What is most surprising is the actual intermix of characterization, content, and form, messy and confusing, to discuss a serious topic, nationalism, whose centrality prevails throughout the chapter as the main focus in the characters’ conversations. Nevertheless, the many layers of interpretations and realities leave unclear the meaning of the whole issue. First, the unnamed narrator, one of the cyclops, fulfills us with vulgar and empty words about his friends and their comments in the midst of superficially irrelevant dialogues. Second, his narration and the dialogues are broken apart by periodical interpolations, which, by parodying the “normal” discourse, add a further insight to the understanding of the subject in question, national identity. Third, a hyperbolic figure of nationalists, the Citizen, curses and blasphemes
Dear Editor, Garrett Hardin’s essay, “Lifeboat Ethics,” although a compelling read, is an appalling example of sloppy conservatism which seeks to manipulate the reader through erroneous, contradictory, bigoted, self-important, and cruel statements. “Lifeboat Ethics” is undoubtedly one of those opinion pieces that is meant to show readers the error of their ways. He all but begs the reader to set aside his or her “kind-hearted liberal” feelings, and provides many examples to walk the reader through his own viewpoint—as any good op ed should. (p. 134). Nonetheless, the omissions and baseless presumptions present in this piece insult the intelligence enough that it is impossible to seriously consider Hardin’s point (which is stunning in its brutality).
If you are in the field of composition, this absurdist routine can't help but be familiar to you, simply because as composi tionists, we are all caught up in the usually thankless argument about what constitutes college-level writing, a public wrangling characterized by a maddening series of contradictions that we strive to synthesize into a legitimate intellectual discourse, only to be refuted, dismissed, and mistreated. And, given working conditions in the field, it's fair to say that we, like the hapless Palin character, pay for the privilege of suffering such ill-consid ered abuse, having in some way been coerced into believing that it ultimately can make sense. But when decades of methodologi cally diverse research and historical study, of classroom experi ence across institutional types, of epistemological paradigm shifts of immense order cannot disrupt knee-jerk contradictions of our OU - 110 The Boxing Effect (An Anti-Essay) field's claim that writing is not a monolithic skill open to simplis tic psychometric measurement and
“Faith” Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” while short, has been the cause of much controversy and various interpretations. These controversies range from the trivial, such as which waiter begins the opening lines of each exchange of dialogue (Thomson, 32), to the profound, such as the interpretation of “nada” as an existential or even nihilistic realization of the absurd in the text. While both of these have merit in their own rights, as numerous interpretation have been put forth as to which waiter says what, I have chosen to focus on the prevailing theme of existentialism/ nihilism in the text and the intricate ways in which it mingles, coincides, and contradicts the concept of “faith” in the story: Who has it, who does not, and which circumstance would be considered the “better” of the two. Many of the characters in Hemingway’s stories are found to be either in a transitional period or having come out of a transitional period and this story is no exception. The story revolves around two waiters who are observing their last customer of the night; a deaf old man who they know has recently tried to commit suicide.
He presents the conflicting perspective of his inability to recall many components of their meeting in contrast to his detailed and vivid memories of her deceptive nature. Employing sarcasm and disdain extensively in the recount, Hughes is quick to enforce his correctness and often returns to the criticism of the reliability and validity of memory through the effect usage of paradoxes and rhetorical questions to incite confusion over the true events, “Just arriving – Or arrived … Then I forget, Yet I remember.” After deconstructing the initial situation of their meeting, slyly manipulating the opinion of the reader to accept his case, Hughes intelligently shifts the overriding notion of the poem from innocence to experience through the introduction of Plath and the detailed delineation of her apparent deceptive nature. He makes an allusion to a glamourous 1950s celebrity, Veronica Lake, a
While there are undoubtedly subversive, or corrupt elements in the novel, arguments for censoring it generally misrepresent its more nobler intentions and greatly exaggerate its subversive designs. Putting aside the overinflated claims of the novel's most extreme critics and supporters, the diversity and intensity of readers' reactions to The Catcher in the Rye suggest that the issues it raises are significant ones. Consequently, it seems likely that readers will continue to have heated discussions about this "minor" classic for a long time to come. One of the issues that has been debated ever since the novel's initial publication is whether or not it qualifies as a significant work of literature. Does it offer significant insights into the complexities of human existence and the development of American culture, or does it simply appeal to vulgar adolescent minds with its obscene language, complaining about everything without developing any positive insights of its own?
' Writing the Nation the “Other” Way: Sara Joseph’s Alahayute Penmakkal' Sudhakaran C. B It is widely agreed that the dialectic of the local and the global has displaced the traditional opposition between the particular and the universal and contemporary discussions on the political, socioeconomic and cultural issues are governed by postmodern ideas of global governance, global citizenship and the “end” theories. The postmodern has also brought with it a heavy intellectual baggage of the image and architecture accompanied by a perceptible decline in the interest of the literary mode. In such an environment it may seem ironic that one dares to think of “obsolete” notions such as “nation” and “nationalism” and a literature that attempts to not only narrate the nation “allegorically” but also to map the history of nation from a subaltern perspective(. Postcolonial theories have emphasized the links between literary texts and concepts such as “nation” and “nationalism” and there is general agreement among writers as varied as Ernest Gellner, Miroslav Hrosch, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Timothy Brennan, Adrian Hastings, Clifford Geertz, and Homi Bhabha that the role played by imaginative literature in the construction of a nation cannot be ignored. So long as the nation is believed to be a “discursive formation,” and, cultural expressions are recognized as participating in the formation and growth of a nation, in the context of the global dispensation where the status of culture and its consumption is radically different from what it was in the modernist period, it is not irrelevant to look into the role played by literature in the construction of a form of resistance against the hegemonic forces that dominate the cultural sphere of the contemporary world.
The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, 'I am myself the matter of my book', was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, 'Que sçay-je?' ('What do I know?' in Middle French[->16]; modern French Que sais-je?).
And, is one category better than the other? Noel Gallagher voiced his frustration in an article in the guardian, stating that “read fiction is a waste of f***ing time” and that he only takes interest in factual books, in which things “have actually happened”. He points out how it is often difficult to suspend belief in something fictional, often reverting to thinking as he puts it, “This isn’t f***ing true”. Although Gallagher’s argument may appear rather blunt, it does raise an important point about ‘snobbery’ from people who feel comfortable with words, looking down upon those who aren’t. We must remember however that Noel Gallagher is a song writer himself, so naturally he writes his own fictions in his songs, which like reading, are just another medium of expressing emotion and creative ideas.
Before we properly begin, it might be prudent to demolish the possibility of literary laziness or carelessness birthing these loose ends. Any reader of Shaw’s other works will undoubtedly acknowledge him as anything but a lazy writer - great thought and research has evidently gone into his other works and it logically follows this play warrants equal investment. Furthermore, a cursory examination of the text itself indicates high audience awareness evident in the self-censorship Shaw employs in his language. In constructing Mrs Warren’s Profession, he alludes to and hints at Kitty Warren’s profession but never