The Lost World By Sir Conan Doyle

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

History has presented hunting as a job and pastime for men for thousands of years. Ancient civilization’s livelihoods rested on the hunting and gathering that men performed for a tribe while the women stayed back to care for the young and cook. It truly is a tale as old as time; however, over time, a very long time, women have found their way into this historically male dominated arena. Women have begun partaking in the “sport” of pursuing animals more frequently than ever before. Despite this, though, females can still find themselves receiving criticism and wayward glances for stepping outside the traditional views of gender roles. In H. William Rice’s collection of short stories, The Lost Woods, the tale “Gobble, Gobble” offers a firsthand account from a young lady who seems to have decided to turn her back on society’s view of femininity to take on her own idea of what her role should be in her family.

Ross Gay’s book Against Which, portrays his poetry to readers allowing them to gain understanding of the cruel world that one lives in. Moreover, the unusual brutalities that people are inevitable confronted with in life. The common denominators within Gay’s poems such as violence, love, fear, and loss allows the reader to visualize characters’ transformation within his poems. In a world of calamity, Gay has created poems that portray the corporal conforming to gender and sex but also human development. Using a reader-response criticism lens, I will be demonstrating my interpretation of Ross Gay’s poems and the meaning that I believe to be a common interpretation of his work. Within, Gay’s poems, “It Starts at Birth” and Angels Out of Reach” one is able to see a pattern of human transformation. By experiencing pain, love, loss, fear, and wisdom one is able to see Gay’s characters evolve through the narrators and readers gaze. In doing so, one is able to reflect on Gay’s poems and gain wisdom themselves.

Some people believe that lies will always be bitter in the end, no matter how sweet you make them in the beginning. In William Gass’ The Tunnel, he expounds the validity of this belief by taking the reader on an emotionally evolving journey, as he recounts the self-realization of a young boy, who’s frightening lie unravels in front of not only his own eyes, but also the readers. Gass successfully enriches this story with striking imagery, symbolism, and comparisons; exposing how no matter how sweet you make a lie in the beginning, it will always turn bitter in the end.

Violence and crime have a large influence on the short story, “The Disappeared” by Charles Baxter. Throughout the story Anders, the protagonist, is often affected by the crime in Detroit. He is unaware to how dangerous the city is because of his short time spent he has spent in the United States. “The Disappeared” does well in reflecting what Detroit was like in 1990, specifically in terms of violence and crime. The short story is shaped by how Anders and the other characters are affected by the violence and crime in the city.

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, people in the book show lack of emotion,feelings,interest or concern especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal wishing we had lack of apathy, my prediction is that people will no longer have strong emotions about anything important.They will become apathetic about most issues.We are convinced that one individual doesn’t matter. We can’t really make a difference in anything we believe in. That’s one of the reasons why people have started to lose interest in many aspects of their lives because they can’t do anything to change that. However,this only applies to a certain part of the population. To be honest in my opinion I personally think most of our generation thanks to social media

Throughout, the book, The Accidental Universe, Alan Lightman the author of the book discusses a number of ideas ranging from, how the world came to be, to the multiverse, as well as other various ideas and his thoughts on them. Consistently throughout the book, Lightman was wishy-washy and it appeared he was trying to please both Atheists, as well as religious people. However, his key idea stays prevalent throughout the entirety of the book. The idea being that this universe came to fruition accidentally, out of nothing.

Ambrose Bierce was known as the “mist of light”. His stories were usually centered on civil war. It was usually a horror or supernatural story, but it could be a comic or tall-tale as well. Bierce’s “Chickamauga” is nothing short of a horror story. This story is known as one of the most powerful anti-war stories, and fits in with the literary criticism New Historicism. It is about a young boy around the age of 6 years, whose father had fought in the Civil War. We later find out that the young boy is deaf and mute. This, and him being only 6 years of age, causes him to be naïve about the things he sees in the forest one day when he gets lost.

A vanished World written by Chris Lowney chronicles the daily life of the Jews, Muslims and Christians, living in the Muslim kingdoms in Medieval Spain. He covers different spectrum of this world that was torn by religious antagonism. In Medieval Spain, in the medieval Spanish villages Muslims, Christians, and Jews rubbed shoulders on a daily basis. They shared irrigation system, bathhouses, municipal ovens, and marketplaces. But they created a system that made everything work efficiently. Medieval Spaniards introduced Europeans to paper manufacture, Hindu-Arabic numerals, philosophical classics, algebra, citrus fruits, cotton, and new medical techniques. More astonishing than Spain 's wide-ranging accomplishments, however, was the

The 19th century was a transformative one in human history, resulting in changes of globalization through colonialism, numerous scientific achievements which led to industrialization, and an emergence of new philosophical thoughts which placed emphasis on human nature. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, was a reflection of its time, and it shows the idea of imperialism at the time by exploring how the differences between Martians and humans causes a moral disconnect which was an allegory to express the British lack of empathy toward their colonies, how radical ideologies took advantage of that disconnect for their own profit, and why imperialism is morally hypocritical.

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness” (“WISE OLD SAYINGS”). In the world today there is controversy over the relationship between light and dark, as well as its overall impact on society as a whole. When comparing light versus dark, they are related in the same fashion as a yin-yang symbol to the point where there is good and evil within both of them. Just like Anne Frank stated in the above quote, light by itself is able to both defy and define darkness. This is because, while it is shining through the dark, there is also a shadow being cast from the light breaking through. Many believe that there is a direct relationship between light and dark and the idea of good and evil, where light pertains to good and

Would you want to be thrown out of a window? In the novel, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky talks about a scene where the underground man wanted to be thrown out of a tavern window after seeing another man get tossed out of it. The social control theory does a good job at explaining the underground man’s need to fit in with society. Do you want to be constantly in debt that you never have money and are a burden to your friends? The strain theory explains really well the scene in the book where the underground man does not get invited to the going away party and does not have the money to pay for it. Both of the theories had interesting histories and more than one theorist has had some input on both.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, Notes from the Underground Man, uses the idea of a modern dystopia by depicting a story that revolves around a distressed older man. Throughout the novel, the main character has a narcissistic belief that he is better than everyone else because of his acute sense of consciousness. His awareness however, also causes him to believe not only are people ignorant to the world around him but that they are also against him. In contrast, critics believe that the main character, the underground man, actually suffers from psychological disorders that causes him to reason this way. Psychological disorders are defined as a wide range of conditions that can affect mood, behavior and thinking, and based on his conduct in the novel, the underground man presents himself as an individual who is subjected to obsessive compulsive behavior, social repression and paranoia.

The short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” is based on disguises of wealth and appearance and how these disguises change the point of view that people have in the social classes and what they think about each other during the Victorian Era. Disguises can be used to create an identity for one’s own personal gain or to protect an individual 's identity. Neville St. Claire uses disguise to validate his place as a gentleman. His status as a beggar allows him to become the successful gentleman that he should be, by concealing his true self to the social class system. Sherlock Holmes uses his persona as a protection to keep the people of London safe and out of harms way. Between the two personalities of St. Claire and Holmes is the outcome of what others may think of them; St. Claire knows the identity that he has created is not accepted by the social class while Sherlock Holmes identity is seen as a hero and is accepted by the social class. One uses his disguise purely for monetary gain and the other uses the identity in order to solve mysteries and protect his city. As shown in the “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, disguise is only allowed when the social class accepts the identity.

The chapter “The Age of Total War” in Eric Hobsbawm’s novel “The Age of Extremes” is broken into four sections in order to explore the time period of 1914-1945. This essay will explore the subjects and processes that are present in this chapter of Hobsbawm’s (1994) novel in a limited scope. The processes that will be discussed are how the zero sum game led to the total war of World War one; the desire for revanchism led to the existence of World War Two, the cost of World War Two led to the economic crisis and how the disaster these events caused resulted in the desensitization of human beings. Throughout this chapter, Hobsbawm (1994) frequently expresses a fear for human kind in both a literal and metaphoric sense arguing that people of