Evaluation of the Work of the Group

When people commit murder, they try to justify their actions with logical reasons for doing so. However, if the reasons are not valid, they try to convince themselves that they are. The short story “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe describes the actions of an unknown narrator who cunningly murders an elderly man at midnight because of his vulture eye. The narrator recounts the confidence in his finesse of the concealment of the body until he hears the first unperceived thumping of the dead man’s heart, driving him to confess to the police. His frantic attempts to convince the reader of his justification of the murder and that he is not insane creates suspense that leaves the reader at the edge of their seats at the moment of his

Time serves as one of the key structures of our society. Throughout each day we are constantly reminded of time: What time is it? What time did I start work? What time is the game? Remember that one time? Time flies when you are having fun! These expressions of time are categorized into two types of time: external time which labels our presence in reality and internal time which guides our actions, thoughts, and emotion. Naturally, we assume that these times are set in unison to each other, as time is always relative to an observer. But what happens when the times of the external and internal differ? In the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Woolf begins to explore this question through her unique writing style of free indirect discourse to travel forward and back in time, as Woolf narrates freely through the thoughts and memories of each character. With each half-hour and hourly strike of Big Ben in the heart of London, the clock serves as a tool to remind each character of the reality of life. The clock further provides physical structure and unity in a post-World War I society, connecting characters of the past at specific moments in time. Through the use of flashbacks we can parallel characters of the past into the present moment, which supports Woolf’s intricate understanding of time as circular not merely linear. Wolf further guides the reader to see how time can provoke daunting effects of fear and anxiety upon one’s life, which is displayed through

Tobias Wolff’s short story, “That Room” is a very suspenseful story that has the reader on the edge of their seat while reading it. Suspense and excitement is created through the plot and theme of the story which are both developed through four main literary devices. In the story, the narrator is put into what is potentially a life or death situation and it is at this point that he becomes aware that one is never really in full control of his or her own life. Throughout this literary analysis I will discuss the plot and theme of the story in terms of how Wolff uses setting, tone, characterization, and symbolism to enhance both the theme and the plot.

While all people like to believe they are virtuous and honorable, it is often not the case. In fact, many would rather stand by and watch as unjust treatment occur, thinking it would not affect them. These people, known collectively as bystanders, are present at the event, but choose to not take part in it. They often feel remorse for the sufferer, yet would not lend a hand in fear of becoming one. In “The Hangman”, a narrative poem by Maurice Ogden, and Eve Bunting’s “Terrible Things”,figurative language is used to emphasize the significance of bystanders. These literary devices help develop several cruel yet irrefutable themes.

The style of narration has been criticised. Some see it as stark, inconsistent, overly poetic and too glib to treat the nature of war and its atrocities. Others find death’s narration entertaining, sardonic, sympathetic and profound. The reaction of the audience is not swayed nor forced by an author-created sense of emotion in the story. By presenting most details using a matter-of-fact tone and the style of brief news headings, the author, vie his narration technique, allows the audience to connect directly with the protagonist.

Many times during this novel, a character notices that their hands, bodies, or even minds were acting without their control. The reader begins to understand the amount of apathy there is towards the concept of death, and how little the people in this novel care about others, themselves, or conclusively anything.

Within a short story, there is usually an obstacle that the main character has to persevere through. Between the characters of the guard from George Orwell’s “A Hanging” and the servant from Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart”, they both experience the act of taking another person’s life. The guard from “A Hanging” works at a prison in Burma where felons await execution. His job is to lead the convicted men to their doom and makes sure everything goes routinely and swift. While the servant from “A Tell-Tale Heart” is a psychopathic man who lets his obsession over his boss’s glasseye lead him to plot and carry out his death. Throughout both stories, the protagonists reach a moment when they need to take part in the organized killings

Loud, booming brass instruments play to a slow beat of a drum, while a silhouette of a man supported by crutches begins to inch closer and closer to the camera. His approach to the audience continues until, eventually, his whole shadow takes up the entire camera and the whole scene is pitch black. The black figure is a looming presence that exudes danger, and the threatening music that accompanies his forward movements heightens sentiments of dismay. What is haunting about this scene is the fact that he eventually consumes all of the screen, which adds to a sense of enclosure. Thus, the viewer is forcibly trapped into all-consuming darkness. This particular moment is significant because it relates to the film’s central theme of inevitability; just like the looming dark figure who is fast-approaching the audience, the fate and doom of Walter Neff quickly caught up to him despite his well-calculated pursuits of getting away with murder. He must now suffer the consequences his misdeeds, and, just like the audience who is enclosed by the darkness, he is essentially feels trapped and is forced to confess. In addition, the very fact that this forward-walking silhouette is that of Mr. Dietrichson, not only foreshadows the film’s murder victim, but also adds an eerie feel to the opening scene (because in this instance, we are literally presented with a “dead man walking”). Similar to

But is not simply sound, it is the image of manacles, cuffs, hammered into the minds of people, as a blacksmith beats the iron into shape, that completes the picture of subtle and effective oppression, killing thoughts before they are even spoken. The reader can almost feel the physical hurt which is implied by these images that accuse the government of brainwashing and repressing creative expression.

In The Trial by Franz Kafka, the protagonist K. is going through what is often thought of as one of the most dehumanizing aspects of society. Even in the United States many criticize the justice system for being dehumanizing. People are forced to wear the same thing, act the same way, and are given numbers instead of names. In The Trial Kafka emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of this process by exacerbating the bureaucratic steps that must be accomplished and adds more uncertainty and secrecy to the steps. Kafka’s writing shows the lack of information that K. is given, and the symbolic dehumanization that occurs during the whipping and with K. lacking a last name.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud equates the unconscious sense of guilt with the unconscious need for punishment when it is evaded. The discontent in society arises through the ability to defend against guilt, but when guilt can be confronted and borne then civilization will truly be happy. In most cases, “the sense of guilt makes itself noisily heard in consciousness,” (Carveth, 2001) and the only way to alleviate this fault is through punishment, by helping others. In Great Expectations, characters face moral dilemmas and shame and must determine how to deal with it. Through the use of situations and characters, Dickens conveys that the only justice system is the human conscience.

It has also discovered that how that sympathy is narrated, can play an extensive part in the reader’s judgment of the criminal. I’ve shown through Capote, that bias narration is a useful tool in causing readers to feel sympathy for the offender. In addition to this, using other offenders as an antithesis can also be a huge aid when trying to evoke criminal sympathy.

The fleeting temporal gates – whence a memory enters and leaves, as it transcends the defining words of a dead time – yield to the winds inside one mind; therefore, this brain exaggerates the injurious envious deeds and sentiments which underlie an innocuous or neutral behaviour; thus, transforming the benevolent movement into malevolent intentions that harass and confound sensibility to the present events and coincidences. Meanwhile, the writer suspects that his extra choleric blood flows from subconscious grades; auto-correction replaces guilt as the snake hisses underneath the truth-conscious phrases that chide the circumvented or implicated people.

In the literary realm, violence is more than a means of capturing the reader’s attention, but rather violence can set an entire book’s plot into motion. In order to fully understand how violence contribute to the meaning of work as a whole, one must first understand the motives and nuances surrounding the act or acts of violence. On many occasions, a single clear cut reason for violence does not exist-the author deliberately leaves ambiguity so that the reader can contemplate the act from many different angles. One novel in particular exemplifies this notion that scenes of violence can hold perceptible ramifications while appearing to be senseless and to be without an understandable meaning: The Stranger by Albert Camus. The novel is centralized around a single act of unspeakable

In the piece “A Hanging Man”, Orwell emphasizes the trauma experienced by those who participate in capital punishment, focusing on the side of those who are tasked with seeing it through. The lack of empathy portrayed in the narration becomes more and more