The Fall Of The City Analysis

Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.

For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that

Alden Nowlan’s story called “The Fall of a City” discusses the central theme of how life circumstances are beyond human control in most of the cases. This theme is applied to the specific idea of coming of age through the story of the main character. Teddy is an eleven-year-old boy who lives with his uncles. Teddy spends the afternoons playing in the attic and creating a paper world: the kingdom of Upalia. The uncle and the aunt are suspicious about what the child is doing up there, and after discovering it, they mock his nephew’s behavior. Teddy becomes angry with himself and destroys the paper city. The story contains multiple literary techniques which show to the reader the opposition or rejection between Teddy’s real life and his paper

Racial prejudice often creates a division between the racists and their victims, and thus results in isolation and alienation of the victimized racial group. During the Harlem Renaissance, discrimination and oppression against African Americans was still prevalent, despite the 1920s being a time of expression of African culture. This juxtaposing concept is analyzed through Claude McKay’s poem “The White City”, which explores the perception of an African American speaker, presumably McKay himself, who longs to be a part of the White City, while retaining a deep, inner hatred of the city. Although McKay initially demonstrates his endearment and attachment toward the city through visual imagery, he directly juxtaposes it by expressing his hatred with tenacious, despicable diction. This juxtaposition not only serves to represent the struggle of being an African American in a white supremacist city but also displays McKay’s paradox of appreciating the “White City” while feeling detached from it.

Sydney, centrally located on the eastern coast, is Australia’s largest and most influential city. Its multicultural nature, advanced infrastructure, state of the art technologies, scale of foreign investment and architectural ingenuity not only make for a highly desired international tourist destination but are all compelling evidence to suggest that Sydney is in fact an established city of the developed world. As in any developed city, there are a myriad of urban dynamics of change at work that have, and will continue to evolve the morphology of the Australian metropolis.

Throughout the story, Lost in the City by Edwards P. Jones there are many different ways the city influences the different characters. Lost in the City takes the reader through some difficult times of many African Americans in Washington. The different characters form bond that cannot be broken in order to handle what life throws at them. In the stories "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons" and "The First Day" the city influences the different main characters in different ways, to help them come of age.

The collection of articles, “The Shame of the Cities” written by Lincoln Steffens, evidently reveals the history of corruption in many American cities during the 18th and 19th century. The chapter, “Pittsburg: A City Ashamed” focuses wholly on the effect Christopher Magee had on the city of Pittsburg during the time of his ruling. With the help of William Flinn, Thomas Bigelow, and E.M. Bigelow, Chris was in complete control over the city. While some of what he was doing was very helpful toward, it is undeniable that he was the cause of Pittsburgh’s extensive corruption.

Imaging your brother or sister, daughter or son gone in an instant, just like Chris, that causes any family to have deep heartbreak and damage. Chris left for two years not telling anyone what he was doing or where he was going. He had compassion and sympathy for the poor and his environment. “How is it ... that a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain?”(104). This confirms that he did cause his parents great pain, also how he has so much compassion to others but he could not even show that to his parents is heartbreaking and selfish. Chris was out of his family's’ sight for a long time. He felt he needed to get the full experience and shut his parents out. McCandless had chances to mail his parents and sister about his travels but chose not to, creating a lost connection between them. “When Gallien asked whether his parents or a friend knew what he was up to— whether there was anyone who would sound the alarm if he got into trouble and was overdue—Alex answered calmly that no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn’t spoken to his family in nearly two years. “I’m absolutely positive, ” he assured Gallien, “I won’t run into anything I can't deal with on my own” (6).

Beginning in the 1960s, middle and upper class populations began moving out of the suburbs and back into urban areas. At first, this revitalization of urban areas was "treated as a ‘back to the city' movement of suburbanites, but recent research has shown it to be a much more complicated phenomenon" (Schwirian 96). This phenomenon was coined "gentrification" by researcher Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the residential movement of middle-class people into low-income areas of London (Zukin 131). More specifically, gentrification is the renovation of previously poor urban dwellings, typically into condominiums, aimed at upper and middle class professionals. Since the 1960s, gentrification has appeared in

The movie “City of God” has many examples of sociological theories of crime and deviance. Some of the major theories I noticed throughout the movie were the functionalist theory, including examples of relative depravation, as well as the interactionist theory, including differential association and labeling. There was also evidence of the conflict theory and the control theory throughout the film.

Two stories with a historical genre “Horrific Wreck Of The City” by Fred Hewitt and “Comprehending The Calamity” by Emma Burke both tell the story of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 in varying perspectives.

Suffocation, the idea of being trapped with no escape and confined with no oxygen is a scenario that many fear. The short story “Through the Tunnel”, by Doris Lessing, plays on this fear as you follow Jerry, a young English boy, as he journeys through an isolated underwater tunnel. Doris Lessing uses the stylistic device of suspense to build an increasingly apprehensive story that captures the reader in Jerry’s adventure “through the tunnel”. Lessing first starts building suspense when Jerry starts his underwater “training”, which consists of holding his breath underwater for as long as possible. Jerry’s constant strain from depriving himself of oxygen for long periods of time starts to show when Jerry starts getting constant nosebleeds.

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

Part two of Death and Life explains several conditions for city diversity based on the observations of different American cities and discusses in depth the four factors that Jacobs believe are critical for the development of a city. The basis for generating diversity lies in these conditions, and cannot be secludedly achieved by planning and designing. This part lays out the foundation and is the basis for the rest of the book. It shows urban planning and many possible remedies for creating equal diversity, and studies why these are not applied and the effects of it not being so.

Contemporary cities face a dilemma in the modern world today; either they evolve in order to adapt to the challenges which globalization bring about, or simply refuse to change and stagnate. At present the global economy is at a fragile and unpredictable state, and for cities to continue to be competitive they are directing their attention towards their own historical, cultural, social, assets coupled with their own creative talents and spaces. The production, publication and campaign of such events as, festivals, exhibitions and championships are important factors of urban development and reconstruction of cities by way of economic prosperity, media coverage, image building and tourism. Nevertheless, cities need to weigh-in the factors of being an ‘eventful city’, which include, sustainability, security, the costs, interruptions and other social factors that comes with this strategic objective.