Marriage for personal gains In the Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio states that he has “come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua.” (Act 1 Scene 2, lines 62-73) Petruchio married Katherina just because she was from a wealthy family. He doesn’t care if she’s ugly or mean-spirited, he just…
In Joseph Conrad’s gripping novella Heart of Darkness, the author takes the time to break down the detail and the structure in which the main character, Marlow, is telling his story. Conrad digs far deeper than the surface to show both the literal events of the story and the symbolic meaning of these events along…
“Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 259). In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, many of the characters are subjected to cruel and unfair discrimination. Harper Lee was 89 years old when she passed away in 2016, and in her lifetime only published one other novel besides To Kill…
The concepts of “free time and leisure time” and the terms of “hobbies and interests” have become irreplaceable and essential parts of our daily lives and found a permanent place in our dialogues recently. Based upon the notion of free time, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, who is a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and a leading…
Fairy tales have been present in many generations, portraying a fantasy world for people of all ages. This fantasy that is portrayed by the stories show that good always wins, and evil always suffers. But, what is the hidden message behind the characters of princesses and princes? In all of the original, Grimm Brother’s fairytales,…
“My Last Duchess” is a poem written by Robert Browning and originally published in 1842. It is a dramatic monologue in which the speaker is the Duke of Ferrara addressing a silent listener. The poem can be interpreted based on multiple approaches, the richest of which is the psychoanalytic approach. The Duke appears to be…
In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the dystopian country of Oceania is controlled by the Party. Many citizens of the nation have no freedom of thought, speech or knowledge. The Party brainwashes people into thinking the same way as it and kills those who so much as disagree with it. In the film version…
During 1591 and 1595, William Shakespeare wrote the play “Romeo and Juliet” set in thirteenth-century Verona. As one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays out of thirty-eight, it tells of the tragedy of two star-crossed lovers who meet and fall in love. However, as pure as their love is, in the end, everything goes wrong because…
Temporal relationships influence our perception of events. The protagonist of the story is a victim of such relationships. In Alice Munro’s “Deep Holes”, Kent is perceived as an individual who is unable to adjust to his self-ambience and life. This results in his neurotic growth, which is a strong understanding in the light of the…
The novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” by John Boyne portrays the innocent mind of a German boy called Bruno who relocates from an ideal wealth of life in Germany to a house next to the Concentration Camp of Auschwitz where his father has been chosen to work as a Nazi commander. Boyne produces…
Name Year Major Works Francisco Arcellana 1990 Frankie The Man Who Would Be Poe Death in a Factory Lina A Clown Remembers Divided by Two The Mats, The Other Woman, This Being the Third Poem This Poem is for Mathilda To Touch You and I Touched Her Edith L. Tiempo 1999 A Blade of Fern…
Act 5 Scene Summaries Characters Themes Motifs Scene 1 Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, acting out washing her hands Lady Macbeth: This is the moment we see all of the fears and conscience finally catch up to Lady Macbeth. The moment that she finds out about the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, and that of Banquo,…
Act 4 Scene Summaries Characters Themes Motifs Scene 1 Macbeth visits the Witches and is given three new prophecies: 1) to beware of Macduff; 2) that no man who is born of woman can harm Macbeth; 3) he is safe until Burnham Wood moves to Dunsinane Hill. Hecate is the goddess of the witches and…
Scene Summaries Characters Themes Motifs Scene 1: Banquo thinks about the prophecy when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth enter to invite him to the banquet that night. He goes riding with his son, Fleance and Macbeth thinks about his fear of Banquo. Some men arrive whom Macbeth sends off to murder Banquo. Banquo’s suspicion rises…
Act 2 Scene Summaries Characters Themes Motifs Scene 1 Macbeth hallucinates, seeing a dagger in front of him. Banquo and Macbeth grow more fearful and suspicious of each other. Macbeth goes as far as to test Banquo’s trust in the statement ‘If you shall cleave to my consent, when ‘tis, it shall make honor for…
Act 1 Scene Summaries Characters Themes Motifs Scene 1: Three Witches get together and start plotting. There are 3 witches. I learned that they’re somehow related to darkness from the introduction mentioning thunder, lightning etc. Evil and Darkness Scene 2: Duncan hears that Macbeth and Banquo have won them the…
There are many successful governments in the modern world, but are they necessarily good? The supposed ‘goodness’ of modern governments are debatable, but the majority of people agree that the societies depicted in dystopian novels are extremely flawed and therefore “not good,” hence the name of the genre. These books often feature a strict central…
The article “What We Have to Lose” addresses several issues, but the main one is civilization. The author comes up with several arguments in support of and against civilization, its cause, and possible solutions. He argues the precious nature of civilization as well as its fragility. Civilization refers to a complex society or societies with…
In Shakespeare’s Elizabethan era play, Macbeth, the paradox of “fair is foul, and foul is fair” (Shakespeare, 1.1.12) is a recurring theme that eventually leads to the downfall of the protagonist, Macbeth. He, who is the thane of Glamis, is faced with a difficult choice; killing Duncan in order to become king or, let himself…
A Passage to India is a 1984 drama film directed by David Lean and based on the homonymous book written by Edward M. Forster. The story takes place in India in the early 20th century, that is, during British colonization. It is well known that Europeans have always seen colonization as a moral duty; however,…