In order to get to know a particular country and its traditions, it is generally assumed that you should have to access its culture. Of course, it is always better to experience it firsthand and subsequently travel there. One of the best ways to learn about a land’s culture is ...Read More
In order to get to know a particular country and its traditions, it is generally assumed that you should have to access its culture. Of course, it is always better to experience it firsthand and subsequently travel there. One of the best ways to learn about a land’s culture is to study its language and history. If you are assigned to write an essay, it is a good idea to research some samples of relevant papers online, read essays on relevant themes, and create a comprehensive outline. Make sure to build a definite structure by including the introduction and conclusion to your work.
Japan’s first capital city, Nara, was directly modeled after the Tang capital city, Chang’an. Out of the total Japanese population of about 5-6 million residents, Nara constituted for some 20,000 of them. Within that time period (710-784 C.E.), land was nationalized in the name of...
Viewed as a Naturalist novel, with its realistic prose, indifferent environment, and an aesthetic network built around motifs, the narrative of Ann Petry’s The Street reads like a mid-century black version of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie: a woman (Carrie is single; Lutie Johnson is saddled...
Ostensibly, the Ann Petry’s novel The Street describes the work’s windy urban setting and introduces the protagonist Lutie Johnson and her desire to find an apartment that suits her needs. On a deeper level, this novel portrays the ever-present and all-encompassing challenges of life in...
In The Sound of Waves, Yukio Mishima conveys the loss of traditional values in Japan due to Westernization in after the Second World War. Through powerful symbols and juxtaposition, Mishima effectively expresses his anger towards the devastating effects of the war, such as a corrupted...
The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama is a book about a young man, Stephen, who is faced with tuberculosis changing the course of his life by taking him to a small peaceful village, Tarumi. When he first arrives at Tarumi, he meets Matsu, Sachi, and...
As The Red Scare infiltrated American culture and consciousness in the 1940’s and 50’s, few prominent players within the Hollywood film industry dared to challenge the accusations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC); the fear of losing credibility and being blacklisted even ruffled...
Cultural divides are difficult to overcome in storytelling, because readers must both re-orient their largest cultural assumptions and understand the ideas of specific, unique characters. However, in The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan effectively makes much of Chinese culture comprehensible to American readers. In describing...
The quote ‘Silence is Golden’ is extremely subjective in its interpretation and heavily dependent on the context of the situation it is applied to. Is it always right to keep silent, without giving voice to ones innermost thoughts and feelings? Or is it always the...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the whirlwind lives of the 1920s New York upper class. In the novel, Fitzgerald criticizes the unattainability of the American Dream as well as the shallow nature of the upper class. From this novel, several movie adaptations...
In order to rationalize the south’s peculiar institution of slavery, the southern plantation novel surfaced. It idealized the plantation lifestyle by creating and romanticizing characters that otherwise would be viewed upon as evil by blacks—the oppressed. Life was portrayed as easy and carefree by the...
The Conjure Woman by Charles Chestnutt is a frame narrative, retelling a story within a story and incorporating valuable information about the traditional African fetishism practiced by the slaves against their slave masters. Fetishism or Voodoun provides a source of empowerment and gives the slaves,...
A fetish object assumes distinct, almost superstitious power and is often associated with sexual gratification, desire, and worship. As explained in “Sexualization in the Media,” “Fetishization marks a cultural, psychological, and social technique of fetishizing things by making them appear larger than life, animate, or...
George Bernard Shaw exemplifies values of the “new woman” and “superhero” through the character of Vivie Warren, in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, in order to promote individualism and critical thinking amongst females. Even the male characters like Sir George Crofts and Frank Gardener are...
Introduction In Major Barbara (1907), George Bernard Shaw questions the prevailing ethical assumptions and attitudes of Western culture on social engineering and poverty. Like Nietzsche, he calls for the revaluation of values, as the meaning of concepts like “good,” “evil,” and “truth,” with no eternal,...
The Mahabharata is one of the two great Indian epics, the other being the Ramayana. Composed in Sanskrit, it embodies the quintessential definition of the word epic with length of roughly 90,000 verses and a clearly defined hero upon whom his tribe depends. The hero...
Most novelists do not kill off half of the characters in their book to prove a point, but this one does. The tragic, bloody deaths in the novel only enforce the fact that the West was wild and could not be conquered by any one...
The “Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee,” revolved around a very prominent district magistrate named Judge Dee Goong An, a man famous for his ability to solve mysterious cases. Judge Dee digs deep to solve each case and was successful because he combined the three philosophies...
Edward Abbey’s second novel, The Brave Cowboy, is intensely critical of modern life. The book celebrates wide-open spaces and freedom through consistent comparison to an adjacent reality: the hustle and bustle of the city. As the novel continues, we experience the challenges and constraints that...
One of the most distinctive and immediately impressive things about Ernest Gaines’ novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is the way the author opens his story with an introduction of a collective of speakers, his cast of character/narrators, so to speak. Gaines weaves his...