pair. Similarly, in Twelve Angry Men, Rose utilizes the protagonist Juror 8 and antagonists Juror 3 and 10 to acquire conflict just after the first vote.…
Claude McKay’s “America” personifies his love toward our land, but also his hatred because of its racial prejudices. America has been portrayed with the attitude of slavery and unjustness. This leaves a sour taste in McKay’s heart toward the people of America, but his love for the land continues to grow. McKay shows several instances of personification by using America as a human and giving it human-like characteristics.…
In midst of a Great Depression, America’s suicide rate significantly increased during World War II. In contrast to America’s common conception as a land of plenty, World War II restricted thousands of people’s lives and their actions, effectively suppressing opportunities. Serving in a military, an aspect of life that is typically perceived as patriotic, ironically, became dull and futile. In this passage from “A Separate Peace,” John Knowles displays the uniqueness of the era by characterizing America as depressing through the use of contrasting syntax, foreboding diction, and dull imagery.…
Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, was published in 1990 and quickly became the ultimate testimony of the Vietnam war, and perhaps even more so, the American experience. Although America’s direct military involvement in Vietnam had been over for nearly two decades in 1990, the haunting clarity of O’Brien’s stories and their autobiographical nature quickly received critical and commercial praise. O’Brien’s work remains as an essential piece of literature in understanding the Vietnam war. Even after a quarter century, the novel remains a staple in today’s college literature and history courses.…
The language of war is commonly used by American culture nowadays in order to figuratively express ideas. In the essay “Fighting Words: The War Over Language,” Jon Hooten argues that integrating the language of war in a metaphorical sense will cause negative impacts in the actual world. When readers realize how common the language of war is in everyday language, they must wonder if Hooten’s statement that American culture has learned to casually use the language of war applies to them as well because of the multiple rhetorical strategies Hooten incorporates in his essay. Hooten assertively presents to his readers that using the language of war carelessly can desensitize us to the horrors of war and develop into real events through the usage…
Under Review: “Moo” by Jane Smiley Jane Smiley is a writer well known for her Pulitzer Prize winning effort “A Thousand Acres”, in which she adapts Shakespeare’s tragedy, “King Lear”, to a more contemporary Iowan/American-Midwestern setting. A startlingly tragic & insightful story which delved into the lives of families in a small Iowan farming community and dissected the issues of patriarchy, environmentalism, feminism and family dysfunction, her astute observational abilities and her honest representation prompted prestigious dailies such as the New York Times to call her “the Balzac of the late-20th-century American Midwest”. It was so celebrated, it even got adapted into a movie (of the same name). Four years later however, in 1995,…
Each character is punished according to his or her character flaw. Their punishment is funny because it highlights the fact that they are not important people, and brings them down to the appropriate level. Nicholas, the guest, is really a troubling and mischievous character. However, the carpenter falls for Nicholas's trick straight away, showing his foolishness. Then he says, "God has some secrets that we shouldn't know.…
“The Glass Menagerie”, “Death of a Salesman”, and “A Raisin in the Sun” all reflect the human experience. The human experience in this case involves American families during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that are co-dependent on each other throughout the economic and social struggles of their time. The families’ struggles transcend their time periods; people empathize with them now and will continue to do so long into the future. The stories depict experiences that feel very real and that people can relate to in their own lives. Economic hardship and dreams of a better future are common themes in these plays.…
In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the protagonist David speaks frequently of America as a dynamic nation unafraid to change fate itself. Yet the actual Americans depicted in Baldwin’s novel express considerable uncertainty, a sharp contrast from David’s professed views. Indeed, Baldwin portrays American hegemony as a self-deceptive myth, contrasting David’s idea of American futurity with Giovanni’s more realistic denouncement of American individualism. The self-deception Baldwin depicts proves ironic: although Americans seem self-assured in their business and political endeavors, their incessant focus on the future obscures their tumultuous feelings towards love. Understanding American self-deception serves another function, however – it…
Metaphors are the crucial element in the story to draw attention to unfamiliar concepts, trigger emotions, and motivates to act. Mason’s work portraits the metaphoric journey from the beginning to the end of the story where in the beginning she provides the symbol in the form of settings, and during the end of the story, she exclaimed that “Leroy takes a lungful of smoke and closes his eyes as Norma Jean’s words sink in. He tries to focus on the fact that thirty-five hundred soldiers died on the grounds around him. He can only think of that war as a board game with plastic soldier” (Mason 714). [Metaphoric statement in the previous sentence will conclude all the literary features in the entire review.]…
The Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer challenges many constructs of modern society through a narrator who is “… a man of two minds” (Nguyen 1). The half French, half Vietnamese narrator operates as a communist spy among the Southern Vietnamese troops. The narrator chronicles his life in the form of a confession to another communist within a reeducation camp. This unique stylistic technique allows Nguyen to delve into and dissect issues that remain culturally relevant, including representation, American disillusionment, and duality.…
Introduction John Steinbeck said that writing Travels with Charley in Search of America was like writing a novel (p.20). At the end of a long life writing about America, he felt he was writing about something he did not know about. He had first travelled as a young writer so his memories were not good enough, that is why he decided to take the road with Charley. This book, originally published in 1962, is a self-portrait and memoir of John Steinbeck.…
The play addresses the question of what it means to be Australian, and answers in a rather open and debatable WAY. Neighbourhood Watch suggests that there is no such thing as one, Australian identity; rather one for each of the twenty-one million living here. Katz opens up this idea by providing vivid imagery of Ana’s life in war torn Hungary, evoking feelings of sonder from the audience. The transitions to and from Ana’s home in Hungary are one of the play’s many challenges, considering that most theatres do not have a revolving stage or set. However these transitions are crucial in connecting Ana’s past and present, and crucial in communicating the vivid, complex identities of everyone around…
Miller’s play is set in a patriarchal society in the 1950s in which gender inequality is widely accepted. During this time in America, the husband was usually responsible for providing for his family.…