Stephen A. Smith

The Age of Revolt Recently, United States citizens swarmed to the cinemas for a chance to watch in horrified fascination as fictional dystopias were projected in front of them. One must ask themselves, where does this obsession originate from? What is the appeal? Some may conclude it is just fascination at the idea of such a horrible society. After reading Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World, the reader might wonder: is the fear stricken into said movie-goers coming from the fear that we could be…

In The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King, the gunslinger tries to catch the man in black. The novel is 305 pages long. The book is set in a dystopian parallel universe. The world is similar to our own, having the song “Hey Jude” and its own versions of modern technology. The gunslinger crosses the desert with his mule and he encounters Brown. He tells Brown about what happened in Tull. He questioned the townspeople about a man in black, where he discovers that he brought a man back to…

The summaries of the chapter from Covey’s book The seventh habits described by Covey is named “Sharpen the Saw”. The author points out that to be effective and productive people need to renovate themselves. A person needs to renovate oneself in physical, mental, spiritual social, emotional dimensions. At the beginning of the chapter Covey tells the story about two men who were sawing a tree all day long. One of them sawed wood without any breaks; the second man did short pauses every hour. In…

In the excerpt the open boat there are many relationships involved throughout the passage. They were all friends even if they had different positions on the boat. This friendship was utterly more then friendship, this was almost pure brotherhood. They never mentioned anything about the brotherhood on the boat though. They wanted to just think of it as really good friendship. This indeed were certain it was getting to be heartfelt. This was nothing less then being heartfelt. There were 4 friends…

The book I’ve been reading is called The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. For those who haven’t read the book, basically it's about a boy named Charlie who is 15 years old and he’s starting his freshman year of highschool. The book is a bunch of letters written to an anonymous person who never writes back, so it’s kind of like a diary recording everything throughout the year and he goes through a lot. His issues, his friends issues, his family's issues while he’s still trying to…

As they secured my seatbelt my heart began to be faster and faster my palms were sweaty and my stomach has butterflies. My first time riding a roller coaster terrifying at first but an absolute black. My adrenaline was pumping and I was overcome by excitement. So, what is the allure of fear? It’s that rush of adrenaline that flood your body. People around the world seek that feeling that creepy scary feeling that can even be found in literature! In many pieces of literature you can see humans…

Occurrences that cannot be related to our scientific understanding or the laws of nature may also be defined as supernatural. The combination of fiction, horror, and romanticism that make up Gothic literature often lead to these paranormal events. Explaining the reason for this, a high school teacher stated, “Gothic literature aims to show that the fixed binary oppositions that operate in reality are actually a construct, and there lies a middle, blurred ground between what we like to think are…

shirt that looks like it was just polished. He was on a prison bus, making sure these inmates didn't try anything stupid, watching them closely. However, there was one in particular he was keeping a close eye on. His name you might ask? Jared. Jared Smith. He was nothing special, but what he did to get into the place he is now was so unspeakable, so terrifying, that everyone hated him. Not only this, but he did it 3 times over the course of the past 5 years, being put in jail for small amounts…

Imagine being placed in a horror story full of dread and isolation, would one be able to remain sane throughout their whole experience? Horror stories in all types of media from novels to films often focus on a protagonist eventually losing their mind, as well as their grasp on reality. This same idea is presented in each media; The Real Bad Friend written by Robert Bloch, The Others directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and I Am Legend directed by Francis Lawrence, where the protagonist slowly loses…

stories they've reviewed. In Stephen Crane's short story “The Open Boat” the critics looked at how the story relates to a ship called the Commodore which sank shortly before the publication, and how the story contains many symbolic perceptions. Critics analyzed how the short story “The Open Boat” is related to the events of the sinking of the Commodore. Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” is based on the real life events of the sinking of The Commodore. Stephen Crane experienced the…