Essays on Voice

“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning is a Victorian poem that demonstrates the power of voice. This poem is narrated by the Duke of Ferrara who uses his voice to gain control of those around him. He even speaks for his deceased wife, only explaining...

Introduction The human voice is remarkable instrument as voice is work as the unique identification for each individual. A speaker can evoke a wide range of emotion and mental images by slight changes of vocal timbre, loudness, or subtle nuances in inflections. A person’s voice...

Child labor is a major problem in the modern world. People have tried to resolve it for generations, but despite their efforts, children are still being taken into slavery and servitude against the law. We can’t put an official end to it, but if everyone...

Above the vocal cords is a set of membranes and cartilage that make the shape of a funnel. When you bring that cartilage in and wrap the shape of the funnel to be even more horn-like, you get twang. The sound is less breathy, more...

It’s hard to find your voice in a society that suppresses you while convincing you that you’re free to say what you want. The Stonewall riots of 1969, led by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, both transgender women of colour, marked a turning point...

Abstract Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus is discussed here as a dialogic novel, with a focus on multiple consciousness and the multi-voiced perspective of the characters, and the interpretation of the characters and the novel based on the ensuing consciousnesses. Bakhtin’s idea of dialogism and...

Aura is a novel that explores the corporeality of aging, the eternal nature of desire and the struggle against mortality. What strikes the reader from the outset is the second person narrative in the present tense, a stylistic choice that is known to have a...

As two key figureheads in what is now deemed the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen served as voices for a previously voiceless population. Their poetry speaks of the enduring struggles of being an African American, and the effort required to merely survive in...

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer uses three different narrative voices to bring life to his story. The first and most prominent, as well as the one used to narrate the ongoings of the present day, is that of Oskar Schell. The other two,...

As the old adage goes, it is not what one says, but how they say it that matters most. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel’s protagonist, Janie Crawford, is immersed in a journey to establish her voice and, consequently, shape...

The use of one’s voice is one of the most powerful weapons humans possess. Yet, too often it is not used to its full potential, and rather, is overlooked, used to harm, or silenced altogether. Voices are shaped over many years and experiences, and they...

However much of its text might be preoccupied with ‘realist’ visuals, Nikolai Gogol’s ‘poem of Russia,’ Dead Souls is still rife with extra-narrative commentary and digressions, in keeping with Gogol’s established style and his stated intentions for the novel as a morally-edifying work. Within the...

A faithful civil rights activist, singer, musician, pianist, and author was born on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. She was a musical icon that inspired so many in a time of struggle. She made the world respect and see her as a strong...