Gangsta's Paradise

Sir Thomas More’s idea of a perfect utopian society is built around the sins of man. More attacks the seven deadly sins (lust, greed, sloth, envy, gluttony, pride, and wrath) by creating a society that will logically fix the fall of mankind. His utopia is supposed to simplify and remove the temptation to break any of the sins. The utopia is designed to create a perfect society that is functional and orderly. Though his society may seem logical in his eyes, his philosophies for the use of gold…

Jeffrey Cohen is a professor of English and Director of Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute. He specializes in many areas of research but he is famed for exploring monster; a subject that we will be looking at in this paper. I will be focusing on one of his seven theses of the monster culture by supporting his position with evidence from three different sources. In his work, 'Monster Culture,' Jeffrey Jerome Cohen introduces a new way of studying monsters in the context of the cultures…

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us three scaffold scenes that represents the basic structure of the novel. These three scenes took place in the center of the town which showed humiliation to the sinners. The scaffold scenes accorded in the beginning, middle, and end of the novel. Each scene showed how the book advanced action. In the beginning, the first scaffold scene involves Hester and Pearl. Hester is standing on the scaffold and holding her baby, Pearl.…

John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” has been enjoyed by readers because of the different point of view in which he depicts Satan. People generally know Satan as the bad guy who opposes God and corrupts mankind, but Milton gave everyone a new perspective in which to look at Satan. Satan shows promise as a protagonist as he commands the world of Hell but also at the same time people still think of him as the embodiment of evil and all bad things. However, as the story progresses the…

the typical literary trends of the era in which it was written, the novel is, in reality, heavily influenced by the great works of English literature that proceeded its writing. Chief among these semi-classical influences is that of John Milton’s Paradise Lost—arguably the greatest poem in any compendium of English literature. Key character’s in Frankenstein are heavily influenced—shaped by—the epic, to the point where they attempt—or are forced to—emulate the key characters of the poem. Mary…

In Dante’s The Divine Comedy, he describes the very center of Hell as an icy, frozen place. This is a direct contrast to what people normally believe Hell to be like, as expressed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which it is rather described as a place full of fire, a literal furnace. Our minds are immediately drawn to a fiery Hell, as that is what is traditionally pictured in modern-day pop culture and the like. However, I believe Dante was right in his description, that ice is a metaphor…

Many view Satan as an abstract concept, but what is not realized is that Satan is real and that he wants our human souls. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a novel of thirty-one letters, written from an experienced devil, Screwtape, to his inexperienced nephew, Wormwood. In these letters, Screwtape suggests various ways Wormwood can distract his “patient”, specifically a middle aged male, from his faith in God. Screwtape's instructions include tempting the patient to rely on realistic…

I promptly responded, Suddenly I realized that all my pages and pages regarding the evils of Satan were virtually lacking of what ‘I really wanted to relate;’ by my words I realized my “true desire” transpired as being deliberately vague. This factual bombshell exploded within my being, along with the amazing issue of how unnerved I had become. Unlike the bold encounter I previously mentioned with my Aunt Lucy May regarding this subject, I found the experience of conversing with an unfamiliar…

The poem “January”, written by poet William Carlos Williams, uses imagery to paint a vivid picture in the mind of the reader. Williams also uses descriptive language and the metaphor of wind and the sentences the narrator is bound to, to exemplify the picture in the reader’s mind. A particular example of imagery in the poem is when William states “And the wind, as before fingers perfectly it’s derisive music.” In this quote, Williams expands to the senses of auditory and touch. He expands to…

Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley both agree upon that a monster originates from a contaminated soul. When one's soul begins to rot, a monster within emerges, for both of their monsters began as pure souls who were unaware of the evils of the world. When the soul gets contaminated by evil, it begins to transform into a monster. Dorian Gray’s inner monster begins to arise when Lord Henry inserts a fear in him (that if he sins too much it will start to show on his beautiful face and he cannot afford…