Confessional

The Reformation was a time period when religious, political, and intellectual beliefs began to change. Many people at that time were Catholic and followed the beliefs and orders of the Church, mainly the Pope. Whatever the Church said, was believed to be accurate and the people at that time would do whatever it took in order to follow these rules and get into heaven. However, during the time of the Reformation, the way people started looking at the Catholic Church began to change after the…

Their involvement in the world is deferred until they are ready to symbolize their experience through language. Jennings is aware of the dangers and delusions implicit in the creation of another system of thought, and she relies on the peaceful nature of this turning point in history to suggest the possibility a symbolic ordering of experience based on something other than the power ratio between predator and prey. In “The Animals’ Arrival,” Jennings uses the flexible form of free verse to…

A man walks down the street depressed and burdened. He looks to his right and sees the church. He can’t bear the burden on his shoulders. He walks into the church and sits down with the priest to do a confessional. The priest says to him, “Tell me what burdens you, son.” The man replies, “I was with General Sherman on his march south. We did some terrible, evil things.” The priest replies, “You were just following orders.” “No,” says the man, “They weren’t just orders. We did things only the…

Dubliners is a novel conceived of multiple stories James Joyce writes describing different aspect of people’s lives within the city of Dublin. In this novel, he uses characters with peculiar circumstances such as the relationship between a priest and a young boy to give the readers a sense of doubt between the characters of all the stories. However, Joyce changes the theme between two or three stories. Within “The Sisters” and “An Encounter,” the stories have young boys as the main protagonist…

parodies its commercialization, while Burgess attacks the mob mentality of religious people and Vonnegut explores the meaninglessness of religious practice. In Survivor, ‘the good people of Tender Branson Enterprises’ take the shameless commercialization of religion to hilarious extremes. This is illustrated by the tacky merchandizing of Tender’s religious fame such as ‘the Bible Diet…the book Money-Making Secrets of the Bible…The Tender Branson Dashboard Statuette.’ Tender himself is acutely…

The fictional narrator, Mendele the Book Peddler (Mendele Moykher Sforim), first introduces himself, after which he provides the frame around a confessional memoir by Isaac Abraham. As Isaac Abraham describes his benighted quest for 'the little man', he vividly describes shtetl life. In particular, he shows the the difficulties that beset a young Jewish man – who starts out as the exploited apprentice…

A Summer in New York City Before The Trapping of a Bell Jar Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder gives an account of the summer in New York City that Sylvia Plath talks about in her novel, The Bell Jar. This novel captivates in great and vivid detail the enjoyment that Sylvia Plath has in the summer of 1953. However, while Pain, Parties, Work sheds light on the vivacious side of Sylvia Plath during that summer, it doesn’t match the life that Sylvia portrays in her own novel. Sylvia in New…

I attended the Queens College Orchestra in the LeFrak Concert Hall on October 26th, 2016. Since this is my first semester at Queens College, this was also my first time attending a classical concert and an event in LeFrak concert hall, which is a very stunning place. It was interesting to see how the performers were setting up and practicing (all at the same time so there a lot of instruments playing and jumbled noises all together). There was a woman in the center of the stage who played a…

Hamlet is a wondrous tale loaded with drama, mystery, and deep rooted conflict. In this play the king’s death and ghost represent the catalyst of the majority of the conflict and drama. The story is one in which our main character pursues suspicion to the point of murder. Through thorough self-conflict and an increasing dislike for his new step-father, Hamlet becomes a person in which revenge is truly a virtue. The story of Hamlet is one in which everyone should know for better or worse. The…

When I first moved to Crystal Lake, It was a stressful time in my life. My parent’s had recently divorced, I would no longer be able to see my friends as much as I had used to, and above all that I would be moving to a town where I knew almost no one, but one cause for stress stood out more than most. I would have to switch to a new school where I knew absolutely no one, with the exception of one kid who went there, but I barely knew him so he might as well have been a stranger. Specifically the…