The Flowers of Evil contains several poems titled Spleen. The significance of spleen relates to the ancient Greek belief that sadness originates from the fluids of the spleen (Puchner 468). In Baudelaire’s poems spleen becomes a representation of “thoroughgoing disgust with life” (468). In Spleen LXXXI readers experience a sense of despair. There are several key elements within the poem that evoke this feeling. The descriptions of rain, bats, spiders and the brain each contribute to despair and the inability to escape. For example, the rain becomes “prison bars” and the spiders “spin their meshes in the caverns of the brain” thus, making it impossible to escape (Baudelaire 475). The bat is symbolic to hope, however Baudelaire’s description
Although everyone is their own individual, society determines who is considered “normal.” In Flowers for Algernon, Charlie Gordon struggles to fit in with the people around him because of his mental illness. Elie Wiesel faces the same struggles while trying to survive in a concentration camp in Night. Charlie and Elie have both been challenged by the concept of identity. In Flowers for Algernon and Night, these characters have faced many conflicts including not having their identity accepted by society, having insecurities about their identity, and being mistreated based on their identity.
In Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, a boy rebels against his father by climbing up trees, where he spends the rest of his life on, without ever touching the ground again. The philosophical residue is the idea that reason advances the human knowledge, which is a powerful influence to individuals, making people seek for it through books and logic. Accordingly, it is necessary for the improvement of society that it should govern people with justice and reason, not through sovereign authorities.
Why is sin important? It is believed that sin is important to people because their deity places guilt on their wrongdoings to show that those actions are not to be repeated. In contrary to this belief, there are people with religious views that hold no importance with sin. Depending on the individual’s religious views, sin can be a conflict between oneself and a “higher” being or it can not affect the individual at all. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale is an ordained Puritan priest that had committed a grave sin in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He had committed adultery with a married woman, Hester, the woman that is married to Roger Chillingworth. After Chillingworth has heard about this news, he seeks
Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are the ages of fourteen, twelve, and an infant of an unspecified age. They each have their own specific things they enjoy and are gifted in. Violet loves inventing things and she’s always thinking of some creative invention. The middle child, Klaus, is very intellectual and loves books. Sunny, being very small, loves to bite things with her tiny sharp teeth. Their very rich parents die in a fire that burns down their house. Mr. Poe, a banker who is friends with the children’s late parents takes the children to live with him temporarily. In the parents will, Violet is legally bound to receive their large fortune when she’s of age. The late Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire also stated that the children
When it comes to the topic of obesity, most of us will readily agree that fast food is one of the main causes. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of readily available cheap food on the go. Whereas some are convinced that only unhealthy foods can be fast food, others maintain that fast food can be healthy too. Someone who believes that is Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain is not only a widely known chef and TV personality, but he is also an author. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978. He has traveled often for his various television shows, which has made him well informed about other parts of the world. Since he has traveled all around the world, been added to the New York Times bestseller
In the novel, The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan tells the intriguing story of how plants are domesticated from the perspective of the plant with regards to four specific plants.. The four plants he chose for discussion are the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. As he discusses the domestication of these plants, his overall focus is the desire that each of these plants have to us as humans. Pollan has written books and magazine articles among other pieces of literature that discuss the relationship between plants and humans. Throughout this informational text, Pollan tries to keep the perspective from the “plant’s-eye view of the world,” but he often slips into Pollan’s eye view of the world. As he talks about experiences that he has had with each of these plants and gives a little bit of their history, it was often hard to stay focused on the topic that he was trying to convey. However, I found that the perspectives that Pollan brings up are interesting to think about. The Botany of Desire was an interesting journal type informational novel that didn’t quite live up to my expectations of what it could have been.
As great effect as emotions can have on someone, even greater is the effect of how one reacts to his emotions. Arguably the two most influential of these emotions are guilt and anger. They can drive a man to madness or encourage actions of vindication. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are subject to this very notion in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter. Hester simply accepted that what she had done was wrong, whereas Dimmesdale, being a man of high regard, did not want to accept the reality of what he did. Similar to Hester and Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth allows his emotions to influence his life; however, his influence came as the result of his anger. Throughout the book, Hawthorne documents how Dimmesdale and Hester 's
I watched in awe as the many boys jumped time and time again from the edge of the cliff into the water, wondering to myself how someone can muster such courage to even attempt something like that in the first place. The boys were cheered on by the girls along the Swan river shoreline. How I wished I had girls to cheer me on. I would have to find he courage to jump blackies, for someone like me a chance of popularity shines golden in my eyes. I decided I would try again to jump off blackies.
The children In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter play a major role in the Puritan society. With their honest opinions of Hester and Pearl, the children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults. Due to their innocence, children are capable of expressing themselves without constraints; there are no laws or regulations that they are bounded by. As an adolescent go through the stages of life and grow older, they begin to be more conscious of the how they act as they are more aware of society and the things that are occurring in the world, creating a filter for their actions. When they remain as the children, on the other hand, are adventurous; they are still exploring the universe that seems to fill with mysteries that are bound to be solved. They tend to attach to the truth and they are not afraid to speak it freely. Children differ from adults in their potential for expressing these perceptions. With their obliviousness to the things that are actually going on around the town, children therefore react differently compared to the adults, who are more knowledgeable. Perceived to be immature, young children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults due to their innocence, how they are unaware of the reality and the crimes that are presented in society by the adults enables them to be blithe and not afraid of saying what they feel like. Due to their naivety, when they express what they perceive to be true, they do not get punished,
The family was fundamental to the postemancipation black community. Previous slaves made extraordinary efforts to find their family members from whom they had been detached under slavery. Widows of African American soldiers demanded survivors’ pensions, obligating the federal government to accept the efficacy of prewar relationships that slavery had tried to refuse. Freedom changed the relationships within the black families. Emancipation brought the idea to African Americans that “men and women should inhabit separate “‘spheres.’” African American women could dedicate more time to their families. Blacks left the white-controlled religious institutions and started to create their own churches. Methodists and Baptists were the two largest followings.
Morality in its basic definition, is the knowledge between what is right and what is wrong. In Joan Didion’s essay, “On Morality,” she uses examples to show how morality is used to justify actions and decisions by people. She explains that morality can have a profound effect on the decisions that people chose to make. I think that morality is an idea that is different for every individual based on morals and background.
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals / I know what the caged bird feels!” (5-7). The river is a symbol of harmony and the bars represents the cruel pain of loneliness
The Scarlet Letter (Figure 1) painted by Hugues Merle in 1861 depicts the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne. Hester Prynne, an adulteress forced to wear the letter “A” upon her bosom forever, becomes an outcast from the community with her daughter, Pearl. Merle was often known for painting scenes of mothers and children. He illustrates the scene of Hester and Pearl sitting in the town square as part of her punishment. The townspeople walk by, pointing fingers and making shrewd remarks. Merle’s painting, his biography, and other renditions of the novel and painting will be later discussed.
The issue: We’re eating the planet. All of us - and not in the fun, culinary sense of exploring international cuisine. The amount of food Americans eat exceeds the amount they actually need. Our food choices are high in calories, high in fat, high in sugar, high in resource and energy input, high in everything. The average American eats 258 lbs. of meat every year. That’s roughly 1/10 of a cow, half a pig, one turkey, and 26 chickens. Maybe this doesn’t sound that much to you – but it is 30 times more meat than the average Indian consumes yearly.
Robert Frost said many times throughout his life that all men share a common bond. In his poem “The Tuft of Flowers” he analyzes the potential of such a bond, in first person. Frost turns an everyday common job, into discovering a common bond with another laborer. The author uses a comparison between aloneness with a sense of understanding to demonstrate his theme of unity between two men. In another one of Frost’s poems “Birches” he imagines walking through the woods looking at all the trees, and seeing the top bending towards the ground. When he sees this he imagines they are bending from kids swinging on them, rather then what is really happening to them. It can be analyzed that Frost had a very definitive appreciation for nature, and a very broad imagination.