More handpicked essays just for you.
Civilization and its discontents by sigmund freud central argument
Apa sigmund freud abstract on civilization and its discontents
What is the importance of what we talk about when we talk about love by raymond carver
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The characters in Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We talk About Love are all part of the submerged population group. There are no heroes in Carver’s stories like in the Lais of Marie de France, no grand adventure or crime as in Shakespeare’s Othello or Stendhal’s The Red and The Black, but a submerged group of imperfect people drunk and hungover watching their life fall apart to ruins from right underneath them. Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents uses an analogy about the ruins of the ancient city of Rome to explain the layers of the psyche. The ruins of an ancient city allow a person to see the history and structure of the past, much like the mind which is composed of the ruins of shattered ideas and memories of childhood that we were unaware of at the time. The new is built on top of the old, creating stratified layers of history and memories, that one day may be pieced together to give a bigger picture despite the holes left in the ruins. “Except for a few gaps, he will see the wall of Aurelian almost unchanged.” (Freud 31). Much like the ruins of Rome, Carver’s characters live in the ruins of their crumbling life. The characters in Carver’s short stories, the submerged population, are slowly being covered with like the ruins of Rome.
In “Theories of Time and Space,” Natasha Trethewey details the evolution of maturity in humans and how that process occurs using a journey to Gulfport, Mississippi. Trethewey begins her work by establishing a destination and starting point that are a metaphors for the progression of innocence to maturity, and she concludes by explaining the significance of that change. All of these components work together to develop an allegory about the human condition. An allegory, as defined in Rapaport’s “The Literary Toolkit,” is “the extension of an analogy into an isomorphic set of correspondences,” that transform the literal meaning (Rapaport, 110). Trethewey uses the literal meaning of a physical journey to Ship Island to create an allegory about
Although many critics have written numerous accounts of Richard Carver’s "Cathedral" as being about revelation and overcoming prejudice, they have overlooked a very significant aspect: the unfolding of marital drama. The story tells of how a close outside friendship can threaten marriage by provoking insecurities, creating feelings of invasion of privacy, and aggravating communication barriers.
The point of view from the narrators perspective, highlights how self-absorbed and narrow-minded he is. “They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together—had sex, sure—and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding” (Carver...
In Raymond Carver's Cathedral “appear...extreme versions of insularity,from a husband's self-imposed confinement to a living room in 'Preservation' to another's pathetic reluctance to leave an attic garret in 'Careful'” (Meyer). One of Carver's chief goals in cathedral is to criticize people who fail, in one way or another, to communicate with society. In almost every short story, the main character suffers from insularity due to a horrible event in his or her life, alcoholism, or a failure to consider others' thoughts and feelings. The stories, “Careful,” “Preservation,” “Cathedral,” and “The Compartment” easily represent the entire novel's theme of the inability to relate with others. Each of these stories shows a slightly different degree of affliction, circumstance, and character types making the entire novel effective to a broad audience. Carver wants people to stop thinking that “[the loss of the ability to interact with others] is something that happens to other people” (Carver 25)
In Pat Mora’s “Sonrisas,” A woman tells the audience that she lives in between two worlds: her vapid office workplace and a kitchen/break-room with family members or colleagues of her same heritage. Mora includes many sensory details to enrich our understanding of the speaker’s experience in both “rooms.” The speaker is content living in the “hallway” between the two rooms because she can put on a metaphorical mask, as mentioned in Jungian psychology, which fits what is acceptable to the different social society that is in each room of her life. Adrienne Rich on the other hand, is not content with peeking her head into the doorframes of the roles she must play in order to be accepted. In her poem, “Diving into The Wreck,” she pursues, in my opinion, a form of individuation by diving into the wreck of her inner consciousness to find who she is among the wreckage of the world and its effects on her. Both Pat Mora and Adrienne Rich explore the dangers of being defined by others and the rewards of exploring different worlds.
Johnny Cash can be considered one of the best country artists of all times, but the soul of his music is rooted in the blues. Many of Cash’s songs are about the complications that come with love. The four songs listed above are only a few parts of the story Cash teaches us about the world of love. Most importantly, Cash does a wonderful job of explaining the complicated nature of love and how it really is the most powerful force in the world. Before diving into each of these songs, one must first understand how Cash is a blues artist just as much as he is a country artist.
Abercrombie states that the human brain plays an active role in shaping the information presented to us, based on one’s past experiences. Kahneman claims that the human mind uses two systems of thinking, System 1 and System 2, where System 2 is more active and effortful than System 1. I attempt to illustrate how Abercrombie and Kahneman's ideal concepts of the perception of reality are applicable to real situations, by referring to the following three readings: Jung’s “The Personal and the Collective Unconscious,” Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” and Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The three readings relate to Abercrombie and Kahneman, considering the overlapping concepts of reality, that words and metaphors structure our understanding of what is real, reality can be altered from different perspectives, and that ignorance can actually be bliss.
Raymond Carver uses strategic dialogue and point of view to articulate themes in his short stories. Another tactic Carver uses in his writing is analyzing basic human skills such as the ability to define love through intimate relations between characters that reveal deeper meaning. In the short stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and “Cathedral,” he investigates relationships and how the characters develop the true meaning of love. While reading these two short stories the reader is able to comprehend the similarities that draw Carver’s works together. Through these stories the reader is also able to understand his outlook on love and human kinship. Carver uses certain strategies and techniques that allow him to bring a parallel between his different stories, but there are also definite things that set each story apart.
When young and experimental, everyone remembers their first love and what it meant to them and how it shaped them. They are often fond memories of purity or naivety, however, sometimes, those experiences are haunting and leave permanent scars in people's hearts. “Coleman (1993)” tells the tragic love story of a female speaker and her lover. They appear to live out happy lives while keeping to themselves however, are separated later in the poem by a group of white boys who decide to murder her lover on a whim. Her interactions and thoughts about Coleman shape the fundamentals of the poem to the point that he is the driving force of this poem. His being is the purpose of Mary Karr’s piece of writing and her time with him and without
In a beautifully descriptive poem titled “Diving into the Wreck”, author Adrienne Rich seems to be depicting a quest the narrator is on, to delve deep into the sea and explore a wreckage beneath the waves. The poem focuses more so on the preparation and process of the dive rather than of the search of the wreckage itself, which plays an interesting factor in the poem. But, as the narrator dives into the water, the reader is taken into a deeper journey along with them. Diving under the surface of the poem, and looking further into the meaning, there is a central theme of women who have been oppressed for hundreds of years struggling for their rights in a society that is mainly dominated by males. The poem is much more than just an adventurous
In Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," the husband's view of blind men is changed when he encounters his wife's long time friend, Robert. His narrow minded views and prejudice thoughts of one stereotype are altered by a single experience he has with Robert. The husband is changed when he thinks he personally sees the blind man's world. Somehow, the blind man breaks through all of the husband's jealousy, incompetence for discernment, and prejudgments in a single moment of understanding.
The purpose of the article “Navigating Love and Autism” by Amy Harmon is to emphasize that autistic people can achieve love, even though the struggles of autism are present. In this article, Jack and Kirsten both have autism and are working to build a dating relationship. For Kirsten and Jack, being comfortable is a huge aspect in their relationship. After their first night together,
I believe that drawing parallels between Winesburg, Ohio and the "Allegory of the Cave" helps provide insight into how the human race has wrestled with the problem of finding ways to act upon the higher ideals that reside in the character of mankind. Perhaps realizing that Man has contemplated this problem for thousands upon thousands of years, from the time of the ancient Greeks through the early twentieth century to the present, can assist human civilization to see the higher plane of existence, which Plato says is the "author of all things beautiful and right."
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved swims like a garden pond full of minnows with thoughts and memories of days gone by. Each memory is like a drop of water, and when one person brings up enough drops, a trickle of a stream is formed. The trickles make their way down the shallow slopes and inclines, pushing leaves, twigs, and other barriers out of the way, leaving small bits of themselves behind so their paths can be traced again. There is a point, a vertex, a lair, where many peoples streams unite in a valley, in the heart of a pebble lined brook, and it is here that their trickles of days gone by fuse with each other, and float hand in hand until they ultimately settle to form the backyard pond.
In conclusion, the Titanic’s sinking is among the many great and tragic accidents to occur at sea. Not only was it the biggest and most luxurious vessel at the time, it was also the most ill-fated cruise ship as it sailed its first and last voyage. Along with the sinking, more than half of its passengers would be buried at sea. This introduced a new idea that people began to understand even the greatest technology is not perfect, and there is no such thing as an “unsinkable ship.” Its rediscovery and production of the movie years later would reawaken the desire to know all that happened on “that fateful night”. The Titanic will continue to lure people for generations to come, since every generation is able to take something different from its tragedy.