The Cockroach By Liu Yichang

Everyone is different, but we all have one thing in common. Death. “The Masque of the Red Death” was a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. The main characters are Prince Prospero and the Red Death figure. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” there is a disease that is killing many people. Prince Prospero is hiding from the disease in his sheltered home with a thousand of his friends. The disease’s causes people to sweat blood and die within 30 minutes. Prince Prospero and his friends think they are safe in his home and they keep partying until it is midnight. Suddenly, Prospero notices a mysterious figure that looked like someone who died from the Red Death. Prospero chases him through the 7 rooms until they are both in the last room, which is black and red. The Red Death figure turns around and then Prospero dies. Then all of Prospero’s friends run towards the Red Death figure and they all drop dead. Edgar Allen Poe uses symbolism to enhance the story’s allegory that death is inevitable

The significance about the number of times she was shot is notable to be the second most important symbol in the story. “To insist at this moment of mutual revelation that the Grandmother is transformed into the agent of God’s grace is to do serious violence in the story. It is as tendentious as to decree that the bullets in her chest symbolize the trinity” (Bandy, 151). After the grandmother is shot, the story goes on to describe the Grandmother's face. When one thinks someone of being dead, the picture is a blank face. But in this short story it is quoted: “Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (O’Connor). The smiles symbolizes the Grandmother's acceptance. “The smile on the face of the grandmother marks a victory over the grotesque in which the sublime is passed through to the reception of grace in a gratuitous act of love” (Raigor, 189). The symbolism with the Grandmother is very important throughout the entire short story, as is her role, and her death.

The one thing that could keep me inside on a nice summer’s day is the threat of mosquitoes. Where they bite me, I swell up and itch for days afterwards. It’s a hard choice between slathering myself in nasty smelling insect repellant or staying inside. Sometimes even with the insect repellant I still get bit. To add insult to injury, they sometimes get in the house and attack me. They seem to be an annoyance I can’t escape. I’m lucky that the mosquitoes that bite me don’t carry dangerous diseases like the ones in other counties. Daniel Engber who wrote the article “Let’s Kill All the Mosquitoes” has the solution to our problem. He makes a great argument to kill the dangerous mosquitoes and it’s very well supported with credible sources.

The third theme is death; in her final hours, Granny is forced to evaluate her life and how she has lived it. Early in the story she seems to be at peace with it, “she had spent so much time preparing for death there was no need for bringing it up again.” The truth is she is struggling with death. She is too weak to get out of bed, yet denies the fact that she is truly ill. The story ends with her blowing out the light, which leads the reader to understand how her life has come to an end.

In The Natural by Bernard Malamud, Malamud displays the magnitude of how an individual’s decisions can influence their life. Malamud’s main protagonist, Roy Hobbs, is the leading example of this idea, as Hobbs continually faces both his internal struggles stemming from his desire for success, and external struggles attributed to his roller-coaster of a professional baseball career. Malamud uses Hobbs and the sport of baseball as a metaphor for typical American life by depicting Hobbs’ struggles as similar to any average American. Therefore, through the life of Roy Hobbs, Malamud alludes to the average American and explains how moral attitude can lead to a person’s success or downfall.

In the story, The Natural, certain characters and events are portrayed in a distinctive way that makes this story unique to other books and shows the typical writing style of the narrator. The author uses a repetitive writing technique that is impossible to overlook. The writer of this book is able to catch the reader’s eye with his concept of the importance of beautiful description. The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, uses great imagery that makes the story appealing.

In the novel “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie, the characters who were all killed by a madman may have lost their lives in part to their own faults. Some of the guests to the island had qualities that may have done them harm because they are listed as some of the deadly sins. Anthony Marston died in part of his gluttonous tendencies, Vera Claythorne due to lust, and __ because of __.

The Grandmother displays the proper image of a southern Christian woman in the presence of other people. Her clothing, her perfection, and her attitude are perceived as truly religious. In reality, the grandmother is exceedingly selfish and corrupt morally. She preaches and gives sermons throughout the story yet in the face of danger she thinks only of herself. O'Conner writes “…the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace, and at her neckline, she pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O'Conner, 2007). She is obviously over dressed for a road trip, again it pin points the grandmother's obsession with materials. Grandmother uses gender roles, “you wouldn’t shoot a lady would you,”(O'Conner, 2007) and religious images to try to save herself. She preaches and prays to the Misfit as if he is Jesus, “Jesus…you’ve got good blood, Jesus you ought not to shoot a lady” (O'Conner, 2007). She radiates an aura of holiness at the same time sounding self-serving.

“An Animal’s Place” written by, Michael Pollan is an article on rather animals should have the same constitutional rights as humans. Pollan explains in the article that, “Zogby poll found that fifty-one percent of Americans believe that primates are entitled to the same rights as human children”. Pg. 362 meaning, people want to stand up for how animals are being treated in factories. More and more animals are treated like they are machines and not animals. Pollan goes on to explain how he went to a few of the animal factories in the United States, to see how they operate. We found he was displeasing. They cage thousands of hens and pigs to the point that they become depressed. They start producing less and some resort in eating cannibalizing.

The book Parrotfish written by Ellen Wittlinger is about transgender teenager Grady Katz-McNair and his struggle to find his place in his high school. Grady struggles with being accepted not only by his family, but also by his peers.

The story seems to imply how the modern man becomes spiritual when faced with evil. The grandmother seems to be unconcerned with the rest of her family: “‘I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!’”(441). She thinks she is a “lady” she shouldn’t be shot. The grandmother is self-centered; she did not even beg for the life of anyone in her family but her own. She is always the first to criticize everyone but never looks at herself in a critical manner. The conflicts in this story highlight the character’s nature.

Time is only running out, and it is one of the most vital and overlooked qualities of life. Albert Camus highlights the theme of time in his 1947 novel, The Plague. Through the use of allegory and point of view, Camus substantiates that when people are not aware of time and its advancing, they are wasting the precious and limited time of their lives. He constantly establishes that the amount of consciousness obtained by a person is the difference between spending time wisely and foolishly.

Presiding over a city with 1.5 million residents, pollution, and a slowing economy is no easy task. But that’s the job of Geng Yanbo, the mayor at the helm of a massive project to reconstruct the walls of imperial China. Zhou Hao’s documentary The Chinese Mayor follows Geng’s busy life as a public official while simultaneously delving into the stories of residents impacted by Geng’s transformation of the city. The film doesn’t leave viewers with clear-cut answers, presenting both Geng’s personal life and the varying viewpoints of Datong citizens. My overall impression of Geng is that he is neither a “good” nor “bad” official; rather, he is a complicated figure motivated by a mixture of unclear personal motives and an idealistic passion for

Lu Xun’s story “Diary of a Madman” serves to demonstrate his discontent with traditional Chinese cultural, not only by the fact that it clearly addresses the incidence of cannibalism that is believed to have occurred but also symbolizes the oppressive nature of Confucian principles.Lu Xun’s madman has the ability to recognize the oppressive elements of Chinese Confucian culture serves to mock established but out-dated traditional scholarship and symbolizes the greater wisdom of cultural reform, especially as it is advanced by modern intellectuals of the period.

The Seven Deadly Sins have been around since the very beginning of religion and christianity. Many of the sins play a key role in numerous stories and epics and the moral of those stories usually focuses on avoiding those specific sins. One particular sin has a large role in three books. Greed is characterized as an intense and selfish want for things, such as money and power. People today struggle with greed on a daily basis. It's human nature to do anything to gain as much power or popularity as possible due to their personal greed. Lying and cheating are ways people indulge in their greed whether it be to make money or become more powerful. Greed shows itself in many ways throughout the stories of the Canterbury Tales, Dr. Faustus, and Dante’s Inferno.