In fairy tales, children are pushed into ovens, have their hands chopped off, are forced to sleep in coal bins, and must contend with wolves who've eaten their grandmother. In myths, rape, incest, all manner of gruesome bloodshed, child abandonment, and total debauchery are standard fare. We see more of the same in Bible stories, accentuated with dire predictions of terrors and abominations in an end of the world apocalypse that is more horrifying than the human imagination can even grasp.
For the most part, these images of violence, promiscuity and human degradation are explained away by psychologists, mythologists, sociologists, philosophers, and non-fundamentalist theologians as symbolic manifestations of the human psyche. This is an assertion that could be supported, in no small part, by the manifestations of the human psyche we see in our own violent, erotic and chaotic dreams.
As a culture, again with religious fundamentalist and perhaps politically-correct feminist exceptions, we pretty much take these literary forms for granted in terms of their violent and seemingly antisocial content. Parents lovingly read their children to sleep with images of forced drudgery, painful mutilations, and vengeful retribution. Teachers and preachers alike use these quasi-historical and metaphorical tales of aggression and hostility to inspire and enlighten. Little thought, if any, is given to the possibility that we are putting dangerous ideas into the heads of our youth that will result in violent displays of antisocial mayhem. And, in fact, there seems to be little evidence that this true. For the most part, our children seem to have a healthy relationship to these stories in which the violence and sexuality does tend to help th...
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...are being fed. The center is collapsing because the psychic weight of their own perceived imperfections is dangerously out of balance to the authentic yearnings of the human heart.
Works Cited
Breaking the Waves. Written and directed by Lars Von Trier. 1996.
Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
Jung, Carl G. The Essential Jung. Introduced and Edited by Anthony Storr. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.
Jung, Emma and Marie-Louise von Franz. The Grail Legend. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970.
Segal, Robert A. Encountering Jung on Mythology. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.
Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.
von Franz, Marie-Louise. Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambala, 1996.
---. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambala, 1996.
tries to make her disinterested in him so that again, he may concentrate on the
Jung, C. G., and Marie-Luise Von Franz. Man and His Symbols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.
“I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” ( Tragedy and the Common Man). Arthur Miller follows his Millerian conventions of tragedy in the writing of The Crucible. Often literature uses tragedy to display a depressing theme represented by the tragic hero.
After hearing a brief description of the story you might think that there aren’t many good things about they story. However, this is false, there are many good things in this book that makes it a good read. First being that it is a very intriguing book. This is good for teenage readers because often times they don’t willingly want to read, and this story will force the teenage or any reader to continue the book and continue reading the series. Secondly, this is a “good” book because it has a good balance of violence. This is a good thing because it provides readers with an exciting read. We hear and even see violence in our everyday life and I believe that it is something teenagers should be exposed to. This book gives children an insig...
her)" "My wife will never die for me! I will bring your guts into your
places in the play in a number of different ways. The way Miller as a
doesn't want her to grow up and as she develops into a woman he wants
How Miller Uses Alfieri in A View From the Bridge In 'A View From the Bridge' Miller uses Alfieri in a great number of ways, sometimes to support the action, to narrate and to add to the literary conventions of the play. For example, to act as the chorus would have throughout a Greek tragedy, which would have been to comment on the action and to fill in minor parts of the play. Alfieri is used for both of these things. He delivers the prologue at the beginning and also appears in the action as the lawyer who observes the events and is therefore able to tell us the story afterwards. The story line relates to this idea of a Greek tragedy, Eddie is seen as the protagonist hero, an essential role in traditional Greek tragedy.
can be happy as he knows she has always been loyal to him and made
Media is everywhere. We each have TV’s, listen to music, play video games, go to movie theaters, watch the news and they all expose a violent act somehow. It could simply be an opinion if media causes violence but it also depends on how something is perceived and who is perceiving it. In an article titled “The Government Should Strictly Regulate Television Violence” Rockefeller promises to “make more tools for families so that they have more control over what is allowed to be seen on television and give them more options” (Rockefeller). How our technology is so advanced today and continues to advance everyday, there are multiple ways parents can control what goes on in their children’s lives. In an article titled “Video Games Are Not Responsible for People’s Violent Actions” Ferguson says “humans were not programmed to be computers, just because someone picks up a gun and ends another human’s life does not mean we were programmed by a video game but because they
Miller completed the two-act version of the play in 1956, the same year in which it was performed at the Comedy Theatre in London. During this epoch he was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee to name the people of communist sympathizers, the height of the McCarthy Era. Miller refused to do so and so was admired by people for his strength and loyalty. In 1957, Miller was charged with contempt by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Miller's own struggle therefore with this issue is present in ‘A View from the Bridge’ as he, like the characters in his plays (Eddie Carbone), was faced with the problem of choosing to be American or not, specifically by naming names of people who were doing (what were considered then) unlawful acts. Miller chose to write about a community that accepted and protected unlawful people. Miller used thi...
of other people's faults. I feel he is in some sort of denial as he
the effect this will have on his reputation and not on the consequences his wife may have
of his pride he cannot admit that he is in the wrong. This makes it
Many people wish to place the blame for any increase in youth aggression solely on the violence in the media to which they are exposed. There have been many examinations into how violence in media can adversely affect childhood development, increase hostility and promote undesirable behavior. Yet, historically, there has always been violence throughout human development including abuse by parents to which children have been subjected. People are exposed to a multitude of personal experiences which shape them as they grow to adulthood. Taking individual experiences into account is thus imperative when attempting to assign blame from any outside stimuli. Most studies found on this subject rarely take into account individual or environmental factors in the adolescent and preadolescent stages. The studies almost never examine the benefits that media, violent or otherwise, can offer during childhood development, but focus on the negatives. Children, who can be some of the more vicious beings on the planet, can also be the most giving.