Arachne Summary In the myth,”Arachne” as retold by Olivia Coolidge, a young girl challenges a goddess and faces the consequences. Arachne is a very good spinner and weaver in Ancient Greece. The myth starts when the young Arachne becomes especially famous with her amazing weaving and spinning. But when Arachne becomes famous she becomes very rude and develops a bad attitude of hubris. She thinks that she is as good as all gods and goddesses. The daughter of Zeus, Athena listens to what Arachne is saying. Athena wants to disguise herself as a crone to warn Arachne about her hubris. Arachne does not listen to the wiseness of the crone and responds very rudely. Then Arachne proceeds to insult Athena. Athena reveals herself as a goddess and
gets challenged by the shocked Arachne to a competition. Athena, being a goddess is better than Arachne. Arachne peeks at Athena's tapestry to get an idea. At the end of the competition Athena sees Arachne's tapestry. Athena is ferocious and back hands Arachne and tears her tapestry. Arachne feels very humiliated at threatens to hang herself. Athena tries to rebuke Arachne by turning her into a spider in which all spiders descend from.
In the Time of the Butterflies is a historical fiction novel by Julia Alvarez based on events that occurred during the rule of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. This book shows the hardships the Mirabal Sisters had to go through while being part of an underground effort to overthrow the dictatorship of Trujillo. It also shows that ultimately, it was their courage that brought upon their own death. Alvarez wants us to understand anyone and everyone has the potential to be courageous.
Sentence #1: Curzon makes his first appearance as a real risk taker when he comes forward when Grandfather calls him and he replies, “‘I say I’m an American.’ Curzon said, ‘An American Soldier” (pg. 164).
The poem “Cozy Apologia” by Rita Dove, explores the idea of love, and modern routine, while alluding to the disastrous hurricane Floyd of 1999. This poem was written for her husband, Fred, as mentioned after the title of the poem. In the first stanza of this poem, Rita Dove uses imagery to display her immense love for her husband. Dove writes, “This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue/ My pen exudes” (Dove 2-3). The imagery in these two lines represent items and things that remind Dove of her husband. She says everything makes her think of him, and in these two lines we can see that even just a lamp, or the ink from her pen bring her thoughts of her husband. Her true love for Fred is shown through this. The second stanza, Rita Dove starts to explain how a hurricane brought back memories of her teenage relationships.
Ann Rinaldi has written many books for young teenagers, she is an Award winning author who writes stories of American history and makes them become real to the readers. She has written many other books such as A Break with Charity, A Ride into Morning, and Cast two Shadows, etc. She was born in New York City on August 27, 1934. In 1979, at the age of 45, she finished her first book.
“The Cold Embrace” by Mary E. Braddon is a wonderfully tragic short story of a young man’s denial and guilt till the end of his life. Braddon accomplishes this by using Omniscient narration to not only showing us his guilt, denial, and struggle; but also able to present his spiral into a depression filled with delusions and guilt that eventually lead him to lose his mind and perish from outside a first person perspective.
Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, who was a major figure of ancient Greek myth.
Helena Maria Veramontes writes her short story “The Moths” from the first person point of view, placing her fourteen year old protagonist female character as a guide through the process of spiritual re-birth. The girl begins the story with a description of the debt she owes her Abuelita—the only adult who has treated her with kindness and respect. She describes her Apa (Father) and Ama (Mother), along with two sisters as if they live in the same household, yet are born from two different worlds. Her father is abusive, her mother chooses to stay in the background and her sisters evoke a kind of femininity that she does not possess. The girl is angry at her masculine differences and strikes out at her sisters physically. Apa tries to make his daughter conform to his strict religious beliefs, which she refuses to do and her defiance evokes abuse. The girl’s Abuelita is dying and she immerses herself in caring for her, partly to repay a debt and partly out of the deep love she has for her. As her grandmother lay dying, she begins the process of letting go. The moth helps to portray a sense of spirituality, re-birth and becomes, finally, an incarnation of the grandmother. The theme of the story is spiritual growth is born from human suffering.
Athena is a very intricate and complex character who has a vital role in the epic poem. She is the Goddess of war and battle, a very interesting role for a female to possess. Because she is the Goddess of war, she has...
"Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it" (Baldwin). All experiences spring out of innocence. Sarah Orne Jewett expresses this through the story “The White Heron.” She uses the story to show how easily innocence can be influenced. "For Jewett, it seems to have been a personal 'myth' that expressed her own experience and the experience of other women in the nineteenth century who had similar gifts, aspirations, and choices" (Griffith). Her personal experiences include her living in Maine with her dad and two sisters. She had a medical degree but turned to writing because of poor health. She represented many women during the hard times of the 19th century.
Athena was the Greek Goddess of many ideas, but she was famous mostly for her superior wisdom, her cunning skills in times of war, and her implausible talent for household tasks, such as weaving and pottery. She was celebrated more than any other God in ancient mythology, was the supposed inventor of countless innovations, and her figure gave reason for Greek woman to gain rights long before others of their time. The goddess of war, the guardian of Athens, and the defender of Heroes; Athena’s impact on the lives of Ancient Greeks is outstanding.
“Remember we are women, we’re not born to contend with men” (Sophocles, 18). The popular literary works, Antigone and A Doll’s House, written by Sophocles and Ibsen, are two famous tragedies that have been performed and read throughout the decades. Although countless audiences have been entertained by these well written plays, few would care to guess that many lessons and several unfortunate truths can be found with a less than tedious inspection of the characters and the reactions they give to their circumstances. The two main characters in these stories, Antigone and Nora, face adversities and problems that are amplified by their society’s views on the rights and abilities of women. The two main male characters in these plays, Creon and Helmer, cause the greater part of the struggle that the female protagonists face. The difficulties that Helmer and Creon create during the plot of these stories are the cause of three major characteristics of what one would consider typical to a headstrong man in a leadership position. The three features of Creon and Helmer that lead to the eventual downfall of Antigone and Nora, are pride, arrogance, and ignorance.
Many characters are disguised throughout the course of the Odyssey. By changing their appearance, these characters enable themselves to alter the progression of events in the story. One of these characters was Athena. When Odysseus finally returns to Ithica, Athena is there, disguised as a shepherd boy. She is described as “Looking for all the world a young shepherd boy…” Because Odysseus
As a preface for the tragedy, the crime committed by Tantalus should be staged first. The killing of Pelops by Tantalus, his father, serving him to the gods will be the beginning of Niobe’s tragedy. After these events, Niobe becomes unusually fixated with being a mother. After having 12 children, seven daughters and 7 sons, she swears to the gods that she’ll never hurt her children as her father attempted with his own; and that she wants to dedicate her life to become the best mother to exist ever. Niobe is having a recurrent dream with a spider, which is in fact weaving a net around her; she goes to the Oracle to find out the significance of the dream. As a response, the Oracle tells her that the spider represents her obsession with her children, whom are not part of the gods’ realm and hence should be subjects of adoration. The spider really represents Arachnae and her fate after challenging Athena. Niobe doesn’t understand the Oracle and feels that even the gods are jealous of her fortune. During a celebration in Leto’s honor, she claimed that she deserved more worship than Leto as she was the daughter of a god, a queen as had seven times more offspring than Leto. She even dismissed the celebration; the worshippers leave.
Alison Stine, author for The Atlantic, investigates “Labyrinth” in her essay (Labyrinth and the Dark Heart of Childhood) and how the theme, which seems to be geared towards adults, actually has turned to favor viewers of a younger age as time has went on. Not only has this genre of stories been read to children, but they also talk about kids and the bad things that can happen to them. Labyrinth is portrayed as a world of men, where almost all characters accept for the Junk Lady are male. In a gist the story is about a girl named Sarah, and her baby brother who is kidnapped by Jareth, a goblin. Sarah has to rescue her brother, or he’ll be turned into a goblin like Jareth. Jareth promises a magical world, but it isn’t as it seems, then Sarah
In this piece, Tuck presents many ideas about the way literary works are written in order to convey her message: that readers must utilize abstract thought in order to effectively grasp various elements of fiction. Tuck establishes the concept of codependency between the reader and the author early on in the piece by quoting the 20th century philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, but it is her declaration that, “fiction is a creative act, an act of the author’s imagination and likewise, ideally, it should be read with the same imagination”, which solidifies her stance that literature is not meant to be read in the same monotonous and prescribed way we read habitually, but rather it is our responsibility