Anthology of Ideas

In Emma ((Page Numbers are for the Riverside Edition edited by Lionel Trilling)), Jane Austen presents characters who are uniquely human: each has their own rich personality and storied background. Through these characters, Austen is able to intimately explore the human condition, as she saw it, and highlight some of the issues of society and class in her world. To achieve this, Austen creates a world into which a reader can insert themselves through the gossip and unique perspective that the narrator and Emma provides; the reader’s perspective is not that of an all-seeing observer, but almost a character in its own right who may judge the characters as an equal participant and member of the community. From this perspective the reader is able to see characters as rich and complex individuals with whom the reader can acquaint themselves. In doing so, one can pass judgment on the characters not from the outside, but from the inside.

The characters of Mrs.

There are three major interpretations of the slave in literature: the good human being who is forced to live their live as a slave, the slave who’s mind, body and soul are broken because of slavery, and the slave who’s mind is twisted and becomes a monster because of the institution of slavery. These views of slavery are prevalent in abolitionist literature because they focus on the evils of slavery rather than the evils of the men who support slavery. In Fredrick Douglas’s “The Heroic Slave”, Douglas presents the reader with Madison Washington: a good man and a loving father and husband. In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno one is presented with the figure of Babo: a demented and twisted individual who is willing to do anything to regain his freedom. These two images of slavery are used because a writer can show both that slaves are human and legitimize their “evil” deeds as being forced by the institutions of slavery.

Chopin’s story expertly takes the average book and succinctly boils it down to two pages of rapid emotions and events. While the average writer would have felt a need to develop events prior to the story to allow the reader a full and developed sense of the personalities of the characters, Chopin instead says this is what you need to know, and you know what to do with it. The reader is given a short snapshot of a person: (wife, weak heart, young, pretty, unhappy, in most likely a semi-arranged marriage) and a range of emotions: (shock, surprise, grief, realization, elation, and triumph). The reader then has to assign each of these emotions and snapshots to Mrs. Mallard to gleam a small insight into her being. Overall this style leaves the reader with a powerful sense of the emotions and felling that went through Mrs.

“Cold Mountain” is the story of a confederate soldier named Inman and his journey back to his homeland after years of fighting in the civil war, along the way he meets many interesting personalities some benign some malevolent. The second focus of the story is on Inman’s lover Ada and her struggle to learn how to live without her father, Inman and servants. “The Odyssey” is the story of an Ithacan king named Odysseus and his journey back to his homeland after years of fighting in the Trojan War, along the way he meets many interesting personalities some benign and some malevolent. The second focus of the story is on Odysseus’s wife Penelope and her struggle to live without her husband. The two stories sound very similar on the surface, but how similar are they really after the two line synopsis? “Cold Mountain” has frequently been called a modern “Odyssey” but is this an accurate description?

For anyone who has read Thoreau’s “Life in the Woods” Ktaadn seems to be written by a different person. “Life in the Woods” is written by an author so full of himself he thinks of himself as being better than everyone else around him, he values nature over all things and is extremely philosophical in his musings and above all considers nature as a thing that must be protected from man. However in Ktaadn there is very little in the way of philosophy and Thoreau means quite literally what he says as there are few hidden layers and he begins to understand that nature is not weak rather it is the mistress of her domain and it is instead man that is weak.
One thing he does do is give a personality to nature, he paints it first as a mother correcting her children from going to where they were not meant to go and helping to lead them to where she believes they belong.

I would like to propose a new meaning of “The Metamorphosis” quite different from those already stated. “The Metamorphosis” can interpreted to show the effect of the dying on a family but also interpreted to show the effect that an outcast from society can feel. Gregor’s turning into a bug could be construed as a groups sudden repulsiveness to the world as a whole. With each member of the family displaying a different part of the world at large.

“The Metamorphosis” was published in 1915 and written during Europe’s slide to World War 2, during this time Austria-Hungry began persecuting the Serbs who they feared because of growing nationalism movements in Bosnia: newspapers were closed, student leaders arrested and the military was given a large amount of control in the country. After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1913 Serbs were suddenly the pariahs of Austria-Hungry.