...of story branches to foresee what type of genre this section could emerge into. However, we reach moment of resound realism, a fork in the path that resonates with many readers. Keith’s friend Stephen, also described as the “best behaved boys at Marlings” offers Keith and his friends a cigarette (68). Mickey and Norman do not hesitate to take the offering, and the pack is raised like a “gun” at Keith and in turn it is you who decides how to react. This is a crucial moment, a gateway to partake in society’s pressures. You are given three choices: to turn down the cigarette, try to fake smoke it as demonstrated by your friend Mickey, or do better than the guys next to you and smoke it properly like your friend Stephen. Most choices given by the novel can be labeled as the easy, moral decision like the first choice given or bad choices like the last. Other choices can be described as neutral...
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...violence in chapter 22? Throughout the 22nd chapter Hosseini convey a sense of tension and violence through many different language features. The chapter is written in a first person, which makes it more personal and sincere. The fact that it is sincere makes it even more dramatic, as we know that Amir really had to go through all this and that it is a real story. The chapter is told from Amir’s point of view and in a retrospective narrative, so we know that it is not happening at the time and it is Amir’s memory told in a past tense. Hosseini also want to give us some information by others points of view. Epistolary we get the point of view of Rahim Khan and Hassan through the letters they have addressed to Amir. Hosseini begins the chapter with a sense of tension straight on a first page. “He parked in the shadow…” The dark scenery is suggesting us that something is blocking the light. It is a pathetic fallacy, as the common noun “shadow” signifies the atmosphere at the time. Pathetic fallacy is a literary device that attributes human qualities and emotions to inanimate objects of nature. “I heard terse voices from the other side and a pair of men toting Kalashnikovs answered the door”. The mood of this quote is also under the tension, as the noun “Kalashnikovs” stands for guns. It is signifying us the death and terror the Russians had brought to Afghanistan. There is also a sign of juxtaposition in the quote, “The older of the two men motioned toward the sofa with the barrel...
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...arguments usually question or celebrate the transgressive potentials of the book (Giroux; Mendieta), or address issues of masculinity brought into the fore by their literary and cinematic representations emergent in the same decade (Tuss; Friday). However, few, if any, have addressed the literary aspirations of the text and its author. Although none of the approaches to the thematic concerns of Fight Club are unjustified, in the argument that follows I will suggest that conclusions drawn and critical judgments passed have been hasty, and not only failed to take into account the formal aspects of story-telling, but that the narrative features of Palahniuk’s text have largely went unexplored, and constitute a blind spot of the reception. Critics condemning or acclaiming the novel, and, indeed, many a cultic reader of Palahniuk ignored Fight Club as a literary narrative, and have inadvertently been repeating the catchphrases of the text, either reinforcing or trying to undermine what they have understood as their meaning. I see the significance of Palahniuk’s fiction and the literary event of Fight Club’s publication in somewhat different terms. Palahniuk’s emphasis and continued insistence on minimalism suggest that his fiction is properly understood as belonging to a literary tradition whose evaluation remains troubled and, for a large part, unsettled. Nevertheless,...
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...Personal Narrative- Track Competition The moment of truth was upon me. The official times, this includes whom qualified for finals, for the 400m relay had been posted. My eyes scanned the page for the bold letters that spell ANDERSON. As I ran my finger across the page to where the times were posted, my ears began to shut out all outside noises, leaving me alone with the thump of my heart and the inhale and exhale of my lungs. Both began to increase in speed as my eyes narrowed in on the time. My sophomore year had begun and I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to do track this year. Last year I played football in the fall and soccer in the spring. Not really enjoying it, the decision was made to play " real futbol" (soccer) in the fall, leaving the spring sports season open. My friend kept telling me how fun track was, so I decided to give it a try. As the first meet neared, things were going well. I made it onto the 4x100 team making me the third fastest kid on the team. The other members of the relay were Jason Schmidt, Jeremy Willard and Rodney Schmidt. Jason and Jeremy were both the top dogs and Rodney and I were second from the bottom of the barrel. The 400 relay was my best event. We placed in every meet and even took home some medals as the season progressed. As the track year rounded for the home stretch, we had only three more meets to compete in: the Tiger Invitational, regionals, and state. As the Tiger rolled around, there arose a question...
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...ended their pursuit of the Clowns, Capsule member Tetsuo continues on, only to later crash into the same little boy and suffer a change that grants him similar powers and rage to gain control like never seen before. Spirited Away on the surface is way different from the previous two, telling the tale of Chihiro, a little girl who, while moving to a new town, discovers a small village with her parents and is sucked into a spirit world. In the spirit world, her parents are literally turned into pigs upon consuming the food there, she becomes forced to work in a bathhouse in order to leave and she is slowly...
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...actors include Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney Grant, and Floyd Red Crow Westerman. The story starts with a wounded Civil War soldier about to have his foot amputated when he makes an attempt at his life by stealing a horse and running recklessly across the open battlefield nearly getting shot. The build from this scene is that the soldiers fighting see his act of desperation and encouragement and a distraction and use the fact that the enemy is so focused on shooting him off his horse that they never see the final attack coming. The end of this scene Kevin Costner throws up his arms and glides with the horse like they were one in a full gallop and is deemed a hero and the general not only gives him the horse(Cisco) but also lends his personal surgeon to save his foot. This is the start to a beautiful and emotional story that builds into a love story between the soldier, a white Indian woman, and the entire Lakota tribe. The bond between the soldier and...
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...is very effective in evoking feelings from great anger and bitterness to terrible sadness and even sarcasm, making the reader sometimes even feel guilty. Whichever way he chooses to portray the pity of the war the end result is always the same. "Dulce Et Decorum Est" is a direct attack at the people in Britain who had been taken in by the propaganda drive by telling them the truth of what life is really like at the front and in what conditions their sons, fathers, brothers etc. are in. "Dulce Et Decorum Est" consists of four unequal stanzas, the first two in sonnet form, and the last two in a looser structure. The first stanza sets the scene of soldiers limping back from the front. The authorial stance is of Owen telling us of his own personal experiences. The second stanza focuses on one man who could not get his gas mask on in time. This is a recurring nightmare that Owen has, where he sees one man "drown" in the gas and in the third stanza he describes how the man "plunges" at Owen, "guttering, choking, drowning." This is an image Wilfred Owen will never forget. The fourth and final stanza, Wilfred Owen again attacks the people at home who uphold the continuance of the war, unaware ofthe reality. He wishes they could experience his own "smothering dreams" which he then goes on to describe in great detail. At the end of this poem he appeals to people not to tell children "Dulce et decorum est pro patria...
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...Gender Identity to Political Balance Long before Song Liling made her debut as M. Butterfly on stage, there was a woman called Cho-cho-san, playing Madama Butterfly with the fullest of her life. M. Butterfly’s counterpart Madama Butterfly presents readers Cho-cho-san, a pitiful and submissive Oriental Butterfly. Cho-cho-san’s character traits fit in almost every single aspect of the ideal of Oriental women, for instance, Cho-cho-san is a geisha, an exotic representation of Japanese women in the eyes of westerners, Cho-cho-san eventually dies of seppuku, which is the Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment, and her ultimate sacrifice of her everything from her religion to her very life. The attributes of Cho-cho-san are not exclusive to this character only but imposed on all Asian women. The western presupposition of some certain fixed and bounded Asian attributes defines the identity of Asian women and thus, creates an image of the sacrificial and submissive Oriental women. Moreover, the historical backgrounds of Hwang’s Butterfly and Puccini’s Butterfly are, in fact, the extension of gender tension to international power struggle. Cho-cho-san’s love story happens in the Meiji Period in which Japan first opened its door to foreigners; while Gallimard and Song Liling begins having an affair in the 1960s, in the midst of Cold War. Hwang’s M. Butterfly parodies Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by reversing the conventional narrative on the gender identities and the power relationship...
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...He knew once death came they were to be taken away from the pain and brought to a beautiful, lively new place. Hell was being portrayed as the barn where the “bad guys” held innocent people captive; beating, raping, starving, killing and eating them (Rambo). Christ broken the chains that once held them, healed the physical and emotional wounds, took away their pain, freed them from hell and brought them to a bright and beautiful place, called Heaven. The Road is an American redemption narrative inspired by the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ crucifixion is represented by death in the story and his resurrection is represented by heaven. Death isn’t feared by many, the life on earth is full of pain and suffering leaving many waiting for death to come, “Death is inevitable if not welcomed” (Rambo). When death comes all the pain and suffering will be forgotten about as God takes them to a new place, called Heaven. The book is a reminder of how powerful and needed G od is, revealing his ability to triumph over death...
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...A: Fusilli At some point in life, we’ve most likely all experienced either a good or a bad drastic life changing experience. That moment when you reach a point of no return, and you’ll never truly be able to go back to how things used to be before this event. Sometimes these incidents can be rather ravaging, but it’s something we all go through in life, at one point or another. The occurrences of life changing events, is just what the short story “Fusilli” deals with, as it portrays the devastating event of losing someone you love. The short story was written in 2014, by the British writer, Graham Swift, who was awarded the Booker Prize in 1996. The composition of the short story highly reflects the main character’s feelings and thoughts, as we hear about the fathers feelings and memories about his dead son, but it also highlights the atmosphere of the story. The story starts out in the present, as we hear about the father walking around in the supermarket, whereas it quickly moves into a flashback, as he starts to think back to the time where his son called him from Afghanistan. Throughout the story the narrator goes back and forth between the present time and the flashbacks, which also creates a kind of chaotic atmosphere. As the father is clearly in a confused and ravaging state of mind too, this makes it easier for the reader to relate to the father’s feelings and frustrations. The storyline seems to last a long time, because of the many flashbacks, whereas it actually...
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...'Hunger Games' Has a Less-Than-Full Plate A strong Jennifer Lawrence can't save a clumsy adaptation; 'Jiro' deliciously delves into sushi perfectionism In life it's usually feast or famine. In "The Hunger Games" it's both a feast of cheesy spectacle and a famine of genuine feeling, except for the powerful—and touchingly vulnerable—presence of Jennifer Lawrence as the 16-year-old heroine, Katniss Everdeen. That's a significant exception, but not a decisive one, since there's only so much this remarkable young star can do in the benumbing, big-budget surroundings. The first book of Suzanne Collins's prodigiously popular trilogy has been brought to the screen with a Jumbotron sensibility, a shaky camera to emphasize the action and a shakier grip on the subject's emotional core. The action, of course, involves kids killing kids. In a dystopian future that bears some resemblance to the here and now—a public besotted by celebrity and drowning in entertainment—a repressive government stages nationally televised games in which 24 teenagers, a boy and a girl from each of 12 districts, are designated Tributes, and must fight one another in the wilds of a computer-controlled artificial environment until there's only one survivor. The concept is hardly an original one. Older audiences with a sense of movie history will recognize more than trace elements of "The Most Dangerous Game," "Spartacus," "Battle Royale," or "The Running Man." But "The Hunger Games" wasn't intended for older...
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...on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks? BY PAU L SC H RA D E R Top guns (and dogs): the #1 The Rules of the Game September-October 2006 FILM COMMENT 33 Sunrise PREFACE THE BOOK I DIDN’T WRITE I n march 2003 i was having dinner in london with Faber and Faber’s editor of film books, Walter Donohue, and several others when the conversation turned to the current state of film criticism and lack of knowledge of film history in general. I remarked on a former assistant who, when told to look up Montgomery Clift, returned some minutes later asking, “Where is that?” I replied that I thought it was in the Hollywood Hills, and he returned to his search engine. Yes, we agreed, there are too many films, too much history, for today’s student to master. “Someone should write a film version of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon,” a writer from The Independent suggested, and “the person who should write it,” he said, looking at me, “is you.” I looked to Walter, who replied, “If you write it, I’ll publish it.” And the die was cast. Faber offered a contract, and I set to work. Following the Bloom model I decided it should be an elitist canon, not populist, raising the bar so high that only a handful of films would pass over. I proceeded to compile a list of essential films, attempting, as best I could, to separate personal favorites from those movies that artistically defined film history. Compiling was the easy part—then came...
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...and occupied the northern half of France including Paris. Dauphin Charles VII, the rightful but un-crowned king of France, set up the remnants of his royal court at the town of Chinon. From here, this weak monarch of questionable competence tried to rule over the unoccupied rump of France. Starting in May, 1428, Joan, claiming that God was directing her through the saints, repeatedly approached the regional governor demanding that he send her to Charles at Chinon. She insisted that it was her divinely ordered mission to take charge of the French army, defeat the English, and escort Charles to Rheims to have him properly crowned king. In October 1428, the English and Burgundians began their siege of the city of Orléans, their last obstacle before overrunning the rest of France. In...
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...to discover that her husband has made the same sacrifice. The story's narrator assures us that in their willingness to give up all they have, they have proven themselves the wisest of all gift-givers. It might remain unclear, though, exactly what their sacrifice has accomplished, or how it has affected them. Wealth In many ways, "Gift of the Magi" is a story about what it means for something to be valuable. Does something's value lie in how much money it is worth? Or are other things more valuable than money? The main characters are very poor – this is repeatedly emphasized – and yet the story suggests that their love for each other makes them very rich. It is that love, which motivates them to give up the only things of monetary (or personal) value they have to buy presents for each other. Perhaps their poverty is what enables them to appreciate what really matters. Women and Femininity The main character of...
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...flight by Orville and Wilbert Wright did not make the front page news; it was very trivial headlines at the time. For instance, page ten of the Washington Times article dated 19 December 1903 in column four, High Gale No Bar to Flying Machine. The article described the flying machine and how the brothers got off the ground. The New York Tribune 19 December 1903 also had a small article but not until page five; Flying Machine Works Successful Trial by Ohio Men with Machine on Box Kite Plan. By 1909 The Wright brothers had set up an Airplane factory in Dayton Ohio, it was to be the first and the largest airship factory in the country. The plan was to produce four airplanes per month and employ eighty people. The target market was for personal use. There was not a realization of the importance of this new flying machine could offer. The factory would also be the home for...
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