ESSAY CEMETERY

Costello has been invited to talk about the problem of evil in the world. This is because she gave a talk in which she compared animal slaughterhouses to the holocaust and people thought she was belittling the holocaust. She thinks it’s futile to talk about evil and she’s also wary of defending herself but she agreed because of a novel she was reading at the time she received the invitation. The book contained a description of the execution of holocaust victims by hanging and it made her sick and inspired/motivated her to speak of evil.  The paper she agreed to give was on the topic “witness, silence and censorship”. She has lately come to believe that we live in a capitalist (“illimitable endeavor”) world. She has also come to believe that reading and writing do not always improve one. In her lecture, she wonders if Paul West, the author of the holocaust book, was not permanently scarred by his exploration of the topic. In the lecture, she proposes that paul’s soul may have been s...

Virginia Woolf’s 1922 novel Jacob’s Room is set in post-industrialization, post-urbanization England. Throughout the novel, Jacob lives in cities, relocating from Scarborough to Cambridge University to London. Although the premise of Jacob’s Room is realistic, descriptions of these cities are often accompanied by mystical and supernatural imagery. Through metaphors of light and darkness, Woolf explores the role of the city and of education in man’s increasing estrangement from nature. In spite of the city’s bright appeal, Woolf exposes intellectual urban life as an ineffective barrier against the unavoidable chaos of existence and the inescapable mortality of man. Chapter Three sees Jacob leaving his mother and his home in Scarborough to attend university at Cambridge. His first impressions of Cambridge are of the brightness of its cityscape. “They say the sky is the same everywhere... But above Cambridge--anyhow above the roof of King's College Chapel--there is a difference. Out a...

Chapter Six of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair opens with a direct address to the serial novel's readers. "I know that the tune I am piping is a very mild one", the narrator apologizes, "and must beg the good-natured reader to remember that we are only discoursing at present about a stockbroker's family in Russell Square" (60). In an era in which the extent of the readership determined a serial novel's continued existence, the reader-writer relationship was of paramount importance. Thackeray appeases his readers, defends his artistic choices, and refutes their implied concerns about his craft. By examining the dialogue into which Thackeray enters with his readers in the context of the novel, we can gain insight into the role of the reader in the Victorian serial, and the manner in which Thackeray harnesses the reader-writer relationship to engage the readers and enhance the effectiveness of his social critique.  The dependence of the serial...

Mary Hays's novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney features correspondence between its protagonist, Emma, and other characters in the novel's fictional world. Tension ensues between the form of the novel and its content: even though the epistolary genre is inherently concerned with communication between several parties, Memoirs of Emma Courtney does not seem to provide insight into the minds of multiple characters. Hays's self-proclaimed intent in writing the narrative, as detailed in the preface to the book, is "attention to the phenomena of the human mind". However, instead of exploring several characters, the novel repeatedly focuses on a solitary individual – Emma Courtney. Attention to sentence structure, keywords, and thematic focus provides insight into the manner in which Hays harnesses the epistolary genre to explore the psychology of one single character. The novel does not adhere to the epistolary genre throughout. Aside from letters from Emma to various charac...

In her 1923 essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, Virginia Woolf places characterization at the center of the novelist’s concerns. For Woolf, the novelist is defined primarily by his or her obsession with capturing character, a task she deems nearly impossible. “Few catch the phantom [of character]; most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair” (21). Despite this ostensible focus on characterization, Woolf has been criticized for creating shallow, incomplete characters in her works. Indeed, in her novel, Jacob’s Room, published in 1922, remarkably little attention is given to the title character. Only a vague outline is provided of the progression of Jacob Flanders from early childhood to his death, and key transitional moments in Jacob’s life are elided from the narrative. Whereas the title character is often absent from the action and narration of Jacob’s Room, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children protagonist Saleem Sinai is omnipresent throughout that narrat...

Anglo-Saxon England saw over two hundred years of Viking attacks at the turn of the first millennium. By the end of the tenth century, Anglo-Saxon England had become Anglo-Scandinavian England (Frank 23). The Scandinavian presence in England is the subject of much Early Medieval poetry, prose and historical literature. The Danes, a geographically foreign and pagan people, emerge as an Other against which the Anglo-Saxons struggle to maintain their ideological integrity. In the poem “The Battle of Maldon” the warfare waged against the Vikings exposes weakness within the ranks of the English. In the “Life of St. Edmund”, an Anglo-Saxon defeat in a battle against the Vikings gives rise to a saint who works miracles from beyond the grave. Even though both texts were written within decades of one another, the recentness of the events depicted and the thematic focus of their authors result in two very different treatments of a similar historical setting. Ælfric’s “Life of St. Edmund” is an e...

"Deor", an Old English poem found in the tenth-century poetry collection The Book of Exeter, is generally considered to be a song of lament for the poet's own misfortune. The poem consists of a series of seven stanzas that describe the travails of well-known historical individuals and groups. As the final stanza contains an account of the ostensible poet's own misfortune – being removed from his position as court poet – scholars have conjectured that the poet's aim in depicting these historical travails is to compare these with his own fate. However, the final stanza does not constitute the poem's final words. The poem ends with the refrain that recurs after every stanzaic description of misfortune in the work – "Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!" – "that passed over, this can too". The placement of the refrain after the final stanza indicates that, just like the other historical hardships, the poet's grief over his demotion, too, has passe...

Summary He thanks the queen. He recounts how he was taken prisoner by Powhatan. His son Nantaquaus is the manliest Indian he'd ever seen. His daughter Pocahontas saved him at the risk of her own life. Furthermore, she provided food for the miserable sick settlers. Even when they began to war with the Indians Pocahontas saw to their needs and warned them of attacks. He has no idea why she helps them so. After she is taken captive (I guess by the settlers) she is returned and they achieve peace with the Indians. She marries an Englishman, goes to England, converts to Christianity, and learns English. Smith apologizes for being a lousy writer but says he's sincere. He apologizes for asking, but he does ask that the Queen be aware of Pocahontas and see that she's well-received. This is so that Pocahontas doesn't resent her having become a Christian and gone off to England. Themes Thanking and apologizing to the queen Pocahontas story Assimilation Conversion Immigration Pedo...

Columbus goes from Spain to Madeira, and then to the Canaries and then the Cape Verde islands. He goes below the equator and it's super hot there until God graces them with a fair wind. They go up to the equator and it becomes mild. Something about the pole and the stars. He has heard that the earth is a sphere but to him, it seems more like the shape of a pear or a nipple. When he sails in different directions stuff happens to the stars. Ptolemy had it wrong because he knew nothing of the Southern hemisphere. He reaches the island Cape Verde where the people are black. Then he reaches Trinidad where the people are whiter, shrewder, and less timid than the natives of the Indies. Christopher Columbus.  Image source

Click here  for a summary of Columbus's report on the first voyage Click here  for Columbus's original report text ------------- Themes Praising the king and queen Praising God and thanking God Naming islands Taking captives Natural descriptions Giving and receiving from the Indians Shy natives Generosity of natives Fostering trade and good relations Missionary desire Expectation of monstrosities Bragging and the eternal God, our Lord, Who gives to all those who walk in His way triumph over things which appear to be impossible, and this was notably one Importance of evidence Sexual imagery- the earth is a nipple (to be conquered) Scientific theorizing Style and devices First-person narrator (letter) Sucking up to the king and queen Run-on sentences And in it, although of all I have taken possession for their highnesses and all are more richly endowed than I know how, or am able, to say, and I hold them all for their highnesses, so that they may dispose of them as, and as absol...

Click here  for a summary of Columbus's report on the first voyage Click here  for a literary analysis of Columbus's report on the first voyage   ------------- Columbus's report letter Sir, As I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I write this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty-three days, I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which the most illustrious king and queen, our sovereigns, gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard un­furled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found, I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." To the second, I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Conception; to the third, F...