Three examples of humans' attraction to knowledge and their consequences are given in the novel. ... Victor longed to rid humanity of " the diseases of the human frame"" and much like Prometheus who brought fire to humanity, Victor sought the secret of life and eventually found it by over-reaching the limits of humanity, bypassing the laws of nature, and eventually receiving prolonged punishment for it. ... His human flaws, his obsession with the creation of a human being clouded his mind and pushed him to gather dead body parts in order to assemble his "masterpiece. " Indeed, Victor neve...

• Word Count: 1600
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He admits his lack of power, as if he were possessed, by stating, "One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the human frame, and indeed, any animal endued with life Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome, and almost intolerable." Victor wants to find a knowledge that has yet to have been discovered, and he finds this possibility in the human anatomy. ... "A new species would bless me as its creator and source," he says, "Many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to m...

• Word Count: 461
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The inherent caution with which neighbors guard their relationships creates an atmosphere of tension, providing for a hothouse model of human racial barriers. ... Kabuo is a victim of the burden of racial prejudice and human nature's attraction to creating scapegoats. ... The sober and bleak mood portrayed by the novels setting is further enhanced by the use of nature as a metaphorical reminder of equality and impermanence. The snow, which covers the lands, makes dispute over fields almost laughable, as nature shows that we, as humans, don't have the true control to divide land in...

• Word Count: 1123
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Ontology as a philosophical viewpoint on life is defined as, "The science or study of being; that branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature or essence of being or existence.... Exploring ontology and the many other philosophical branches that derived from it resulted in many new perceptions of viewing the nature of a human being and the society. ... The rise of modernism goes hand in hand with an entire society progressing their intellect and awareness of who they are as humans and the dynamics of society. ... A main theme in "The Open Boat" is the idea of that constant ...

• Word Count: 3767
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Yet he is also an author who writes with tremendous insight into the dark side of the human mind, and one who speculates with serious consideration about the nature of truth and its relationship to both fact and fiction. ... The factual nature of his first book and the relatively conventional narrative methods of his second give way to a much more imaginative account of Vietnam in Going After Cacciato (1978), the book that launched him to stardom. ...

• Word Count: 781
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Heart of Darkness, and the nature of the novel form, makes it easier to describe Marlow's situation. ... The film assists in elaborating the effect on the reader of the seemingly abyss nature of the inner station. The raw animalistic actions overtake the human facade of power and control when confronted with the darkness. ...

• Word Count: 926
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Although her deeds are immoral, the novel affirms the good nature of her intent. The religious themes in the novel center around her for she exemplifies unconditional human love, which accepts others with all their failings and asks nothing in return. ... Due to the nature of her experiences Sonia can sympathize with the mental anguish Raskolnikov incurs after the murder. ... "He had gone to her, Sonia, first with his confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it; she would go with him wherever fate might send him" (Page 528). ...

• Word Count: 1225
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The argument I put forward in this paper is such: children's literature is a vital tool in didactic fiction, as in the words of Phillip Pullman, it teaches lessons "about what it means to be human, to grow up, to suffer and learn- (assignment handout, 11/3/03). ... It has been said that Little Women has in it the universal theme of human nature (Meigs, 213). Louisa May Alcott presents this human nature as a woman's struggle between duty to family and personal growth. ...

• Word Count: 1473
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Everything finishes the way a nature dictated: the days became rainy, and gray. ... The death of Phineas symbolized " a Gene's freedom from fear not by hiding from war and the ambiguities of the human heart, not by building barriers between youth and age, but by accepting the inevitability of change and loss."...

• Word Count: 622
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn uses irony to depict the social hierarchy created within the gulag, the harshness and cruelty of Russian prison life, the social hierarchy within the gulag and the attempt to destroy human solidarity to convey the theme of the endurance of humanity. ... Though the prison camp system seeks to destroy, by its very nature, expression of camaraderie and actions based on morals and ethics, Shukhov and his fellow prisoners maintain their humanity through small acts and rituals, for example when Shukhov "could never bring himself to...

• Word Count: 1052
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

McEwan utilizes literature to provide insight into human nature through his clever interpretation of humanity's fragility at the mercy of war along with literary preservation through history. 1. ... Writers write with the purpose of presenting and explaining some sort of universal theme relating to human life, which survives in history through generations, along with the stories they create, because they are written down and read by others who keep that tradition and the values connected with it ongoing. ... Like the trust broken between Briony and Cecilia, and the humans easily killed i...

• Word Count: 1179
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

After the murder Raskolnikov falls ill or at least he thinks he is ill, and becomes irritated by all human contact. ... Roskolnikov publicized his theory in an article he wrote in college and in a discussion with the detective on the murder case he states "I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by the law of nature into two categories, inferior, that is, so to say, material that only serves to reproduce its kind, and the men who have the gift or talent to utter a new world. ...

• Word Count: 856
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

After the murder Raskolnikov falls ill or at least he thinks he is ill, and becomes irritated by all human contact. ... Roskolnikov publicized his theory in an article he wrote in college and in a discussion with the detective on the murder case he states "I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by the law of nature into two categories, inferior, that is, so to say, material that only serves to reproduce its kind, and the men who have the gift or talent to utter a new world. ...

• Word Count: 876
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

A detailed first hand account of one man's mental ramblings, utilitarian in their nature. ... She is full of true human emotions. ... The complex personalities of Raskolnikov and Sonia reveal great insight on the inner workings of the elusive human conscience. ...

• Word Count: 966
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Direct vs Indirect Threats In the human heart, danger represents fear, stimulating either a selfless or selfish response. ... The boy in The Road experiences countless moments of fear and cries just as any other child would in a harsh environment with "human livestock" (47). ... In such a craze, McCarthy shows how humans lose their mind and perform cannibalism when laws and social structures collapse. Understanding that threat is an immediate, man versus man nature by witnessing "the dead impaled on spikes along the road" (33), the father strengthens his ability to pro...

• Word Count: 1772
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The thinking that was being questioned by the Gothic novel was Augustanism; and without some understanding of Augustan principles and their role in eighteenth-century thought it is difficult to understand the purposes of the Gothic revival, either in terms of history or in terms of the way in which it offered a new conception of the relations between man, nature and a supreme being. ... Its style will tend to be ornate, unnatural and thus operate against the perennial human desire to believe the word as fact. ...

• Word Count: 1271
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The thinking that was being questioned by the Gothic novel was Augustanism; and without some understanding of Augustan principles and their role in eighteenth-century thought it is difficult to understand the purposes of the Gothic revival, either in terms of history or in terms of the way in which it offered a new conception of the relations between man, nature and a supreme being. ... Its style will tend to be ornate, unnatural and thus operate against the perennial human desire to believe the word as fact. ...

• Word Count: 1271
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Trace the psychological progress of Raskolnikov's mind from the planning stages of the murder through the final realization of love. Raskolnikov fights a constant battle with himself in the beginning of the novel, debating on killing the old lady for her possessions. Eventually, after deciding to un...

• Word Count: 1095
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Throughout the ages, literature has revolved around the personal relationships between people. The relationships between women have evolved throughout the ages possibly as a result of the transformations of society as these texts explore; The Shakespearean era where only men were allowed to act, the Victorian era in which everything must be prim and proper and women should still do their work as a mother and wife to the Post Modern era in which women are free to express themselves in the same way that men are. All three chosen texts explore these relationships differently; Jane Eyre's cl...

• Word Count: 3018
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The Parsis and India become metaphors for the human experience in Mistry's fiction. ... His meteoric career cannot then be credited altogether to the exotic nature of the Parsis. Instead, he has turned their lives into a metaphor that stands for the human experience: the fears, the joys, the ambitions and failures, the terror and the conflicts, finally the sense of balance that once attained will allow the characters to withstand the outer world, a world awash with dangers to personal fulfillment and identity. ...

• Word Count: 4675
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The Parsis and India become metaphors for the human experience in Mistry's fiction. ... His meteoric career cannot then be credited altogether to the exotic nature of the Parsis. Instead, he has turned their lives into a metaphor that stands for the human experience: the fears, the joys, the ambitions and failures, the terror and the conflicts, finally the sense of balance that once attained will allow the characters to withstand the outer world, a world awash with dangers to personal fulfillment and identity. ...

• Word Count: 4673
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Thus Frankenstein begins his morbid craft, he "collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secret of the human frame", and this morose degradation of the science shows how far Frankenstein will go to create "life from dead matter". ...

• Word Count: 2019
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The variety of passionately displayed themes, interactions, and events presented in The Bluest Eye provide an understanding of Toni Morrison's inner thoughts and beliefs which were highly impacted by her various life experiences. Throughout her writing, Morrison continuously focuses on her readers b...

• Word Count: 2626
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the mid-1980s, just as the new historicists, with their invocation of "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history," were transforming the way readers understood the English Renaissance, Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose became both a critical success and a bestseller. (1983) Widely celebrated as a postmodern historical novel, this dazzling mixture of thick historical research and popular detective fiction invited its readers to view historical fiction as an academically respectable genre and a vehicle for recovering and reimagining the past in unconventional ways...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate