François Rabelais

What makes this novel unique, is that it focuses on the concept of how to live and how to die. This theme is even prevalent in the title as it is called Looking for Alaska rather than simply Alaska. The word “looking” implies an adventure because in this story, it is the journey that matters. Miles leaves Florida in search of a “Great Perhaps.” This idea comes from Francois Rabelais. Miles describes him in this quote: “He was this poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps” (Green 5). When Rabelais sought a “Great Perhaps,” he was referring to the mystery of what might await him after death. Miles reinterprets this quote to be about living rather than dying. He memorizes people’s last words because it helps him understand their life. Miles’ World Religions class explores how different cultures answer life’s biggest questions. One concept the class focuses on is how to get out of the “labyrinth” of life. When Alaska escapes from her own labyrinth, she creates a new one for Miles. After months of grieving and anger, Miles chooses to forgive himself and Alaska. He decides to move forward in his search for a “Great Perhaps…

A current and common reading of Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves places the character of Bernard against his friends as a dominating force. The novel is noted for its pluralism. The six speaking characters in The Waves express themselves through short monologues, sharing nearly equal space with one another until the concluding section. It is over the final forty-four pages of the novel that Bernard is fully emphasized, the voices of Louis, Rhoda, Jinny, Neville, and Susan giving way…

Haiti in its fight to Political Freedom In his route to Asia, Christopher Columbus landed on the Island in 1492, naming it Hispaniola. As we learned in this course, Christopher Columbus was one of the first conquistadores who were seeking land and wealth in order to get high class standing. At the time, the Tainos lived in the land; they had a peaceful encounter at first where they exchanged gifts then second encounter, they n took over the land and enslaved the indigenous people who later died…

1 : Introduction 1.1 General Background Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a dystopian novel, set in a world where the ownership of books is illegal, and firemen burn books instead of putting fires out. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman. He decides to investigate the loyalty some in their society have for books by reading some he kept in secret. He is then discovered by his captain who reports him, and is chased by the government until he escapes in a river. In the end, he washes up…

The phrase “New Wave” was a blanket term given to a materializing film movement in Europe in the late1950’s and 1960’s, mainly in France, Italy, and England where an abrupt manifestation of brilliant films emerged. This movement consisted of two groups of directors, the Cahiers , majorly consisting of critics turned filmmakers and the Left Bank who consisted of individuals who went straight into filmmaking. Jean-Luc Godard was within the Cahier division. In collaboration with Francois Truffaut,…

Ferocious Fear Faster, the men ran, faster, are they men anymore, faster, went the running skeletons trying to survive the freezing night. Night is a heart-wrenching nonfiction story by Eliezer Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who decided to share his story and that of other millions, for everyone to learn and read of. Eliezer was a young man when his entire town was taken into a dehumanizing captivity by opposing German forces, forced around the entire expanse of a European country to five…

n utilised in their own works. Though “the young French cinema indirectly reproached Hollywood’s long-established narratives and restricted storyline subterfuges” (Lanzoni, 206), the French New Wave directors also had a longstanding appreciation for directorial greats like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles. Each film was an exercise in honouring great filmmakers, and any other hero of the director: writers, great thinkers and even Hollywood actors, through countless references in…

“It was a pleasure to burn.” (3) Guy Montag lives in a society where firemen burn books, ‘family’ are projections on a wall sized TV, and people are considered crazy if they have opinions other then the norm. This dystopian life is controlled by the ignorance of the people and the censorship from the government. Owning books and reading are against the law and the people are drugged into compliance through sleeping pills. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 the author Ray Bradbury portrays the idea that…

In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, Montag, the book-saver, tried to escape the world of the overwhelming technology. Social activities were replaced by inane TV shows where clowns tear their limbs apart, families are replaced by the “family” on the television, and where thoughts are stopped by deafening TV commercials. Bradbury’s vision of today seems to be precise seeing that people started to care less about each other, people stop thinking due to the overload of technological…

Although many underlying messages are prominent throughout this novel the main overlying theme is that blind acceptance of societal norms is a catalyst for the loss of oneself .This is expressed continuously by the action taken by characters throughout the novel. At the start of Fahrenheit 451 Montag seems perfectly happy accepting his occupation of destroying literature as a fireman. This false sense of happiness begins to come unraveled as Montag meets Clarisse. Clarisse helps to establish…