In "The Meaning of a Word" and "Being a Chink", Gloria Naylor and Christine Leong examine words of hatred that are meant to scorn, hurt and disgrace people. But these same words could also be used without harmful intentions and in a fashion of endearment amongst the people those words were created for. They each had a different word to discriminate their different culture and ethnicity. These writers discuss the words "nigger" and "chink", which are words in our language mostly ignorant people use
Two Words The short story “Two Words” by Isabel Allende is a tale about a girl who went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario. She had extreme desire to be the best at selling words, since the first time she saw words in the sports section of the newspaper. Belisa learned to read from a priest for 20 pesos and read the dictionary until she knew it cold. She went from the top of blistering cold mountains to scorching hot coasts selling her words in markets and fairs. Belisa’s words became popular
rising together in "calm swells." When I think of swells, calm is not necessarily the word that comes to mind. He also states that the angels are "flying in place...moving/ And staying like white water." Flying implies movement, so "flying in place" is not a phrase that is commonly heard. Later in the poem he uses the term bitter love, and while I understand that this concept does in fact exist, it is still two words which are somewhat contradictory. In the last stanza he mentions the "heaviest nuns"
its attitude toward those who disapprove, urgent in its perception of time, charming and innocent in its request for kisses. Composed “at an early stage in Catullus’ love affair with Lesbia” (Goold 237), poem 5 opens with the words vivamus and amemus. These two words, meaning “let us live” and “let us love,” characterize Catullus in a way that few other poems do so well, revealing who he is when lets down the guard of cynicism. Indeed, poem 5 seems to be one of the less cynical and more honest
History, Theory, and Evolution of Magical Realism What comes to mind when one hears the word "magical"? He or she probably thinks of charms, spells, wizards, and disappearing doves. The term "Realism" may represent the everyday world-that with which we are already familiar. Could these two words ever be coupled together to represent one idea? Magical Realism represents the marriage of these two words. A name originally given to a new art form in the early twentieth century, Magical Realism evolved
Word-association in Oedipus The King Let us play a little game, shall we? We have all played this at one point in our lives; it's the word-association game. Think red- you may think apple. Now think green- you may once again think apple. Wait a minute, how can that be? How can two words that are unrelated have the same picture in the mind of an individual? This is the basic idea of perception. Now let us apply this basic concept to the text of Oedipus Tyrannus. The main character, Oedipus, has
Compare and Contrast Kami and Shen, the Japanese and Chinese Words for God The words kami in Japanese and shen in Chinese both are translated into English as the word god. Although they both refer to somewhat similar supernatural elements, they are by no means identical to each other. Chinese shen is an abstract term referring to spirits and relating to abstract thoughts such as the heavens and the afterlife. In contrast, kami are very often related directly to a person or actual object and
A little boy lies on his deathbed because his parents refuse to take him to a medical doctor. Two men were fired and were refused unemployment benefits for smoking peyote, an illegal narcotic. One man looks to change part of a national recitation because two words of it offend him. A woman and her husband are trying to prosecute a man for a letter he sent to members of their church. These four situations may sound strange and unrelated, but all of them fall under the issue of religious freedom and
particular words that Shelley chose to describe a lost, grand and ruined kingdom are all words of powerful connotation. Every adjective, every noun, builds an image of something big and strong, something enormous and indestructible. An emphasis on physical appearance is blatant. Surfacing first, above the duality and symbolism in the poem, is the immediate call to attention of the physical size and orientation of the statue. This is most notably presented in lines 2 through 4. Although only two words
baptized her cheeks. Frozen like statues in a stone garden my mom, my brother and I were told the two words that shook the foundation of everything I knew to be good and strong: "He pa... ... middle of paper ... ... brought. My professor of life, he taught me the ins and outs of love and family. "Family is all you got, Shaun; without that you have nothing. Always remember that." Reciting those words in my consciousness filled me with an assurance that my grandfather in fact was not gone, just in
pronounce the nonsense words in the poem, the sounds of the words come out as gibberish. The sounds are the important element of the poem. Often, people like to hear poets read in languages they cannot understand. A woman leaving a reading by the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz said she was glad he'd read some of his work in Polish because the language sounded exciting, like horse hooves over cobblestones. Sometimes a poem can mean little or nothing, yet the stimulus of words alone wins our attention
cummings' poem since feeling is first e. e. cummings' "since feeling is first" is about feeling (802). This is immediately evident from the title and first line, which emphasize the word "feeling" in several different ways. The stresses on "feel-" and "first," as well as the alliteration between those two words, make explicit their connection and importance, and the repetition of the same line in both title and first line serves to enhance the effect. The meaning of the first line is clear
about suffering her tongue, and Desdemona's rejoinder that "she has no speech", Iago has to admit that "she puts her tongue a little in her heart and chides with thinking". In the scene of light hearted banter that follows Emilia manages to utter two words. She really only finds her voice when fired by indignation as when Iago confirms that Desdemona has been called a whore, and even then much of her utterances or short phrases. Even when she really gets going, lambasting Othello after discovering
such change, it's hard to know who we really are. Adolescence is the time when we find out who we truly are, but not until we know who we aren't. Adolescents use common words, actions, and rivalries to try to define their unique personalities, goals, and ideas. They label themselves in different ways, trying to find a single word that defines them entirely. Through this ongoing change of identity, adolescents fully realize who they are by trying on different identities until they find the one that
the head and commanded to sit in the corner for not knowing the difference between the two words “persimmon” and “precision.” Immediately the speaker’s attitude is that of confusion. The next stanza, however, proves that he does in fact know the difference between the two words. The speaker shows his understanding of “precision” in choosing the diction to describe how to choose and eat a persimmon. The words “soft,” “sweet,” “sniff,” “suck,” and “swallow” all alert one’s senses. The alliteration
The Role of Humor in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle "I've narrowed comedy down to two words: clown and farts. Because first it makes you laugh, and then it makes you think." Dave Attell's joke comes remarkably close to describing exactly what it is that Kurt Vonnegut is able to do with his writing. First, he makes his readers laugh, and then he forces them to think. By employing such humorous devices as irony and satire, Vonnegut is able to bring humor to a less-than-humorous
created a flawed angel from the beginning (this is also supported by the fact that Sin comes from Satan's head while he is still in Heaven). Satan first acknowledges that his pride and ambition caused his fall (4.40). After his first mention of the two weaknesses, he says that God created "what I was / in that bright eminence . . ." (4.43); God not only created him, he gave him his pride and ambition. This begins to establish that God wanted him to fall. Satan further laments what has happened: "O
computer technology is rapidly increasing everyday, the issue is becoming relevant to society as a whole. We are all affected by its presence and therefore should become more aware of what lurks in the cyberworld. In the late twentieth century, two words cybernetics and punk were merged together to form a term that would label the art of combining the science of communication, with an anti-social or rebellious attitude. An ideology was established that included an infatuation with high-tech tools
Depression in America's Teens Teenage Depression. Everywhere you look these two words appear together as one, in newspapers and magazines, as well as in scholarly reports. Teenage depression is one of today's "hot topics" this among other teenage mental health problems, has been brought to the forefront of public consciousness in recent years after several incidents involving school shootings (CQ 595). The environment that teens grow up in today is less supportive and more demanding than
What is the definition of art, of life? The phrase suggests that art reinforces cultural and social beliefs by using the verb imitate. If art imitates life, then life imitates art. The verb is reflexive and positioned in the middle of the two words it is reflecting. It is true then, the language speaks for itself, and this political statement can be used as a tool to find the underlying cultural belief within a text. How is this theory that art imitates life, and life imitates art, applicable