... In specific, Japan and South America share many similarities and differences in the historical context, symbolism, form, and content of their artworks. The Japanese respected nature, disciplined themselves mentally and religiously, and practiced a specific religion, Shinto, collectively as a country, and their art displays those things. The South Americans were made up of several different subcultural societies, who practiced their own religions and were very rhythmic with the natural and supernatural worlds. The forms of art used by these two cultures shed light...
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...Paper Imagism and Symbolism: American Poets in Europe The key aspects discussed in this paper are American Imagists in Europe in the beginning and the middle of 20th century. However, everything has its roots and its beginnings. The same way imagism movement initially developed from symbolism, very popular literary movement of the end of 19th century, which influenced most of the imagist poets. Symbolism was an art movement originated in France, Belgium and Russia in the end of the 19th century, which remained prominent almost until the end of the World War II. This movement was a reaction to the predominating at that time standards and rules of realism. It appeared as a new manifestation of the romanticism and was concerned about preserving individualism in the modern world, absorbed by the mass culture.1 Usually being enclosed in free verse, symbolism was about expression of author’s personal emotions. It handled very composite feelings that appeared from the everyday life in the world and was rather about evoking than about describing. It used an object, person, colour or just a word in order to represent or describe something else. It was used when an author wanted to create some specific mood or any given emotion in his piece.2 Being tired of realism, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, introduced symbolism to the America. Nevertheless, Pound was looking for something else, for something new in his poetry and, along with some other British and American poets, created...
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...September 11th was a gruesome day in the history of this country. Schools saw it. Businesses saw it. The world saw it. The world saw the dawn of a new war, a war waged against terrorism. On september 11th, 2001, two commercial airliners crashed into the World Trade center, one into the Pentagon, another into a Pennsylvania field. The planes had been hijacked by members of Al-Qaeda, a muslim terrorist group. They did this to protest America, to get us to change our ways. In the photo, the flag functions as a symbol for the idea that America will not be defeated. The symbolism of the firefighters raising the flag on the rubble of the World Trade center made me feel proud of my country with a bit of anger directed at the terrorists. I felt...
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...confederate flag is a part of American history. The way the flag is interpreted is different for different people. For some it represents states freedom, natural rights, and heritage. The confederate flag should not have been taken down at the Elizabethtown fair. The Elizabethtown fair takes place in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania; at the fair this year two vendors were selling confederate flags. They were asked to stop selling the flags by fair security; both vendors stopped selling the flag. Firstly, banning the confederate flag is against the first amendment. “The First Amendment...
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...A country is a special place for people, and those people should be willing to fight for it. The poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, truly encourages people to fight for their country. It does this by including words about courage and war and depicting Paul Revere rallying up all Americans to fight against their common enemy, the British. The author also uses symbolism to reveal to the reader the purpose of the poem. The poem is about Paul Revere’s famous ride, Paul Revere was a patriot famously known for his horseback ride that was pivotal to the United State’s victory in the American Revolution. I chose this poem because Paul Revere plays an important role in U.S history and I am strongly interested in U.S history. The...
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...Who Really are the Freemasons? Throughout modern history, an organization known as the Freemasons has created controversy and raised many questions about the true purpose or purposes behind their activities. It is said to be the world’s oldest and largest fraternity. It proclaims itself to be a group “comprised of adult men (18+) of good character from every country, religion, race, age, income, education, and opinion, who believe in a supreme being.”(What is Freemasonry?). Furthermore, the Freemasons claim to promote the idea that “each man has responsibility to improve himself while being devoted to his family, faith, country, and fraternity.”(What is Freemasonry?). This sounds innocent enough, but does it provide a full picture of Freemasonry? While always a secretive organization, several events in modern times have led to an increased interest in the Freemasonry and suspicions about the actual reasons for their existence. How did the Freemasonry begin? One theory is that the Freemasons were originally a group of tradesmen who worked as masons. (www.grandlodge-tn.org) A mason is, by dictionary definition, “a person whose trade is building with units of various natural or artificial mineral products, as stones, bricks, cinder blocks, or tiles, usually with the use of mortar or cement as a bonding agent”. (www.dictionary.com). And according to historical records, the Freemasons began as illegal trade unions of stonemasons in England during the...
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...The connection of the Jefferson Memorial to mythology can both be found in its architecture and purpose. It is part of an Architecture movement known as Neoclassical or Federal Architecture. Its purpose was to create a connection to ancient Roman republican society as well as the Greeks and their democratic values. It was also meant to create a new American mythos to enshrine values, illustrate manifest destiny, and show that the United States was created by divine providence just as Rome was founded. We can see this in many of our monuments and artwork from the time period, as well as in the way the American story is told and taught to us. The Jefferson Memorials construction began in 1939 when President Franklin Roosevelt laid its cornerstone and was completed in 1943. It is dedicated to Thomas Jefferson our third president and was modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. It was...
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...Cultures come and go like the wind yet they leave behind small remains as they go. These remains are our ancestors, their traditions, and our history; And ultimately, they shape us into who we are and who we become. N. Scott Momaday, a Native American, wrote “The Way to Rainy Mountain” (1969) in which he argues that people must find themselves by retracing their past away from busy American life. He uses sensory detail, poetic elements, personification, symbolism, and an oxymoron to display the self acceptance, beauty, and inner peace that one can find through their ancestry. The authors intends to describe his personal experience with finding himself through his roots in order to persuade readers to do the same and embrace their history,...
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...Kyle LaBella 5/16/13 Option 1 The Flowers by Alice Walker “The Flowers” is a cheerful story that turns gloomy, and is about a young girls voyage away from home. The author of the story is Alice Walker, who was an African American woman born in Georgia in 1944, and is most noted for her story “The Color Purple” (Goldman). The major theme of “The Flowers” is a lesson about young child’s first journey away from home, which went from a particularly simple life at home into a very complex dangerous world; and three literary devices the author uses to advance her theme is the use of setting, irony, and symbolism. First, the setting of “The Flowers” plays an extremely important role in the theme because it helps paint a better picture in the readers mind. The story takes place in a rural setting, most likely the southern United States, because the family lives on sharecropping farm, which grows corn, cotton, and peanuts and has chickens and a pigpen. The family is poor because of the author describing the cabin as rusty, and also another clue the authors give is it’s a sharecropping farm, which is a government-funded program to help struggling farmers. The author uses the setting to provide the author with a sense of how simple the young child’s life must have been like on the farm. Second, the author uses irony to show how simple the world can be and also how complex the world can be. With the help of the setting, the author creates irony in the beginning of the story...
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...Men who set their future goals based off past experiences, will end up destroying those dreams by themselves. “Through Gatsby, Fitzgerald attempts to correct Americans’ misconceptions about the American dream” (Dilworth 119). The Great Gatsby was written during the “Jazz Age” and prohibition era. Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota and died on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood, California. He attended Princeton University in 1913 and in November 1917, with graduation looking unlikely, he decided to accept a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He later went on to marry Zelda Sayre and had a daughter named Frances Scott Fitzgerald (born in 1921). In his novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald demonstrates...
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...In her short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker depicts opposing ideas about one's heritage. Through the eyes of two daughters, Dee and Maggie, who have chosen to live their lives in a very contrasting manner. Walker utilizes symbolism to highlight the dispute between two different points of view of, or approaches to, the African-American culture, showing that culture and heritage are parts of daily life. Through the use of symbolism, there are three of which I will refer to, one being the quilts, the tangible objects of the family heirloom, the yard, which she emphasis on and its physical characteristics, and then there’s the name changing, when Dee changed her name to a traditional African name, Wangero. The quilts were the most compelling symbol in the story. They signified pieces of living history, documents in fabric that chronicle the lives of the many generations and the struggles, such as war and poverty, which they faced. The quilts served as a testament to the family’s history of pride and trials. With the drawbacks that poverty and lack of education placed on her life, Mama sees her personal history as one of her few treasures. Her house embraces the handicrafts of her extended family. Instead of acquiring a financial inheritance from her ancestors, Mama has been given the quilts. For her, these objects have a sentimental value that Dee, despite claiming her desire to care for and preserve the quilts, is unable to fathom. Mama’s yard represents a private space free...
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...time of drastic social change. However, many of its conservative values remained and most importantly, the notion of youth conformity was held in high regard. On the other hand, Igby Goes Down is set in the 1980s -1990’s American era, a time of expanding multi national corporations, materialism and commercialism. Salinger and Steers utilise the characterisation of their young, sardonic and rebellious protagonists, Holden and Igby to epitomise non-conformity. The composers allude to the recurring theme of isolation and alienation in both texts. As a result of their non-conformity, the protagonists experience rejection and depression as they search for their selfhood. Similarly, the national ethos of the American Dream is explored as a mere fallacy, and both composers portray this through their protagonist’s wealthy backgrounds and opulent upbringings and yet money doesn’t bring them happiness. Salinger, through literary devices and Steers, through cinematic techniques effectively convey that youth will always refuse to conform regardless of context because conforming denies individuality. Salinger in his novel The Catcher in The Rye explores the ideas of non-conformity in association with Holden Caulfield’s isolation and alienation. The 1950’s Conservative American context demanded adolescents such as Holden...
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...acknowledged for his history in the America’s. Sherman Alexie is a Spokane Coeur d’Alene Indian and he now writes everything from the point of view from his heritage. I read the poem first and then read the brief biography of the author. I found that after reading the biography, I had a much better understanding and more clear and concise grasp of where the author was coming from when he wrote. In analyzing this poem, it seemed that Sherman Alexie was very angry with the white man. He expresses this throughout the poem, but shows the woman who speaks of Walden Pond respect. Sherman appears to only show her respect and continued to listen to the woman described in his words close to the end of the poem, because of her age, he states very pointedly that “I respect elders of every color” indicating to me the woman who was speaking of Walden Pond to him was in fact an elder. Though he was respectful to her, he shared his frustration and ill feelings in many different ways from beginning to end. In the second stanza he states that he “learned little more about American history” during his few days back east but really it seemed as though he could care less in knowing more. He expresses that everyone “should all know of the tribal stories architecture is 15,000 years older than the corners of the house that sits”. As the woman continues to speak, he sits apparently in silence, absorbing her words and lets her continue on with her pride in the American history, though as the poem goes...
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...2012 1. Metropolis (1927). The film created by Fritz Lang is set in the future which has two separate classes of people the thinkers and the workers. The film describes the struggles of each as the workers are depicted as human cattle being assigned to complete mundane tasks in an underground machine that can be related to the Bull of the Sun or Moloch the God Balaal from Carthaginian culture. The workers live above in a ever evolving world that is testament to mans achievements. The opposites rely on each other as the city could not function without the workers and without the thinkers creating an utopia they workers would not be needed. 2. Top Hat (1935). The film by Mark Sandrich and starring Fred Astaire was about an American dancer who goes to London to star in a show. Dancer played by Astaire meets and attempts to impress the woman in the hotel room below his. The film is sometimes called a glorified remake of The Gay Divorcee (1934). This was the fourth film by Astaire and lead lady Ginger Rogers and was specifically written for both parties to play their respective parts. Though the movie had a simple plot the dances helped to naturally develop the plot. 3. The Big Sleep (1946). The film by Howard Hawks is the first film version of the novel by the same name. The films plot is somewhat hazy as it revolves around a wealthy general who wants to resolve the gambling debts of his daughter. The film is best known for the convoluted plot as the viewer was...
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...Courtney Osmond Professor Jhingree ENC 1102 12 March 2014 Symbolism in Eveline and Everyday Use Symbolism is a common part of any story; from a play to a poem. In both Eveline and Everyday Use, hidden symbols are used that represent each character. In Eveline, the symbol used is dust which covers everything in Eveline’s life. In Everyday Use, the quilt is the symbol that represents heritage. Also, additional symbols are used to define each character. Symbols add a hidden meaning to the story that can add depth to the characters. In James Joyce’s short story, a prominent symbol is dust. Eveline’s character has lots of dust, since she is lifeless, and never advancing. In Eveline, Eveline looks around her room taking everything in. She observes “all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from (McMahan et al. 3).” This means that she is looking at her life and all the dust that has accumulated over the years. She is noticing how stale and boring her life is due to all the pressures of her dad. Her dad is the main cause of dust build up all these years. Her father abuses her and “says what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake (McMahan et al. 4).” The “dust” in Eveline’s life is due to the pressure of taking care of her dad, and trying to support him. Over the years the dust kept piling up, making the dust unmanageable, causing her to freak out at the end of the story. Just as she is about...
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