Critical essays

In “Darkness at Noon”, Harold Krents vividly describes some of the everyday prejudices disabled citizens must face. Presented in an often humorous fashion, the author opens the reader’s eyes to the cruel ironies of society’s pre-conceived and inaccurate judgments, and their long reaching effects on his life. Krents begins his essay by pointing out to the reader that he cannot see himself, and thus, often has to depend upon the viewpoints of others. He states: “To date it has not…...

“Shooting Stars” is a horrific and moving poem written by Carol Ann Duffy. She adopts the persona of a female Jew speaking out from beyond the grave about her terrifying ordeal before she died in the Holocaust. A powerful impression is left on the reader after reading Duffy’s dramatic monologue and visual descriptions of her ordeal and immense suffering. She urges the reader to remember what the Jewish victims were forced to go through, and begs us not to turn…...

Human beings have all experienced guilt, the consequence of committing a wrong, and the manipulation it has on decisions. In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” author Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates the theme that guilt is strong and has the power to overcome conscience; he uses characterization, the conflict, and symbolism to communicate this message. The characterization of the narrator most clearly shows this theme. In addition to Poe’s use of characterization, his decision to show the struggle the narrator…...

In Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Celie leads a life filled with abuse at the hands of the most essential men in her life. As result of the females who surround and help her, Celie ends up being stronger and conquers the abuse she experienced. The 3 most prominent ladies in Celie's life are here sister Nettie, her daughter-in-law Sofia and the vocalist Shug Avery. These are the ladies who lead Celie out of her shell and assist her turn…...

The Godfather, a story about a multigenerational crime family by the Italian American author Mario Puzo, was one of the best-selling books since it was published in 1969. Not only the book was a phenomenon, its movie under the direction of director Francis Ford Coppola had also become a landmark in American movie since it was released in 1972. The Godfather detailed impressively the activities of the gangster world, especially the Corleone family which was under the control of the…...

Introduction: The STCW Convention “The Standards of Training, Certification & Watchkeeping (STCW) Convention was drafted in 1978 by conference at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London, and was activated in 1984” (wikipedia/stcw). Since its beginning, its scope has been to set qualification standards for masters, officers and watch personnel on seagoing merchant ships. On an international level, “the 1978 STCW Convention was the first to establish basic requirements on training, certification and watchkeeping for seafarers” (wikipedia/stcw). It introduced such…...

Throughout "An American Childhood", Dillard shares with us her childhood experiences with her dear mother. Dillard's admiration for her mother is clearly visible through the way she explains in depth all of the memorable situations and events. Dillard explains how intelligent her mother was and how she always played mind games with her and her sister. The characteristic Dillard displays of her mother can tell the audience that Mother is as unique and spontaneous as can be. After hearing one…...

In “Enduring Love”, McEwan again creates a family that confronts a challenge and finds it difficult to survive. Joe and Clarissa are intellectuals living together in a well-appointed flat in a comfortable neighborhood in London. Clarissa is a professor researching Keats, and Joe is a well-known science writer with a doctorate in quantum electrodynamics who is somewhat dissatisfied with his decision to leave academia behind. Through the story utilizing the characters of Joe and Clarissa, McEwan articulates the idea humans…...

Electoral College is a term that refers to a selected group of representatives who perform the task of electing candidates for particular powerful offices such as presidents or church leaders. The selection process of electing candidates usually involves participants from different and competing political or religious entities. In the recent past, the Electoral College has been conspicuously practiced in electing the President of the United Stats and the Pope of the Catholic Church. It is the US Electoral College that…...

Sigmund Freud, a well-known psychologist, believes the unconscious can be unlocked through dreams. He defined the unconscious as, “the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them” (Tyson). Psychoanalytic criticism, a form of criticism which allows the reader to psychoanalyze an author’s unconscious through the characters of his or her work(s), is heavily influenced by Freudian theories of psychology.…...

The study of human behavioral pathways can intensify the scope of how each individual is grouped according to preferences. In this aspect, it would be important to study the role of gender ideals in molding the society. Gender criticism is the overall approach in understanding the ideas about the complete make up of men and women (Bedford 1). This includes the notion acceptance of what is masculine and what is feminine. It regards sexuality as a very complex method of…...

Write a Critical Analysis of the Character of the Artful Dodger in Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Would You Describe the Dodger Only as a Victim of Circumstances? Jack Dawkins, also known as the Artful Dodger, is one of the most interesting and memorable characters in Dickens’ Oliver Twist. He is reckless and very good at pickpocketing. He is denied the opportunity of choosing his own way of life and is fated to become a criminal. Jack has been a victim of…...

Critical and Evaluative Response to Virginia Woolf’s Professions for Women Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a British author and feminist, was born and grew up in London. At that time girls weren’t sent to school, so she was educated by her parents. Although she was a woman, Woolf became a significant figure in London literature society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Professions for Women is one of her essays in which she talks about the difficulties women should deal with…...

Grammy award winning artist Taylor Swift debuted her first album at in 2006. Within six years Swift has grown to be one of the most renowned country pop artists ever known. With her fans craving for more from Swift, she released her fourth album titled “Red” on October 15, 2012. The album was an instant hit that sold over 1.2 million copies within the first week of being released. “Red” is one of the top selling albums in the past…...

Critical theory is a body of ideas generally associated with the ‘Frankfurt School’. It was during the early 1980s that a new form of theoretic inquiry which was highly critical of tradional theories of IR, emerged. However the genesis of the theory can be found in the works of Kant and Marx with their emphasis on the ‘emancipatry purpose of knowledge and enquiry’. In other words critical theory entails ‘enlightenment project’ which subjects knowledge and education to the ideal purpose…...

The researchers in this experiment aimed to “Investigate the quantitative differentiation of pulmonary dendritic cells in smoker with or without chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) to explore the possible role of dendritic cells in smokers suffering COPD” (Yan-wei, Yong-jiang, & Xian-sheng, 2010). Dendritic cells (DCs) are inflammatory cells that are considered to be the promoter of immune responses; knowing this the researchers hypothesized that DCs may play an important role in the development of the disease. See more: how to…...

Socrates was an orator and philosopher whose primary interests were logic, ethics and epistemology. In Plato’s Apology of Socrates, Plato recounts the speech that Socrates gave shortly before his death, during the trial in 399 BC in which he was charged with "corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, also being a busybody and intervene gods business". The name of the work itself is not mean what it is appeared; here, Socrates…...

“Formalism” is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes literary form and the study of literary devices within the text. The work of the Formalists had a general impact on later developments in “Structuralism” and other theories of narrative. “Formalism,” like “Structuralism,” sought to place the study of literature on a scientific basis through objective analysis of the motifs, devices, techniques, and other “functions” that comprise the literary work. The Formalists placed great importance on the literariness of…...

In the article “Letting Go” that was being published in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande addresses the issues regarding to the current medical care system that fails to meet the needs of the patients with terminal illness. Gawande points out that the patients want to spend more quality time with their family members and having some special last moments rather than struggling to stay alive when they know that the chances are thin. Knowing the time to let go was…...

What is a family? What is family composition? Family is a group of people tied together by blood, co-residence, or affection. Family composition is the makeup of the family including the numbers of members, their ages, and their relationship with each other What is cultural bias? What is an example of this? Cultural bias is the interpretation or judgement of practices by the standards of ones own culture. Looking at a different culture wrong because its not the way we…...

”The gulls go down the body dies and rots, and time flows past them like the hundred yachts.” Kenneth Slessor, a renowned poet and journalist was born on the 27th of March 1901 in Orange, New South Wales. Throughout his eventful life, Slessor was able to compose an array of poems through which he was able to convey his experiences through life. But why exactly are his poems still considered so relevant and significant in this era? Firstly, Slessor’s poems…...

We do abortions here; that is all we do. There are weary, grim minutes when I think I can not bear another basin of bloody remains, utter another kind expression of peace of mind. So I leave the treatment space in the back and grab a new chart. Quickly I am speaking with an eighteen-year-old woman pregnant for the fourth time. I rise her sleeve to check her high blood pressure and find row upon row of needle marks, neat…...

Thomas Hardy is on of the brightest representatives of English realism at the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th century. At that time, a new stage in the development of the English literature began, characterized with the conflict between the supporters of realism and the new modernist artistic directions. He learned from his predecessors to raise important and interesting problems, to tell interesting stories , to portray interesting characters and to describe the environment. Hardy is defined as…...

In this assignment, I will analyse and reflect on a critical incident that I was confronted with during school experience A (here after will be referred to as SEA). I will reflect on the implications that my critical incident has had on my practice and I will relate it to theory. In addition, I will make reference to four approaches of analysis which have been outlined by Tripp (1993). Tripp’s four approaches focus on the why challenge, personal theory, thinking…...

In Mrs Midas, Carol Ann Duffy takes the well-known story of King Midas from Ancient Greek mythology and places it in a modern context from the wife’s perspective. Originally, the story is about King Midas and the power he possesses that turns everything he touches into gold, which leads him to ultimately realise that wealth alone can’t make him happy - even unlimited gold. The moral of the King Midas story is that you can’t buy happiness, and also to…...

Poetry is never divorced from the contexts within which the poet himself is necessarily part of. This is to say that poetry is a product of the poets’ political, economic, historical, cultural and intellectual contexts. Such being the case, one may say that it is through the aforementioned contexts that poetry captures the spirit of the times. The first half of the 17th Century witnessed both the flourishing of the English poetic tradition and science. Such flourishing however, did not…...

Literary criticism is not an abstract, intellectual exercise; it is a natural human response to literature. Literary criticism is nothing more than discourse— spoken or written — about literature. Reader-response criticism attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a work of fiction. This type of literary criticism recognizes that like writing, reading is a creative process. Reader-response critics believe that no text provides self-contained meaning; literary texts do not have meaning independently from readers’ interpretations. According…...

Introduction As firms begin to realize the need to improve on their project management capabilities, many companies and software developers have charged to fill this need by offering tools and techniques for a variety of projects. Some are tools for portfolio management, and some focus on particular disciplines within the project management field. Tools for resource planning, task and time management, communications management, resource allocation, or other project needs abound. Being a mature academic and practical course, Project Management has…...

Throughout history, people with creative minds have created original ideas which have been useful in the fields of music, art, technology, medicine, and science. Most of these ideas were once branded as impossible and ridiculous, but as of today, their thinkers are considered to as individuals who achieved enormous breakthroughs which helped the world advance (Coon, 2006). Usually, problem-solving is done through mechanical and insightful means which are based on understanding; this kind of problem solving involves either deductive or…...

Critical thinking includes the component skills of analyzing arguments, making inferences using inductive or deductive reasoning, judging or evaluating, and making decisions or solving problems when evaluating academic content. Background knowledge is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for enabling critical thought within a given subject. Critical thinking involves both cognitive skills and dispositions. These dispositions, which can be seen as attitudes or habits of mind, include open- and fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility, a propensity to seek reason, a desire…...

Introduction In this paper we will discuss the Shui Fabrics Case Study and its implications on managing in a global environment. The research of case studies gives us the opportunity to understand and apply the lessons we have learned in the course. The case explains that for 10 years, Shanghai Fabric Ltd., a Chinese fabrics company, and Rocky River Industries, a United States textile manufacturer, have been part of a 50-50 joint venture to produce dye and fabric. This venture,…...

It has been once said that, “all literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates character in literature” this quote can be interpreted to mean that all books show us the power of feeling. It is feeling not reasoning that drives characters in it literatures. To fulfill whatever they want in the story. Feelings drive characters to succeed in every possible scenario. The validity of this interpretation can be seen as true by examining…...

Secular Humanism regarding the question of origin, appears to lean towards the determination "that matter has actually always existed and provided sufficient time and possibility, completion result is what you see around you today." (Weider, Gutierrez 64). There is an absence of evidence that God exists and man is viewed rather as a maker, having no control over their presence and as soon as male's life has concerned an end, this maker ends (65 ). Humanists respond to questions of…...

Martin Luther King’s speech, ‘I have a Dream’ may be considered on two levels, and the first is on the level of its content. Supposing one did not hear the speech delivered and only read a transcript or a printed copy of the speech, it is surprising that many things work independently for the written form of the speech in the ability of the speech to persuade. One very glaring element that one easily notices is the presence of various…...

Good Country People is one of the most sought after works of Flannery O’ Connor. It is said to be the biography of O’Connor but she never claimed it to be such. The novel Good Country People seems to reflect the current situation and emotional status of O’ Connor while she was writing the novel, and if it is not in fact her biography, her emotion at that time has influenced the novel greatly. Flannery O’Connor has lived only until…...

William Wordsworth had a variety of concerns which he expressed in “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge. ” He was a metaphysical poet and the theme he writes about in this poem is nature and its relationship to man. He has used a variety of poetic methods which have all helped to shape and enhance the poem such as rhyming couplets, simile, and personification. The main concerns he highlights in this poem are the destructive nature of man, the relationship of man…...

Introduction As the world progresses on in this never ending chase for a time and wealth, it is undeniable that science has made astounding developments. Technology and computers are everywhere. Today, they are becoming the foundation of any development of society. The computer system is not a simple machine. It is like a very modern and highly complex calculator. It can do all the functions at a speedy rate and also helps us to search and progress in our homes…...

Of all Shakespeare’s works , Julius Caesar is a play that hinges upon rhetoric - both as the art of persuasion and an artifice used to veil intent. The most striking of Shakespeare is his command of language. In Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Caesar, we have not only one of Shakespeare’s most recognizable opening lines but one of his finest examples of rhetorical irony at work. The speech could serve as a thematic synopsis to Julius Caesar. One of…...

It is a basic law of storytelling that in order for an author to capture and maintain the reader’s interest, the author must create “realistic” characters, ones that are relatable, genuine, and plainly likeable. In the works of Eugene O’Neill, he takes that rule of realistic character development and proceeds to warp and twist it into a beautifully mangled paradigm of raw humanity and pessimism. He formulates characters that are utter derelicts to society, each one desperately hanging on to…...

Ecocriticism is the research study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to examine the environment and brainstorm possible services for the correction of the modern environmental situation. Ecocriticism was formally heralded by the publication of two seminal works, [citation required] both released in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell. In the United States, ecocriticism is often associated with…...