Binary opposition

She never allowed herself to married, never allowed herself to reap the rewards due a warrior and in the end has a difficult being accepted for who she was in this ancient society or by herself, due to the existences of cultural gender binaries. And at the end she doesn't feel like a hero; “Feeling lonely and misunderstood, the legend says that she decided to commit suicide”(13). Not the fairytale ending one would expect for a hero. In ancient societies, stories contained gender narratives…

Methodological Potential The trickster figure exists across various cultural contexts, emerging as an archetype that utilizes the methodologies of play and “craft” to illuminate authority and destabilize authorized boundaries. As “the epitome of binary oppositions” the trickster figure rejects social borders, boundaries, categorization, and identification. Often a shape-shifter, the trickster embodies an ongoing state of liminality—they are always on the cusp of becoming another. Though the…

as guilty (and by constructing Eve as guiltier than Adam) the story has been reduced to a set of binary oppositions between self and other. These oppositions have been used to construct western knowledge and language, and its constructions of sexual difference. The paradox of this problem is the fact that knowledge after the fall and the loss of Eve’s initial innocence presumes in its logic this binary separation between Self and as not…

learning what is real and its importance within a just society. Plato, within the allegory of the cave, utilizes the prison in opposition with the upper world to further expound upon the theory of forms and ultimately further justify the Philosopher as the ideal ruler. Plato’s analogy of the cave operates on the binary of the cave and the upper world; these two binaries then correlate with what Plato calls the “perceived” and “Intelligible” realms, which serve as a basis in the theory of forms.…

ugliness coincides with the negative and evil. Humans view people, art, architecture, and design in the context of beauty versus ugliness. The opposition of beauty and ugliness is prevalent in life daily. The binary of beauty versus ugliness changes the way that people view the world around them and causes pre existing notions of people and things. The binary of beauty versus ugliness is ingrained in us from childhood. Children’s stories and films portrays ‘good’ characters as being young and…

gender. It reinforces the gender binary that patriarchal sexuality essentially demands. With heterogenders, you cannot have one without the other, because each gender is defined by its opposite. It is important to note that they’re set up as distinct opposites. They’re mutually constituted. What is female is strictly not male, and vice versa. This concept is of great value to queer theory because it is the root. Queer theory always sees a way of thinking beyond the binary, and this theory of…

contrasting relationship between humans and nature plays a pivotal role in the development of Beowulf. Throughout the entirety of this story, we’re presented this binary labeled as good and evil. In order to become an epic hero of Beowulf’s caliber, humans must be the conqueror, not the conquered as it relates to nature. Going further into the binary, as it relates to evil portion, it would include: women, the uncivilized…

Morrison, both Nel and Sula face the same obstacles and shared a similar experience. In addition to the theme of good and evil, the concept of straddling the binary opposition is another related theme. Examples of these oppositions include fire versus water, nature versus society, and acceptances versus abandonment. Each of the binary oppositions creates harmonies for the role…

character, loss of identity, or “the small shafts that fall with desperation in between”(48) Thus throughout the story the narrative, blackness is confused with oppositional thinking by breaking down binaries and bring opposites together.…

Through clearly presenting the distinction between himself, and his white counterparts, Bigger separates himself from their world. In the quotation, it is important to note the use of binary oppositions such as, ‘We black and they white’, ‘They got things and we ain’t,’ and ‘they do things and we can’t’. It is through the use of contraries, that indicate that Bigger and the larger ‘we’, can only exist as opposite to white society. Wright both deconstructs this image of internalised prejudice,…