Read about Writings
The power of the individual: The American Enlightenment and Romanticism
During the 18th century, scientific and social changes reshaped the concept of the self. The individual slowly separated from the collective and began to develop as an antithesis of the collective agrarian society of prior centuries; thus, giving rise to a wave of new philosophical thought that evolved into the popular movement of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment developed around the belief that scientific thought and expression should be free from religious interference and that the foundations of society should be human reason and logic. Over time, these ideals gave rise to Romanticism which introduced the contrast of nature and the self, the internal desires, feelings and beliefs, and juxtaposed Nature with science. Franklin, Poe and Thoreau each represent one of the three popular faces of Enlightenment and Romanticism: Franklin, a well-respected Enlightenment writer, focused his writings on the improvement of the social order through improvement of the self and the realization of a deistic world; Thoreau, an Emersonian or “bright” Romantic, merged Nature with science and allowed for both to work simultaneously while emphasizing the individual’s ability to remove themselves from the flow of society; Poe, a “dark” romantic, wrote mainly on the way the individual views his world and the way the nature of the mind can recreate the world.
Was La Rochefoucauld a Pessimist?
Because of his writings, especially his maxims, La Rochefoucauld is historically seen as overly pessimistic; however, one should consider first if this is really a “bad” thing and if the maxims were written in a pessimistic style to encourage debate?
If he had written “people are nice” I doubt anyone would have read them, let alone remember then for hundreds of years. More specifically, I doubt anybody would have even taken him seriously because unfortunately, people are not “nice”. Likewise, if he had written “people are nice sometimes” he would have just written the obvious, and would have been equally ignored. However, by writing statements that boil down to “people are self-serving egotists with no regards for anybody else unless they need something” he immediately catches your attention and forces you to stop and think—even if it is only to prove he is wrong.
Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Achebe’s “Civil Peace” as a Call for Succinct Writing
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.
Comparison of Cold Mountain and the Odyssey
“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?
Esquivel’s “Like Water For Chocolate”
To tell the truth this was one of the few books that I entirely disliked the style they were written in. It was not the magical qualities of the story that made it bad, the story was nice, but the style was distracting and scatter-brained. It felt like I was reading a normal book and every other paragraph I looked at a line from a cookbook. In most areas the recipes were not even seamlessly brought into the story, instead they were just stuck in a few sentences here and there. Overall I think the book’s style reflects the way a person with severe attention deficit disorder thinks. The story itself was nice but parts made no sense at all, and if anybody handed in a paper with the same lack of coherency it would receive a nice big red F.
Darkness and Light in “Oedipus Rex”
The only ones who can truly see are blind. This is a popular theme through out Greek literature, especially in “Oedipus Rex” where Sophocles nurtures the idea that real sight does not require eyes but the ability to see beyond the surface of things. According to Sophocles, one must not only be able to see something, but one must also be able to understand it. Teiresias, the only physically blind character, is the only person that throughout the play can actually see what has, is and will happen. Oedipus himself only truly achieves this state of knowledge after he blinds himself with his mother’s/wife’s broach. Light and darkness (sight and blindness) takes on three different forms throughout the play, the first form refers to knowledge, the second to physical light and the third to truth; the three forms are used interchangeably and they occasionally refer to multiple interpretations at the same time.
