Dichotomies

Macbeth, can be viewed as a Renaissance version of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. The witches of the play strongly resemble the snake in the Genesis story, and Lady Macbeth is similar to Eve. Further, there is a great presence of sin and the dichotomy of good and evil in both the Scripture tale and the play. Finally, the act of betrayal, with the feeling of fear, is prominent in both pieces of literature. The witches wickedly provide Macbeth with information…

individuality, authenticity, values, talents, abilities and passions that characterize you, your vision and mission in life, all of this is your essence. How do you perform gender in a daily basis? To start off, gender is the very process of creating a dichotomy by effacing similarity and elaborating on differences, and where there are biological differences in the service of constructing gender (...). Basically, doing gender is doing you, is…

Theories of a “third gender” have become prominent in New Kingdom Egypt case studies in the last few decades. However, Matić argues otherwise on any evidence for ambiguous genders outside the dichotomy. From the New Kingdom ancient Egyptian era comes the Tale of Two Brothers (Matić 2016, 177). The story explicates how a figurehead named Bata describes himself as a woman after cutting off his own penis after having been accused of adultery (Matić 2016, 177). Matić concludes that binary gender…

importance of respecting our foes through the linguistic mirroring of the Montagues and Capulets and the intertwining of both comedy and tragedy, symbolic of the uncontrollable fate and melancholy conclusion to the play. The human construct of the dichotomy of enemy and ally, child and adult, love and war, and other Petrarchan images, “one fire burns out another’s anguish”, suggesting…

Ruby Cohn remarks in her article about how “within each pair, too, a carefully symmetrical dichotomy is set up” (162). The comparison that is drawn between the two pairs is of the slave-master relationship of Pozzo and Lucky contrasting with the friend-friend relationship of Vladimir and Estragon. Cohn describes the dichotomy between the master-slave relationship as a physical one, observing how “Pozzo is blustering, red-faced, and bald; whereas Lucky is emaciated…

In Durkheim's theorization, the sacred symbolizes the interests of the group, which embodies in sacred group symbols, or totems and taboos; whereas the profane exemplifies mundane individual concerns. The dichotomy, as Durkheim puts it, between sacred/profane is not equivalent to good/evil. The sacred can either be good or evil; the profane could be either too. Thus, VidûSaka’s sacredness, if one judges it from Georges Bataille’s point of view, can only be conceived of through his…

monster. The novel goes through Victor’s journey from making the monster to realizing the horror he has unleashed into the world. However, there is much more to this story than the aspect of terror. Upon first glance, there seems to be an unequal dichotomy of men and women throughout the novel. The few female characters are portrayed as weak and submissive to the multiple male characters. However, further analysis can reveal that Shelley purposely composed her book this way in order to satirize…

Human rights became an idealistic ideology that was intended to grant unalienable rights to all human beings, regardless of a countries politics. Under an idealized view, human rights were supposed to transcend politics, however, in practice, the dichotomy…

Shakespeare’s plays are known to display countless themes, some of which manifest through the body of the works as a whole. There is a dichotomy between appearance and reality in Shakespearean works. The idea that people or things in the world are often not what they seem, falls at the heart of all his plays. The false appearances of the characters often lead to the climax. The reality is the truth of what exists, but the appearance is merely what someone makes something look like. There are…

Topic 3: Patriarchy at its Finest The novels of Jane Austen and Francis Burney take on the patriarchal system in Sense and Sensibility and Evelina. Each has their own style of not living within the patriarchal society, but challenge it in their own way. Austen places her characters in the private space and Burney in the public, each takes on the burden of growing feminism during the 18th century, each with their own characteristics (Elinor – Sense Evelina – Sensibility) and deal with marriage…