Category: Literature 5177

Infantile literature has always been a subject of literary and psychological research, mostly due to its rather controversial nature. The main peculiarity of such literature is that it looks at the world through the eyes of a little child, who is unprejudiced in his judgment. Authors, who write in this style, have to cope with a very difficult task: they have to place themselves into the position of a child. They have to perceive the world from his point of view and that presents great difficulties to them.

In this essay, we will discuss the books Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida and Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia McLachlan. It is of utmost importance to analyze the means that these authors employ to affect the reader and what impact it has on our imagination.

Speaking about Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida we must first mention that the events described in this novel are based on true facts from the authors experience. Even the outrageous shooting of an old man Mr. Kurihara is real incident, which occurred in Topaz. The author skillfully depicts historical events, which altered lives of many innocent people.

Overall we can say that the book has three settings: first, it is Yukis cozy house in Berkeley, then comes the camp near the Tanforan Race Track and the final setting is the camp at Topaz. The authors shows that striking contrast between Yukis house and the two camps. At the beginning, the author creates that homely atmosphere of their place: she depicts the nice garden and the fishpond that the family has. The news that the family is going to be interned is something entirely inconceivable. If we compare this place with the camp in Topaz, the difference between them will be incredible: constant dust storms, a building that has never been plumbed. Yukis father does not want to believe it he says Its a terrible mistake, of course, It must be the work of a fanatic. That is, if it really happened. (Uchida, 2005).

The authors tries to show all these changes through Yuki for whom all this rudeness and brutality is entirely abhorrent. Nevertheless, in spite of every obstacle the main character remains good-natured and open for other people.

As far as the Sarah, Plain, and Tall is concerned, we can say that its plot evolves around a farmer Jacob Witting a person who is bereft of his wife, he finds it very difficult to take care of his children. Patricia McLachlan focuses attention on the themes of abandonment and loneliness. Speaking about the setting of this book we should take into account that the author does not give any particular details as to the location, thus it is difficult to pinpoint it. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to say that the action takes place in the great American Prairie. The main character becomes homesick because she cannot get accustomed to the prairie because it cannot a substitute the Maine seashore. The girl takes colored pencils and paints the beauty of a sea (McLachlan, 1999).

Thus, we may arrive at the conclusion that in these two novels the main emphasis is placed on the contrast of different settings and the way people get adjusted to the new conditions of life.

Bibliography

McLachlan P. Sarah, Plain & Tall. Novel Units, 1999.

Uchida, Y. (2005). Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation. Donald Carrick.

Introduction

The Brothers K is a compelling story by David James Duncan about a family living in Camas, Washington in an America rapidly approaching the revolutionary 1960s. Though Camas is a small town still settled in the conservativism of the 1950s, the family soon faces the common division of the hippie movement and the fall out of the Vietnam War, losing one of their sons, Irwine, to the draft, only to have him come home institutionalized. The Chance familys second son Everett, this readers personal favorite, experiences a journey that many of his contemporaries went through. Everetts character is particularly compelling because he experiences a spiritual journey that requires him to reject what he grew up with for what he thinks he wants, then to lose everything and return to what he once knew; this journey is certainly relatable to many people Everetts age, regardless of the decade they live in. Everett departs from the religion of his family for the ideals of the time, loses faith when his girlfriend leaves him, goes to jail for avoiding the draft, and comes full circle to believe theres something bigger than him out there.

Description of the Chance family

The Chance family consists of mother Laura, a conservative Seventh Day Adventists, Hugh a former baseball player, and their children Everett, Irwine, Peter, Kincaid the narrator, and the twins. The religion of their mother is a dominating force in all the childrens lives, and for Everett, it is a force to be reckoned with. In what the author calls the Psalm Wars, Everett and his mother encounter a confrontation over Mamas strict Seventh Day Adventist household. Though most of her children end up abandoning the religious views with which they were raised, Everetts is the most volatile. Everett and his mother debate angrily over the virtues of religion and eventually, Everett abandons his familys religion. He sees the innate problems with religion and religious fanaticism that many of his peer groups were fighting against. In a head-on collision with Fanatics, the real problem is always the same: how can we possibly behave decently toward people so arrogantly ignorant that they believe, first, that they possess Christs power to bestow salvation, second, that forcing us to memorize and regurgitate a few of their favorite Bible phrases and attend their church is that salvation, and third, that any discomfort, frustration, anger or disagreement we express in the face of their moronic barrages is due not to their astounding effrontery but our sinfulness? (Duncan 128).

He feels fully immersed with the progressive thinking of the time and decides that the only necessities and peace, love, and a sense of community. He goes from the tightly knit island that is the Chance family to speaking to crowds about the current state of America. He sees the violence inherent in the Vietnam War like many others did at the time: as a violent, unnecessary tragedy. When the army seeks him out for the draft, he sets his papers on fire and flees to Canada with his beautiful girlfriend, Russian Literature student Natasha. This break from the religious home and parents to being swept up in the counterculture of the 1960s and the hippie era is an archetypal story from the time. Many of the people at the time agreed with Everett when he states that, &strong families like mine kept fighting for family identity, and strong characters like my brothers and sisters still struggled to come of age in non-farcical ways.

But our lives were being violated, trivialized, and in tens of thousands of cases terminated by the trite machinations of these sickeningly powerful men (Duncan 352). The people of the time expressed a sentiment that many of us identify todayone of manipulation and that the powers that be were taking advantage of the unknowing masses. Whether we lived in the time or have just read and heard about it, we know that thousands of young adults from the same kind of family as Everetts experienced the same disillusionment. For Everett, this change means estrangement from his family, especially his mother. The close relationship he had with Mama changes drastically when he abandons the Seventh Day Adventist Church. This divide between Everett and his former life is demonstrated physically with his move to Canada, but the distance between him and what he once knew is already there.

Everetts story

While living in Canada, Everett gets his girlfriend Natasha pregnant and eventually, she leaves him. This marks another change in Everett because he begins to question what he thinks and believes. This seems similar to the departure he makes after the Psalm Wars, but this change is a much less inspired one. Whereas his joining the anti-war movement and even his move to Canada can be considered a representation of the optimism of the 1960s and the hippie culture, this change is a sad one for Everett, filled with regret and pessimism. This can be seen as a loss of religion to an even further extent than the results of the Psalm Wars because he loses his religion of love and understanding, and his world becomes much darker and senseless.

In a sense, this is a similar loss to the one that Papa Hugh endures before the book opens. We know that due to some injury Hugh had stopped playing baseball, the game he loved so much. But more than losing the ability, he lost the heart, letting himself fall so far down and making the threat that an injury posed to his playing a reality. This tragedy is mirrored in Everetts fall from grace after Natasha leaves him. Both Papa and Everett give up on what they had once believed in so much. Though Papa calls the idea of getting back in the game a fairytale comeback stating that, All Im ever gonna do out here is toss the pitchers equivalent of harelip prayers (Duncan 113), he is eventually encouraged, especially by his son Kincaid, to take up his old hobby. In this way, we sense that Everetts luck will turn around eventually and that his forlorn-ness and dejected feeling are only temporaryanother step in his journey.

Things do change for Everett again, but like most characters in the middle of their journey, things have to get worse before they get better. When the family is called together to come to the aid of their institutionalized son Irwin, Everett leaves Canada and crosses the border back into the United States of America, whereupon arriving he is arrested for having dodged the draft and put in jail. While he is in jail he receives a letter from the girlfriend who left him, Natasha. She says that she has been thinking of him, misses him, and wants him back. This scene marks the third change in Everetts character. He begins again to question his existence and the meaning of life, but this time he opens his mind up to the idea of a higher power, calling it You instead of God. This change seems, in a sense, to be Everetts way of coming full circle. He begins as a member of a religiously observant family, strays, and ultimately comes back to a sense of spirituality. However, Everett is not truly back where he started. He is changed, and for the better.

Though he has found his spirituality, he is not a Seventh Day Adventist like his mother and like he and his siblings were growing up. This is a new state of religion for Everett, one of his choosing. Unlike the sixties religion that carried him away from home, this new spirituality and acknowledgment of a higher power humble him. Through the idealism of the movement, he comes to realize that reality is not supported by the all we need is love concept, that bad things happen and he needs the faith to get through them, not run away from them. He has changed for the better because he becomes reacquainted with his family without having to regress and readopt their beliefs. Instead, he gains the insight that spirituality gives him, without blindly following but with clarity, peace, and understanding. By joining his family to retrieve his brother, Everett shows us that though he has strayed far from home, he still feels bonded to his family. Unlike before, where he was simply a member of the family and religion because that is how he was raised, now he has chosen to be with them and to start his own family because he feels that is whats right, and his experience, as well as the understanding that the experience provided him has made him a better, more capable man. He has grown past the free love religion of the 1960s that tended to have the same problems as any other religion and found a sense of a higher power.

Conclusion

All of the children of the Chance family seem to find their way back in the end. Some, like Irwin, return to the Seventh Day Adventist faith of Mama without having strayed as far as Everett. But the lesson Duncan seems to want to leave us with is that through the tumultuous times of the 1960s many concepts of spirituality, religion, meaning, and community rose and fell and that what survived was a strong hope for peace and strength of family. Through this and every decade we see that the strongest institution to survive is that of the family structure; by the end of the story, Everett may not have embraced the religion of his mother, but he shows his loyalty to his family and the belief in the strength of the family as he joins them to help his brother. The Chance family represents the power of familial love as it weathers the turbulent storm of change that is natural in the course of a family, regardless of the era, and Everett represents the forward-thinking movement of the time that challenged these bonds though it was ultimately based on love itself. Through the trials and tribulations of extreme social revolution, Everetts story leaves us with the singular admiration of the true strength of family, and that even when strained these bonds still hold.

Reference

Duncan, David James. The Brothers K. (1993). Bantam Books: New York City. 736 Pages.

What do people seek when they go on a pilgrimage? I guess it might be either an edification or a strive for forgiveness. The author of the book Pilgrimage to the End of the World Conrad Rudolph, who origins in Poland, is going through a series of missionary journeys on the ship. Traveling two and a half months and one thousand miles along the ancient route through southern France and northern Spain, Conrad Rudolph made the way to the holy site of Santiago de Compostela, which is one of the most important pilgrimage destinations for Westerners. It should be noted that the author of the book is writing a so-called chronicle of his travels to this captivating place. Of course, some aspects of pilgrimage both mystical and physical are still interesting for the Christian renaissance. So, Pilgrimage to the End of the World takes its reader, via the eyes and feet of its author Conrad Rudolph, to the Santiago de Compostela, believed to be the holy site or the burial place of the apostle James. In his book he fuels the ancient and the contemporary, describes both the spiritual and the physical, Thus, the book presents at once a travel guide, a piece of literary work, a historical study, and finally memoir.

The first question, which arises, is the following one who is the Pilgrims? Such journeys are considered proof of the ultimate devotion of people to God, the most important act of an individuals life. Thus, the people, who are going on the missionary journeys, are the special ones or chosen ones. They consider themselves to be the people to open new routes and new truth to the people, whom they are going to meet during their journeys. So is the author of the book, he is getting on the ship with other pilgrims to join their trip and to divide all the twists and turns of life with them. He is willing to be edified as he is sure that he will be. As the special one, he notes everything down to make a real memoir.

The author is very creative in making his book as a literary work is still being a spiritual inspiration and a guide for young pilgrimages. It is believed that the holy places, to which relate the places of death of the holy people, the places of sufferings of Christians or any place that has to do something with Christianity, inspire people not only to do good in life and to do the best they can but also to lead a truthful and faithful life of a believer, who has come to commemorate the place and the holy one who died there. Doing the following Conrad Rudolph managed to reach two goals. In the first place, he managed to reach believers in the book and to find the interest of those, who are keen on literature.

The book gives an important insight into the inner world of Christians who are going on journeys to reach peoples hearts and to find their edification. Of course, leaving ones home to travel somewhere, to the end of the world, as the title of the book states is not the best idea, which can come to the mind of a man in the morning. But the fact remains, they leave their homes, leave their troubles and their Motherland to go and to find the truth for both themselves and the people, whom they are going to meet. The truth for itself seems so obvious to pilgrims sometimes, but it is widely known that if one is willing to teach somebody, he has to learn all his life. Consequently, the teachers become students, and pilgrims, who go on their journeys to teach become small children, who need to learn so much new for them. The first they need to learn is the land they are going to, the mentality of the people, they are going to meet, the habits, they have. They face a lot of obstacles doing that, as this idea is sometimes hard to be grasped for people who boil down their purpose to be pilgrims to simple teaching. As the practice shows, simple teaching is not helpful in this case. Also, the pilgrims are to have compassion for people they meet as most of them are like lost sheep, they need to find their way to a safe place. But being blind little sheep, people are trying to pretend themselves to be goats or at least as obstinate as goats. So, pilgrims just need a lot of patience to cope with these wild obstinate creatures.

Both in early times and nowadays it is an outstanding experience to be a pilgrim. Being a pilgrim did not, does not, and will never come out of fashion as it is one of the Commandments, to do, which are written in the Bible. And the Bible is surely not the out-of-fashion book. That is why so many people are willing to go to strange places for them to reach the truth they have not known before and to share this truth with the people they teach. A place discovered around 812 AD, is still considered to be one of the most pilgrimage destinations. Moreover, an inflow of people, who come here, has given this place a renewed attention, and also it has been proclaimed to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But the period, during which the Heritage is visited is so vast, that it gives grounds to think of the high interest of people in pilgrimage.

Summing up, it is necessary to point out how important the book is as it gives the impressions, endured by the author of the book. That is why it gives an important insight into the pilgrimage journeys. First and foremost, it gives inspiration both to the common reader of the book and to the young believers. It inspires them to experience being a pilgrim themselves through the stories, but literary through the authors eyes and feet. Next, the book points out that the pilgrimage experience is very edifying for those, who are going to be taught and for the teachers, the pilgrims as they discover some new things for themselves. And as it has been in the middle ages, so it is now very essential for people to do that and to consider it to be a part of their lives.

Works Cited

Conrad Rudolph. Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela (Culture Trails).Chicago: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition, 2004

Anton Chekhov is one of the most talented dramatists, whose plays are included in the repertoire of theaters all over the world. The depth of the thoughts, expressed in these plays, makes readers and watchers seriously think over world history, relations among people. Chekhov himself once wrote: We have inherited talent from our father, and soul from mother. The fact is that their family originated a few artists and writers.

Surely, the most significant factor in his life, as in the life of anyone, was education. His father Pavel wished his children had got serious education and made his children study seriously. The lashings were frequent, however, he also paid for the best tutors (music, languages), insisted, that children studied in the best gymnasium in Taganrog (the city at the Azov sea), so the elder brothers started speaking French rather early. The lack of childhood made Anton get to know life early, as he had to work in the store made him get to know human nature. The music classes made him the admirer of high art, and he studied not only playing the violin, but he got to know the thinnest substance, that touched the human soul. Later, he transmitted this feeling in his short stories. Despite the fact, that his early stories were satiric, they reveal human relations to the depth, that most even can not imagine.

Anton Chekhovs study at the Mens classical Gymnasium essentially impacted his life views. The Gymnasium formed the disgust to Hypocrisy and falsity. Here, his vision of the world, admiration for books, knowledge, and theater was formed. Here he got his first literary pseudonym Chekhonte, which he got from his Scripture tutor Feodor Pokrovsky.

Music and books aroused the strive for creation in young Chekhov, and Taganrog theater left a deep influence on his creativity: the protagonists of his first stories were the theater actors.

Originally, this period appeared to be one of the most fruitful in his life. The Childhood, that he seriously lacked, made him sensitive to the human soul, and this sensitivity accompanied him all over his life. It may be observed not only in his early stories but also in later literary works (Notes of Young Doctor Ward Number 6 The Man in a Case and others).

Impressive Fact

The most impressive fact of Chekhovs life is his trip to the Sakhalin peninsula, and his attempt to make the general census of the population. Along with the great historical work, he also got an endless source of creativity and inspiration, as the lives of the simplest people, who even could not read appeared to be the precious source for further human nature study. This period is described in his book Sakhalin Island, which he wrote after returning to Moscow in 1890-1892.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention, that the life of this great writer and dramatist may be featured by lots of notable events. However, his childhood, and life in his fathers estate in Taganrog, and then his trip to Sakhalin impacted his life and creativity the most. Childhood shaped his feeling about the world and people, while in Sakhalin he got tuberculosis and the endless source for further literary work.

In the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe creates a unique image of the main character, a nameless narrator, who commits a crime and kills an old ma. Although this narrator claims to be totally sane, he admits that there never existed a real motive for murder. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the murderer is eventually stalked by images of time as he, in turn, stalks his victim. The nameless narrator drives the plot of the story and creates a story conflict.

Without this character, it would be impossible to proceed and understand the events and their consequences. The first half of the story details the narrators nightly ritual of spying upon the old man sleeping. There came a knocking at the street door&. There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police (Poe). At first, the murderer is confident that he has done his work well; he even goes so far as to invite the police to sit in the room where the body is buried, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim (559). These events help readers to understand the conflict and follow storyline.

It is possible to say that the main character is flat because readers know only some basic facts but guess his inner intensions and feelings. The narrator in this story makes the claim so strongly for his sanitywhy will you say that I am mad? (Poe)that the reader is immediately suspicious. His attempts to distance himself from insanity, to prove himself sane, succeed only in focusing the readers attention upon his unstable mental condition. From the opening lines to the end, the narrator demonstrates that he is meticulous, obsessed, a fetishist, and quite out of his mind. How else to explain the post-operative resonance of a heart that refuses to die and his rationale for murder: a vulture like eye. The narrators truest fascination for the reader is to be found in his duplicity. He can boast of his preparations to make sure that the blood does not splatter when dismembering the corpse and smile charmingly as he reports to the police that it was his own screams at midnight that awakened the neighbor. On the other hand, his excitement is so profound that he can barely hide the old mans body. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim (Poe). The narrator is pursued by the violence and anguish of his own actions, and ultimately fails in his efforts to project it outward away from himself. The character does not change till the end of the story but keeps the same qualities and motivations.

The revelation of this crime may come as little surprise to a reader who has watched the slow splintering of the narrators mind, but one can presume that the police are utterly shocked. Indeed, the identities of the old man and narrator run together in the act of murder itself: the killers yell is amplified by the old mans simultaneous shriek. This condition is psychologicalbrought on by the murderers inability to separate himself from the person he has murdered. Lacking any clear sense of inner vision, the murderer learns about himself only by living through the old man. By killing the old man, in other words, the narrator is attempting to kill a part of himself. After the crime, the sound of the old mans heart grows in intensity and volume, and both increase as a direct response to the narrators efforts at distancing himself from the old man by first burying him under the floor and then lying to the police that his victim is absent in the country (Poe).

While the narrator initially experienced a sense of triumph in the act of killing, immediately afterwards this euphoria is transformed into horror as it becomes impossible for narrator and reader alike to distinguish whose heart is actually beatingthe old mans or the narrators. No sooner does an individual consciousness reach this state of moral suspension than his own self-punishment commences. Just as the upraised hands of the clock signaling the midnight hour must eventually separate, the murderer feels compelled to undermine his own efforts. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! (Poe). Thus, this story revolves around a narrator who initially manipulates time imagery as a means for torturing his victim and even manages to regulate time itself (at least in his own head). By the conclusion of the tale, however, he has lost control over these images as they are turned against him and used to suggest the clocks remorseless progress and its ruinous effects upon the individual will.

In sum, in this story the main character plays a unique role: he drives ploy development and creates a story conflict thus he remains stable and flat. the change is emotional rather than psychological because the narrator is assailed by the infernal pulsations of the old mans body clockmeasuring the time the narrator has left before he must confess, the time he has left before being taken to jail, the time he has left inhabiting the world of the sane. The inability to make this distinction emphasizes both the extent that the old man is a mirror for the narrator and the level of madness that contributes to the murderers self-destruction.

Works Cited

Poe, E. The Tell-Tale Heart. Web.

It is a rather specific matter when one has to write about the peculiarities of the culture of a certain nation because not always people are acquainted with the national customs and traditions. It becomes even more complicated when the cultural peculiarities are to be studied with the help of a literary work where they are encoded and only very few people who can think analytically are able to decode them.

In this essay, the author is going to interpret the world view of the people representing the Irish Oral Traditions with the help of the work by a famous Irish writer Angela Bourke The Burning of Bridget Cleary. This literary masterpiece is dedicated to a tragic side of the culture under consideration, and the author of the essay is going to look for the reasons for people of this culture to act as they did.

Needless to say, that every culture has its own peculiarities. People from all over the world should treat every other culture with respect, as far as every nation has a right for self-identity and expressing of its own ideals and values. But sometimes it happens so, that being strongly dedicated to the culture and its beliefs leads to uncontrollable consequences that are hardly or impossible to correct. The Irish Oral Tradition is a tradition of transferring the legends, sayings, fairytales, sayings, etc. only with the help of oral language without writing them down.

It goes without saying that the people of this tradition are characterized with a low level of intellectual development and lack of knowledge about the objective reality, as far as they can not write and read (Bourke, p. 555 ). So, the Oral Tradition becomes the only source of education for them, and sometimes it brings tragedy. The story under consideration depicts the event that happened in a small settlement called Ballyvadlea which is situated in Ireland in the end of the 19^th century.

People there lived according to the medieval beliefs and customs, so although the event that happened was tragic there was nothing surprising if the context is taking into account. The family and her own husband, led by beliefs in witches and fairies, killed a woman who just could not recover from a simple cold (Burke, p. 553). This womans name was Bridget Cleary, and the whole topic of the essay is connected with her fate.

The author of the book under consideration depicts the settlement where all the events took place as a town where only ordinary workers lived who could scarcely read and write, and consequently were the people of the Irish Oral Tradition. As far as their beliefs were rather primitive it was not surprising for them to trust that the actual Bridget was taken by fairies and the person that was suffering from cold was the changeling the fairies usually leave instead of the person they steal.

So, when Jack Dunne, Bridgets fathers cousin got a suspicion that fairies took Bridget, her husband had no other idea occurring to his mind than to believe it and to try to return the real Bridget to life: It is not your wife is there. You will have enough to do to bring her back (Bourke, 82) According to the Irish fairy folklore, it could have been done by severe tortures of the changeling, so the men including Bridgets own father started torturing the poor girl with the hot iron poker and certain herbs.

This can characterize the people from Ballyvadlea as prejudiced and not educated, while they were torturing Bridget with the medieval cruelty as if they were convinced in what they did and did not even imagine that they might be killing an innocent girl: Again and, as though they doubted her identity, they demanded, in the name of God, that she say whether or not she was indeed Bridget Cleary, daughter of Paul Boland and wife of Michael Cleary. (Bourke, p. 4)

Michael Cleary, Bridgets husband was also absolutely convinced that his wife was taken by fairies and did not doubt to torture her. Nowadays, of course, such a cruelty can not be accepted but in the Irish labor settlements that lived according to the Oral Traditions it was a usual thing. If one asks a question, why was it so, he or she needs to address the Irish folklore and the fear that people had for fairies and witches. Of course, this can not affirm the bloody killing of a woman but for the Irish reality of those times it was not something unusual in using hot iron to kill a witch: Bridget had been forced to swallow two earlier doses, encouraged to do so by being threatened with a hot poker, a poker which left a small burn mark on her forehead (Bourke, 91).

Finally, Michael who still believed in Bridgets being a witch, fired her clothes and drenched them with oil from a lamp so that the woman died in fire. James Kennedy, his friend who was present at this, cried for him to stop but nothing could help: As I beginned it with her, I will finish it with her!& Youll soon see her go up the chimney! (Bourke, p. 124). The next day Bridgets body was buried, and only the police found it and convicted Michael Cleary. He spent 15 years in prison and till the end of his life was convinced that he killed a witch but not his wife (Bourke, p. 126).

As a conclusion, I have managed to study the beliefs of people belonging to the Oral Traditions and tried to motivate, at least to some extent, the actions of illiterate people. To express my personal opinion, I have never read anything more cruel and terrible, and the impression made by the true story by Angela Bourke proves the fact that the work is a real masterpiece of the world literature which teaches people that real life and folklore beliefs together with old customs have nothing in common.

Works Cited

Bourke, A. 2006. The Burning of Bridget Cleary. Pimlico.

Bourke, A. (1995). Reading a Womans Death: Colonial Text and Oral Tradition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Feminist Studies, 21(3), 553-586.

Poetry has a beautiful ability to pull ideas and emotions out from the depths of ones being with only a few short lines and a well-chosen metaphor. Through various literary devices, poets are able to paint pictures for their readers that more concretely define the feelings and beliefs that remain, for most of the world, almost impossible to define to any satisfactory degree. The effect of a poem, however, often depends on the ability of the poet to present their ideas, emotions and impressions with strong imagery. This effectively paints a mental image for the reader (or listener) that cannot be denied and therefore begins to conjure up a sense of sympathy with the emotional response the poet has to the subject. The process of conjuring up these images that serve to illustrate emotions better than any definition spelled out in a dictionary necessarily also conjures up deeply personal images to the author as being representative of the source of such emotions. Because of this intimate relationship between the author and the images used to portray the subject, it is impossible to remove the personal experience from the outward expression, particularly as it relates to poetry dealing with relationships. These concepts are sharply illustrated in much of the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Although she insisted her poem Daddy was not about her life, this paper will demonstrate not only that it was strongly linked to her personal life, but also that the hostility laced throughout the poem was not directed toward her father, as the title might suggest, but was instead directed to her ex-husband.

The first indication that the poem might not be as objective as Plath might have intended is found in the fact that the poem is written in first person. It takes the official form of a poetic letter to her father, who has been dead for 20 years. Although it is not clear who the figure of verse 1 has been, his identity seems to be revealed as well as the concept that this is a letter emerges in the second verse, Daddy, I have had to kill you, / You died before I had time (6-7). The story that emerges in the subsequent lines is of a woman who has lived in fear and awe of a male person for as long as she can remember. The fear is evident in her metaphor of him as Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal (8-10). Later, she compares her fear of this male figure to the fear the Jews felt for the Nazis, seeing herself as being shipped off to the concentration camps and describing her fathers appearance in terms of the perfect Aryan. But no less a devil for that, no not / Any less the black man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two (54-56). Finally, her description of the man she married as the model of her father indicates his deep cruelty because he has a love of the rack and the screw (66). She ends the poem by indicating her father has been an evil vampire, sucking her life dry and finally buried with a stake in his heart to the delight of the villagers. Her beginning and end of the poem, each expressed in terms of anger and fear, leave no doubt that her fear outweighed any other emotions she had of this male figure.

Even the pace of the poem works to indicate Plath is personally involved with the action as it focuses on major events of her life, such as the death of her father and the betrayal of her husband. Although she is writing against the male of the poem, angrily detailing the many cruel actions he perpetrated, she seems almost breathless as she allows the thoughts of the poem to be interrupted by line breaks and allows one thought to blend almost seamlessly into another. This liberal use of enjambment keeps the pace of the poem moving quickly (McInerny, 1999) and gives the impression that the thoughts of the poem were written as they occurred to the author. This impression heightens the personal connection between Plath and her subject just as the various images she relates continue to reflect aspects of her own life in an autobiographical sense. Unable to completely escape her own inner feelings and thoughts, Plath has captured a great deal of her own impressions of the men in her life, which, by extension, also happened to address many common issues faced by women of her time. As the poem bleeds from one man to another, the reader begins taking a closer look at the ways in which Plath has portrayed the husband and the father, beginning to suspect that this obviously personally applicable poem reserves most of its bitterness for the husband.

Throughout the poem, Plath provides plenty of clues that her love for her father was very strong, calling into question the source of the hostility found within the poem. She opens the poem with her anger toward her father as she describes the oppressive environment of trying to live in a black shoe, barely daring to breathe or achoo (5). While this can be seen by an adult woman as oppressive, this same imagery could also serve to indicate the feelings of security and protectiveness the young child might have felt when in the presence of a loving father. Similarly, her analogy of the heartless statue in verse 2 bleeds into a memory of a beautiful vacation she took in which she used to pray to recover you (14). A tender feeling is evoked with this blending of images that serves, even without any background knowledge of the author, to indicate a more positive relationship had existed between father and daughter than is expected by the later bitterness. She describes him as Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe (8-9). This imagery at once indicates the depth of his importance in her life, as he was God-like and ever-present, but also describes the lifeless corpse she was confronted with when her father died of complications from gangrene (the gray toe) when Plath was just ten years old (Srivastava, 1992: 127). Her island memory turns into a full-scale search for her fathers roots, which further suggests the concept of trying to recapture the person she loved. But the name of the town he came from was too common for her to determine the correct one, So I never could tell where you / Put your foot, your root, / I never could talk to you (22-24). The way she places mention of his death just after the line about his biting her heart in two (56) brings into question whether her broken heart was the result of his cruelty or his death. Her attempted suicide is described as an effort to get back to him just as is her marriage to a man who is just like what she remembers.

As she more openly discusses her husband, the poem becomes more and more bitter and angry in tone. While its difficult to determine just where in the poem the husband enters the picture, there are plenty of hints that he comes in at roughly the half-way point. It isnt until line 41 that she first mentions that she lives in fear of him, With your Luftwaffe, your gobblebygoo. / And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue & Not God but a swastika (42-44, 46). The oppressive language used in lines 48-50, Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you, does not indicate a father/daughter relationship that would naturally result in the type of nostalgic searching already described through the rest of the poem. Instead, it seems much more in keeping with an abusive relationship between a husband and a wife. The apparent mixing of the two men who have been most important to her life, her father and her husband, enables the concept of the black man who / Bit my pretty red heart in two (55-56) to apply as equally to the heartache caused by her fathers early death as the betrayal and pain brought on by the imperfect substitute she created out of her husband: I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkampf look / And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do, I do (64-67).

It is this monster creation, this vampire who has usurped the image she had of her father, to whom she feels the great bitterness and distress that suffuse the poem. If Ive killed one man, Ive killed two  / The vampire who said he was you (71-72). Because vampires were considered to be immortal yet retaining only the outward aspect of the person they had once been, Plaths use of the term here indicates the extreme degree at which she replaced her dead father with her husband. However, her husband was not her father and was unable to live up to the expectations regardless of whatever else he might have been. Because he takes on the outward aspect of her father, though, her reference to Daddy throughout the poem, particularly in the second half, can be read as applying equally to the father she remembers as well as the husband she selected. Examining the poem as an elegy for her father, Ramazani (1993) also sees the metaphor of the vampire as Plaths means of purging herself of the bitter images her husband has instilled in her, finally coming to grips with the concept that she will never be able to recapture the type of loving and protective relationship she once had with her father. Plath now fiercely mocks her desire to fashion a surrogate for her dead father (Ramazani, 1993: 1151) and sets out to completely remove any traces of connections with him, The black telephones off at the root, / The voices just cant worm through (69-70).

Writing with a heavy use of enjambment to depict the almost breathless pace with which these thoughts of husband/father/vampire seem to spill out onto the page highlights the degree to which Plath is incapable of removing herself completely from the subject of her poetry. Biographical data of her life serves to deepen the understanding of the poem and further indicates a level of personal involvement on the part of the author. As the poem is analyzed, though, it becomes obvious that the bitterness and anger of the poem only seems to enter in at roughly the halfway point in a change of tone that is in keeping with the bitterness she felt toward her husband, as it is expressed through the latter portion of the poem. Introducing the concept of an enemy with a familiar face in the concept of the vampire, Plath illustrates the many ways that her surrogate father, her husband, has managed to hurt her and disappoint her desires for a loving and supportive relationship. He is a monster who has only taken the form of the father, but is unable to take on the compassion and emotion. Understanding this construct, it becomes apparent that the authors husband is the focus of all the bitterness, with only a regretful and half-apologetic final farewell given to the well-loved father of the authors childhood.

Works Cited

McInerny, Maud. What the Heck is Enjambment? The Canterbury Tales. 1999. Haverford College. 2008. Web.

Plath, Sylvia. Daddy. Ariel. New York: Perennial Classics, 2005, p. 56.

Ramazani, Jahan. Daddy I Have Had to Kill You: Plath, Rage, and the Modern Elegy. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Vol. 108, 1993, pp. 1142-1156.

Srivastava, K.G. Plaths Daddy. The Explicator. Vol. 50, 1992, pp. 126-28.

Introduction

James Patterson is one of very few authors, specialised in the genre of criminal thriller, who provides his readers not with merely the possibility to kill time, during the course of reading his books, but who also allows them to get an insight onto the fact that the concept of crime, in cotemporary America, cannot be discussed as thing in itself. That is  no matter how innately wicked the characters of serial killers in his famous novels might appear, author discusses them as the mere reflection of greater evil, which in its turn, is often being described as such that originates in Americas governmental institutions. Therefore, even though that many people think of Pattersons books as such that are closely related to the concept of entertainment, their literary value does not solemnly correspond to authors ability to write in clear, cohesive and inventive manner, which allow readers to follow the plot with apparent ease, but also to the fact that by reading Pattersons books, people are being instilled with the idea that self-reliant individuals are much better protected from crime, as opposed to those who rely solemnly on cops, within a context of trying to enjoy a safe living. We can say that Pattersons novels are highly didactic in their essence, despite the fact that author can hardly be described as someone who actively strives to force readers to adopt his outlook on moral dilemmas, associated with Americas socio-political realities. Apparently, Patterson was able to realise one universal truth  in order for the author to be able to successfully promote his worldview to readers, it is very important for such writer not to step over the line, while doing it. This is the reason why readers seem to find Pattersons novels, which are being written in rather casual manner, as being particularly insightful. It is namely, Patersons easy-going writing style and his ability to get down to the very core of analysed subject matters, which had won him a millions of fans across the globe. We can draw certain parallels between James Patterson and Jack London. Just like London, Patterson writes in utterly realistic manner. Just like London, he does not strive to impose his political opinions on readers, and just like London, Patterson never felt being ashamed of admitting the fact that the prospect of receiving a monetary reward motivates him to indulge in literary activities more then any other factor. In his article The Man Who Cant Miss, Lev Grossman provides us with the insight on James Patterson as individual who fits the least into the traditional concept of literary genius: The fact is, Patterson is an affront to every Romantic myth of the artist we have. Hes not tortured. Hes not poor. He doesnt work alone, and hes way too unsentimental about his work (Grossman, p. 108). As the mental products of a true intellectual, Pattersons books are free of cheep sentimentalism and lengthy discourses on the subject of morality, which better then anything else points out to their high literary value.

In this paper, we will briefly outline the plots of Pattersons most famous novels Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls, in order for us to be able to define these books main motifs. We will also analyse a few critical articles, in regards to Patterson as writer, because it will allow us to get even a better understanding of the practical implications of authors ideas, regarding the issue of crime in contemporary America, despite Pattersons tendency to express these ideas in rather implicit manner.

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Kiss the Girls is one of Pattersons earliest novels, which is the reason why in it, author particularly strives to make readers emotionally attached to novels main character Alex Cross (a private forensic psychiatrist), as if he knew, well ahead of time, that Kiss the Girls would become a bestseller and would create a popular demand for more books about Alex Cross to be written in the future. The story begins with Cross being informed that his niece Naomi has been missing for a few days. This coincides with tabloid newspapers beginning to exploit the stories of serial killers Casanova and Gentlemen Caller, who are being revealed as individuals preoccupied with seeking public attention. Initially, Cross strives to collaborate with detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes, who are being assigned to crack the case of few missing girls in the area where Casanova and Gentlemen Caller were believed to operate. However, it did not take Cross too long to realise that that he would be much better off relying on himself, during the course of investigation, as it appeared that Ruskin and Sikes were not particularly enthusiastic about executing their professional duties. In the meanwhile, Casanova continues to kidnap and to murder young women, with police being increasingly blamed for its inability to catch him by Medias. Gradually, Cross is beginning to realise that Casanova and Gentlemen Caller could not be the same man, as it is was being originally assumed by police investigators, and that both serial killers were amazingly good at cleansing the crime scenes, so that not even a single clue, in regards to their true identity, could have slipped into cops hands. In its turn, this brings Cross to conclusion that these serial killers were not just some ordinary criminals but rather specialists in the field of medicine and criminology, which would make the task of catching them especially challenging. Moreover, it appeared as if some sort of competition was going on between two killers, as to who would murder more innocent women: There are two men. But that they arent just communicating, theyre competing. This could be a scary competition. This could all be a scary game theyve invented (Patterson, p. 136). Eventually, Cross grows to suspect Dr. William Rudolph as Gentleman Caller and Davey Sikes as Casanova, although he lacks any hard evidence to use against them. The final showdown between Cross, his partner Sampson and both serial killers occurs a few weeks later, after painstaking analysis of investigated crimes pattern, brings Cross and Sampson to conclusion that the kidnapped women must have been kept in the underground location at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, across which the Underground Railroad once laid. During the course of shootout between Sampson and Cross, on one hand, and the Casanova and Gentlemen Caller, on the other, Sampson gets injured, with responsibility for catching both killers being shifted exclusively on Cross, as a result. He manages to come as a winner out of situation, while revealing the Casanova (who was wearing a mask) as being actually the Detective Ruskin, although at the expense of putting few bullets through Ruskins chest. Thus, we can say that the main motif of Kiss the Girls corresponds to authors strive to rid readers of illusion that it is simply impossible for someone preoccupied with enforcing the law, to also act as serial killer, in his free time: He had figured everything out so beautifully. He was a genius that was why he had succeeded for such a long time. I stared into the impassive face of Detective Nick Ruskin. Ruskin was Casanova. Ruskin was the Beast. Ruskin! Ruskin! Ruskin! (Patterson, p. 275). Thus, even though that Kiss the Girls can be referred to as rather technical account of police and FBI investigators trying to solve a crime, the novel ultimately deals with the theme of cops corruption.

In his later novel Along Came a Spider, Patterson explores this theme even further. The story begins with Cross being called to investigate the kidnapping of Megan Dunne and Michael Goldberg  the children of important U.S. governmental officials (Michael was the son of U.S. Secretary of Treasury). It appears that they were kidnapped by their math teacher Gary Soneji, who has been secretly dreaming of becoming famous, with the kidnapper of Lindberghs son serving him as the role model. Cross becomes actively involved with the investigation, although he fails to even get a hint on kidnapers real identity (Gary Murphy) for months of time, because, just is it was the case with Casanova in Kiss the Girls, Murphy is rather good at eliminating the traces of his criminal activity, which could have led to his arrest: There were no sure things in life, he was thinking, but he couldnt imagine how any policeman could get him now. Was it foolish and dangerous to be this confident? He wondered. Not really, because he was also being realistic. There was no way to trace him now. There wasnt a single clue for them to follow (Patterson, p. 28). When Dunnes receive a telegram with demand of $10 million in ransom, for the life of Megan, Cross voluntarily assumes the responsibility of a negotiator, and flies to Orlando, where he is supposed to meet the representative of kidnappers, with FBI agents following him discreetly. However, after having met with the man, who claimed to have been given an authority to talk on behalf of kidnappers, Cross realises that arresting this man, would automatically result in Megans death, which is why he agrees to fly with kidnapers spokesman on private plane into the unknown, only to be dumped off the plane somewhere in South Carolina, after having the briefcase with the money taken away from him. In the meanwhile, Gary Murphy is being arrested; however, it appears that he does not know anything about the ransom. FBI begins to suspect a third party to be involved in the case. Cross and Sampson come to conclusion that FBI agent Jessie Flannigan (Cross lover) and Mike Devine had something to do with the kidnapping, although there is absolutely no factual evidence, which could have substantiated such their suspicion. It is only when Cross lures Jessie Flannigan to go on a Caribbean tour with him that she finally decides to tell him what had really happened, as she was convinced that whatever she had to tell Cross would only remain between them. Apparently, she was well aware of the fact that Soneji/Murphy has been noticed lurking around Goldbergs residence, prior to Michael being kidnapped. However, she and Devine did not do anything to prevent the kidnapping. Instead, they designed a plan to extort money out of Goldbergs, as they were well aware of the fact that Godbergs had fallen out of favour with Colombian drug cartel, which is why U.S. Secretary of Treasure was demanding to have his kids being protected by FBI in the first place. Even before going out on a cruise with Jessie, Cross had come to conclusion that kidnapping of Megan and Michael was somehow related to Secretarys shady dealings with Colombian mafia: A strange possible connection entered my mind. We were in Florida now, heading farther south. A Colombian drug cartel had originally threatened Secretary Goldbergs family. Was that a coincidence? I didnt believe in coincidences anymore (Patterson, p. 68). Yet, it was the conversation with Jessie that had provided Cross with the insight onto the full scale of corruption within FBI: Mike Devine called me from the school when it all came crashing down. They wanted to go after Soneji then. Thats when it struck me about taking the ransom ourselves. I dont know for sure. Maybe Id thought of it before. It was so easy, Alex. Three or four days and it would be over. Nobody would be hurt. Not any more than theyd already been hurt. Wed have the ransom money. Millions (Patterson, p. 224). Thus, in Along Came a Spider Patterson had managed to tie the themes of mental deviation, sexual perversion, drug money laundering and governmental corruption into one knot. Even though Patterson does not imply any wrongdoing, on the part of Secretary of Treasure (had he done so, he would have ended up being accused of anti-Semitism, given Secretarys last name), the fact that this high governmental bureaucrat used to be in cahoots with Colombian drug cartel, derives out of novels context. People are not afraid of mafias retaliation, unless they feel that there is a good reason for them to be afraid, as the result of their failure to provide adequate payment for the shipment of drugs, for example. Only utterly naïve citizens can believe that government does not have its own share of the dough, in regards to the drug trafficking. For example, there is an overwhelming of evidence that in eighties, CIA acted as Americas major drug trafficker, with all probability that it continues to be the case, up until today, just as CIAs partner in fighting crime, Russian FSB (secret service) continues to provide major Russian drug barons with governmental roof. Therefore, we can say that Pattersons talent, as a writer, also relates to his ability to dispel the myth of American top officials existential integrity, without risking the chance of being killed in car accident.

Conclusion

Given Pattersons immense popularity among readers, it comes as no surprise that literary critics pay special attention to his works. In his article The Patterson School of Writing, Andrew Gross, who is also an acclaimed writer himself, suggests that reading Pattersons novel is a must for anyone who intends to pursue the career of writer: I learned how to plot. How to map out a 100-chapter story in a detailed outline, and figure out the puzzle pieces before you wade into the first page. How to create vivid scenes that stay with readers like movie scenes. And how to create surprises. I learned the importance of making your lead character someone who readers love. To make them crucially invested in that characters struggle, right from the opening scenes. And how to make your bad guys bad. Real bad (Gross, p. 168). We can only agree with Gross  Patterson does know how to twist and turn plot, so that it would keep readers in the state of constant suspension. However, it seems that such Pattersons ability has inborn subtleties, as author had never bothered to attend any literary courses for writers. As we have stated at the beginning of this paper, Pattersons style of writing allows readers to feel as being active participants in criminal investigations, described in his books. It is not by pure accident that many of his fans became hooked on Patterson, after having read at least one of his novels  apparently, the popularity of his novels corresponds to Pattersons ability to encourage readers to derive pleasure out of utilizing their own sense of rationale, without any intellectual enforcement, on his part. Why do many people like assembling puzzles? It is because they get to be intellectually satisfied, once the pieces of puzzle begin to make sense, after being put together. The same line of logic can be applied, within a context of explaining the semantic appeal of Pattersons novels. In his article The James Patterson Business, Jeff Zaleski suggests that one of the reasons why Pattersons books continue to be published in millions is because of the highly attuned content of these books: Pattersons novels are sleek entertainment machines, the Porsches of commercial fiction, expertly engineered and lightning fast. The minimal description, the slipstream of sentences, the rat-a-tat-tat chapters, all are geared toward maximum ride; the style exactly suits the vehicle (Zaleski, p. 53). In its turn, this proves Patterson as a supreme psychologist, even though that it is highly doubtful of whether he ever studied the works of Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung. It is namely this feature of his character, which prompts many critics to draw parallels between Pattersons novels and the works of Stephen King. In one of his interviews, King had suggested that the reason why he writes about exploding golf balls, and about human fingers that crawl out of water faucets, is because people are being innately attracted to this kind of reading material. The same can be said about Patterson  the reason why it is the least suspected characters in his books, which turn out to be the biggest villains, is because readers subconsciously understand that such state of affairs does correspond to the objective reality. The crimes that investigators have a particularly hard time, while trying to solve, are usually being committed in cold-blooded manner, which in its turn, imply that perpetrators of such crimes relied exclusively on their sense of rationale, during the course of committing them. This can only mean one thing  besides being White, these criminals posses a rather good education, which in its turn, suggests them being the figures of high social standing, and therefore  the least likely to end up among the suspects. Thus, by revealing the police officers as being closely affiliated with the concept of crime, Patterson does not want to simply shock readers  he confirms the validity of their subconscious anxieties. In his article Have You Read a Patterson Lately?, Rob Brookman, quotes Griffin Stenger, the Director of The Concept Farm in L.A., who while referring to James Patterson, said the following: He is very, very good at knowing what his readers hot buttons are and how to put them together in the right order (Brookman, p. 44). In this article, author also comes up with the statistical data, according to which, 70% of Pattersons fans consist of women. This confirms the validity of our description of Pattersons novels as such that are meant to appeal to peoples subconscious understanding, rather then to their rational knowledge  after all, there can be no doubt as to the fact that womens existential mode is affected by their acute animalistic instincts to significantly larger extent, as opposed to mens. It is a well known fact that, during the time when they undergo training as criminal investigators, women often fall behind their male counterparts, in terms of their ability to rely on their sense of logic. This, however, does not prevent them to execute their professional duties with utter proficiency, after being graduated, simply because women understand more then they could possibly know. It is not by pure accident that in Kiss the Girls and in Along Came a Spider, Cross continuously refers to blind instinct and intuitive predicament, as such that allowed him to avoid certain death, while confronting the villains. Thus, James Patterson had proven once again that the best writer is not someone entitled with the supreme understanding of what the concept of stylistic finesse stands for, but someone who has a lot to tell, who is filled with ideas that must be verbally expressed. Lewis Frumkes A Conversation with James Patterson, contains a clue as to Pattersons popularity, expressed by acclaimed author himself: In the beginning, I really worried a lot about the sentences in my books. But at some point, I stopped writing sentences and started writing stories. And that is the advice I give to new writers. Sentences are really hard to write. Stories flow. If youve got an idea, the story will flow (Frumkes, p. 13). As history shows, it is only writers and philosophers that had a vision, who were capable of attaining a literary fame, as opposed to those, who despite their extensive knowledge of the ways of the world, still lacked the ability to make the ideas, expressed in their works, to be perceived by readers as being particularly intense. James Patterson is definitely the man with vision, which is why he was able to brilliantly succeeded in about all of his undertakings, without having to apply much of an effort.

Bibliography

1. Brookman, Rob Have You Read a Patterson Lately?. Book (Summit, N.J.). no.27. 2003. p. 44-8.
2. Frumkes, Lewis. A Conversation with James Patterson. The Writer. (113)11. 2000. p. 13-14.
3. Gross, Andrew The Patterson School of Writing. Publishers Weekly. (254)18. 2007, p. 168.
4. Grossman, Lev The Man Who Cant Miss, Time. (167)12, 2006. p. 108-9, 115.
5. Patterson, James Kiss the Girls. NY: Grand Central Publishing, 1995.
6. Patterson, James Along Came a Spider. NY: Grand Central Publishing, 1993.
7. Zaleski, Jeff The James Patterson Business. Publishers Weekly. (249) 44. 2002. p. 43-4, 46-8, 53-5.

Introduction

In Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, the main character Marlow continuously calls into question the modern assumptions that are made by his listeners as well as his readers, blurring the lines between inward and outward, civilized and savage and, most especially, dark and light. The bulk of the book concentrates on Marlowes telling of his adventures on the Congo River as a steamboat captain sent in to find a station master who has gone missing. As he struggles to make his way up the river to the interior where this man is supposed to be waiting for him, Marlowe begins to gain a deeper understanding of what is actually occurring in the forest outside the realm of what hes been told by the Company, thus exposing the darker elements of colonialism. It is explained from the beginning of the book that Marlowe is different from most men in that he does not search for a great depth of meaning on the inside, as had been the tradition in everything from art analysis to psychology, but rather that he seeks meaning from the outside of things, by what can be seen and touched about a man and therefore proved to no false assumptions. However, what he sees in the Congo makes gaining meaning from the story difficult at best as nothing seems to be established in such dyadic certainty, a fact that is underscored as the story begins. In making his comments upon London, Marlowe, and Conrad by extension, illustrates how the lessons learned in the jungle regarding societys understanding of colonialism fosters an unreasonable dependence upon false cultural definitions which are as applicable to the outside world as they were to the alien world of the Congo shown in the rest of the story.

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Many generations of Africans have endured life essentially as slave laborers in the colonized regions of the continent. They were regarded as mere tools, both physically and intellectually, used for the advancement of the occupying nation and tolerated only as the lowest subjects of the new ruling government. This condition, combined with the natives lack of formal education, spawned and confirmed the perception in the minds of the ruling population that they were a people of limited intellect. Certainly these sub-humans, according to typical ruling-class methodology in colonized Africa, could not think in abstract, introspective ways much less formulate philosophical postulations. Words from a missionary working in the Congo in the 1930s still ring true today. To declare that primitive peoples are completely lacking in logic, is simply to turn ones back on reality. Every day we are able to note that primitive peoples are by no means just children afflicted with a bizarre imagination (Stenger, 2005). Wisdom is universal and the level of literacy is not a boundary to critical thought, as is consistently being proven upon the Dark Continent today, but in Conrads time, there was still a widespread belief that the only right way was the European way, which was considered the way of light, civilization and upstanding behavior.

The concepts of inward and outward, civilized and savage and light and dark are recurrent themes throughout the novel, introduced at the novels beginning and illustrating how each of these words are actually defined by cultural rather than actual standards. They are brought forward in a variety of ways beginning with Marlowes observations on the Thames River and his comparison of same with his experiences on the Congo. As the narrator notices the sun setting over the Thames, a condition that most would view as the onset of darkness, the narrator notes that the serenity became less brilliant but more profound (Part 1). This in itself suggests that though the sky is becoming darker, the meaning of this darkness is becoming clearer. The picture that immediately springs to mind is that of an individual squinting into the sunlight to make out a shape on the horizon. When the brightness is suddenly dimmed, plunging things into a greater darkness, the individual is able to now recognize the shape as something intimately familiar to them. This image is at the heart of the story and is illustrated so eloquently now as a means of bringing this concept to the attention of the reader and the listener so it perhaps will not be lost in the greater telling.

Light and dark is also used to illustrate the difference between civilized and savage, with the light always referring to the civilized world. This is obvious as the other men sitting on the ship on the Thames at the opening to the story have been discussing how the great heroes, the knights-errant of the sea, have made their way in similar fashion down the Thames and out into the dark places of the world, suggesting they were bringing light to other places of the world and defending the light of England against the dark hordes of other nations. They also comment upon the way in which this light was kindly distributed throughout the dark places of the world as the settlers and colonists bravely left their bright land and traveled down the Thames to dark areas that wanted exploration. In this, it is seen that bringing light to dark areas is a positive thing, always helping the savage people who are affected by it whether they know they want it or not. However, in this scene, as in the bulk of the novel, Marlowe tends to turn everything inside out, making dark seem light, in seem out and civilized seem barbaric. Keeping in mind how the light tends to blind people to the truth, Marlowe suddenly breaks the reverie with a startling observation. And this also & has been one of the dark places of the earth (Part 1). In this line, he could as easily be talking about the blindness of his comrades in not seeing past the propaganda of the trading companies regarding the effects of their activities in the darker regions of the world as he is discussing the distant past history of England.

To make his point clear regarding Englands own experience with light, Marlowe explains himself by illustrating how this lead-gray, bleak land was once the savage, dark place visited by the Romans. Despite finding a flourishing society on these islands, the Romans felt lost in the darkness themselves. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages  precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. & Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay  cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death  death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush (Part 1). Much of this description could be equally applied to the lands of the Congo, in which Europeans died in great numbers as they fell to the strange diseases and other hazards of an unfamiliar world. The Romans, like the younger Marlowe and his associates in the Congo, had no light to guide their way to the interior of a land defined by them as dark, but that operated well enough on its own with its own people. The Englishmen to whom Marlowe was speaking were well aware of the brutality of the Romans as well, knowing them as conquerors, who grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind  as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness (Part 1). Despite any claims to the contrary, Marlowe is indicating here, as he will throughout his adventurous story, that the claims of imperialism are little more than an excuse to plunder and steal, blinding outsiders with the light theyre supposedly bringing to the interior so little can be seen of the ravages occurring on the edges as the savages are brutally killed and the civilized men profit from their spoils.

The concept of the other as it was developed through colonialism took on a new direction with this novel by comprising these conflicting ideas within a single individual in the form of Kurtz. Rather than concentrating on the individual who does not belong based upon his appearance or physical presence, the idea has moved underground. Throughout the novel, it has been shown that no one has a clear concept of Kurtz, who instead seems comprised of a series of impressions imposed upon him by others. He is considered dangerous and fearful by the Manager, a brilliant poet by the Russian Trader, was early thought of as a painter by Marlow, a wonderful musician by a cousin who meets with Marlow following his return and an excellent elocutionist and politician by the journalist. The scene at his cottage in the jungle depicts a man of almost inhuman brutality and the sight of his African mistress instills a deep sense of dread every time she is seen standing upon the shore. The conversation with the Intended reveals her belief in Kurtz as a tremendous humanitarian with a genius mind while the Company official seems to believe he has every right to have expected more out of the man than what hes been given, both in terms of material profit and scientific undertaking. Marlows own experiences of him portrays him as an empty shell of a man who nevertheless deserves tremendous respect and honor because of his ability, at the end, to face his own reality in the final words he utters, The horror! The horror! Thus, Kurtz is a collection of the impressions of others, never fully shown as himself and never honestly understood, the perfect product of a colonial mind.

Conclusion

Thus, starting from the very first chapter as Marlow challenges the assumption that London is the center of the civilized world, Heart of Darkness can be seen to challenge many of the assumptions regarding basic values as they relate to those who exist outside ones personal cultural background. In making this speech, Marlowe sums up a great deal of what he has to say throughout the remainder of the novel. By confusing the concepts of light and dark, civilized and savage and inside and outside, he makes it clear that no single definition of such terms can be applied as universally good or bad. Instead, through his London analogy as well as the inconclusive tale he tells regarding the Congo, he suggests that the actions of men, looked at from the outside and as objectively as possible, can only indicate where definitions fail and new understandings must be sought.

Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1902. The Literature Network (2006). Web.

Stenger, Fritz. African Philosophy I: The Time Has Come to Take Ourselves Seriously. Stenger, 2005. Web.

Morrie Schwartz

Morrie Schwartz  one of the protagonists of the novel is the professor of sociology. It is stated, that he got this job by default, nevertheless, he is an excellent teacher. The action of the novel takes place for the time when he retires, as he starts losing control over his body (because of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Feeling, that his time is approaching, and he is obliged to share the wisdom of the meaning of life with the people surrounding him.

His physical condition leaves him to wish better; nevertheless, he tries to keep fit, as there may be no time left for sharing his wisdom. ALS is the degeneration of muscles, so, Morrie constantly loses control over his body. His aphorism, When youre in bed, youre dead, is fully realized, when Morrie gets stuck to his bed. Nevertheless, he aims to struggle with his ALS and does not wish to stay in bed. Staying in bed is a kind of surrender for him, so he continues to study sitting in his armchair. (The truth is& once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. (Ablom, 2002. p. 23)).

More can be told of his emotional condition. He aims to live his last days as fully as possible. So studies, watches the photos of the people he loves, reads the books that he collected for his life. He striving to share his life experience with all the others, and he copes to persuade everyone. He acts by the means of love and friendship. Even thick-skinned people like Koppel  the national celebrity  get inspired by the words by Morrie.

The ethical system is the highest value for Morrie, and he teaches Mitch and other people, that initially, it is necessary to value ethics and morale.

Mitch Albom

Mitch is a person with a kind heart. He thinks that life turned its back on him, as he can succeed neither in his career nor in family life. He had worked himself nearly to death and got frustrated with the career and the decisions, that he had previously made for his life. He does not have much time to devote to his wife Janine, and he realizes that his life necessitates essential changes.

Mitch gets inspiration and encouragement from Morries words. He finds that all his previous life appeared to be meaningless, and sometimes, he feels sorrow, that he had abandoned his dream to become a musician, and started chasing the dream of creating a career.

Only Morrie can feel and ruin the toughness that has grown around Mitchs heart and he did it. Mitch felt, that Morrie is someone, who really can live his life to the fullest if only had an opportunity. He realizes the principles that Morrie taught him: value love over gold, be above the tabloid gossips and vanity, that had captured peoples lives. (You see,& you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too  even when youre in the dark. Even when youre falling (Albom, 2002. p. 87).) Mitch feels, that he wishes to know his life is lived to its full extent, certain that he has loved and forgiven himself and others as often and as sincerely as he could. No one lived his life so fully and impressively as Morrie did, and Mitch feels h wishes to do the same. Almost anything had left to change the life  to change the attitude towards it, and value every moment of life, as everyone is unique.

References

Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Lifes Greatest Lesson Broadway publisher, 2002