In Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, the people in the places of leadership manipulate the ordinary citizens for their own gain. In the wartime environment, basic common sense is sacrificed for the benefit and personal gain of people in power. Major Cathcart continually chases his desperate...
George Meredith once reasoned, “The true test of comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.” The importance of encouraging thoughtful laughter in comedy lies in its ability to humorously provoke reflection of some greater idea or theme. In the dark comedy Catch-22, Joseph Heller...
During war, men and woman are swept by emotions that make it difficult to overlook their experiences in war. Jack Croasdile, a prisoner of war, drew under his captivity in 1941 by the Germans a picture titled Anticipating 1942. Featured in the picture, he and...
Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 not only in order to make a statement about the absurdity of war, but also to illustrate the absurdity of the human condition itself. Through its style, language, and characters, Catch-22 vividly depicts the absurdity of life using World War II...
In the midst of World War II, apprehensive soldier and antiheroic bombardier John Yossarian endures the perpetual torment of war with a tenacious desire to escape. Witnessing a number of horrendous events and ceaseless bureaucratic absurdity, Yossarian and his companions struggle against the surreal parameters...
Space is an important element in drama and is embodied by the stage itself as a representation of a space where action is presented. Plays differ significantly with regard to how they present space and how much information about space they offer the audience. The...
Humans inflict suffering on other humans and when events are forgotten, they are repeated. In the poem “Shooting Stars,” Carol Ann Duffy tells a shocking story of a female prisoner held by Nazis in a concentration camp around the time of the Holocaust. This is...
Duffy’s poems, Adultery and Disgrace, portray the theme of betrayal in a number of different ways. Both show that betrayal is destructive and deadly to relationships, however, different diverse, including sibilance and oxymorons, are used across the two poems to portray this. It is possible...
Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “In Mrs Tilscher’s Class” expresses the poetic speaker’s love for literature in the context of an intriguing personal narrative. Such a passion came from her primary school teacher as Duffy’s protagonist grows into adulthood — from a dramatised experience in her...
The poet Carol Anne Duffy presents two different attitudes towards religion in her poems “Prayer” and “Confession.” In “Prayer,” Duffy contemplates how, in the absence of organised religion, comfort can instead be found in ordinary, prosaic occurrences. These usually insignificant experiences instead become a source...
Most of us have a clear perception of what fairy tales are, or what we assume them to be. Over the past century, these tales have been burdened with so many clich’s, such as evil queens’ curses and damsels-in-distress, that we tend to identify them...
‘Mrs Midas’ is a revisionist version of the King Midas story told from the female perspective: traditionally, this ancient Greek myth was about a man who could turn everything to gold with a touch. This poem explores the sadness Mrs Midas feels in regards to...
Duffy presents gender in the poems Litany and Havisham through society’s views and expectations of women, and the effects it has on them show how being female was harmful to their wellbeing. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to...
Queen Herod is taken from Duffy’s The World’s Wife, a collection which inverts gender roles to celebrate female characters and display the injustice of men’s generalizations. This poem inverts the gender roles in the biblical story of the arrival of the Magi for Jesus’s birth...
In the poem ‘The Map Woman’, Carol Ann Duffy uses the extended metaphor of a map being printed on a woman’s body to explore ideas surrounding hometowns, childhood and nostalgia. This is immediately introduced in the first line where the reader learns that ‘A woman’s...
Carolyn Forch? frequently uses images of everyday life to draw the reader into her poetry. After establishing a connection with the familiar, she often reveals a darker side of humanity, integrating the two seamlessly. The transition between the two mirrors real life, where horrors coincide...
In both Before You Were Mine and Pluto, Duffy uses characters to present different viewpoints of the past and present. In Before You Were Mine, the past is seen to be tangible and physical as the character of the narrator’s mother is heavily described, whereas...
In both “Before You Were Mine” and “Brothers,” Carol Ann Duffy uses descriptions of memory as a means of re-living past family life. Throughout “Before You Were Mine,” Duffy writes about her mother, and imagines her life before motherhood. This poem is designed as Duffy’s...
Duffy explores ideas, thoughts and feelings about love in Valentine and Havisham by commenting on societal expectations of the outcomes and portraying love as unstable, dangerous and likely to cause hurt. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater...