...Stranger Than Fiction: Paper II “Anything worth writing comes inexplicably and without method”? How is this idea evident in the film, particularly as Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman’s characters portray the art of writing/narrative in the film? No one can force something good to happen, nor can they control their fate; it is something manifested from random courses of events. Fate is something inexplicable and is created without a method, therefore, Harold Crick is the perfect example of Eiffel’s quote. His entire life is a metaphor of things that happen that cannot be explained. This is ironic because Harold’s life is a book, written and narrated by Karen Eiffel. “Death and Taxes”, also Harold’s life, was expected to be Eiffel’s most amazing book yet. Harold’s fate and Eiffel’s novel is one and the same thing, therefore her quote relates to Harold’s life and the events that surround it. Taoism is an important ancient religion practiced in China, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam by about five million people. There’s a principle in Taoism that’s called “Wu Wei”, and translated means: “non-doing” or “non-action”. “Wu Wei 無爲 (Chinese, literally “non-doing”) is an important concept of Taoism and means natural action, or in other words, action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort. Wu wei is the cultivation of a mental state in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life. This going with the flow, although it...
Words: 658 - Pages: 3
...faced by Christopher was his inability to interact with strangers, because he had been too scared that they might hurt him,...
Words: 933 - Pages: 4
...learn English, my teacher was showing kindness. Kindness can help kids learn better even in difficult situations. The characters Bridget Smalley from Sway and Marin from “Geraldo No Last Name” show kindness because they both were being nice to other characters who have had difficult experiences. The character from the novel Sway, Bridget Smalley is kindly because she treats everyone fairly. An example from the book is “Incredibly, she was all smiles, submitting to...
Words: 852 - Pages: 4
...Living With Strangers Sometimes it can be a leap in the dark to move from a small city to a big city. You start somewhere new; an unknown place filled with new experiences, challenges and strangers. It can be overwhelming at first, and it might as well take some time to grow accustomed to the new culture and what the city has to offer. The situation can especially be difficult to someone who comes from a city, where one is used to live in closely encircling. As an example of this kind of situation is Siri Hustvedt’s essay ‘Living with Strangers’, which is written in 2002 Hustvedt describes in her essay her move from rural Minnesota to New York City in 1978 and how suddenly norms and rules change for her. In Minnesota it is the custom to greet everyone you meet on the road, even though you do not know the person. If you pass someone in silence, you will be considered as discourteous and it can lead to accusations of snobbery. This is the worst and rudest possible thing you can do and it gets compared as a sin in the egalitarian state. A good place to start is the title of the essay ‘Living With Strangers’, because it sums up the thesis in the text and Hustvedt’s point with the text. The title refers to a major problem in every city - whether it is a big or small one, and it is because the society that we live in now has changed and is still changing. The late modern society is characterized by the fact, that we no longer are bound by old traditions and habits. We are instead...
Words: 949 - Pages: 4
...As Albert Camus said in one of his writings, “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth of life.” The famous masterpiece of Albert Camus, The Stranger, gives us the true taste of existential philosophy and teaches us about the universality and inevitability of absurd in humans’ lives. However, one can meet very similar concepts and ideas illustrated in another piece of art, which is the movie “I Heart Huckabees” by David O. Russell. This philosophical comedy does, indeed, share many similarities with The Stranger. The four main principles of existentialism similar in the book and the movie are observation, meaning of life, coincidence, and absurd. The best place to start is one of the most important aspects of existentialism and absurd as well as of The Stranger, observation. In The Stranger, we read about the constant observation that is done by the main...
Words: 1362 - Pages: 6
...“Living With Strangers” Many people think that urban life in big cities means a happy life, with no worries and just pure happiness. But what is happiness? And what makes us think that urban life is pure happiness? In the essay “Living With Strangers” by Siri Hustvedt, we hear about a woman's move from the countryside of Minnesota, to the Big Apple in New York City. Her move is described with many comparisons with her previous life and experiences, and a lot of humor, which underlines her situation and her attitude to urban life. In the following essay I am going to analyze and comment on Siri Hustvedt’s essay “Living With Strangers”. Part of my essay will focus on the genre, the attitude to urban living and the contrasts between Siri’s life in Minnesota and her new life in New York City. As said, the essay is based on Siri Hustvedt’s own life and experiences. Siri Hustvedt grew up in Minnesota, where everybody knows and greets each other. Now she lives in New York City where nobody seems to care about each other, and where greeting strangers would be “impractical and unsound”. This is a big change for her, and she uses an overwhelming amount of detailed descriptions to describe her situation in the Big Apple. She uses many personal experiences and examples, which characterizes the essay genre. Furthermore, she is very reflective, descriptive, subjective and very personal in her way of writing the essay. “It didn’t take long for me to absorb the unwritten code of survival...
Words: 1138 - Pages: 5
...“You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral; some Negro men are not to be trusted around women – black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire"(Shmoop). This quote is from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In this literary piece, the search for truth in a judicial setting is the main focus. There are pieces of evidence, moral, and ethical aspects that are revealed in the book. They were used in the search for the truth. Truth is the state of mind of being real or fact. Through the ways of knowing, truth can be found. There are different ways of depicting truth. Through the arts, an artist can express him or herself and show truth through their expression. One form of art is Literature. Literature is a way of reaching truth but is not necessarily the best at “telling the truth”. Truth can also be represented in historical fiction in great literature works such as in To Kill a Mockingbird. Literature is the way that a writer can express him or herself through written language. Some might believe that literature is a more reliable way to find truth. However, there are others who might raise the questions such as “What is literature?” and “Who decides what literature is?” If questions like these...
Words: 1632 - Pages: 7
...Yorker, Canadian American Psychologist Paul Bloom makes a shocking case against empathy. He begins making his case by defining empathy, and admitting its conventional wisdom. Bloom then presents numerous situations in which empathy can mislead or has misled us. Finally, he wraps up his argument by asserting that while empathy will drive us to empathize only with someone we identify with, reasoning will ensure that we make the right decisions for the better of society and the world. Bloom achieves his aim by providing historical accounts that show how empathy has failed us, building his ethos with expert opinions and quotes throughout, and using anecdotes and creating hypothetical situations to complement the factual examples and perspectives. Although he makes a strong argument against empathy, Bloom fails to propose alternatives to empathy. Bloom uses quotes from experts to build his credibility and show his knowledge on the topic. He does so by defining the word empathy and highlighting its importance through the lenses of his peers. He tells us that empathy is “a rendering of the German Einfuhlung”, and that it means “feeling into” (par. 3) . This dictionary definition helps Bloom’s ethos because it shows that he conducted research the topic before even discussing it. It also helps him establish an intelligent voice and tone. Bloom also acknowledges the opinions of experts on the importance of empathy in society. Economist Adam Smith argues that “what made us moral beings was...
Words: 1587 - Pages: 7
...words/verbal codes, be it intentional or unintentional. These wordless cues comes from our non-verbal behaviours; body movement, gestures, eye contact, personal space etc. (Richard Nordquist, n.d.). Although words are usually used to express our thoughts, we still convey most of the meaning through nonverbal codes. The world’s vast cultural diversity influences the way each culture interprets these non-verbal messages whereby a non-verbal expression is considered to be fine at one place but not at another. Touching perspectives are culturally determined as each culture has a clear view on when and where one may touch or not. In year 2009, as the First Lady of the United States briefly laid her hand on the back of Queen Elizabeth II at a reception, it sparked a global debate as etiquette is stern about this matter as rules are set in stone regarding one’s touch towards the queen (NYDailynews.com, 2009). In the United States, handshakes are common even towards strangers while hugs and kisses are exchanged between the opposite gender in the family or close acquaintance. Another example would be an African-American male who came across a Korean female receptionist and got upset as she put his key down on the counter instead of handing it to him. This doesn’t mean that the Korean is unfriendly or rude as it’s her culture; be it a traditional Korean or many other Asians to not touch strangers, especially of different sex. The same goes to Islamic culture believers as touching...
Words: 921 - Pages: 4
...The Importance of Perspective As I sat in class and watched Stranger with a Camera I didn’t get how the class could draw any meaning from this film. It almost felt like we were watching something just for the sake of using up class time. I didn’t have a clue as to how this related to this class at all. It was only when I watched it for the second time, still skeptical, that I had a true flash of brilliance. It was all there in front of me; I realized that this film has a deeper meaning than most other films that I have watched over the course of my 19-year life. I think the most meaningful thing that this film taught me was that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I wanted to know though how much you are really limited by perspective. Seeing the various scenes of the conditions the poor of Letcher County were living in you would think that it should be a violation of human rights, but you...
Words: 1868 - Pages: 8
...Videotape Don DeLillo is the author of “Videotape” published in 1994. He believed that writers were supposed to write about the world around them. He has claimed that his fiction comes from living in a dangerous world and why is this a dangerous world? What is it that makes our world dangerous? Primarily I think it is that we have the equipment’s to destroy the world, and our world would never really be in peace before we demolish those equipment’s. This is where “Videotape” comes in play, all his fiction is inspired by this dangerous world, and it is no different with “Videotape”. Don DeLillo makes the reader question life with his stories. Even though his stories are fiction, they seem very real. Don DeLillo’s fiction “Videotape” is a story about a man who is clearly mesmerized by some footage on the news. The footage is being showed over and over again, it is about a young girl with a video camera and a stranger in the car behind her. She begins to film the stranger, the stranger sees the girl and waves briefly as the girl keep on filming. Then in a blink of an eye an unknown killer shoots the stranger, he is called “The Texas Highway killer”. The man who is watching the footage can’t seem to back away from the TV, he even tried to get his wife over to watch it with him, it’s like he is addicted to seeing something like that. So the question is why do we keep on watching something terrifying and terrible? So why do we keep on watching all these terrible things? In “Videotape”...
Words: 945 - Pages: 4
...descriptive techniques her prevailing language and her ability to create a setting. This essay will look at how Cope powerfully conveys her feelings in the poem “On finding an Old Photograph.” In the poem Wendy effectively builds a picture for the reader to give them an insight on what the picture is like. She often does this by using onamatipia; “women dressed in white blouses that brush the grass.” The onamatipia occurs on the word ‘brush’ this helps make the poem all the more real for the reader. “In an apple orchard, sunlight patching his stylish bags;” this quote sets the place for the photograph again expanding on the ambience of the setting. Wendy moves on to mention the time and location, “Yalding, 1912”, the fact that this photo was taken in ‘1912’ is interesting because it is the year that the Titanic sank and this sets a bad tone for the poem, it implies to the reader that there are no good memories coming from this photograph. The descriptive techniques really do send across powerful feelings to the reader. Cope has written the poem in a very mysterious manner, it is made to clear to the reader that the poem is about her father as it mentions this is the first line of the first stanza but it is never clear who “a child with curly hair” is. The “child” part creates obscurity and conveys her feelings powerfully as you never know who the child is and this adds to her ever growing sadness. The child could very well be her father or even a sibling, this creates tension...
Words: 697 - Pages: 3
...Albert Camus’s 1942 novel The Stranger deals with a myriad of pressing questions. Although The Stranger is relatively short, topics such as absurdism, mortality, and ethical decision-making are littered throughout. In addition, as is the case with great works of literature, The Stranger does not provide answers, but rather, opens the door for interpretation, discussion, and conclusions. Why does the protagonist of the novel, Meursault, feel a lack of remorse over his mother’s death? Why did Meursault choose to shoot and kill “the Arab” after attempting to convince his neighbor Raymond not to shoot? Lastly, if what Meursault believes is true, that the world and human existence has no rational purpose or higher meaning, then what is the reason...
Words: 752 - Pages: 4
...death of a stranger.” * This quote comes from the NLFD and Douglass is explaining how he never had a relationship with his mother. Through this quote, he explains the means by which slave owners falsify social bonds and the natural processes of life in order to turn men into slaves. 2. “’Now, you d—d b—h, ill learn you how to disobey my orders!’ and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over.” (Douglass, 5) * In this quote, Douglass is descriptively explaining a beating that his Aunt Hester received from Colonel Lloyd. Douglass says that he was so terrified and horror-stricken that he did not want to come out of the closet. This quote demonstrates the brutality of the slave masters because of the intensity of the beatings regardless of the minor infractions the slave may have caused. 3. “Each year, they were supplied with one pair of stockings made of yarn and a pair of shoes. Once a year, children who were too young to work were given two long, coarse linen shirts that came to their knees. There were no shoes or stockings for them. Some children slept near a cabin’s chimney. Once the fires were put out for the day, they slept with their feet tucked into the ashes to keep warm” (Ruffin, 11) * This quote explained how...
Words: 352 - Pages: 2
...Name | Problem | What ‘A’ learns from the characters | Quote | The message that the quote portrays | | | | | | | 5994 | Justin | The problem of Justin’s character is that he is the abuser in an abusive relationship with his girlfriend Rhiannon. | From being in Justin’s body A learns how to connect with other people and that it is okay to have a personal relationship with another individual. | Quote#1“I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned how to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present, because that is where I am destined to live.”p.7Quote #2“A closeness that isn’t merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we’ve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging” p.22 | Quote #1The message that this quote portrays is that you must acknowledge the person that you are with, not just pieces of kindness that they have given but the whole person themselves. You should never define yourself as someone else’s definition of you and that you should never feel pressured to show who you really are towards other people.Quote#2The message of this quote is that you can love someone,...
Words: 564 - Pages: 3
