Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Hopper's most famous painting is "Nighthawks," in 1943. "Nighthawks" depicts an all-night diner in New York City. What makes the painting remarkable is its point of view as an outsider looking in. The viewer peers through the window of the diner, seeing inside three patrons and the man behind the counter, who wears a sailor's uniform. The streets are deserted due to the dark hour, but the people inside are illuminated by the interior light. Hopper deftly captures the feeling of the fluorescent lighting and its yellowish tint, which is reflected on the walls of the diner and which also spills out onto the deserted streets. The streets are, however, not completely dark. They are illuminated by street lamps that are not depicted on the canvas, lending a sense of continuity to the frame. "Nighthawks" is an icon of the "City that Never Sleeps."

There was never a bloodier war on American soil in history than the Civil War. Those short four year took the lives of thousands soldiers and destroyed many infrastructures of America. The war, however, was more than a battle between Lincoln and Davis, North and South, slavery and freeman. The Civil War was a war of ideals. The accounts told by the soldiers shown that, although the two sides did not agree on most topics, the North and the South did held certain ideals. In The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, the eyes of James Longstreet and Joshua Chamberlain expresses the battle between the North and the South as an opportunity to show their major contributions, their loyalties to their troops, and their opinions of the war that shaped them.

Every man has opinions, some which are stronger than others, but do these thoughts define the man? In Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play Inherit The Wind opinions do not define the people who advocate them. Each character in this play has viewpoints that influence their actions. The bravery, honesty and determination required to express an opinion defines a person more than the opinion, allowing one to respect a man who advocates unpopular opinions.

The Battle of Gettysburg brought the dueling North and South together to the small town of Gettysburg and on the threshold of splitting the Union. Gettysburg was as close as the United States got to Armageddon and The Killer Angels gives this full day-to-day account of the battle that shaped America’s future. Michael Shaara author of “The Killer Angels,” tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg through the eyes of generals Robert E. Lee, Joshua Chamberlain, James Longstreet, and John Buford, and the other men involved in the action of the battle. The historical account of the Battle of Gettysburg gives the reader a chance to experience the battle personally and not the history book manner taught in schools. The feelings and inner-thoughts of each General and the conditions of the battle are seen, heard, and felt by the reader in the historical account. Shaara takes historical license with letters, the words of the men, and documents written during the four hellish days of the battle. Shaara also avoids historical opinion and provides his own opinion towards the Civil War and the people.

People commonly draw similarities between the relationship of a father and son and that of a man and their shadow. However, this raises several questions. What is one to do if their shadow becomes larger than themselves? Or perhaps the shadow no longer resembles the man? Such questions arise in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel and the graphic novel MAUS by Art Spiegelman. While no definite conclusions can be drawn, they act as guidelines in explaining why the family culture that emerges as a result of Holocaust events deters father-son relationships. The Jews all respond differently, causing such uprooted father-son connections and proving that similar religious beliefs do not necessarily translate to similar decisions in extenuating conditions.

Although Native Son by Richard Wright was set in Chicago in the 1930s instead of the South, Jim Crow laws were still a big deal. Being a bigger city in the north, Chicago came with more opportunities, but it gave black people a taunting sense of possible achievement that the segregation took away. They were forced to live in overpriced small tenants in the black belt, while being oppressed by white people in the racist, stereotype-filled society. This caused Bigger Thomas, the protagonist, to react more unmanageable than he would have had if he was living in the South. The crippling racism and Jim Crow laws oppressing African Americans in the racist, white controlled society of America led to the dangerous creation of “Native Sons” like Bigger Thomas, which Richard Wright depicts through exaggerating how the media portrays black and white people, using the motif revolved around blindness, and showing the violence and hatred that is instilled in the protagonist.

James Cone postulated that “to be black is to be a human in a condition of social oppression involving the affirming in which the oppressor regarded as degrading”. In addition to this, cone argued that society has misinterpreted the meaning of black due to the fact that society is a institution ran by ‘white’ people. Blackness is not “criminality” in fact “black is … beautiful; oppressors have made it ugly.” James Cone defines the oppressor to be ‘white’, he argues that the oppressors are homogenous as they impose their beliefs on ‘black’ people. For example attending the opera in James Cones perspective is seen as a ‘white’ agenda. Furthermore, ‘white’ people are those who force ‘black’

Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, is a poem that speaks deeply to many types of people with different personalities. This poem encourages the reader to let go of their shame of guilt and rather they should follow their heart, find the beauty, and become one with nature. Each and every one of us has a place on this earth, and although we all go through times of despair, the sun keeps shining and the earth keeps turning.

“Sonny’s Blues” was written by James Baldwin. Some of the main characters of the short story are family members that include the narrator, his brother Sonny, their mother, the narrator’s wife Isabel, his father and their uncle. Sonny’s friend is also a main character in the story, but was not in the least helpful to Sonny. The characters live in Harlem and try to survive in very trying circumstances of crime, violence and poverty. Even though the main characters are all struggling to make it in the violent crime ridden neighborhood of Harlem, they interact and help Sonny to fulfill his dream of playing his music for a living.

Flight behavior is an interesting read because it combines science and a story. There is a nice balance of the two where you do not feel like you are just reading a textbook. By combining the science and story in her book she gives the scientific aspect while also giving you characters that you can hang on to and imagine being in their shoes. It is different than how most biologists write because most of the time they do not include a story in their writing. I think that by being a biologist it impacts her writing because she uses scientific terms that are not just terms in a textbook setting. She uses terms that are more advance and it is almost like the author Barbara Kingsolver expects people to have background knowledge on the subject rather than just reading the book to learn the knowledge. It is also interesting because it seems as if she goes deeper than most writers do when it comes to explaining the nature and the scientific aspects in the story.

One of the most controversial plays of its time is hands down, Inherit the Wind. The main debate throughout the play is the debate between science and religion. A bit of a background for those that are naive to the topic in this time period to follow. Small towns such as Hillsboro were very prone to streamlined views in every possible topic of extremities such as religion to minor topics relative to eateries, gossip, and small town politics. Lawrence and Lee do an exceptional job representing and setting the scene of this town by painting the history of the play’s main characters. They make a strong point about the lack of strayed opinion as everyone is primarily religious in views and science is taught according to the bible. In a sense it is wrong for one to have a mind or speak about views that clash with what has been widely accepted in Hillsboro.

Queer Theory is the best approach by which to examine Angels in America because using Queer Theory allows us to see/ illuminates the difference between socially constructed gender and sexual acts based on sexual identity. Queer theory argues that gender is a cultural construct, that the social norms of men being masculine and women being feminine were manipulated as a culture to be seen as normal. In Angel in America, Roy Cohn is an attorney with power in his work place; he expresses a strong masculine character with “clout”, strong political power. He mentions that he is a powerful man and how with only a few phone calls he is able to get a hold of the president. These are expectations of how a masculine male is supposed to act, with power, confidence, and without fear. Being a man of politics, Roy lives up to the expectations of what society believes a strong man is supposed to be and how he is supposed to behave. When he goes to see his doctor and he is told that he has AIDS, Roy refuses to admit that he has AIDS and Homosexual. Roy tells his doctor, Henry, “You Think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.” (Pg. 51) He argues that his identity is not homosexual because they do not have “clout”; that he is a man of clout and has a lot of it. Roy states, “Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout.”(Pg. 51) An example of Queer Theory, Roy tells his doctor that labels like Homosexual, Gay,

Soon after Edward Hopper married his wife Josephine(Jo) in 1924, Hopper and his wife kept a journal. Edward would sketch his drawling in it with precise details. Jo would then add additional information. A review of the page on which "Nighthawks" is entered shows (in Edward Hopper's handwriting) that the intended name of the work was actually "Night Hawks", and that the painting was completed on January 21, 1942.

In the use of light to depict the mood of the situation, Hopper uses intense light

Traveling through the Dark by William Stafford is essentially a short poem that was written based on personal experience. The poem starts out with an unnamed, anonymous character which is also the narrator of the poem as he tells of a haunting but sad memory in first person. The story begins by telling of how a cautious traveler in the night comes across a dying deer but with an unborn child waiting to be born. What the traveler chooses to do with the deer and her child is a conflict that will decide their fate. The poem is a ‘sentimental poem’ that is both a memory from the past and a lesson of morals by Stafford that draws the reader in and makes them ponder; “what would I do if I were in this situation?” Being written in first person, Stafford puts the reader into the traveler’s position and by this, the reader can experience what is happening as if it were them in the situation.