My Friends Essay

inefficient and impulsive leader of the company allowed for the justification of the cruelties at My Lai. While the direct orders for the search and destroy came from those higher in the chain of command than Calley, his characterization as a poor leader allowed for the American public to believe he was solely responsible. The predetermined image of Calley caused the American public to support…

It is difficult for some people to go against the beliefs of the majority, especially when a topic is considered too controversial to challenge. In Margaret Atwood’s “My Last Duchess”, this happens to be the case for her female protagonist when her class studies a poem by Robert Browning that is also titled “My Last Duchess”, in which a Duke had his Duchess killed for his own selfish reasons. Unexpectedly, the young girl’s interpretation of the Duke is vastly different from the rest of her class…

can be inferred that O’Brien is trying to describe the horrors that he saw in both the My Lai area and Vietnam in his tour of duty there. The way the events that transpired in Vietnam are described in the book is there is a section of narrative,…

Emo, a label given to teens that appear to wear dark clothing and walking around looking as if they are chronically depressed. Who are these kids really and what has made them this way? There has been speculation on how to define Emo culture, from its fashion and lifestyle close to that of the Goth culture and it’s taste in music close to the Punk culture, yet being neither. Music is the core foundation of the Emo culture, it not only influences the way teens dress and behave, but it connects…

Is Success Tangible? Arthur Miller’s 1949 play Death of a Salesman is a very powerful play that discusses not only the slow demise of Willy Loman, the aging salesman with two unsuccessful sons, but also highlights the different views that people can have regarding success. Willy Loman, the father of Biff Loman and brother of Ben, is a salesman who has dedicated his life to building up his reputation. His son Biff has spent much of his life trying to find a job he truly loves to do, but has…

“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is a poem written in the form of a dramatic monologue. In it, the speaker describes the portrait of his late wife to the servant of a prospective bride’s father. Throughout the description, the speaker’s sociopathy is made increasingly clear, with the heavily implication that he was the actual cause of the wife’s demise. Browning reveals the prideful, control-obsessed, and sociopathic character of the speaker through self-boasting, caesuras in the monologue,…

An Application for Slavery In Sylvia Plath's poem "The Applicant", a male marriage applicant is being interviewed for his quality as a suitor and his willingness to accept the girl being offered for marriage by the narrator. While the young man is being grilled by the narrator, he does not near experience the harsh narrative treatment that the prospective bride receives, being purposefully deprived of both gendered pronouns and choice of action as part of the arrangement. Plath uses metaphor…

the events that have influenced the character to develop into the person that they present themselves to be in present day. For example, in the first flashback of Act I, Willy and his two sons are in the Loman House when Bernard, the son of Willy’s friend, Charley, enters. Bernard warns Biff that he is about to flunk math and the he won’t be able to graduate if that happens. This angers Willy and he launches into a speech to his boys about how “the man who makes an appearance in the business…

social class, their parents, and in particular: their race. In Mildred D. Taylor’s novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Taylor guides us through the experiences of an African American family living in the South. The Logan family, while better off than may African American families in Mississippi during the 1930s, lived during a period of time…

The idea of murder may make people’s stomach turn, but to the Duke in Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” it seems like an easy task. The Duke is showing the emissary the painting of his last Duchess and telling him of her flaws and how she made him unhappy. The Duke has met with the emissary to discuss his next marriage. The death of his most recent Duchess was caused by the Duke and his personalities traits. They are the reason for him murdering her because he is a jealous, selfish,…