Shakespeare’s plays have demonstrated the battle between good and evil in various ways. Macbeth, one of his most famous works, has been heralded as a prime example of this battle between good and evil through the use of imagery of light and darkness. Firstly, light imagery illustrates the nobility of person. Next, one’s purity can be easily stained by darkness. Finally, the use of dark imagery symbolizes the true and final stage of evil.
In Melville’s Billy Budd, Claggart, the Master-at-Arms aboard the Bellipotent, is a symbol for evil or Satan. John Claggart’s name characterizes his role in Melville’s novel. His common English given name paired with the harsh, cacophonous name of “Claggart” typifies his role as a conniving figure of evil. The fact that Claggart is evil is inevitable because the physical descriptions of Claggart are less appealing than those of Billy Budd, the ideal of an uncorrupted man newly aboard the Bellipotent, and help indicate his evil nature (Smith). The narrator describes Claggart by stating, “his complexion…though it was not exactly displeasing, nevertheless seemed to hint something defective or abnormal in the constitution and blood” (qtd.
Part of the appeal of Shakespeare's plays is the complexity of his characters; unlike fairytales that often show people as wholly good or wholly bad, Shakespeare's characters are far more realistic because the characters often embody traits that are both good and bad. Shakespeare shows that even people who are traditionally considered good are also bound to have flaws, and that even people who are generally seen as bad may have some redeeming qualities about them. This ambiguity is particularly prominent in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, which presents its main characters Caesar, Brutus, and Mark Antony in such a mixed blend of virtuous and less-than-noble qualities that it makes it unclear which of the three is the true hero of the play. While most Western textbooks have cemented Julius Caesar's image as a heroic figure, Shakespeare adds in his presentation of Caesar qualities of excessive narcissism and physical weakness; thus, though the play is named after him, his image as the "hero" of the play has been compromised. Furthermore, the traditional image of Brutus as a cruel traitor to his close friend has also been reworked in Shakespeare's play.
In his stories, Poe clearly uses a variety of themes and literary devices that let us observe him as a Dark Romantic, rather than a Romantic. First of all, it is important to present a historical background, which explains the link between Romanticism and Dark Romanticism. When Romanticism arrived to the United States it brought the belief that emotion, imagination and intuition meant more than logical reasoning. The Romantics emphasized sensibility and beauty, as the things, which lead people towards the truth. Wikipedia defines Romanticism as “a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe (...).
Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (e.g. the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject matter; for example, Émile Zola's works had a frankness about sexuality along with a pervasive pessimism. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth. As a result, naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for focusing too much on human vice and misery.
. . to a realm of unfettered vision,” lifts us out of rather than urges us into the depths which humanity in the person of Usher has touched. (4) Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate are closer to the truth when they call [column 2:] Usher “a ‘Gothic’ character taken seriously” and when they view “The Fall of the House of Usher” as “a serious story of moral perversion.”(5) Certainly perversity and maladjustment are central to a reading of Usher’s character; and if this is a story of moral (sexual) perversion, its locus, Usher’s morbid fears, express themselves overtly and
Camus is deservedly more famous for his novels, where many of his philosophical ideas are worked out in a more subtle and more engaging manner than in his essays. He wrote The Stranger (also translated as The Outsider) around the same time as The Myth of Sisyphus, and the two books in many ways parallel one another. The Myth of Sisyphus can be read as an attempt to clarify and to make explicit the worldview expressed in The Stranger, and The Stranger can be read as an example of the absurd hero and the absurd fiction described in The Myth of Sisyphus. The Stranger tells the story of Meursault, who lives for the sensual pleasures of the present moment, free of any system of values. Rather than behave in accordance with social norms, Meursault tries to live as honestly as he can, doing what he wants to do and befriending those whom he likes.
With his tale of corrupt patriarchy filled with mystery, romance, and tragedy, Horace Walpole bridged the gap between the wantonly romantic and the excessively realistic (Scott 11); filling the space with dark settings, stark characters and tangled narratives. It was the sum of all these parts that became the formula that is still followed today by writers of the genre. This essay will outline various elements of the typical gothic novel, and the way in which they are associated with excess in the themes, characterisation, and style of writing. In doing so, the differences in the techniques used in Walpole’s novel Castle of Otranto, and M.R James’s short story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, will be identified and discussed. The primary objective of Gothic novelists is to rouse the reader into eliciting emotional responses such as shock or fear (Hume 284).
Racism within Heart of Darkness What is racism? How can someone be classified as a racist? According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, racism is classified as the poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race, or the belief that some races of people are better than others. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has been considered a major turning point for authors and other works because his style of writing was different than most other pieces of literature in his time. Conrad’s use of ambiguity fascinated critics and readers as he used obscurity to dramatize Marlow’s perceptions of the horrors he encounters.
The Ironic Depiction of Colonialism in The Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad extensively used irony in the Heart of Darkness. To comprehend how saturated this novel is with irony one has to have an understanding of the concept of irony. Merriam-Webster defines verbal irony as “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning,” situational irony as “incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result” and Socratic irony as “a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the others' false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning” (“irony”). All forms of irony involve two opposing points. Conrad uses situational, verbal, Socratic, and other forms of irony in his portrayal of colonialism in order to expose the hypocrisy and motives of the pilgrims and colonialism itself and the dehumanization of peoples based on race.