Parallel structure places words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in a series of the same grammatical elements. Creating parallel constructions shows the reader that two or more things relate to each other with equal importance. Think of railroad tracks, which run parallel to one another. If one track bends along the line, a train goes off…
WRITE A SENTENCE IN WHICH THE VERB PRECEDES THE SUBJECT (ANASTROPHE) Placing the verb before the subject in a sentence is also known as a form of “anastrophe,” the inversion of the natural word order (subject-verb-object) which dominates the English language. The following sentences open with adverbs or prepositional phrases. Notice that the verb precedes…
OPEN WITH AN INFINITIVE Verbals make sentences more active. The English language has three verbals: 1. infinitives 2. participles 3. gerunds. Verbals are half-verb, half another part of speech. Verbals look like verbs, but they function as another part of speech. Verbals are half-verb, half another part of speech. Verbals may function as 1. nouns…
USE STRONG ACTIVE VERBS Strong active verbs bring life and description to your paper by more accurately identifying an action and by adding emphases, connotations, or by merely making a common phrase stand out. EXAMPLES 1. The tragic accident devastated the entire family. 2. The recorder intercepted many of the secret messages. 3. The author…
Shaping identity is at the core of most every individuals being. Identity defines you as well as separates and shapes each individual giving them the qualities that makes them unique in a vast pool of the sameness. Generally people have an undying will to characterize themselves and will go to great lengths to achieve a…
Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet (1603) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), explore the theme of conflict and its repercussions, each play highlighting different aspects of the theme due to differences in genre and subject. Conflict, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one”, and would therefore seem to…
The character of Lucy Westerna is created by multiple narrations in the novel. The character of Lucy is first introduced through Mina who is Lucy’s friend, Lucy Westenra, exchange letters about their respective romances. The dominant characteristic of the character emerges through Mina that she is a vivacious young woman who is much praised for…
Colley Cibber was a comic actor and playwright with pretensions to tragedy (Colley 17-18). In 1700, he wrote and performed in an altered and slightly abridged version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which was initially unsuccessful (probably because of overzealous government censorship) (Ashley 52). However, it soon became popular enough to eclipse the Shakespearean original on…
In “Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” Janet E. Smith argues against the consensus view of Catholic moralists who, following Aquinas, regard all deceptive speech as morally wrong. She maintains that Aquinas’s view depends on an overly limited view of the purpose of speech, a view based on a prelapsarian order of things and neglectful of the…
Warren Leight’s “Nine Ten” is a play that could only be a play. Its ensemble focus and emphasis on character interactions unfolding in apparent real time are essential to its theme – and these are two effects that can be created with far more strength and certainty in performance than on the page. The play…
Susan B. Anthony was a revolution and still is even in the modern world today. This is for good reason as well. Susan B. Anthony was a prominent and important civil rights leader during the women’s suffrage act in the 1800’s. Susan started off working against slavery and encountered another disastrous problem: gender inequality. Coming…
A literal “age old” argument that has sparked intelligent conversation since the BC era is still as potent as ever in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy, Antigone. Since the play’s origin, there has always been a toss-up as to who the true tragic hero, or protagonist, is. A popular misconception is that the character Antigone must be…
War usually is a bloody series of battles between 2 or more factions. Usually it is between tribes or countries. In Dulce et Decorum, Wilfred Owen describes war as being deadly, very bloody and disgusting where soldiers are innocently killed, ripped apart and treated like beggars without hope and they are very smelly. However, in…
This poem is not a traditional love poem. The poem presents love in many different ways but is very unique in its interpretation of love. Havisham is a poem written in 1998 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Charles Dickens’ character Miss Havisham from his novel Great Expectations, looking at Havisham’s mental and physical state many decades after being left…
Ambition is the motivation that strongly drives one to achieve what they desire. Macbeth has great ambition. It can be said that Macbeth’s strong ambition is what leads him to his misery. In the beginning of Macbeth, Macbeth’s ambition drove him to beat the king of Norway. He single-handedly took on the enemy forces. The…
Italicize the titles of plays: Richard III or Othello. Cite line and page numbers up to 101 like this: 34-37; above 100, you repeat only the last two figures: 211-12 (but of course, 397-405 and 96-109). Use arabic numerals rather than roman numerals for citations of acts, scenes, and line numbers: Twelfth Night (1.5.268-76). Always…
Shia Are believed to be the descendants from Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali. It is believed that they are the best source of knowledge about the Qur’an and Islam This is the key difference between followers of Muhammad’s family and descendants from the followers of Caliph Abu Baker Sunni They are the…
Run-on sentences occur when independent clauses are not joined properly. There are two types of run-on sentence: the fused sentence and the comma splice. ►Fused sentences occur when there is no punctuation and no coordinating conjunction between two independent clauses. The snow needs to be shovelled get going on it right away. ►Comma splices occur…
Set in the time of the Mau Mau uprising, Ngugi wa Thiango’s novel, “The River Between” tells a harrowing story of the clash between two villages in the Gikuyu region over the maintenance of the traditional Gikuyu belief systems vs. the integration of Christianity by colonial white settlers. It tells of one man (Waiyaki)’s struggle…
The autobiography Black Boy, by Richard Wright, is a tale of hope and determination. It catalogues Wright’s life growing up as an African-American in Jim Crow South, depicting the economic and social struggles that were stereotypical for African-Americans at the time. It follows him through his youth, examining the hardships and obstacles faced by both…
