Venice – a lagoon city. There is hardly any city characterised by such opposing attributes as Venice. Many may consider Venice to be the city of love and a senic gem on the water, novels and films usually paint a different picture. The city frequently appears morbid, mysterious and dark. During winter and autumn fog occupies the whole city. Venice is used by many authors as a backdrop to create an environment of suspense and death. Venice is an allegory of death, decay and rot. The city itself represents the literary synonym of the deterioration of the architectural wonder.
Venice represents the sensuous south that stands in stark contrast to Aschenbach’s serious native Germany; furthermore the setting of Venice is symbolic in this novella. The physical journey of Aschenbach from culture to another and from one climate to the other is in parallel with his internal descent from cool control to fiery passion. Venice in particular is symbolic for Aschenbach himself as Venice is famous for its exceptional and its bold constructions. Built in the middle of a lagoon, and preserved by pure determination over the forces of Mother Nature. Much like Venice, Aschenbach believes that art can conquer physical needs and natural impulses, and he has demonstrated this through his numerous art forms. Though Venice is magnificent, it cannot be denied that it is a city that is gradually sinking, and decaying from within. This, once again can be said about Aschenbach’s morals.
The use of Venice as the setting in Mann’s work does not appear to be a co-incidence. Mann’s intention may have been to reinforce the atmosphere of atrophy and deterioration in Gustave Aschenbach’s life through the underlying character of the city. The Venice used in this nov...
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...o be ignored; his travels ultimately results in hopeless infatuation, mental torture and death.
I feel that Thomas Mann very intricately incorporates the setting of Venice to bring out the theme of death and it is almost as if Venice is a whirlpool in which Aschenbach gets sucked into and eventually results first in the death of his art and then to his own death. He gives Venice a convincing miasma of a city in decline, rotting away yet beguiling its visitors and admirers, much like Aschenbach and his art. He had lost his art and had been tempted by memories of a previous visit to revive it in Venice. Yet truth and reality cannot be hidden forever and in Venice, Aschenbach finally encounters the reality of the city, his own mortality and the mortality of his art.
Works Cited
Page 167 in the Novella – Death In Venice
Page 190 in the Novella – Death In Venice
Plan: Compares and contrasts America and Venice in each body paragraph to show how similar the two places are. Uses specific examples and places modern examples in a Venetian context to strengthen the connection. Shows that this comparison helps support the idea that America might be following the same path that Venice did.
This piece of art really impressed me. I can’t stress enough how realistic the painting is. One can see what was going on that day in Venice. Like is said that a photograph is worth a 1,000 words this painting is a photograph for its time. My interpretation of the art work was for Canal to show daily life in his city of Venice, Italy. Using the building in the foreground to the right still stands in Venice, Italy and is called the Palazzo Ducale. Giovanni Antonio Canal responded to his historical context by taking a “picture” for future generations to view, look at, admire and ponder upon
First of all, strong insight is perhaps given into the Viennese high society, who were "devoted to order, mannered charm and the grandiloquent facades on the `Ringstrasse' "³ by the reaction of the audiences alone to the play and its characters. Both shocked and embarrassed the Viennese bourgeoisie with its "uncompromising representation of the Viennese world"². Schnitzler's writing of the play and his inclusion of these common, gritty characters coupled with the reaction of this part of Viennese society represents the "test of wills... [sic] between well-behaved traditionalism and liberated modernism"³ emerging in Vienna at this time.
When looking at these pieces, it is best to use certain modes of analysis. Levine made art that showed how corrupt and unjust he felt that America was. Welcome Home is a work of satire, where he mocks the major general of the army that he himself served in during World War II. The contextual mode of analysis can be used when looking at this work, because it was made right after World War II and it is in context of the historical time period. The biographical analysis can also be used, since Levine was so strongly influenced by what he saw in the army, and he therefore displayed his strong views against what he saw as “undemocratic” leaders.1 When viewing City Landscape, it is best to use a contextual mode of analysis. This piece was made during the ...
Ruskin, John. “Grotesque Renaissance.” The Stones of Venice: The Fall. 1853. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979. 112-65. Rpt. in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1989. 21-2.
Another attribute to the story is the insight which the third person narrator offers to the reader regarding the sailors' state of mind. Particularly interesting, is the reference to the poem "Bingen on the Rhine". Until the correspondent must contemplate his own death on the cold and desolate seas, he does not realize the tragedy of a soldier of the legion dying in Algiers. Also, not only did he not realize the significance, he says that, "it was less to him than the breaking of a pencil's point"(385). Again, towards the end of the story, the narrator describes the bitterness the correspondent feels towards nature when he realizes that after all his efforts he may not live to appreciate his being. Observations such as these are not encountered frequently until confronted with death and the conveyance of these thoughts is insightful and meaningful to the reader.
The Drowned Cities by Paulo Bacigalupi is a very interesting and captivating novel about a area in what used to be the US that is now plagued with war. An important quote from the beginning of the story is on page 71. At this moment, the two main characters, Mouse and Mahila are sent to collect food, but they find something unexpected. “It wasn't one creature, but two. Monsters intertwined. A big king of an alligator, and another creature- a thing that mahila hadn’t seen since the cease-fire died and the last of the peacekeepers cleared out, all of them running for the docks as the Drowned Cities returned to war. A half-man.” This is an important quote primarily because it is the first time the narratives from Tool’s perspective and the narrative from Mahila’s perspective meet. This is the end of the exposition and the beginning of the rising action. Before now, nothing had really happened except for introducing us to the characters and a quick little scene for all 3 of them. This is the first time that something actually happens that changes their lives (since we have know them.) This would be like when Harry Potter finds out that he is a wizard, or when Katniss Everdeen gets selected for the Hunger Games. This has a similar effect on the rest of the book like those two events impacted their respective books. Tool becomes a main character and follows Mahila around for the majority of the rest of the book, and he saves her life on countless occasions. If Mahila had found tool in a different way, by perhaps watching him from afar, their relationship would had ended quite differently. From the way Tool respects Mahila on in the book, we can tell that he has a lot of respect and adoration to her for saving his life after she found hi...
“You live and you suffer” — a translated quote from Antonio (from the film The Bicycle Thief), is a brief statement that summarizes the feelings of those who lived in the post world war II “civilization”. This paper will preview Italian Neorealism, and the way it’s elements are incorporated into the movie “The Bicycle Thief” to reveal the ideal Italian setting, as it was after the second world war.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, is a story that deals with mortality on many different levels. There is the obvious physical death by cholera, and the cyclical death in nature: in the beginning it is spring and in the end, autumn. We see a kind of death of the ego in Gustav Aschenbach's dreams. Venice itself is a personification of death, and death is seen as the leitmotif in musical terms. It is also reflected in the idea of the traveler coming to the end of a long fatiguing journey.
Upon an initial examination of William Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, a reader is provided with superficial details regarding the moral dilemmas embedded in the text. Further analysis allows a reader to recognize the multi-faceted issues each character faces as an individual in response to his or her surroundings and/or situations. Nevertheless, the subtle yet vital motif of music is ingrained in the play in order to offer a unique approach to understanding the plot and its relationship with the characters. Whether the appearance of music be an actual song or an allusion to music in a mythological or social context, the world of Venice and Belmont that Shakespeare was writing about was teeming with music. The acceptance or denunciation
In Mann's own life, the novel is greatly emblematic in that much of Aschenbach is autobiographical. Just like Aschenbach, Mann enjoyed status early in life; feeble health was a shared complication; and both exercised self-imposed order (Mann, too, conducted all his literary work during first light). The determination to sustain and survive existed in the spirit of both artists. Yet "Death in Venice" is by no certain means a narrowly autobiographical narrative. Nevertheless, much that is the artist Aschenbach is part of the artist Mann, and thus can be interpreted as a faint symbol of Mann. Perhaps Aschenbach is an extreme example of the imperfections Mann combated during his own lifetime; if this indeed is the case, then Aschenbach is not only a token of the frailty of Mann, but an emblem of the fallacies plaguing us all.
The elements at play in the novel and film are quite remarkable for their traditionally universal appeal.3 The fates of two adolescents, one jailed the other unwilling jailer, intersect and are soon bound together in a struggle for survival at the hands of unsuspecting enemies. The filmmaker's aim was to adopt a child's unadulterated point of view in referential opposition to the surrounding adult world. Given the suspenseful plot and the exploration of the young protagonists' fears at coping with a habitat they must disavow, such an aim and narrative scheme were expected to gather much attention.4 The pre-teens Michele, the novel's principal hero, and Filippo the kidnapped child are ultimately elevated from a pit of dirt and fear, the antechamber of death, chiefly by their own heroic praxis. Yet the problematic lack of any meaningful degree of depth in the novel and film seems to lie precisely with its overly schematic construction, tailored to safely weather the otherwise unpredictable market.
Print. The. Weisberg, Richard H. "Antonio's Legalistic Cruelty: Interdisciplinarity And The Merchant Of Venice'." College Literature 25.1 (1998): 12.
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice contains many themes and elements that are considered timeless or universal. Samuel Taylor Coleridge defines a timeless or universal element as a “representation of men in all ages and all times.” A universal element is relevant to the life of every human being – it is universal. The first major theme that plays an important role in the play is the Christians’ prejudice against the Jews. A second important theme is the attitude toward money. Perhaps the most important theme of the play is the love between people. This love can occur between the same sex, or the opposite sex, platonic or romantic. In Merchant of Venice, the three timeless elements are prejudice, money, and love.
First, most people visualize the romantic vision when they hear the city “Venice”; that is true to the majority, but what is clear is the fact that mass tourism has occurred and it is pushing locals away. Logically, there would be an extremely high influx of money coming in because of mass tourism, but this is occurring on the expense of the departure of locals and the closure of their businesses.