Christopher Hitchens

King Ferdinand never would have guessed in his wildest dreams that he would stumble onto something greater—the New World. Although King Ferdinand died centuries ago, his memory is forever immortalized around the discovery of America, along with Christopher Columbus, the legendary Italian explorer. Soon after the discovery of the Western hemisphere, Europe began to colonize, explore, and conquest the New World, a mystifying place filled with new possibilities. Throughout history, I believe that…

Christopher Columbus was not the man many tell him to be. As a society, we tend to look at all the great and glorious things he did, most notably discovering the Americas. Almost all of the time, however, we do not look at all the negatives, which there are arguably many more of. These include his harsh treatment of natives, thirst for wealth and the terrible acts he committed as governor of the Indies. Upon first reaching the natives, Columbus describes them as very friendly, extremely willing…

most people assume. People believe McCandless’ death was stupid, reckless, and it disrespected the land he wanted to live off due to him traveling with very little resources, disappearing from his family, and eventually leading to his fatal death. Christopher McCandless went on adventure to find a purpose of life. His father expected so much from McCandless that he wanted him to go to college and so he did. McCandless was pressured to do what his family wanted and not what he wanted. Therefore,…

Was the pain Chris McCandless brought to his loved ones justified? “Nothing was more important to Chris than truth. He believed strongly that absolute truth should be part of everything you do in this life.” (Carine McCandless) To those who knew Christopher McCandless, he was a charming young man with a bright future ahead of him. He was brimming with self-confidence and had a profound respect for nature. During the May of 1990, after graduating from Emory University as a top athlete with high…

panel on his doors tells a different section of Columbus’ life. Howard Zinn addresses European colonization of the New World in the first chapter of his book, A People’s History of the United States. Although both Rogers and Zinn tell a story of Christopher Columbus, their stories depict contrasting idea. Randolph Rogers’ portrayal of Columbus shows him as an idealized and glorified person, but Rogers does show some elements of Columbus that display him as someone who is not heroic, but instead…

Trends contribute to the credibility of a book. For my book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, I picked three trends that I thought demonstrated this. My trends for this book were character trends for Christopher Johnson McCandless, “Alex”. Relentless determination, breaking free and curiosity/wonder led to Chris’s adventure throughout the book. I also pick the trend of reporting or journalism that Jon Krakauer uses to tell Chris’s story. The first trend, relentless determination, is shown by…

William Shakespeare is history’s most greatest, influential, and philosophical playwright. His most acclaimed work, Hamlet, is extensively studied and analyzed as it confronts and speaks openly about many moral, ethical, emotional truths and dilemmas. Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, in which the indecisive and contemplative protagonist is driven to avenge his father’s death, yet the act of his revenge is necessarily delayed in order to highlight Hamlet’s emotional and psychological complexity. The…

Primary sources are documents and artifacts that come directly from the past. The Vinland Sagas are two Icelandic texts and primary sources that include the “Saga of the Greenlanders” and the “Saga of Eirik the Red.” Both sagas tell similar yet different stories of Norse voyages to North America, a place that Leif Eirikson named Vinland (wine land). The Vinland Sagas tell how the Norse people traveled to North America and created settlements there until a battle with the natives broke out. The…

On September 6, 1992, a young man’s body was found just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. That young man’s body was Christopher McCandless, a 24-year-old Emory University Graduate. Chris McCandless had previously left Georgia to go on a 114-day journey cross country before finally starving to death in Denali National Park. His journey leads many to question if McCandless’s journey was a death wish or if he was an intelligent young man seeking for adventure. Shaun Callarman…

In Antonioni’s Blow-Up, symbols are a large part of the characterization of the main character Thomas, and play a huge role in the execution of the themes and overall plot. The film is rarely direct, having many scenes and interactions whose intended purpose is complicated and usually hard to decipher at first, leaving the watcher very confused after it’s completion. While many aspects of the film seems disjointed with no connection or meaning whatsoever, most of the meaning is symbolically…