Writers Page 105

Born in Florence, Italy in 1469, Niccol Machiavelli was the first great political philosopher of the Renaissance. Once a administrative official and diplomat for the province of Florence, he was removed from office when the Medici household was restored to power in 1512. He retired to his state place where he, among other plants, penned…

Joseph Conrad’s books, The Secret Sharer and Heart of Darkness, both deal witheach of our “dark selves”. These books also have similarities which are overwhelming. In describing the true inner self of humans, Conrad used many symbols which havebecome apparent in many of his novels. Conrad uses the same or very similar objects inmany of…

Writers have always drawn inspiration from real events for their stories. Joyce Carol Oates is now being criticized as unethical for just that. The critics claim that it was not ethical for Oates to use the events that befell John Fiocco Jr. in her story “Landfill”, and also for including many similarities between Fiocco and…

Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is a horror novel. The novel has three editions and the first edition was published in 1818 in London. Shelley wrote the novel at the age of 19. The novel was based on an inanimate creature that was made to bring to life by a scientist named…

Shakespeare’s play Hamlet depicts the protagonist undergoing a significant transformation from good to evil. This change is triggered by the intense anguish and rage he experiences following his father’s death, his mother’s hasty remarriage, and the loss of his beloved Ophelia. These tragedies instill within Hamlet a deep-seated resentment and an inability to forgive, which…

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were… No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it – this suspicion of…

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov are both insightful and unique commentaries on human nature. Though the works are from entirely different times and cultures, both function to investigate and express the authors’ cynicism of social convention. The Metamorphosis gives a vivid account of the repression suffered…

Many characters go through transformations In The Scarlet Letter, and one of those characters is Reverend Arthur Timescale. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne writes of a puritan society, and it is the laws of that society, both written and unwritten, that Timescale breaks and which causes the changes to occur. He commits the sin of adultery, and…

After reading the Shakespeare plays we were assigned this semester, one thing in particular caught my interest. It was the turnabout in the tetralogy; the turn from foolishness to wisdom and being changed by the choices made. The choices made become catalysts. The protagonist is broken down into base components and re-forged into a new…

“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller is about a man named Willy who has wife and children. He came to America chasing the “American Dream” in search of fortune, respect and happiness. He had high dreams for his children as well but like with most parents he was disappointed by the truth. His…