Order In Disorder : Surrealism And Oliver Twist Analysis

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends and the other begins”(Poe, par. 3). Edgar Allan Poe, as well as many other writers throughout history, have questioned the ideological standards of society. A noteworthy debate that has surfaced time and time again through varying time periods is the dispute of logical and rational intelligence versus the impassioned emotion of one’s inner-self. These two conflicting philosophies divided and defined the different characteristics of literature during the Enlightenment era and the Romantic era. In order to understand why various authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and John Locke wrote in their differing styles, it is important to understand the historical context that inspired these authors. Although these approaches in style were exceedingly different, remarkable works of literature emerged from both time periods. While the various writers of the Enlightenment era had a more historical motivation for writing, the writers during the Romantic era composed an overall more amusing anthology of literary works.

Stephen King’s insight on dreams are all based on personal experiences. King begins by comparing the functionality of a dream to a mirror “I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use a mirror to look at something you couldn’t see head on”. By using this idea of dreams being like mirrors, King is able to alleviate his writer 's block by depicting his dreams directly onto paper. An example would be when King had already written seven to eight hundred pages of his novel which he could not seem to finish. Then later reveals how a nightmare provoked the ending, he states how he woke up frightened yet at the same time relieved he’d finished the book. According to King all he had to do at this point was to take his dream and transfer it to paper. Without a doubt, King’s personal experiences can justify why he believes “dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrates the answer to their problem in symbolic language”.

I admire the use of figurative language Dickens uses to paint each and every scene throughout this book. There is a difference between how the setting was described in the middle of the book to now.

What happens when an individual descends into madness? This process is the focus of both Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain.” Both texts use many structural techniques and literary devices to draw attention to the central idea of insanity. This insanity takes the form of a deviation from what the reader would consider normal. In spite of the two authors’ drastically different writing styles, one element remains constant, the masterful use of punctuation.

A deeper level is achieved in the mind of the narrator when she acknowledges her own mental state and that she is eager to leave her sad mood. While the man is described as animal-like and savage, she stands “In moody sadness, on the giddy brink” (9) full of contemplation and reflection on her own worldview. The poet is quite self-aware while the lunatic is not, and through her intelligent banter, the reader can see the extreme difference in personality. The poet’s own self-conception, however, is ironic in that she is wishing for ignorance that can only be achieved by lack of a self-concept. The catch-22 she experiences is perplexing, both to her and the reader.

Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist is saturated with the evil of men (and women) who seek to destroy the purest of things—the innocence of a child. The majority of the characters in this novel are driven by greed, power (over the less fortunate) and pure evil—non-more so than Mister Bumble, the cruel, pompous old beadle of the poorhouse where Oliver is raised, and Fagin, a “loathsome reptile” of a man. While each of these men will succumb to some level of depravity, as will the other characters, young Oliver Twist does not. Against all odds, Oliver is the only one who remains untainted by the evil that surrounds him all times. Despite the heartbreaking revelation of his parents’ demise, dealing with the loss of them both, the ill treatment he receives on a daily basis, existing in a world completely void of light and permeating with corruption, Oliver never adopts the pervasive nature of those around him. The infestation, which eventually consumes all those around him, is something that Oliver Twist was able to avoid due to his purity of self.

In today’s society, people have many different ways that they interpret their dreams. Some people believe that they give us a view into the future while others believe that they tell us more about ourselves. Historically, they were once believed to be symptoms of mental illness. It was through the work of Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst, that the value of dreams was shifted; we were able to learn the significance of the information that they gave us (“Dream in History”, para. 9). In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses dreams and nightmares to share information with the reader on Victor. These dreams — specifically Victor’s — give us details relating to his desires which affect his character. As the book progresses, we begin to see a shift in his character which parallels with these dreams.

The dreams individuals pursue possess tremendous power to impact their lives and personal identities. John Steinbeck utilizes his 20th century novel Of Mice and Men to highlight how simple, genuine dreams can help one find a sense of self-worth and happiness. On the other hand, in his 19th century novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens underscores how individual’s greatest desires can rob one of his or her true identity and lead him or her to misery and self-loathing.

The ideas of imprisonment captivity confinement shows how they are related to the freedom of choice and fate is explored deeply throughout the novel,the residents of the people in London are conjested like that of prison.the symbols portrayed in the novel such as dark deeds,bad behaviour,smoke fog,constant rain,dark nights uncommonly cold weather etcshows the terror, crime and sufferings of the people something thst related to fate.In contrast,the countryside which was mentioned ,where oliver was taken symbolises the freedomand happiness,which is far away from prison.

The use of counter culture and ideology can provide unique perspectives on the issues faced by everyone, even those who do not acknowledge it. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh portrays a drug addict who rejects any conventions of normalcy in the pursuit of an alternate reality. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis does the same through the depiction of a rich and greedy Wall Street tycoon. This essay will closely analyze the themes of illusion and reality in Trainspotting and American Psycho. The relationship between the fantasy world and the “real” world in these texts are closely linked and aid the narrative in a criticism of social and structural issues. The texts are often criticized as glorifying drug use and violence however through analyzing the effect of narrative, drug use and culture on the characters reality and illusions will argue that the elements of drug use and violence help in the deconstruction of greed and popular culture in the texts.

By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that

The poem begins with Oliver imagining death in a variety of different forms. The first is a simile comparing the arrival of death to a bear. Oliver states, “When death comes/like the hungry bear in autumn” (lines 1-2). It creates a strong image because in autumn bears are searching for food in order to put enough weight on to hibernate through the winter. This bear is desperate for food, making the bear seem scary and violent. Also this death is expected; every fall bears prepare for hibernation. Thus death is

“The relationship between the energies of the inquiring mind that an intelligent reader brings to the poem and the poem’s refusal to yield a single comprehensive interpretation enacts vividly the everlasting intercourse between the human mind, with its instinct to organise and harmonise, and the baffling powers of the universe about it.”

In Oliver Twist, Dickens wrote “The deep remembrance …………. of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day by day, what I had learned and thought and delighted in and raised my fancy and emulation up by was passing away from me……… cannot be written.” As a child labour, he would dine on a slice of pudding and for his twelve hour daily labour, receive a meager wage of six shillings a week” (Oliver Twist).

The novel depicts the story of an orphan, Oliver Twist who starts his life in a workhouse and is then auctioned into apprenticeship with an undertaker . He doesn’t get food over there and has to starve for food .When his stomach is not filled he always says ,”Please, sir, I want some more.” He flees from there to London where he meets a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by criminals. Oliver was asked to do several tasks which he didn’t wanted to but he had to do. The consequence of these tasks were not good for Oliver , he was once caught and jailed . At the end of the novel Oliver is handed over to a person who later happens to be his