Ecclesiastes is a preaching of the gospel. Life is short, painful, and hard. You make mistakes you can never fix. The longer you live the more sorrow you endure. Even if you work hard your entire life to be a “good” person, you still die like the foolish and cruel. It seems pointless. This tone of hopelessness and frustration plays throughout the book leading to Solomon’s conclusion. There is nothing better in life than to work hard and enjoy what God has given you. Treasure your life, you only have one. God ordained everything so there is time for everything, we need not worry. We are alive on this earth to do our job. So fight the good fight, work through your pain. Fear God and obey His commandments.
The Author to Her Book, by Emily Bradstreet is a poem in which Bradstreet is laments about the publishing of her writings without her permission. The purpose of the piece is for Bradstreet to express the love, pride and remorse she feels toward her new book and is displayed elegantly through the metaphor of a mother and child. Lines eleven and twelve contribute to the poem’s purpose; they show that Bradstreet is unsatisfied with her work, and desires to fix it. Unfortunately, the book has already been published, and it is too late for her “child” to attain perfection in its mother’s eyes.
In what is noted as one of Plato first accounts, we become acquainted with a very intriguing man known as Socrates; a man, whose ambition to seek knowledge, inevitably leaves a significant impact on humanity. Most of all, it is methodologies of attaining this knowledge that makes him so mesmerizing. This methodology is referred to as Socratic irony, in literature. In any case, I will introduce the argument that Plato's Euthyphro is extremely indicative of this type of methodology, for the reason being that: Socrates's portrays a sense of intellectual humility.
In “Oedipus the King,” an infant’s fate is determined that he will kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this heartache his parents order a servant to kill the infant. The servant takes pity on the infant and gives him to a fellow shepherd, and the shepherd gives him to a king and queen to raise as their own. The young prince learns of the prophecy and flees from his interim parents because he is afraid that he is going to succeed. The young prince eventually accomplishes his prophecy without even knowing he is doing it. He murders his father and marries his mother unknowingly. While it may seem to some that Oedipus was destined to carry out his fate, it is also true that Oedipus’ personality led him to his fate.
In “The Oresteia” trilogy, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus advocates the importance of the male role in society over that of the female. The entire trilogy can be seen as a subtle proclamation of the superiority of men over women. Yet, the women create the real interest in the plays. Their characters are the impetus that makes everything occur.
In a democracy, people choose representatives to lead and govern them. However, these representatives might take unpopular steps. In such instances the people may show their disapproval of a policy and vent their grievances through acts of civil disobedience. Henry Thoreau said, “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” It is both the right and responsibility of a person to fight an unjust law, and civil disobedience allows one to convey his thoughts and ideas in a passive, nonviolent way. In Sophocles’ Antigone, written in 442 B.C., we find one of the earliest examples of civil disobedience. The play emphasizes the right of the individual to reject his government’s infringement on his freedom to perform a personal obligation and highlights the struggle that one faces in doing so. More importantly, it shows how such actions help further the cause of democracy. It strengthens the belief that each individual’s opinion is important in a democracy and makes a difference. Eventually, we see Creon realize his mistake – his stubbornness – which teaches him that he should have room for more than one opinion. Also, women at that time were not considered equal citizens, but Antigone’s actions left people to rethink the extent of the equality in Athenian democracy.
In Sophocles’ play, Antigone, the main character uses rhetoric to effectively persuade her audiences to sympathize with her. In the play, Antigone’s brother, Polyneices, dies a traitor to the Theban people. The king, Creon, decrees that no one is to bury the traitor despite the necessity of burial for proper passing into the afterlife. Believing that Creon’s decree is unjust, Antigone buries her brother. When she is brought to the king, Antigone uses this speech in defense of her actions. In the speech, she uses allusion, diction, and particular sentence structure to increase the effectiveness of her argument.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury tales a collection of short tales in the 14th century. The compilation of stories are told by different characters within the narrative as part of a game proposed by the host. Each individual must tell two stories on their journey and two stories on their way back. Each story tells some aspects of English life during the time and often added satire like qualities to the English life. In particular Chaucer often tells stories with elements of the relationship between man and women. He gives a clear representation of what the expected behaviors at the time are for men and women. Men are the more dominant, they control more of the relationship and provide for their wives, and the women are submissive and are supposed to do as they are told. However these elements are presented in Chaucer’s work he often takes a role reversal in his writings. Chaucer makes most of his female characters stronger and causes the roles to be reversed between man and women. The wife of bath tale is an excellent representation on how Chaucer demonstrates the role reversal between man and women.
With the poem, Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou, she describes the basics. feelings and descriptions of a person that does not need loathing or people to try and lift her up. She shows us that she and all those oppressed in general are strong. We are shown some of the thoughts and feelings people have displayed. against her, but the reality is she won't let them get her down.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play full of many instances of Shakespearian Passion. These instances consist of passion for revenge, love, and magic through different characters throughout the play.
This story teaches that death is an unavoidable and inevitable circumstance of mortal life, which is the most significant precept Gilgamesh learns. Gilgamesh is resentful that only the gods can exist eternally. Gilgamesh is frightened by the idea of his own destiny. Mesopotamian divinity proposes a perception of an afterlife; the deceased spend their period being dead in a netherworld. Death is inevitably entwined within the structure of creation. Life is also entwined, although mortals die, humanity maintains to live. The message that Gilgamesh returns with from his adventure is not primarily about death, but about life. Fragment of a tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh is figure C down
The first half of this epic enables the reader to observe Gilgamesh struggling to make a name for himself and to reach immortality. In the final half Gilgamesh attempts to drive his immortality through questioning others. Gilgamesh first attempts to find his purpose on his own, but failing in that effort turns to others for it. In clear contrast the first and second halves of this epic convey the universal truth that happiness, meaning and purpose to ones life are found internally, not externally. But we must not forget that the story of Gilgamesh is a common one. How often does man look externally for happiness when it is best found within? Meaning in life more often comes from what one has done with that life, and how that life has affected the lives of those about us. The journey of discovering oneself and one"'"s values is not in achieving immortality, but is in life well lived.
As a result, the topic of ‘risk management’ can be related to a biblical passage in The Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 11:5-6. According to Solomon, “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good” (2009, p. 975). Thus, as stated previously, risk consists of uncertainty and risk management is the process of mitigating such risk in order to prevent counterproductive consequences. The Lord is the all-knowing entity throughout the universe, and
The book of Proverbs expresses the conclusion of the will of man. Together, the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes give us the understanding of the soul of man. In Psalms you have the emotional nature, which is one part of the soul function. Ecclesiastes deals with the function of the mind, the search of man reason throughout the earth, analyzing, evaluating, weighing and concluding. But in the book of Proverbs we have the appeal to the will of man and the conclusion of the will. Therefore, this book is all about the things man should decide, the choices of life. This is beautifully set before us in the introduction to the book.
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes explains the story of two sons of Zeus, Apollo and Hermes become cordial through the decepticon on Hermes part. Throughout the Hymn, Hermes is described as a trickster that bends the rules to succeed in the eyes of Zeus but also remaining admirable in the eyes of people. In the contemporary work of art, the main character of the movie Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale Jr. is similar to Hermes. Frank lives a life a deception in which he pretends to be multiple different people in which he fools the whole world. They resemble each other through their physical characteristics, the way deceive the world, and the way they antagonize others.
“Success Is Counted Sweetest”, by Emily Dickinson, is a poem that deals with the understanding of success and who is more aware of success. The poem deals with themes of desire and success. It begins by explaining how success is held to a higher standard and desired more by the people who don't succeed regularly as opposed to those that succeed constantly. People who rarely, if ever, succeed, regard it as a miraculous experience and want it more since they rarely get to enjoy it. The poem then continues the theme of success and the desire by explaining how others who have experienced success regularly would not be able to comprehend why those who do not experience success as much to hold it to a greater esteem. They have not experienced the