Representation of the Body and the Mind in A Tale of Two Cities
In the novelette, A Tale of Two Cities, the characters Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton immensely resemble each other. Ironically, their individual personalities are also extremely different. So different that they reflect the body and the mind philosophical bugaboo that Rene Descartes proposed in the 17th century which puzzled philosophers for centuries. The characters Darnay and Carton are comparable to the body and the mind philosophical conundrum as a result of their interactions, Carton's charisma illustrating the mind, and accordingly Darnay's charisma illustrating the body.
In the body and mind conundrum, the body is a vessel for the mind (the mind in the problem is comparable to the soul). When comparing Carton and Darnay to the enigma, one must accept the fact that humans often have a critical opinion of themselves. For example, instinctively, a person's body image may disappoint them, believing that they are too scrawny or too fat and that no one will approve of them or convene with them if they regard their imperfection. Accordingly, Carton sarcastically acrimoniously replies," It must be an immense satisfaction!" to Darnay's alleviation over not dying, which reflects someone disliking their body image as Carton dislikes Darnay. When individuals dream, they conceive themselves as they are in real life. When they dream they still know who they are in the dream because that person looks like them.
George Cukor’s star studded romantic comedy, The Philadelphia Story (1940), offers modern viewers a look at changing personalities in 1930s/40s American high society. The film stars Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and James Stewart in a clash of cultures centered around a wedding. Macaulay Connor (Stewart) is a reporter for tabloid like Spy Magazine, on assignment to write an exposé on the marriage of wealthy Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) with the help of her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). While all of the characters present go through a dramatic change of outlook, Connor’s is the most drastic.
Lord of the Flies is often claimed to be an allegory of modern society. While this is true, Golding’s intentions in writing this novel are much deeper. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies provides an enlightening insight into the true nature of human beings; along with why people refrain from acting upon the evil that resides within them. He presents these ideas through symbolism within the novel and it proves effective in many ways. Through symbolism, Golding can unfold the excellent plot of his novel, while subsequently sharing his ideas on the relationship of mankind and society. Golding uses the beast, the conch shell, and Piggy’s glasses to symbolize the human impulse towards ‘savagery’ and the social constructs put in place to prevent it.
Simons dead body moved out toward the open sea” (Golding 154). In The Lord of the Flies, Golding refers to the boys as Beelzebub, a powerful demon in the bible that was very dangerous and feared almost like a powerful savage. In one of the big plots of the story is when Jack and his hunting crew goes and murders Simon and when you are a child you are raised to not murder anyone in this world; therefore the boys lose their human nature and murder Simon. The real problem the boys experience on the island is that they succumb human nature; therefore their solutions of authority structure by a dictatorship versus the conch and ultimately they fail.
Throughout history, pride and determination have motivated people to do amazing things. In The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson proves that pride and determination aided the creation of The World’s Columbian Exposition.
All our personalities compare to a character from Lord of the Flies, and I found myself to be an ENFP or an idealist; someone most comparable to Simon. An ENFP or an idealist personality displays characteristics of being extroverted, intuitive, feeling and perceiving which. Furthermore, passionately concerned with positive improvement, being kind, warm, sympathetic, distracted and motivated were all trait described in the personality test for the ENFP. Due to our selflessness, how introverted and extroverted we are, and how we can think both logically and emotionally, makes Simon and I most similar.
Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton have pretty much in common, as well as their similar appearances and their love for Lucie. They even have terribly several variations as well as their backgrounds and attitudes. However, in the end, the reader finishes up having the
Sydney Carton, “one of Dickens’s most loved and best-remembered characters” (Stout 29), is not just another two-dimensional character; he seems to fly off the pages and into real life throughout all the trials and tribulations he experiences. He touches many hearts, and he even saves the life of Charles Darnay, a man who looks surprisingly similar to him. In Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton is a selfish man of habit, a cynic, a self-loathing drunk, and an incorrigible barrister until he meets Lucie Manette; throughout the novel Sydney is overcome by his noble love for Lucie and transforms from a cynic to a hero as he accomplishes one of the most selfless acts a man can carry out.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson has two main characters, Daniel H. Burnham and H. H. Holmes. Burnham is the protagonist. He was an accomplished architect who was chosen to design the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. ''It was easy to see how he got commissions. His very bearing and looks were half the battle. He had only to assert the most commonplace thing and it sounded important and convincing'' (Larson 26). This was how he was able to successfully build the fair of people's dreams. He was completely committed to building it. He lived on the grounds so he could always to make sure things were going smoothly. They hardly ever did, but he was able to push passed it and deliver. He then lived a happy life designing cities and being with
In Charles Dickens’s historical fiction, A Tale of Two Cities, set prior to and during the French Revolution, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay look almost identical and even share a few characteristics, such as their love for one Lucie Manette and their being orphans, but overall they are opposites of each other. The former is an alcoholic, aimless man, while the latter is more ambitious. Despite these similarities and obvious differences, Sydney Carton’s foil is not Charles Darnay, but rather Madame Defarge, the wife of a wine-shop owner in Saint Antoine, a suburb outside of Paris. Like Carton and Darnay, the two share similarities and differences. While Sydney Carton and Madame Defarge share the ability to go unnoticed while taking charge
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a story about a troop of boys who are on a plane out of war-torn England. However, their plane crashes and strands them on an island without any adults. The boys, who are anywhere from age six to age twelve, must learn to survive not only the elements, but each other as well. By the end of the story, at least three of the boys have died, two of which were killed knowingly by other boys on the island.
In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, it is explicitly mentioned several times that Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton look particularly similar. The similarities in the appearances of Carton and Darnay later play a substantial role in the conclusion of the novel. Despite their physical similarities, the two are completely different individuals and are nothing alike. Chapter 4 of the novel juxtaposes the two characters together and displays the differences in their personalities. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens exhibits the diversity of Carton and Darnay’s personalities, by embedding imagery and characterization into the context.
Eye color and interpretation are a big part of most world cultures. There are several superstitions and theories about eyes and their meanings. There is even an old proverb that states, “Eyes are the window to the soul.” Erick Larson uses this proverb and the perception of eyes in his novel, The Devil In The White City, to illustrate the nature of murder H.H. Holmes, and create a parallelism between Holmes and another main character, architect Daniel Burnham. Throughout the novel, Larson also highlights Holmes’s and Burnham’s similar but contrasting personalities.
In the novel Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, a group of young boys get trapped on an unknown island due to a plane crash. While reading this novel one might come to realize “people were never quite what you thought they were,” (Golding 54). For example, Simon seems like any other preteen British kid. Jack also appears to be a regular kid. Piggy, too, is at first characterized as a total weakness. In the article “The Stanford Prison Experiment”, prisoners and guards also think they are kind and good, but soon realize they’re the complete opposite.
A lot of the characters are portrayed as basically good, for the most part. Like Ralph, Simon, Piggy, and Samneric.They were good most if not all of the time. However some characters were written as basically evil, according to Golding’s idea of evil. Those characters being Jack and Roger. Even though a good portion of the characters represented good Golding still thought that men were naturally evil. While most of the characters are good most of the time there is still a point when they are all evil.
Oliver travels through many places throughout the book. He goes through many cities and also the countryside. Charles Dickens describes both the locations in a very different way. He has a total opposite opinion on both the places. He explains the city as a place where the criminals, unsafe and disgusting. The countryside, however, is described as splendid, safe, and place where the rich people live.