At the Mountains of Madness

making them a perfect breeding ground for the fungus. The crop harvested in the fall of 1691 would have been baked and eaten during the following winter, which was when the fits of madness began. However, the next summer was unusually dry, which could explain the sudden drop in the bewitchments. No ergot, no madness.” (NEA) This coercion that because the accused were possessed by the devil, caused many to lose their lives. The Salem Witch Trials is an example of this conformity and…

for love is “love”. She continued using the Greeks as an example by stating, “But while the Greeks gave love four spots in the dictionary, this emotion was feared. Both Plato and Socrates saw this emotion as a serious mental disease and a state of madness.” She said these things so that her readers would be reminded of how love can make you do crazy things and is often the source of pain. And in conclusion, she encourages her readers to seek out his or her partner’s love language, in an attempt…

42: The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything: Existentialism in the Hitchhikers Guide In a world without meaning, what are we to do? Aliens, humans, existential robots, and pan-galactic beings, all ask some version of the above question in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and none of them is ever provided an answer except for “42”. Although there is no ultimate answer to the purpose of life, these creatures all react differently in the face of nothingness. While some choose to bemoan…

in why their kingdom was overtaken due to his madness and his lust over the wealth, even worse than his grandson whom is Thorin. In saying that it seems as if the greed may have been passed to him because all he seemed to care about was the treasure as he even threatened Bilbo’s life when saying to Bilbo “Get down now to your friends! Or I will throw you down.” (Tolkien, The Hobbit, Chapter 17, page 277) He is threatening to throw him off of a mountain onto the ground, ending his life because of…

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence–whether much that is glorious whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought–from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect” (Poe 513). Influential author of the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe, is renowned for his dark, ghastly representations of emotionally haunted, and mentally insane characters; However, the very man who wrote of such…

Bilbo would have never been able to lead his friends without Gandalf. One could compare Bilbo to a superhero with his super power being his luck. Such ocassions his luck has saved him include when the goblins tried kidnapping the dwarves in the mountains, finding the Arkenstone in the monumental pile of treasure, surviving the escape from the Elf Kings palace on a barrel, and finding Smaug 's weakspot (B). Not only does he have uncanny luck but he is very pure and keeps part of his character…

unattainable and generally move on or live with them without subjugating others to their dreams. Nevertheless, there are exceptions—sometimes, resentment and envy grow against the unattainable subject--in this case, a mysterious woman. The dark mountains seemed to symbolize the dark reality, as they are very far from the “dream” woman, as they seem to represent how far away the bleak challenges of life can be from the imagined Eden of dreams can make. Next, the synthesis of the different colors…

his daughter would die first. His entire life revolved around his daughter to the point that she was all he could write about. Kinnell quotes Gary Snyder saying, “Widely speaking, the muse is anything other that touches you and moves you. Be it a mountain range, a band of people, the morning star, or a diesel generator. Breaks through the ego-barrier. But this touching-deep is as a mirror, and man in his sexual nature has found the clearest mirror to be his human lover” (233). While we know that…

as mentioned earlier, he was sailing home and decimated a general that demanded attention from him, while sailing around the coast to Asia Minor. As for Tsar Nicholas II, during World War I he took command of the Army of Russia which was complete madness. Russia endured major losses and became extremely povertized and had high inflation, he was then held accountable for his…

The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley fulfills many elements of being both a gothic and romantic text. Romanticism is the idea that the power of one’s spirit, soul, instinct and emotion are more important and powerful than the science and limits of human nature. Victor Frankenstein himself is a highly romantic character and dreams of breaking the boundaries of rationality and using his knowledge to go beyond them. This novel is passionate and evokes the imagination, but it also focuses mainly…