.... It portrays the actions of a dysfunctional family and brings us on a reflective journey from when the fledgling family had started, devoted to one another with high hopes for the future, to what it is today, a family engulfed in turmoil. "Who would have thought Jamie would grow up to disgrace us…Its such a pity…You brought him up to be a boozer." (110) In this excerpt from Mary’s conversation with James regarding their son, it is obvious that their life had taken a 180-degree turn from when their offspring were mere children with promise. Characterization throughout the play helps us not only to understand the characters’ actions but also to see into the ....

.... conforming to contemporary attitudes of women, circumvented them by creating resolute female characters with a strong sense of self. The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, and has weathered well into our modern era with adaptations into popular television series such as Moonlighting. For all the praises it has garnered throughout the centuries, it is curious to note that many have considered it to be one of his most controversial in his treatment of women. The “taming” of Katherine has been contended as being excessively cruel by many writers and critics of the modern era. George Bernard Shaw himself pressed for its banning dur ....

.... themes that are clearly portrayed by the poet, Frost, in a story about travellers who’s journey has been bared by a hurdle, represented by a fallen tree. "The tree the tempest with a crash of wood, Thrown down in front of us is not to bar Our passage to our journeys end for good." The first three lines of this stanza already expose this existentialist message. When read literally we see a group of travellers whose passage has been impeded by a tree which has fallen across the path of these travellers, however when we read deeper into the passage we find Frost referring to "Our journey", a term commonly used in existential writing as a descripti ....

.... levels. The first is literal: he uses the journey and its ever-changing environment to put the Joads through many situations. The second level is general: the journey of the Joads can be seen as the same that forced farmers to become migrants from the dust bowl westward or of any mass migration since the beginning of time. The third level is the symbolic level: Steinbeck’s novel can be analyzed by the commonly used mathematics principle of fractals. This relates to The Grapes of Wrath by enlightening the reader of the fact that many things are identical at different levels. The first level, the literal, is simply to describe the events the Joads witness and expe ....

.... attention and to shock the world. For them shades of nail polish whether they were blue, black, or glitter have never been an issue of inappropriateness. Those who were less eccentric when it came to expressing their exterior image stayed with the “acceptable” red tones. Now that blue nail polish is the latest manicurean craze, both the tamest and the wildest adolescents together are donning the shade. When asked why they choose to wear this latest cerulean shade of nail polish, many give back similar responses such as: “It looks cool”; “If I wore red I would just feel like another ordinary person, but if people see your blue nail polish, they do a double ....

.... The “barbarians” only moved out to California to escape the treacherous conditions of Oklahoma and surrounding states suffering from the Dustbowl; the were attempting to create a better life for their families. The Californians wanted all the luxuries in life, they were living in a land free of Dustbowl worries. “…the Californians wanted many things, accumulation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious banking security…” The Californians had already established the conditions that the Okies were in search of. They were now attempting to attain extras, and feared that the arrival of the Okies would halt this endeavor. The Oki ....

.... an unimaginable amount of thinking and writing ground. The two poems "The Sick Rose" and "Fog" are very much alike in the sense that they both use the introduction of weather and animals to shape the poem and give the reader a sense of displeasure. In "The Sick Rose" the poet introduces a worm and storm and in "Fog" the poet uses the fog and a cat. The subject matter is perhaps similar in these two poems with the fact that both poems embody foul weather that prevent life from flowing in its normal path. To be more specific, a storm destroys plants, animals, and life in general, while a fog blocks out the sun and its energy to spring life. In "Fog" the poet, Carl Sandburg, ....

.... suggests the possibility that none of our ideas are caused by external objects and therefore, such objects may not exist. He also raises the idea of a demon that may deceive us and allow us to perceive what is not really there. Although he assures himself of his own existence by his modes of thought, he remains uncertain of the reality of an external world. He doubts whether there is anything of material substance that provokes thought within him rather than it being conceived in his mind completely independent of anything else. Descartes then considers those reasons that have inclined him to believe these material things exist in the past. “I know by experie ....