Edgar Degas

Among the most universal and powerful images in literature is the motif of the eye. Spanning from religious texts and mythology to Vonnegut and Hemingway, the eye fascinates writers because of its complexity and mystery. The eye has the powerfully unique ability to represent the bridge between mind and body. Indra Sinha makes use of this motif in his book Animal’s People in order to intensify the importance of personal perspective in understanding the world and to explain the relationship the…

Richard Cory is written by Edwin Arlington Robinson in 1897. Richard Cory is a narrative poem, meaning it tells a story. It was published as part of The Children of the Night, one of Robinson’s most popular anthologized poems. Edwin Arlington Robinson was supposedly destined for a career in business or in a science since his dad was a wealthy New England merchant, but was he guided towards his poetic pursuits by a neighbor. He consistently dedicated himself to his work throughout his entire life…

If a person's sanity is in question, don't you think you should look through all the facts and interpret them carefully and accurately? Edgar Allen Poe wrote, "The Tell-Tale Heart", a short story told in the first person by the self-confessed murderer of an old man. The narrator is clearly sane. However, many other readers of the story believe that the narrator of “The Tell-Heart” is insane. The Narrator knew what he was doing was wrong. While this admittedly seems plausible, the narrator of…

Delicatessen is black-comedy set in around the 1950’s. The French film was written and produced by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro in 1991. This film show cases a range of themes from comedy, romance and horror. The use of different camera angles such as chanted or Dutch. Jean-Pierre Jeunets use of multi narratives to slow the viewer to full understand each character important to the story told in throughout the film. The film opens to a fog consumed rundown apartment building, on the ground…

A dystopia is an imagined state where people live dehumanized lives often in fear of an eminent being. Dystopian literature is used to portray social issues, unfairness in society, history, or to simply mock something or someone. In Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “2BR02B” these short stories are extreme in content but share purpose. Life is implied to be plentiful and fulfilled in both scenarios, however, to perfect life extreme measures are…

The eminent 17th century French poet, Jean de La Fontaine once said: “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”. This can be related to the protagonist, Holden Caulfield in the J.D. Salinger Bildungsroman, Catcher in the Rye, as an adolescent searching for his purpose in the world. Many literary works explore the struggle of finding one’s identity within society, such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. The timeless essence of this best…

Loneliness is not the same thing as being alone, you can be surrounded by people but still be lonely. Loneliness is a state of mind while aloneness is a state of being. In John steinbeck’s book Of Mice and Men the theme of loneliness is shown throughout the book and with various characters. These characters include Crooks, Curley’s wife, and Candy. John Steinbeck demonstrates this loneliness by how desperate these characters are to have someone to speak with. He also shows how the loneliness…

The power of nature; nature’s role in the Romantic’s works Throughout William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and Lord Byron’s work “Darkness” both human nature and the natural are explored separately and in their cohesion. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” mainly focuses on the blissful side of nature and the impact it had on the narrator in the moment and during the present when in reflection. However, Lord Byron’s “Darkness” illustrates the cold and brutal side of nature, how…

Often a person can be conditioned to do a certain behavior, either by their own actions or influences from others, sometimes without realizing it. In two different novels that share a similar theme of racism, A Walk in The Night by Alex La Guma, and Maru by Bessie Head, the act of conditioning is explored. A Walk in The Night follows many different characters throughout the novel but mostly centers around the actions of Michael Adonis. Michael is a person of color in a coastal city of South…

Lizzy Smith Mrs. Howell Honors English II 12 January 2018 Killed for Being Odd In Albert Camus’s novella, The Stranger, the main character Meursault demonstrates many psychopathic tendencies for which he is ridiculed during his trial for killing an Arab Man. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a psychopath as “a mentally ill or unstable person; especially : a person affected with antisocial personality disorder” and this definition perfectly aligns with the personality of Meursault…