Oscar Wilde, an aesthete, wrote in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray that “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”
The artist’s unique and avant-garde works from the 1960s to the present day convey themes of nature, infinity, repetition, and accumulation.
The horror genre is then a mastermind of forcing direct participation, almost as if placing viewers in a chokehold.
Aligned with postmodernism, Spiegelman asserts that a quest for objective “truth” is as fraught as the human condition itself.
“Reunion” by John Cheever stands out as a deeply melancholic narrative expertly wrapped in a seemingly lighter tale through the use of numerous literary devices and writing tactics. To be more specific, the author employs irony, indirect characterization, and the first-person point of view to make the event feel both more real and less mentally taxing at the same time.
Frankenstein, as registered in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s work “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” affirms that monsters are a product of culture. Monsters are not about differences; they are mirrors. They reflect our worst fears and desires and, whether we are ready to accept it or not, we are monster-makers creating extensions of ourselves, as the Creature is of Victor.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a story about temptation and desire, told through descriptive imagery and flawless prose
In both texts, the two paradoxically glamorize and deglamorize eternal youth and eternal life respectively, presenting them simultaneously as a gift and a cruelty that both causes and prevents danger.
Ultimately, Plath’s confession transcends personal means, and its purpose is vested in positing a social critique.
The two-thirds divine Gilgamesh offers the opportunity to the human network to reflect on their brutal attempts and malpractices to dominate the Nature network.
The first chapter, “Prologue,” shows the hopeful side of the incredibly sad tale that is Five Little Indians. The circle imagery, the reference to birch trees, and the warmth of the setting all work together to strengthen the theme of resilience.
About Hannah Dane: I am in the Literature Profile of the ALC program. I wrote this essay for my Confessional Literature class, which centred on nonfiction works of personal revelation. Amongst the pieces we read, “Howl,” a poem published in 1956, written by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, intrigued me the most. A strenuously long and controversial piece, the length of the lines in “Howl” inspired me to analyze how a specific form choice could play with the central theme of…
The existence of Lady Macbeth enriches the play by provoking a discussion about the truths pertaining to gender constructs, drawing connections between the mortal world and the supernatural, and controlling the transformation of the Macbeths’ marriage on a micro as well as a macrocosmic level.
Through her approach to the Shakespearean sonnet form, as well as her use of juxtaposition and rich connotative language, Chandler brings awareness to readers about the emotional and psychological impacts of miscarriage while criticizing the harsh expectations put on grieving mothers to quickly heal from their trauma.
Indeed, Good’s paradoxical placing of an epilogue in Five Little Indians’ “Prologue” foreshadows the initial process of closure on the lasting impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system on Indigenous students and their families.