``Finist the Falcon is another story translated from Alexander Afanasiev work by Robert Chandler. It begins with three sisters, the older ones who put too much value in things especially clothing, and the youngest named Mary, who is humble, and loves helping her father around the house. She eventually acquires a magically feather that she uses to call a Tsar to her bed at night, who comes in the form of a falcon, and to dress her up like a princess on Sunday for church, where no one recognizes her in fancy clothing. The older sister become suspicious and jealous of her behavior, and attack the tsar while he is in falcon form. The tsar can no longer return to her house, so she travels to his kingdom. On the way, she meets three Baba Yaga, who gives her magical trinkets, and send her on her way. Using the trinkets, she convinces the princess to let her see the tsar, but the princess used sleeping potions, so Mary could only talk to his sleeping body. The tsar eventual remember the dreams, and marries Mary instead of the princess, due to her fortitude, and the princess’s contentious nature. All the basic fairytale needs are met, full spectrum of good and evil, characters relatable to emotion, thoughts, and people, and morals. Many of the Russian fairytale elements are there also. The common plot of quest, which Mary takes to find her Tsar. Many of the common characters such as the humble daughter, a person who can turn into a bird, and the infamous Baba Yaga. The major moral
Analyse Faulks’ presentation of friendships and love affairs in Birdsong, showing which relationships and love affairs had the greatest impact on your understanding of the novel.
The science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, was written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. This book is about a society based in the future, where thinking and feeling is considered antisocial, and books were banned in an attempt to keep people happy. Bradbury shows the reader a society that wars against itself, that loses its humanity, until it eventually destroys itself so that it can be reborn and reshape itself into something new and the cycle can start all over again. This book contains many symbols, the strongest of which would be the Phoenix. The first time the Phoenix is introduced, it is an emblem on the firemen’s chest. This symbol represents rebirth, and recreation.
“There must be something in books, something we can imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”(Pg. 51) Main character Guy Montag is a servant to a society that is controlled by censorship and the fear of knowledge; Montag has spent his life burning books, to prevent the spread knowledge. But a series of events cause Montag's mind to change, and result in him breaking free from his society. The internal struggle of dynamic character Guy Montag, as to whether he should go on believing the lies his society has told him, or risk his life for something as simple as words on a page, brings readers into the corrupt society of Fahrenheit 451. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 author Ray
In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is one man attempting to turn his society upside down. After discovering for himself the injustice of his society as it shuns all literature, Montag relentlessly fights to fix this corruption and endures large amounts of persecution in the process (Bradbury). Meanwhile, in his autobiography, Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass recounts his past as a single slave doing his best to right the evils of southern slaveholders. Although one takes place in a fantasy and one during 19th century America, both works portray individuals going against the unjust grain of their societies, and persevering through extreme opposition in the process. After escaping the grip of slavery, Douglass recounts his life story to a curious, yet most-likely privileged audience in an intelligent and revealing manner. Throughout his narrative, Douglass praises the surprising resilience of the human spirit even in the midst of constant hardship.
“The Fifi Bird” recounts a small crippled child abandoned by her people. While she is lying in the center of the village, a beautiful Fifi bird flies to a tree and begins swinging from the vines. The bird fascinated the little girl and as she struggled to move closer, the bird flew away. The child climbed up the tree herself and began to swing from the vine just like the Fifi bird had. As she was swinging, two men from the Bira tribe, enemies of the Mbuti, saw the girl. They called her “disgusting, ugly, diseased, and crippled” and they raised their weapons to kill the child. But all attempts to hurt her failed and the weapons kill one man and badly injure the other. A cycle occurs of men entering the village attempting to kill the child but
In Dashiell Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon, the "black bird" serves as a crucial link connecting Sam Spade and Brigid O’ Shaughnessy. The black bird functions as the structural bond of Spade and Brigid’s relationship because it represents their greed and desire for wealth. Hammet points out that the Brigid’s greed for the bird causes her to utilize detective Spade as a tool: "Help me, Mr. Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t where will I find anyone who can, no matter how willing?" (Hammet 35). This quotation illustrates Brigid’s submissiveness and dependency on Mr. Spade to help her. But later she becomes the dominant figure when she utilizes her monetary wealth to her advantage: “She opened
“Then, moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him scratching,” (63). In the novel Fahrenheit 451 follows the protagonist, Guy Montag, and his interactions with society discouraging and encouraging his discovery of the illegal books. Along the way he understands who are the poisonous people in his dystopian world and who are not; changing his perspective to lose trust in his wife Mildred, from previous quote, and finding safety with Faber, a retired professor he came by one day in a park. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 the author demonstrates the idea that when there is censorship in the world, ignorance will follow because when a subject is hidden from one anything they do regarding it is under the impression of their lack of knowledge surrounding the topic, this becomes more relevant when Ray Bradbury acknowledges the emotions of people who have read books and whom haven't and their general opinions of them.
Dashiell Hammett who worked for a detective agency, wrote the novel The Maltese Falcon in 1929. In this novel the protagonist is a fictional character that Hammett created and named Sam Spade. Sam is a private detective hired by another character in the novel named Brigid O' Shaughnessy. Being a detective comes with many job responsibilities and being a private detective becomes even more complicated. In Hammett's novel there are many conflicts throughout his writing. Most conflicts have to do with Spade in some form considering he is the detective and also the protagonist. Are the conflicts in the story relating to Spade within himself; man versus self, or caused by another character; man versus man?
In Fahrenheit 451, The Hearth and the Sledgehammer, Ray Bradbury writes of a fireman, Guy Montag, who is the fireman in charge of burning books. He wears a helmet with the numbers 451 engraved in it, which represents the temperature at which paper burns. His uniform, black with with a sledgehammer on the arm, which seems to really attract the ladies. After suspecting an abiding near by he decides to meet up with his new neighbor, Clarisse, instantaneously she becomes greatly intoxicated by the fact that he is a fireman and feels a slight attraction toward him. Clarisse's constant “flirting” with Montag causes him to slightly feel attracted to her. After meeting with his new neighbor Montag returns home only to find his wife, Mildred, doing exactly what she had been doing for the past two years, listening to the radio with her earphones.
Michel Basilieres "Blackbird" is a very dark, gothic type novel. It deals with terrorism, death, political crisis and familial strife. Accompanying the darkness, however, is a layer of humour and wit shrouding each character. With Black Bird, Michel Basilieres has written a comic and disturbing study of how the October Crisis and the question of Canadian nationalism and identity play out through the disjointed relationships within one family. The plot is full of twists and turns and incorporates many social and political aspects derived, albeit slightly altered, from Canadian history to pull together a story ultimately about a dysfunctional family coming together. The characters in this family are obtuse and often difficult to understand, but even when they do completely ridiculous things like stealing electricity, robbing graves, committing acts of terrorism, or bringing bodies back to life, there is a likable ness about them brought about largely due to the humour imbedded in their personalities, their actions, and the events they partake in.
Although Phoenix Jackson is old, tired, dirty, and poor, nothing can stand in her way. In Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path,” Phoenix jumps off the page as a vibrant protagonist full of surprises as she embarks on a long, arduous journey to
In traditional hard-boiled American detective fiction there are many themes that seem to transcend all novels. One of those themes is the concept of power and the role in which it plays in the interaction and development of characters. More specifically, the role of women within the novels can be scrutinized to better understand the power they hold over the other characters, their own lives and the direction of the story. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon exemplifies the varying ways in which female characters attempt to obtain and utilize power in hopes of influencing, manipulating and succeeding.
The Maltese Falcon, was not only a detective film, but a film that displayed many different aspects of the female and the male character in the movie. The film was more than a story, but a story that explored the ideas of the detective genre and the different characteristics of femininity and masculinity. It also brought forth subjects of sexual desires and the greediness of money. The characters and the visual motifs in the film contributed to the developing of the plot and assisted in creating a more detective and gender oriented film. In the film, The Maltese Falcon, the role of men and women are portrayed in different ways in the film to show the distinct functions of masculinity and femininity
Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon, is a hard-boiled detective novel; a subset of the mystery genre. Before the appearance of this sub-genre, mystery novels were mainly dominated by unrealistic cases and detectives like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. As Malmgren states, “The murders in these stories are implausibly motivated, the plots completely artificial, and the characters pathetically two-dimensional, puppets and cardboard lovers, and paper mache villains and detectives of exquisite and impossible gentility.” (Malmgren, 371) On the other hand, Hammett tried to write realistic mystery fiction – the “hard-boiled” genre. In the Maltese Falcon, Hammett uses language, symbolism, and characterization to bring the story closer to
“The Tale of the Falcon” is a story that shows readers how one man’s love can lead to a series of noble and courtly actions as well as unfortunate events. A wealthy man by the name of Federigo Albherigi falls in love with a woman, Monna Giovanna. Federigo showers her with gifts and feasts; spending his money without restraint, with hopes of her returning the love. However, Monna Giovanna is as virtuous as she is beautiful and does not fall for the things that Federigo does for her. Soon enough, Federico grows poor and ends up only having his farm, his majestic falcon, and his unrequited love from Monna.