Kavan Smith

The Bell Jar was written around the 1950’s and 1960’s, when women were expected to adhere to specific societal norms. Often, these norms included being a mother of children, staying at home cleaning or cooking, and being an obedient wife. Society placed high importance, along with these expectations/behaviors, on the women while they were at home or in public. Society accepted women who met all these factors. Esther, a character in The Bell Jar, and Sylvia’s autobiographical figure, lacks all of…

Elements of Voice: The Bell Jar The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a timeless literary classic. One reason that this novel has transcended the ages since the 1960s is Plath’s expert use of the elements of voice. Few novels may stand the test of time. A vast knowledge of author’s craft is necessary to create a story that is intricate and detail-oriented without becoming overly specific and unrelateable. Sylvia Plath suffered from depression throughout her life, which led to her poetry and novels…

Disease and degeneracy has taken place of the progression promised by the Enlightenment, there is discomfort present within modern society and its streamlining that has led to the world despair and nihilism. Modern mechanical social structure stands responsible for the capacity depletion of humanity to find meaning, and the increased intellectual sophistication is in fact a manifestation of a vane sense of egoism, bound to erupt violently. What was deemed to become the age of information has…

industrial society according to the social principles espoused by Christianity (Appelrouth & Edles 2012). The contributions of many forward thinkers went into forming the established theories of Marx including, but not limited to, political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. During this time Marx also established a longstanding collaborative relationship with Friedrich Engels (Appelrouth & Edles…

naturally decline as competition on the supply side of the market and wages of labor increase, which, in turn, inevitably happen as societies increase their wealth (Smith 1976:278). Therefore, there is a contradiction between the interest of the rich and that of the society as a whole, which renders the principle of the invisible hand (Smith 1976:477) inapplicable if they have the means to circumvent the natural rules of the market available to them through the power of the…

Often described as a perfectionist, Sylvia Plath was an enviable, popular, academically successful college student when her losing battle with depression began. Having published her first poem at eight years old, Plath was a writer at her core, and her journey with mental illness can be revealed and analyzed in her writing which gave Plath a method of coping with and externalizing her many debilitating anxieties. In her many published poems, stories, and essays Plath covers topics on identity,…

I have conducted an interview with a sixty-two-year-old nurse to develop a better understanding of non-sharable problems and of rationalization. I was surprised with the understanding of these terms my interviewee had without really hearing the terms used often in her life. She told me of encounters she has had personally with rationalization and non-sharable problems, and she also told me of stories of co-workers and friends who faced similar issues. The main thing I took away from the…

I. (Attention-getter) The Titanic was on her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York City, US. The Titanic was considered to be unsinkable. But, on her maiden voyage the Titanic struck an iceberg that resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people. II. The Titanic had 2,603 passengers on board. Out of those 2,603 passengers only 705 of them survived. The Titanic had 20 lifeboats and could carry 1,178 out of the 2,603 people that were aboard. III. (Credibility Statement) Ever since…

William Easterly argues in his book The Tyranny of Experts that the support of autocratic dictatorships does not promote economic or political development in a more efficient way than what allowing a democratic and free regime to flourish would promote. He presents the idea that development experts who try to implement policies through dictators in order to promote the economic well-being of nations fail to support the economic or political well-being of individuals due to four things that…

capitalists, nor aristocrats, too kindly. Thus, in order to avoid the mounting of aristocratic and capitalistic heads upon pikes, the system should be reformed to employ those who are qualified for and desire employment. Most of the economists following Smith in the school of classical economic, notably David Ricardo, that Smith’s moral sentiments were not in fitting with the field of economics, and abandoned Smith’s moral reasoning. In its place, we are left with the iron law of wages (Ricardo…