...Why it matters? It's a mystery of literature involving a man of words. Words which caused uproar back in 1789. The British readers were captivated by his personal experience of being enslaved at age 11, kidnapped from Nigeria, and brought into slavery of a New World in a terror-filled ship. Equiano's tale is viewed as an authoritative description of the villainous Middle Passage, one of the very first narratives from a slave, a story that gave the hatchling abolitionist movement a buzzing moral influence; except it may not be exact. Therein lays the mystery: Because if the gentleman who penned "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African" was not born in Africa, but rather born into slavery in South Carolina -- as Vincent Carretta suggests -- then who was he? Where did he learn to speak fluent Igbo? And how did he obtain such agonizing details about life aboard an 18th-century slave vessel? The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains. . . . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. (Equiano, 1789) In that lies the controversy: Carretta's findings, detailed in his biography of Equiano, have ignited a blaze...
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...mentally and physically. Hamlet by William Shakespeare shows how lies and deception go against one another as well as rejection to self doubt. Shakespeare uses various forms of conflict to project his opinions and explanation of his ideas relating to the themes of the play. Internal conflict, as well as external conflict are dominant features in the narrative. Shakespeare merges the ideas of lies, deception and self doubt resulting in shall we say a “domino effect” of moral dilemma and personal complications. This gives way to the continuous concept of revenge, broken family relationships, and the questioning of life. In the form the play is written it assists in creating tension and raising questions about revenge and lies. Shakespeare uses external conflict in order to explore the theme of revenge in this play. This leads Hamlet into a state of internal conflict as he agonizes over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Using the idea of external conflict, the play is able to demonstrate the aftermath of a difficult decision, leading to personal moral dilemma. Hamlet is presented as thinker who takes a lot of time contemplating how to avenge his father’s death. He plots against Claudius and schemes to kill him. We see that Hamlet is a man of logic; we also see his weaknesses such as his procrastination and his self doubt. The play, like many tragedies concludes with the death of many of the characters. “Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, Of accidental...
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...STUDIES IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND WORK Mike Hayler University of Brighton, UK Autoethnography, Self-Narrative and Teacher Education examines the professional life and work of teacher educators. In adopting an autoethnographic and life-history approach, Mike Hayler develops a theoretically informed discussion of how the professional identity of teacher educators is both formed and represented by narratives of experience. The book draws upon analytic autoethnography and life-history methods to explore the ways in which teacher educators construct and develop their conceptions and practice by engaging with memory through narrative, in order to negotiate some of the ambivalences and uncertainties of their work. The author’s own story of learning, embedded within the text, was shared with other teacher-educators, who following interviews wrote self-narratives around themes which emerged from discussion. The focus for analysis develops from how professional identity and pedagogy are influenced by changing perceptions and self-narratives of life and work experiences, and how this may influence professional culture, content and practice in this area. Autoethnography, Self-Narrative and Teacher Education Autoethnography, Self-Narrative and Teacher Education STUDIES IN PROFESSIONAL LIFE AND WORK The book includes an evaluation of how using this approach has allowed the author to investigate both the subject and method of the research with implications for ...
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...the views represented in the synthesis essay may not necessarily represent my personal opinions (I won’t write this disclaimer on the AP test). To live a meaningful life is awfully vague, for it can mean a life of happiness, of financial superiority, and of success. But the reason behind why the definition remains vague is clear: we become too obsessed with external factors and often forget ourselves--our character and our individuality. Thus, the prospect of a meaningful life continues to run away from us as we grow jealous of others who have more resources than we. To live a truly meaningful life that embraces both controllable and uncontrollable factors, we must resist trying to please others by avoiding the tendency...
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...F. Scott Fitzgerald is in many ways one of the most notable writers of the twentieth century. His prodigious literary voice and style provides remarkable insight into the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as well as himself. Exploring themes such as disillusionment, coming of age, and the corruption of the American Dream, Fitzgerald based most of his subject matter on his own despicable, tragic life experiences. Although he was thought to be the trumpeter of the Jazz Age, he never directly identified himself with it and was adverse to many of its manifestations. The life of F. Scott Fitzgerald was deeply divided, in that his early successes in the 1910’s and 1920’s contrast noticeably with the years full of personal happenings and self doubt. It was divided, among all, between the pursuit of the artistic ideal and the continual lure of easy success. He became a victim of the myth of success and money instead of the perpetrator. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald’s incredible prose style and beautiful talent shined through his tragic, disillusioned life and he was able to successful create a beautiful world for his readers to escape to. In the early 1920’s, Fitzgerald was accepted as a symbol of youthful sophistication. He became intensely aware of the strangeness and mystery behind the rich at a young age, and tried so hard to echo their actions through sheen curiosity and characterization. It was then that he established a rich and enduring symbolic value throughout his...
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...trust the narration of the book usually done in the first person. In American psycho, Ellis explores the sinister nature of Wall Street yuppie culture by examining the sanity of the narrating protagonist Patrick Bateman using the unreliable narrator. Ishiguro also uses this, exploring ideas of regret and also self-justification in the character of Mr Stevens in The Remains of the Day. Unlike Ellis who examines Bateman during his early working years, in his mid-twenties and presenting a snapshot of his life, Ishiguro uses his take on the unreliable narrator to look at Stevens towards the end of his life using a series of flashbacks narrated unreliably, by Stevens. Both novels are comparable in the sense they examine the topic of failure using unreliable narrators that will do anything to escape the idea that they are failures. A popular debate regarding American Psycho is whether Patrick Bateman is a murderer or not, certainly Bateman describes in detail of murders he commits and why he commits them, however, certain factors bring Bateman’s reliability of narration into question. Bruno Zerweck argues that due to the lack of ‘detective framework’ and ‘unintentional self-incrimination’ the narration of the novel is reliable. Jennifer Phillips in her article on the subject disagrees citing examples such as Detective Donald Kimball as evidence of so called ‘detective framework. Even within the film, which takes a ‘reliable’ Bateman stance, Kimball questions the reliability of the...
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...I hesitated to reveal how I felt in a time of havoc because I felt it put me in a position of vulnerability to the reader, who is that case was my judgemental, Honors English class. To display myself as frightened, nervous, and unstable seemed out of place in something I was writing about myself. I realized once I began rewriting my paper, although it felt wrong at first, that the details of my heartbeat in the panicked situation and how I considered hiding the debris gave the story a whole new angle. It was rich and colorful. It was my voice, my style. Writing was not burdensome when it was done like that. I loved the way my narrative paper sounded and I felt nearly ready to share it with my classmates the next...
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...Natasha chose to represent, in her book Beyond Katrina the story of Joe's attempt to rebuild his life and the simple tragic act that leads to his incarceration. Before Katrina, Joe's life and business is on track. “He was a hard worker – efficient and likeable” (46). After Katrina, the misery of natural disaster and the injustice in the government reforms forced him to yield to the temptation of a lucrative drug deal, leading to his imprisonment. Without a doubt, it is the hurricane Katrina that made him end up in prison; yet the prison is where he began writing to Natasha, or at least at first....
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...becoming a colorful and fragrant flower. To be the flower that will rightly represent his identity, he needs someone to call his name. In this poem, identity is not seen as something that is solid and concrete but as something that is situated and constructed by others, a glimpse of poststructuralist view on identity. Recently, language learning has been seen as participation and negotiation of self (see Higgins, forthcoming; Kinginger, 2004; Lam, 2000; Morita, 2004; Ohara, 2001; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; and Solé, 2007 among others). The trend is resonated in the growing interest in language learner identity and the studies in narratives. In this paper, a case of heritage language learner will be investigated upon the theoretical frame of poststructuralism. Narrative inquiry will be used to analyze how she negotiates her learner identity. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: First, by looking at the struggle a language learner makes to acquire her heritage language, I reclaim the centrality of identity in defining heritage language learners. Second, to widen the horizons of narrative studies to the cyber space as it provides an ample source of easily accessible data and it has become one of the commonplace media of daily communication. Heritage Language Learners and Identity To refer to the Heritage Language Learners (HLLs), various terms have been implemented such as ‘native speakers,’ ‘quasi native speakers,’ ‘bilingual speakers,’ or, from the dissatisfaction with the...
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...both tendencies in language: the positive search for truth, preservation, remembrance, evidence, and knowable signifieds on the one hand and the negative dispersal of meaning in fits of uncertainty and multiplicity on the other. Final Paper Notes/Outline Thesis: Something about using the medium of a novel (text and language’s role (both as a signifier and signified) to per petuate Bechdel’s story and reveal plot of her dad’s motive motive for killing himself Fun House Explore the medium of a comic Fact that she wrote everything herself, does this relate to self realization, etc. Notes from Youtube Video: Words don’t illustrate pictures… writing in a drawing program. Can say that my hypothesis for her motives, including the literature was this… but actually only she (as the author) can know Role of Literature in Alison’s coming out… Handwriting all the poems, what does this have to do with memory, and can she fully replicate her father’s signature? Daedalus mytch and Ulysseus…starts out book with it Passage 1: Page 140: Because of her obsessive-compulsive spell she started a diary… But, because of the questioning of memory, the words “I think” popped in her comments. Page 141: How did I know that the things I was writing were absolutely, objectively true? She’s doubting what she writes down to be true… Specfic kind of text: the kind that’s in the boxes, speech bubbles bring you back into the moment, Square ones are superimpositions, narratively offering her...
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...Literature has long been used to provide a glimpse into history as writers memorialize their view of the world and their surroundings. Often littered with satires, comedy or factual narratives - authors showcase their personal opinions on critical issues within their societies. Voltaire and Moliere’s works on social and religious issues are prime examples of this. With unquestionable tenacity, both authors used their writing to question religious authority and denounce religious hypocrisy at a time in which social power and order was grounded in “sacred” doctrines that determined people’s way of life - both in public and in private. Being cautious to maintain their art a form of entertainment, both Voltaire and Moliere resorted to the use...
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...I would probably say that one of my formative experience is how a colleague and I constructed a narrative of our experiences at SSA that began with we’re the oldest students here, unsure of what classes to take, we could never be full time students, take more than 2 classes and/or work and attend classes—only to have some transformative moment or moments that then made us the social workers we are today. On the flip side, I feel like we all have this platonic ideal in our minds about passing all of our classes with grades higher than a “C,” and we expect, contrary to our own experiences and contrary to the experiences of some of the students in our cohort, is that not to stress ourselves, and do the very best we can. Unlike my colleague, my concern was graduating undergrad 30 years ago, coming to a prestigious discipline, and feeling inferior in my first year of not knowing how to write papers or conduct research. I came from a very small college, and had no preparation whatsoever in 30 years what school was about currently. Moreover, graduate school has given me the opportunity to apply a theoretical foundation to describe my own undergraduate experience—after spending four years going through college and witnessing my own development, I am now learning why I went through such development and how I can best help those develop and grow just as I did. SSA has removed all self-doubt, and helped me leap past my own assumptions of what I knew to be true and what I am capable of learning...
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...Women: A Personal Worldview Narrative An individual’s worldview may originate from how and manner through which knowledge and understanding are offered and obtained. A world view in my opinion, worldview is an introspective view on how everyday activities are color, organized, filtered, and interpreted in regards to personal cultural perceptions. Additionally, my worldview, which continues to develop, is an interpersonal process, which began when I was a young man in rural society of Africa and subsequently in civilized society of Europe, Asia and America. Thinking about the concept of worldview found me rendering deep thoughts about my life so far. Why? One may ask; well, the total sum of my worldview is directly and indirectly shaped by the different assumed and certain roles women plaid in my life. These experiences gave me a unique interpretation of the world. Fifteen years was the age I realized that my culture is one that discriminates against women. It is a culture where women are viewed as property and used only to satisfy the sexual libido of their male counterparts; a culture where women has no opinion either in the family or society, except for that of their husband if married and father’s if unmarried; and finally a culture where female genital cutting is still practiced. Ultimately, there is no potential for women to actually have and fulfill a dream. In such culture, there were three women-my mother, and two grandmas. Domestic violence, abusive behavior, and...
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...But between me and narrative synthesis of the round table revolution last week thinking about age, essentially, how the contemporary debate struck many in the US history, but essentially personal and -political although several of the narrative between the high and the other fundamental democratic and representative. For Hobsbawm, analysis, or "wide on human affairs" of these methods are really bold and decisive measures the synthesis of what-efforts to count. Perhaps, after all, you want the goose just kind of synthesis Hobsbawm American wealth of experience in the last fifty years of research and diversity is probably not...
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...Johan Rodriguez Professor Nadia Johnson English Comp. 1101 13 June 2010 The Heart of Darkness is a novel that describes many subjects. One of these subjects is read between the lines but is very prominent during the whole adventure through the African Congo. The topic is knowledge and the great desire of man to reach it since its childhood to adulthood. Conrad uses the main character in his novel the Heart of Darkness, Marlow, as an interpretation of the ignorance of human kind and its desire to find knowledge. Kurt represents the knowledge that human kind so dearly desires but usually is surrounded by darkness. The paper is divided in three different sections. The first section provides an insight of Conrad’s novel and identifies the desire of Marlow to find knowledge through his voyage. The second sections establish the new attitudes and split concepts Conrad uses as turning points of the characters in the novel. The third and final section demonstrates the dilemma that Marlow confronts once it has found the knowledge he was looking for. MARLOW’S CRAVING FOR KNOWLEDGE The HOD describes the great desire of the author for letting its audience know that the knowledge of light is Kurt, the desire of man to look for that knowledge is Marlow and the African Congo and many of the other characters are the darkness that individuals must surpass to find knowledge. One of the striking aspects of the novel is that only Marlow and Kurt are named; the other characters...
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