Friday, January 24, 2020

Essay on Lies and Self-realization in A Dolls House -- Dolls House es

Lies and Self-realization in A Doll's House    In Ibsen's play,   A Doll's House,   the characters willingly exist in a situation of untruth or inadequate truth that conceals conflict.   Nora's independent nature is in contradiction to the tyrannical authority of Torvald.   This conflict is concealed by the way they both hide their true selves from society, each other, and ultimately themselves.   Just like Nora and Torvald, every character in this play is trapped in a situation of untruth. "A Doll's House", can be misinterpreted as simply an attack on the religious values of Ibsen's society.   While this is certainly an important aspect of the play, it is not, however, Ibsen's main point.   "A Doll's House" established a method Ibsen would use to convey his views about individuality and the pursuit of social freedom.   The characters of "A Doll's House" display Henrik Ibsen's belief that although people have a natural longing for freedom, they often do not act upon this desire until a person or event forces them to do so. Readers can be quick to point out that Nora's change was gradual and marked by several incidents.   A more critical look reveals these gradual changes are actually not changes at all, but small revelations for the reader to see Nora's true independent nature.   These incidents also allow the reader to see this nature has been tucked far under a facade of a happy and simple wife.   In the first act, she admits to Christine that she will "dance and dress up and play the fool" to keep Torvald happy (Ibsen).   This was Ibsen's way of telling the reader Nora had a hidden personality that was more serious and controlling.   He wants the reader to realize that Nora was not the fool she allows herself to be seen as.   ... ...in A Doll's House is the importance of the individual and the search for self-realization.      Works Cited Brunsdale, Mitzi. "Herik Ibsen."   Critical Survey of Drama.   Ed.   Frank N. Magill.   Englewood Cliffs, NJ:   Salem Press 1986. pg982. Clurman, Harold.   Ibsen.   Macmillan, 1977, pg223.   Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.   Ed. Sharon K. Hall. Vol. 8.   Detroit:   Gale, 1982. pg154. Heiberg, Hans. 1967. Ibsen. A Portrait of the Artist. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami. Ibsen, Henrik. "A Doll’s House." Perrine's Literature.   Forth Worth:   Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.   pp. 967-1023 Shaw, Bernard.   "A Doll's House Again."   The Saturday Review, London, Vol. 83, No. 2168, May 15, 1897:   539-541.   Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.   Ed.   Sharon K.   Hall.   Vol. 8. Detroit:   Gale, 1982. pg.143.   

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Gillian Clarke †Neighbours Essay

Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet whose writing often uses natural and rural settings to explore larger themes and ideas, particularly political ideas. She draws on the Welsh landscape and her experience of sheep-farming on the small-holding where she lives in West Wales. She has been the National Poet in Wales since 2008. The Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Russia was the site of a massive explosion in 1986. Radiation from the accident killed people and animals from the local area, including 6 firemen who put out the fire after the explosion. The effect and spread of the disaster can’t be accurately predicted after a nuclear accident because radioactive particles can be carried by the wind. They can also get into the water cycle. The Chernobyl disaster was one of the motivations for the policy of ‘glasnost’, proposed and developed by the Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev. Glasnost translates as ‘openness’ and the policy supported the freedom of information. Gorbachev saw a need for openness because Chernobyl residents were not evacuated immediately after the disaster due to the Russian administration’s concern to cover up their faults. The spring was late. We watched the sky and studied charts for shouldering isobars. Birds were late to pair. Crows drank from the lamb’s eye. Over Finland small birds fell; song thrushes steering north, smudged signatures on light, migrating warblers, nightingales. Wing-beats failed over fjords, each lung a sip of gall. Children were warned of their dangerous beauty. Milk was spilt in Poland. Each quarrel The blowback from some old story, a mouthful of bitter air from the Ukraine brought by the wind in its box of sorrows. This spring a lamb sips caesium on a Welsh hill. A child, lifting her head to drink the rain takes into her blood the poisoned arrow. Now we are all neighbourly, each little town in Europe twinned to Chernobyl, each heart with the burnt firemen, the child on the Moscow train. In the democracy of the virus and the toxin we wait. We watch for spring migrations, one bird returning with green in its voice. Glasnost. Golau glas. A first break of blue.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

How do William Blake and William Wordsworth respond to...

How do William Blake and William Wordsworth respond to nature in their poetry? The Romantic Era was an age, which opened during the Industrial (1800-1900) and French Revolution (1789). These ages affected the romantic poets greatly by disrupting and polluting nature. Before the Industrial Revolution, William Blake wrote about Songs of Innocence. He also wrote Songs of Experience but after the Industrial Revolution. William Wordsworth, on the other hand, continued on an optimistic route and ignored the Industrial Revolution in his poems. He instead wrote about nature only and its beauty. Previous Augustan poets were more controlled and rule governed. They were also concerned with order. In Blake’s ‘London’, he describes the†¦show more content†¦Wordsworth talks about the mind being free and relaxed, â€Å"Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!† The adjective ‘deep’ shows how immense the tranquility is. It also shows how the poem is personal, â€Å"Ne’er saw I.† He sets the scene in the morning, creating a feeling of calmness and peace, â€Å"The beauty of the morning; silent, bare.† The noun ‘beauty’ implies splendor and magnificence, showing the opposite of what Blake writes about ‘London’. The adjective ‘silent’ is also the opposite of what Blake writes in ‘London’, â€Å"How the youthful Harlot’s curse†. Wordsworth mentions the daffodils as people, â€Å"When all at once I saw a crowd.† Similarly, he uses personification, ‘crowd’, to imply that everyone is unified in nature. He uses color in his poem to indicate a deeper meaning, â€Å"A host, of golden daffodils.† The adjective â€Å"golden† illustrates purity as well, therefore connecting it to innocence. The noun ‘host’ has a slight religious tone, which also relates to purity. ‘The Daffodils’ has eight syllables in each line. This makes the poem seem more complex than ‘Spring’. In ‘Spring’, a lively tone is repeated throughout the poem,†Merrily, merrily we welcome in the year.† The adverb ‘merrily’ is repeated to highlight the positive tone of the poem and to make it last longer. The pronoun ‘we welcome in the year’ also shows us how everyone is unified in nature. Blake uses colour to expand the meaning of the sentence, â€Å"Come andShow MoreRelatedWilliam Blake Had A Strict Standard On How His Poems Should1431 Words   |  6 Pages William Blake had a strict standard on how his poems should appear. In his poems, he was not very concerned with grammar or spelling, even though he was writing in a time much after the official English language had been created. Much of his spellings are very old-fashioned to us and at times can sound very awkward. Even his readers in his time found that the wording and spelling of phrases and words was quaint. 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