Invisible Cities

In the book “Invisible cities”, Italo Calvino described 55 different cities from Marco polo’s memory. Towards the end of the story, the fifty-five cities made me more and more troubled, as if they were just a city of different character. Marco polo visited Kublai Khan when he was 21 years old at 1,275 A.D. In 1279 the Yuan Dynasty unified the whole China to establish the seventh Chinese Dynasty. Western countries have send numerous messengers to meet with Kublai Khan, but Khan only put Marco Polo into Yuan’s historical records. I think Kublai is atractive by Marco Polo’s cities because he is providing a clue to Kublai himself to fantasize his dream city. And each city in the story display like one of Marco Polo’s dream, and he only remembered…

After much contemplation, I think I would use thought-provoking to describe ‘Invisible City’. The interviews, anecdotes and footages in the documentary film gave me a trip down memory lane of old Singapore in the 1950s. However, at the same time the past was shovelled, more questions began to arise. Then, I wondered about the Singapore I know. As a product of our education system, I grew up only learning one clean and neat singular linear history of Singapore. The textbooks told me the…

Advancement is shown through the city of Fedora. It has numerous plans of how make it the ideal city of its time, but because advancement in all aspects of life is as inevitable as time, the improvements are obsolete when they are in the midst of production and construction (Calvino 32-33). The city of Fedora explains Calvino 's motivation to write about fictional places: to maintain the book 's accuracy against time and progress. When Marco Polo/Calvino begins to name real cities that are…

Invisible City is a documentary filmed by Hubert Davis. Following the lives of Mikey and Kendell, two youths currently situated in Regent Park’s community housing during the beginning of Toronto’s ‘Revitalization’ plan for the area in 2005. During this development of the city, Davis explores the issues that affect these adolescent boys and their mothers. My initial interpretation of the film is how well the documentary addresses the concerns around public housing. The policy in the film such as…

Existentialism and Invisible Man Ralph Waldo Ellison is an American writer. He was born March 1, 1914, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and died April 16, 1994, New York, New York. He studied music for three years at Tuskegee University and left in 1936 to move to New York. While in New York he befriended Richard Wright and was influenced to start writing. In 1952 Ellison published Invisible Man, which was the only book published during his life time. The idea that Ellison seems to stress in the novel is…

The narrator introduces himself as an “invisible man.” He explains that his invisibility owes not to some biochemical accident or supernatural cause but rather to the unwillingness of other people to notice him, as he is black. It is as though other people are sleepwalkers moving through a dream in which he doesn’t appear. The narrator says that his invisibility can serve both as an advantage and as a constant aggravation. Being invisible sometimes makes him doubt whether he really exists. He…

In literature, blindness is often used to symbolize something more than just a lack of ability to see. There is often a deeper meaning to the disability, as defined in How to Read Literature Like a Professor’s 22nd chapter, “He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know” (Foster 209-214), where Thomas Foster explains the significance of a blind character in a work and how literal blindness often means wisdom for a good-spirited character and something of the opposite for their heel counterparts. In…

popular and has influenced many 20th century authors. Named after Emerson, Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man has many references to other authors’ ideas, including Emerson. Emerson was most popular for his belief in self-reliance and in theory, self-reliance is a very useful and beneficial ideology, but in reality, it’s especially difficult for an individual to live by it in society. Ellison presents the idea of self-reliance through the narrator’s character to exhibit how Americans,…

From the very beginning, the narrator introduces himself as an invisible man. He lives off the grid, under a rock where he is hibernating in anticipation of future direct, visible action. But before all this happens, he needs to recognize and explain his own invisibility. This piece by Ralph Emerson is a true reflective piece that makes the reader step back look at his or her life in a different light. However, while coherent, his memories come in bits and pieces and are quite random, sometimes…

While it adds a new voice to the discussion about African American indiscernibility in America since 1945. Ralph Ellison wrote an inspirational novel that dealt with the full range of black experience. "Invisible Man" is important in the literature world for its inspired style. His invisibility is not literally a physical condition, but is rather the result of others refusing to acknowledge him. The story is of a man in New York City who, after his experiences growing up and living as a model…