Thomas Cooke's As Midnight Strikes
"Your listening to 94.8 Fox Fm, and if you're out on the roads tonight
then take care because the weather report has…."
"Enough of that" Ana muttered as she leant forward to turn the channel
on the radio over. She sat upright, rubbing the back of her neck as
she eased her grip on the steering wheel. Traffic had been a nightmare
since they had started working on the M11 link road through Essex and
London. Finally she turned into her drive with a sigh of relief at not
having to spend another minute jammed in amongst anymore cars, not at
least until Monday morning anyway. As she unloaded her books and bags
from the car she could make out the silhouette of her mother, Liz as
she had always referred to her, running around in the hall
frantically. Ana was never quite sure why she had always called her
Liz but suspected it was something to do with her mother having her at
only 17 and never wanting to comes to terms with being a stereotypical
'Laura Ashley clad Mummy' .
"Liz, what's the matter?'' Ana asked with a smirk on her face, knowing
perfectly well that her mother was rushing off on some date as usual
on a Friday night when she returned from college each weekend. Ana
knew that Liz would no doubt be searching for an odd earring or lost
shoe.
"Oh hello, darling, have you got my other black shoe with you, you
know the Jimmy Choo ones, it's half eight and I am meant to have met
Mark at Chinawhites half an hour ago!" she panted as she continued to
run around in circles between air kissing Ana on each cheek.
"Sorry, can't say I have" she said without the slightest interest in
her voice what...
... middle of paper ...
...e heard something that brought more fear into her
than anything had ever done; the rustle of her bedroom door across the
wool carpet. She turned ever so slowly, which seemed to take an age,
around to find herself standing opposite a large, dark figure that
remained motionless. Ana shot backwards towards the top step and lost
any form of balance she had. Her arms reached out, grabbing in the air
in hope for something to cling to, but there was nothing. She screamed
into the darkness; it echoed into the shadows and around the house and
her body tumbled down the staircase.
She lay their motionless. Moonlight had found a crack in the curtain
and it shone a beam of light across her white, pale face. Her dead
eyes still wide open with fear as blood ran slowly across her
forehead.
The clock on the wall read 12.14am.
Atkinson, Rick. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume 1 of the "Liberation Trilogy." New York: Henry Holt, 2002.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
In the first chapter of his book “The Midnight Hour: American Studies in a Moment of Danger” American Studies author George Lipsitz offers a critique of nationalistic political nature from a Marxist perspective . In this essay, I will offer my own critique of the arguments raised by him throughout the chapter. Furthermore, I will also offer insight regarding my thoughts of how the ideas of Lipsitz are pertinent to the practice of American Studies. Lipsitz's central argument in the first chapter of his book asserts that the globalization of various economic aspects (transportation, distribution, consumption etc.) transform the political nature and culture of the nations involved. The transformation in question here is from a nationalistic
Beryl Markham’s West with the Night is a collection of anecdotes surrounding her early life growing up as a white girl in British imperialist Africa, leading up to and through her flight across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West, which made her the first woman to do so successfully. Throughout this memoir, Markham exhibits an ache for discovery, travel, and challenge. She never stays in one place for very long and cannot bear the boredom of a stagnant lifestyle. One of the most iconic statements that Beryl Markham makes in West with the Night is:
Bravery is simply finding faith in oneself, accepting risks and danger, and facing fear when no one else will.
Ronald Reagan once said, “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.” I read the book, Dancing in the dark by Morris Dickstein. This book was about the great depression, and the impacts it had on American life. The traditional thought of poverty, people dying of hunger and people lying in the roads, has been erased. America has abolished poverty by the traditional standards but the thought of poverty and what it is has changed. In America we consider poverty to be spending all your money on bills, so you have no money left for food to feed your family. We consider poverty to be just being poor. One-Third of our population makes less than $38,000. This is not enough to be able to be above the poverty line. Anything below this “line” is considered being poverty. How do they decide this line? They take the cost of a very basic diet, and they multiply it by three, for a family of three. That being said, One-half of the jobs in America pay below $38,000 a year, so no wonder we are losing the war on poverty.
“Who am I?” (Thomas 415). Many ask themselves this relevant question in times of self-doubt or ambivalence. Leona Thomas asks this question in her essay entitled, “Black and White.” As the child of a black father and a white mother, Thomas finds herself in a racial dilemma. Society punishes Thomas for being “mixed.” Through the use of the literary techniques of pathos, logos, and inductive reasoning, Thomas effectively persuades the reader that society should look beyond one’s mixture. She shows that racial orientation should not determine how a person is perceived by society, and that the people in society should stop being racist to one another.
Running and screaming. Burning and freezing. The survivors of the Holocaust have been through it all. Their stories describe each and every detail of the horrendous events they experienced. Although the book Nightfather is fiction, the stories described depict the actual Holocaust exactly. By dissecting the time period of Carl Friedman’s Nightfather, a reader can understand the elements of fiction and realize the impact of history on fictional literature.
In The Hungry Soul we find an interesting blend of subjects, methods, and traditions. This book is a fascinating exploration of the cultural and natural act of eating. Kass intensely reveals how the various aspects of this phenomenon, restrictions, customs, and rituals surrounding it, relate to collective and philosophical truths about the human being and its deepest pleasures. Kass argues throughout the book that eating (dining) is something that can either cultivate us or moralize us. My question is, does Kass succeed in arguing for the fact that eating is something that can moralize us as human beings? Although I agree with some of the things that Kass discussed in the book, in this paper I will argue mainly against some of his claims.
The faultiness theory can be seen that without order there will be no anarchy, without murderers who kill lacking penitence there will be no need for the ‘hero’ a protector for the people, the common man.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” tries to shed light on the conflict between women and a society that assign gender roles using a patriarchal approach. Specifically Margaret Bauer highlights, that most of Chopin’s works revolves around exploring the “dynamic interrelation between women and men, women and patriarchy, even women and women” (146). Similarly, in “The Story of an Hour” Chopin depicts a society that oppresses women mostly through the institution of marriage, as women are expected to remain submissive regardless of whether they derive any happiness. The question of divorce is not welcome, and it is tragic that freedom of women can only be realized through death. According to Bauer, the society depicted in Chopin’s story judged women harshly as it expected women to play their domestic roles without question, while on the other hand men were free to follow their dream and impose their will on their wives (149).
Sam Woods is a very important character in the novel In the Heat of the Night. He is a racist, and throughout the novel you will notice many changes in his attitude towards Negros.
Nobody understands what really took place that night, the night that John Brown launched his raid on Harpers Ferry. Why it was done, what caused it and what the actual event itself caused was later discovered and well known by people centuries after it even took place. This raid, was one of the biggest reason a nation was left divided. The Southern part of America was its own “nation” where as the Northern part was thought of kind of as the same but opposite. “Midnight Rising” gives an in depth explanation and feel for the events leading to and the events caused by this raid. The book is based around the time period pre civil war ( circa 1859), In the first part of the book and overview and a little bit of background information is provided. Explaining where and when the raid was being planned and where it was going to be executed, and all of this being told through the perception of one of John Browns men .Prior to this event, Bleeding Kansas had happened and it caused an immense amount of outrage, blood shed, fear and frustration amongst almost every single person part of the U.S at the time. Nat Turners rebellion caused an uproar filled with fear, in the south and that was one of the things that had led up to the main event discussed in the book ( the raid on Harpers Ferry). During the time period the book took place, the southern part of America was pro slavery where as the North was not, and due to these discrepancies neither side could or would compromise and neither would be able to come to any sort of agreement on what to do with laws and rules and with the slaves either. Events such as Nat Turners Rebellion are what caused people in the south to become more fearful of slaves
In every story, past or present, fantasy or reality, there is the good and there is the bad. These “forces” are expressed through antagonists and protagonists. More often than not, these antagonists and protagonists collide. In the well-known novel, A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, there are quite a few antagonists. One that is prominently presented to the readers is society as a whole. The author wrote, “After all the Titanic was considered unsinkable” (Lord 64). As expressed in the quotation, the infamous vessel, the Titanic, was essentially known for its “unsinkable” reputation. But, it is simply impossible for a ship to be unsinkable. People are gullible. The human race, in its entirety, can be told something absurd hundreds of times,
In both texts, a key concept is implemented: ‘Despair.’ Despair is presented in both poems through the oppression of the Jewish People; in both poems they manage to create a feeling of alienation in conjunction with isolation through manipulating their imagery and tone. ‘Refugee Blues’ is rooted in the 1930′s pre-second world war, when the Jewish communities were being punished for countless mistakes they had not even made. If we break down the title of both texts we can already begin to interpret the different tones, as well as emotions that will be in the pieces. ‘Refugee’ comes from the word refuge, which means safety, safety for the people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. It is almost ironic how Auden uses this as his title as the Jews were anything but ‘Safe.’ ‘Blues’ is a music genre; typically it offers a slow, calm rhythm yet creates an uplifting vibe. Developed by the African-American communities, originating in the 19th century, around the ‘Deep South’ of the United States. Furthermore, in ‘The Last Night’ is set in France during World War Two, when the Nazis occupied and controlled France. If we begin to break down ‘The Last Night,’ we can immediately pick up yet again that the poem is going to involve death, or the end of someone/something. If we look at the second line of the poem, ‘deportees might write a final message,’ the word ‘final’ already gives us a clue that this may be the deportees final chance to write a message before they die.