First Contact by Murray Leinster presents a classic science fiction trope, an initial encounter with an alien species. While this take on the science classic did have an interesting variation from the norm, as the two species came to switch ships, it’s basic structure left much to be desired. I didn’t find the structure of the piece to be very beneficial to the story. The gaps in the narrative could’ve been used more cleverly. The disruptions to the flow of the story only seemed to add repetition and unnecessary complexity. However, had they been used to change the perspective of the piece and allowed the reader access into the mind’s of the aliens and their perspective on the chain of events, I think the story would have been far more compelling.
I was immediately hooked in the book. In the first paragraph, excluding the preface, Philbrick writes "There were 102 of them 104 if you counted the two dogs: a spaniel and a giant, slobbery mastiff." I love dogs! And two of my "granddogs" are "giant, slobbery mastiffs". I can understand writing a book of fiction and basing it on historical facts, but this is supposed to be non-fiction. How in the world does this man know that two dogs were on the Mayflower? Throughout the book I continued to ask myself the same question, "How does this man know this stuff, did he just make it up?" What I didn't realize, until I was quite a ways through the book, there are pages and pages of notes in the back of the book. These notes take you chapter by chapter and tell you where Philbrick found the information he writes about in that particular chapter. He lists previous books, manuscripts, journals and personal writings that have survived all of these years. Besides the notes, his bibliography is twenty-three pages long! The man did his research, and I am glad he did.
In Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” he attempts to portray the idea that perspective can be skewed by another’s story, personal experience, and other factors that lead people to have these expectations of a sight or study that lessen the experience. He demonstrates this when he makes mention of the tourists at the Grand Canyon, and the Biology student getting compared to the Falkland Islander. The facts he presents are true, but Percy does not go into detail about individual cases leading to a generalized essay that does not show that each individual account is different, and not all expectations are changed from other information given to people will taint the learning environment or the experience, and because of this the points that are not mentioned as well as Percy’s thoughts will be explained and expanded on.
The theory that I would use to analyze this story is Symbolic Interactionism. This theory focuses on how people interact with each other. According to the book, “For an interaction to occur, there must be at least two people who both act and respond to each other” (Strong, Cohen 47). Interactions can be made through either gestures, symbols, or words.
Zoe Webster, our protagonist, (in the stereotypical Young Adult trope) has parents that have just divorced which, in turn, forces her to move to a small, unknown town with her mother. As we all know from other novels which use this same formula, the main character ends up feeling depressed, bored, and extremely annoyed with whatever parent took her – in this case, her mother. Zoe has always been a lot closer to her high up there father, and she establishes that very quickly in the start of her narration. She believes that moving to a new, public high school will be the death of her chances of getting into the preppy private school of her dreams so she can then go to college – which, she believes, to be her one chance at escape. Yet another
David Howarth's writing style is unique. He allows the story to develop on its own. The story flows and the events do not seem forced. The story reads like a historical novel and is easy to follow. Howarth presents his information fully and does not leave anything for the reader to question. The reader does not become confused or lost because of the way that the author reveals his information in the book.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, space is a pretty messed up place. Visiting planets like Magrathea, the richest planet of all time; nearly being killed by the Vogons, and finding the answer to the universe are all some of the crazy adventures the group goes on. Adams really thinks outside of the box for this book, it is filled with chaos and lunacy, but also some romance. It is evident in this novel that the theme is love, which can be shown through the ridiculous adventures Arthur and Trillian journey on.
Terms like ‘beautifully executed’ ‘the clearest’ ‘readable’ and ‘entertaining’ have been used to describe this novel. This means that he has managed to do what most authors never managed to do in that time, and he did it well, and that the way it was written, as he told the story straight, was clear and readable. Both touch upon the fact that he is an icon of the ‘beat’ generation, and that his writing was entertaining.
“Hush” is a popular episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is due to the twenty-nine minutes of the characters not speaking because their voices are taken away. The characters see the value of communication to solve their issues. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is related to real life problems such as insecurities and weaknesses. Some of these insecurities and weaknesses involved are identitiesidentity, relationships, and responsibilitiesduties. Also, adolescence because it is a time of growing and realizations. They mature through their experiences and battles of everyday life. and fighting. This occurs in a place called Sunnydale ,where during this time of the episode which monsters lurk around and are hunted. In the episode “Hush”, the voices taken away from the residents of Sunnydale represent the theme that communication is needed for understanding and solving problems.
2001 was released in the tumultuous spring of 1968, at the same time that Americans were reeling from President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that he would not seek reelection and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It might seem odd that so many people would get so excited about a science fiction movie in the midst of urban race riots and campus protests against the Vietnam War, but to many, 2001 had far greater importance than its sci-fi trappings. Baffling early audiences with its non-traditional structure, theme, and presentation, the film was soon embraced by many members of a younger generation entranced by its consciousness-raising message and its psychedelic special effects. Over the next 30 years, the film would not only become a part of American culture, but would eventually be hailed as a masterpiece of modern cinema.
This was by far my least favorite paper of all of them simply because "The Dubliners" is incredibly hard to understand when you don't have enough time to read back through it like I had previously to understand the other stories. "The Dead" and "The Sister's" are two different stories. "The Dead" is the longest story in "The Dubliners" and the most difficult to understand because of the many different themes running through it. While "The Sisters" is much shorter than the latter, with an easier storyline.
Throughout Dubliners James Joyce deliberately effaces the traditional markers of the short story: causality, closure, etc. In doing so, "the novel continually offers up texts which mark their own complexity by highlighting the very thing which traditional realism seeks to conceal: the artifice and insufficiency inherent in a writer's attempt to represent reality.(Seidel 31)" By refusing to take a reductive approach towards the world(s) he presents on the page - to offer up "meaning" or "ending" - Joyce moves the reader into complex and unsettling epistemological and ontological realms. Meaning is no longer unitary and prescriptive, the author will not reveal (read impose) what the story "means" at its close and therefore we can't definitively "know" anything about it. Instead, meaning, like modernism, engenders its own multiplicity in Joyce's works, diffuses into something necessarily plural: meanings. An ontological crisis is inextricable from this crisis of meaning and representation. In Joyce's stories the reader is displaced from her/his traditionally passive role as receptor of the knowledge an author seeks to impart, and "positioned as both reader and writer of text, in some ways playing as integral a part in constructing the work as the author does.(Benstock 17)"
To me, Ulysses was a necessary evil, in that I thought that I would not be able to call myself a literature student unless I had read the entire novel. While my journey through Ulysses was laden with moments of bewilderment, exasperation, and self-pity, I was able to power my way through the novel with a deeper appreciation for the way James Joyce was able to create a linear story told through a series of non-linear writing styles. In retrospect, the grueling challenge of reading Ulysses made me a better student, in that I was able to grow as a reader by adjusting myself to Joyce’s train-of-thought writing style, and that I could add Ulysses to my personal canon of academic literature.
Every person must experience their first of three major experiences in during childhood. Whether the experience be good or bad, all children will come across each situation sometime in their childhood. These three experiences are death, sex and love. In the book the Dubliners, by James Joyce, the short stories, The Sisters, The Encounter, and Araby all represent a one of these significant childhood experiences. These three stories each tell a different story during the narrator's childhood which all lead to a life lesson which the narrator gets through by realizing that maturity is key when interacting with any adult.
Joyce approaches this story from a third person perspective and creates examples of stream-of-consciousness narration. When we read the only three indirect thought processes; ‘He is in Melbourne now.’(IS) ‘Miss hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?’(IS) ‘Look lively, Miss Hill, please. (IS)’we, the readers, are presented with outer observations only as they encro...
The aesthetic criteria used in John Leonard’s review places an interest in form and content of the novel. Leonard’s criteria seems unafraid of reading