The tension between civilization and savagery lies at the heart of this play. Each character experiences the competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live morally, act peacefully, follow the true and the good or the instinct to satisfy one's immediate desires, act violently and enforce one's will. Philoctetes, "the wild man", cut off from civilisation on Lemnos proves, paradoxically, to be, arguably, the most civilised: he is the recipient of the theophany, who alone sees the god and to whom the god's words are addressed. He is also the c...

• Word Count: 2877
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Religious Symbolism in Alberto Moravia and Vittorio De Sica's Representations of Two Women. In 1957, Alberto Moravia wrote Two Women, a novel that demonstrates the fallacy of the bourgeoisie's worship of money and its resultant cycle of spiritual death and resurrection through suffering. In 1960, Vittorio De Sica adapted Moravia's novel and directed Two Women, a film that filters reality through religious symbolism. De Sica created a version of neo-realism, linking the material poverty of war stricken Italy with the spiritual loneliness of its inhabitants. Both Moravia&#...

• Word Count: 2867
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

King Lear is one of the greatest tragedy play written by William Shakespeare, which portrays the intense suffering from the blindness through Lear king of Britain and the earl of Gloucester. According to Dictionaries, blindness is defined as "unable to see and lacking of sight, but blindness that Shakespeare demonstrate is not only a physical inability but also a mental flaw that both characters present in the play. Shakespeare use parallel structure of the main plot and subplot that mirror each other like throughout the play. Begin with both two men have good children and bad children...

• Word Count: 3449
• Approx Pages: 14
• Grade Level: High School