The Mark Of The Beast Essay

Images can have a powerful effect on the way a person perceives a story. It can be the line that connects two dots together and adds a visual emotion to just a plain text. Matt Ottley’s multimodal text, Requiem for a Beast, uses illustrations, music, text and changes in point of view to highlight the major themes that develop throughout the text. Themes such as reconciliation and the Stolen Generation are explored and the hardships that the Aboriginal people endured are present as well. The Stolen Generation is interpreted as a time when Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes and then taken under custody of the Australian Government.

The latter half of the nineteenth century brought about the introduction of detective fiction into popular culture, the stronghold of British colonialism in India, and the characterization of one of the most celebrated detectives in literature, Sherlock Holmes. While the British East India Company occupied Indian territories far before the Crown in the seventeenth century, the extent to which brutal and divisive colonial practices took place, increased substantially after the British government annexed the Indian subcontinent. The British government officially expanded the Empire into India after the Mutiny of 1857, which was purposefully misconstrued as an open invitation for the British to unsheath the white man’s burden into action. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sign of Four is written within the context of this particular rebellion and its aftermath. The novel becomes mirror for the functions of aristocratic and Victorian society at large, and their perspective of the exoticity of the East as a commodity to be kept as a trophy, shattered whenever deemed fit, but never as anything more.

In the Photograph Album of Cashmere& Ladakh,1886, H.W.B depicts the age of imperialism through his photography of the 1st Batallion East Surrey Regiment of Great Britain. The photos allow one to make observations without any biased inputs such as writings. Using one’s own

Beast by Donna Jo Napoli, is an adventurous novel that tells a story of a man, who is also a beast, that faces many challenges. These challenges will allow him to return to his rightful being. This man’s name is Orasmyn, Prince of Persia. One mindless mistake during the Feast of Sacrifices results in Orasmyn being turned into a lion by a pari, also known as a fairy. Only a woman’s love can undo the curse. This marks the beginning of Orasmyn’s travels through France and the Middle Ages. Along the way, he is faced with challenges of trying to survive as a lion, in which he eventually overcomes by the end of the story, by finding someone who is brave enough to love him for what he becomes; a beast.

An empire on is ways to conquer the world to decorate its dear crown could not mistakenly forget to collect its chief jewel. The country of diversity, riches and abundant resources caught the avaricious eyes of the British right after the British gained political power in France in 1763. India’s peaceful atmosphere and lack of being politically unified, due to its vast culture and diversity, paved the way for the British to capture more than just a trading agreement with the British East India Company. Although the British are worthy of receiving partial credit for modernizing India, the negative effects cannot be overlooked since far more damage had been done than rectification. They greedily fueled their economy while draining India’s, socially impacted their jewel in a negative manner in the name of modernization and tore apart the land of diversity and culture while stealing words from the oppressed.

Kipling also showed how the English empire thought they were superior to the natives of India and Kafiristan in multiple ways. Dravot would compliment the natives he was ruling over by calling them English, “These men aren’t Indian, they are English.” This implies that being English is the right way to act. Kipling also displayed English superiority when Dravot refused to listen to the people he was ruling when they protested against him marrying a woman that was not a god. Kipling too thought that the British gained power in a corrupt manner. This was revealed when Dravot claimed to be friends with one of the gods the Kafiristan people worshipped. Both Dravot and Carnehan took advantage of the natives in a fraudulent manner as did the British. Kipling further showed how he thought the style the British were ruling was poor because both Dravot and Carnehan mimicked British methods. Both characters created a contract, modernized the country they took over, and brought new rules, just like the English. In both the story and reality, the people rebel against the English to reclaim their Independence.

Mr. Cook makes a strong case in his attempt to understand the causes and contributing factors behind the segregation along race, class and gender lines which were so prevalent in British ruled India, but also strictly observed within Britain and her other colonies. In “Conflicting Ideologies in British India, 1875-1900” he cites factors both specific to India, in particular the suppressed revolt of 1857, and those more external, like the “hardening racism” in Europe. The substantial losses, both financial and in human lives, associated with the revolt of 1857 resulted in a significant decline in trust and an increasing hesitancy to risk “antagonizing Indian sensibilities”. Since the revolt was viewed as retaliation for British attempts to Westernize India, this fearful reluctance to continue along the path previously envisioned by some which ultimately resulted in Britain’s empowerment, modernization and civilizing of the native Indians to a place of independent governance and administration, became less appealing but also served as additional justification for European society’s changing perception of race. The elite Anglicized Indians had not only dared to challenge British authority and administrative processes, but they had dared to utilize their Western teachings to do so. This clearly barbaric application of treasured knowledge, which the British perceived they had bestowed upon the fortunate Indians as a gift, was viewed as further proof of the inability to

I first came across with the music of saxophonist Logan Strosahl last year, when I got the album Janus, recorded in duo with the pianist Nick Sanders, also a member of his Team collective group. I was very well impressed with the connectedness and genre bending adopted by the talented pair of musicians, who join forces with five other musicians to devise Book I of Arthur, the first of a planned set of three chapters inspired on the legendary King Arthur.

Rudyard Kipling’s attitude towards the British Empire was significantly negative. The novella essentially expressed Kipling’s feelings towards British Imperialism and his overall frustration with the British Empire. However, there are several positive qualities of the Empire pointed out by Kipling several times throughout his novella. Despite his mixed feelings, he is ultimately dissatisfied with the British Empire, claiming that it is “the White Man’s Burden”. Kipling was a steadfast imperialist, living in a time of British domination and oppression. He shared similar outlooks with the natives, that the majority of them were oppressed by the government and the wealthy. The upper class was greedy and wanted working men to do all of the work for them so that they could reap the profits. Kipling conveys his attitude towards British Imperialism through parallelism and figurative language.

Cheney, Ian. 'Queen Elizabeth I Sows The Seeds Of The British Empire'.Construction Literary Magazine. N. p., 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Imperialism is a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or militaristic force. Often times, it involves the complete usurpation of a country’s power and involuntary renouncement of people’s rights. This idea is expressed in works such as “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon, “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty,” A Tempest by Cesaire, and “The Strangehold of English Lit” by Mnthali. These writers all portray imperialism as a discriminatory act in which the well-being of imperialists are given significance over the imperialized. In the ideal case of imperialism, the imperialized and imperialists are accommodated equally. However, all these cases of imperialism, as depicted

Nonetheless, after Great Britain’s exponential period of growth and prosperity, they encountered rising opposition. Examining British Imperialism’s overbearing effects on the Indian society as a whole traces the pathway leading to the fight for Indian Independence. British Imperialism’s extremely protruding effects on India hold the sole answer to why India actively fought for independence against Britain in full force but did not strive to do so against previous, foreign powers.

At the close of the 19th century Rudyard Kipling preserved the prevailing attitude of Britain’s intellectual elite in a poem - “The White Man’s Burden”. In his work Kipling confirms the hubris of a generation of Britons who were entirely convinced that they were culturally, rationally, and morally superior to the “new-caught…Half-devil and half-child” natives of the British colonies. This belief in the superiority of western values manifested in the flight of thousands of philanthropically minded Victorians across the British Empire. These emigrants consisted of a section of society driven to do their duty and fulfil the “national

The story of “Rikki-tikki-tavi” directly describes the English present in India and also the idea of domestication. The story “The White Seal,” exemplifies how India’s resources were taken and the brutality of the natives being forced from their homes by the British. Imperialistic ideas are visible throughout the novel as

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.