Category: Book Review
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Anonymity and Its Collective Nature: The Narrative of “A Woman in Berlin”
The book, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, written by an anonymous female, focuses on the social history during the capture of Berlin by the Red Army in 1945 and how it led to violent acts of rape against Berlin women. The end of World War II left most of Germany,…
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Order in Peaches
Societal dictum and etiquette are fluid concepts, changing and differing dependent largely on location, culture, time period, and other factors. With reference to carting a carriage of Peaches through rural Japan in the middle of a cold winter night, the narrator of Abe Akira’s Peaches discerns “Nowadays, perhaps. But back then? Unthinkable” (Akira 11). This…
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The Believer and Macintyre’s Emotivist Culture
Title: The Believer and MacIntyre’s Emotivist Culture Author: Katherine Perry Date Written: Feb. 22, 2006 Words: 2,085 In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre asserts that members of contemporary society live in a world devoid of definitively objective moral foundation, a world he calls an “emotivist culture.” This essay will first define which specific characteristics…
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Horror as a Subject in Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Pit and The Pendulum
Horror has about a thousand different definitions in everyone’s minds and can be associated with anything from movies to video games. The definition of horror has changed over the past few centuries, and the media is the best example of change, morphing around what we’ve taken as fear into events and circumstances that terrify the…
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Understanding a Human Mind: Clarice’s Unexpected Knowledge
Renowned psychotherapist Alfred Adler once said, “Man knows much more than he understands.” This means that although we might be rich in education, we do not understand much of what we know. The Silence of the Lambs brings insight to this quote on a much deeper level. In the novel, and FBI trainee named Clarice…
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Myth, Absurdity, and Human Conditioning in Beckett’s Act Without Words
In Act Without Words (1956), Samuel Beckett strips the human condition to its barest level of existence, the “last extremity of meat – or bones” (Connor 181). The play is no longer than four pages, but, in those few pages, Beckett confronts humanity’s unceasing struggle with its disturbingly absurd, thrown condition. It mimes the thwarted…
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Mary Rowlandson: Questioning Civilization
Mary Rowlandson faced what would be many people’s worst nightmare, when she witnessed the slaughtering of her family and neighbors as described in her autobiography, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Rowlandson. As if that horror were not enough, Rowlandson was kidnapped and held hostage by hostile Native Americans. Within her captivity,…
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Oscar Wilde’s Portrayal of The Faustian Pact as Described in His Book, The Picture of Dorian Grey
What lengths might one person go to stay forever young? Would they enter a Faustian pact? A Faustian pact is where a person trades their soul with the devil for something they truly believe they cannot live without. In Oscar Wildes the Picture of Dorian Grey makes a Faustian pact by saying that he would…
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Review of Sharon G. Flake’s Book, The Skin I’m in
The Skin I’m In The Skin I’m In is about a girl named Maleeka Madison III being teased because of the color of her skin. This book takes place at McClenton Middle School. There was a new teacher named Miss Saunders and Maleeka’s friend, Charlese, made fun of Miss Saunders because of the way she…
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The Theme of Power of Knowledge in All The King’s Men
In All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, the theme of the power of knowledge is prominent throughout Jack’s journey within the great web of the world. His path brings to light his true self and along with it the realization that he and everyone else in the web must take responsibility for their…