A dystopia is a fictional society that is the opposite of a utopia.  It is a society with some type of social control, and is characterized as having at least on fatal flaw.

What classifies the novel as dystopian are as follows:

1. The Back Story: A ‘back story’ is told of the society and how it came to be, in addition to including some form ( Read more... )

Short stories do not require multiple reads as poetry because the topic or theme is presented throughout and is straight forward, even if there are some things that are hidden away in the imagery, but in general, the imagery is described more for us to really get its true meaning.  Poetry, or at least for me, requires more then one read, and most ( Read more... )

The author uses the lines “One day I’ll come swimming / beside your ship or someone will / and if you hear the siren / listen to it.  For if you close your ears / only nothing happens.  You will never change.” to describe how one day he will come and talk to the daughter, warn her about something in life that will happen that cannot be avoided. (26 ( Read more... )

A similarity I noticed between ‘The Pomegranate’ and ‘Daedalus’is that the authors let the children make their own life choices, to learn from their mistakes and their life challenges.  In Pomegranate the author states: “If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift” (49), showing us that she will not give her daughter all the answers and try to ( Read more... )

Sylvia Plath, 'Daddy'

Sylvia Plath presents her poem ‘Daddy’ as a piece of art because she ties in truth with a piece of her work about her thoughts on the German war.  This is a way for poets to express their emotions in their work without having to tell the truth about their entire life.  In reading about Sylvia Plath’s life, it is obvious ( Read more... )

Sophocles, 'Oedipus the King'

1.   Catharsis is the idea that watching the tragedy will allow the watcher to release strong emotions, to express these emotions (like misery).

The occurrence of catharsis is when Oedipus realizes he killed his father and married his mother, and when he tries to find his mother, discovers that she has already ( Read more... )

Dramatic irony is normally found in dramatic monologues where there is a difference between the perception of the speaker and reader and so, the speaker is less aware of the impact of his or her words then the reader.

Oedipus’s parents are Laius and Iocaste because as a baby, Oedipus was given to a shepherd by Iocaste to be destroyed, however ( Read more... )

Alice Munro, ‘Boys and Girls’, Part 2

From the story, I believe that the author considers gender roles to be determined by nature, rather than nurture.  With nature girls and boys eventually fall into place, especially in this story, where the daughter was very tom boyish but eventually began liking delicate things and a pretty room, as well as ( Read more... )

Alice Munro, ‘Boys and Girls’

Alice Munro makes the ‘inside/outside’ binary reflect gender by the way the kitchen (inside) and the farm (outside) is described.  These two scenarios are in fact complete opposites in the narrator’s mind as the description of the kitchen was dreary and bleak, being ‘hot’ and ‘dark’ as well as never changing.  The ( Read more... )

I find that both Ann and John fail each other.  John is ignorant in his love for Ann in the sense that he believes she is as much in love with him as he is, however this is not the case as over time, both Ann and John have grown distant and do not speak as much.  John fails Ann by working so much and leaving her for days at a time, while Ann fails ( Read more... )