Crass

Albert Camus, a philosopher of the twentieth century, claimed that: “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world” (The Tribune). As expressed by Camus, man is depicted as civilized, living in a society of morals and manners, while a beast or animal is considered cruel, coarse, and acts only on instinct. In Life Is A Dream Pedro Calderón de la Barca explores both natures through the hybrid character Sigismund, who begins by embodying a rough filthy nature when he acts maliciously…

Would gender roles, that are seen time and time again in families and communities, have any weight in a populace of homeless people? In Saunders’s “Tent City,” the Principal Researcher, or PR, observes firsthand the traits used by those he is studying. Survival is the priority for the inhabitants of the encampment in Fresno, California. Thus, gender roles acclimate to what is necessary to live. Women often struggle in places where the power automatically goes to the strongest. I worked at a…

off-time given to slaves during the winter holiday was actually used to reinforce slave obedience. The holiday, he posits, was a vessel through which slave masters could deliver a perverted image of freedom and expose slaves as a class that enjoyed crass entertainment and could easily revert…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is in essence a comedy, drawing together many themes with satirical and romantic humor that still attract large audiences today; it therefore can be considered comic not only due to the literary devices Shakespeare uses but because it has filled audiences with mirth for over four hundred years. In the extract Shakespeare carefully hints towards the social constraints which imprison the two 'lovers ' through the juxtaposition of class. The comic effect…

Richards reports experiments in which he himself administered high doses of LSD to a poverty-stricken research volunteer that saw images of a Hindu God with many spiraling arms during his psychedelic experience. He found out because the young man, who was in his mid-twenties, pointed it out in a magazine he was looking through some time after the experiment at Richards office and it was exactly that, a Hindu rendition of the God Shiva. “Psychedelic research, however, does suggest that there are…

This is because of another color symbol, yellow. Yellow symbolizes Gatsby’s car. The same car that hit Myrtle. “The ubiquitous yellowsymbol of the money, the crass materialism that corrupts the dream and ultimately destroys it.” (Daniel J. Schneider 1). As stated in this quote, yellow is the symbol that destroyed the dream. Also, yellow is shown with blue in the iconic billboard of ‘the eyes of T.J Eckleberg’…

As seen in the Duke and Dauphin, it is the personalities of the aristocrats that personify poor qualities and allow readers to understand them more easily. One day, Huck and Buck walk in the forest, and are forced to quickly dive into the trees or be shot; this is Huck’s first time hearing about the feud. Later, he asks Buck about the feud, but Buck’s explanation only further confuses him. In Huck’s opinion, there isn't any reason to be fighting with the Sheperdsons for seemingly no reason, and…

any accident. Crude humor remains popular today, as seen by games like Cards Against Humanity or What’s Yours Like?, where the funniest sexual or pornographic insinuations win the game. While the monks may have warned, and been warned, against such crass humor it does little good if they are unaware of what it is like when it does show up. In fact, these double-entendre riddles may not have even come into existence were it not for the taboo placed on sexual language and actions in both monastic…

In America, it is common practice for parents to attempt to educate their teenage children on the practice of sex. This is a generally awkward experience that most kids end up repressing to the far recesses of their mind. However, this is not an idea that most immigrant children are exposed to. Instead, because it is seen as more socially acceptable, they are made to embrace celibacy and abstinence. In her novel “How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents”, Julie Alvarez narrates the difficulties…

Much as a river shapes its banks on its course, in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck grows and matures as a person as he and an escaped slave, Jim, travel down the Mississippi River. As they raft along the river, the people Huck meets and experiences he gains, as well as the extreme social views he is exposed to, transform him from a naive young boy to someone who has an understanding of his own morality and of the way society functions. In between the banks of the mighty…