English 2110
Essay #2
In Charles Baudelaire’s To the Reader, the preface to his volume The Flowers of Evil, he shocks the reader with vivid and vulgar language depicting his disconcerting view of what has become of mid-nineteenth century society. Humanity, through its own vices, has become a cesspool of sin and debauchery.
Baudelaire makes his perception on humanity quite evident from the very beginning saying “Infatuation, sadism, lust, avarice / possess our souls and drain the body’s force;”(656) indicating that people no longer possess free will; instead they are overcome by the forces of evil that possess them to participate in acts of transgression and lasciviousness. In quatrain three and four, Baudelaire identifies Satan as the catalyst causing this downfall; it is he that is luring society down this path as “each step forward is a step to hell” (656). Even though society can see what is happening, people remain “unmoved” as Satan’s clutch is too powerful and compelling for people to resist.
The lines “we spoonfeed our adorable remorse, like whores or beggars nourishing their lice” (656) indicate the hypocrisy of people by comparing them with dirty whores and beggars. Filthy beggars do nothing to change the fact that they are ridden with parasites and whores continue their dirty acts knowing they are immoral. Relating these miscreants and vagabonds to everyday people provide stark insight to the hypocrisy that people acknowledge their sins, yet do nothing to change the way they act.
The hypocrisy is reinforced through the second stanza with Baudelaire saying that people not only know their misdeeds, but publicly feign regret and offer empty promises of change for the better. Everyone knows, however, that these ...
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... back from being able to overcome the darkness. The “spiders spin / Their meshes in the caverns of the brain” (661) and confuse him to the point where he is left with nothing but despair.
This outlook on life mirrors his views in To the Reader. Describing the world as “a dungeon dank” (661) like he does in Spleen LXXXI can be connected to his view of the world full of “infatuation, sadism, lust, [and] avarice” (656) in To the Reader; the world is hopeless, full of vulgarity, and beyond salvation. Boredom, being the root of all sins in To the Reader is revisited in Spleen LXXXI even though it isn’t explicitly stated. The first three stanzas start with the same word giving this poem a boring feeling and flow to it. It is this boredom, bought about by the loathsome state of the world, which allows grief to plant “his black banner on” his “drooping skull” (661).
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
Criticizing the cruelty of society, Baudelaire begins his book, Flowers of Evil, with a warning. To foreshadow the disturbing contents that his book focuses on, Baudelaire describes the unpleasant traits of men. Lured by the words of the Devil, people victimize others. Grotesque images of torture and swarming maggots exemplifies the horrors of our actions. Yes, our actions. Baudelaire puts shame to every human, including the reader, through the word “ours.” Humiliated, the reader dare not to allow himself to be guilty with the worst sin – boredom. Separated by dashes, the last sentence commands the reader to choose whether to fall to the worst or save himself a little bit of dignity. Accused and challenged, the reader is pressured to ponder
It is my intention to compare the book, Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos, to its modern movie version, Cruel Intentions starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. I intend to examine how the original French text was modified in reference to plot, character, morals/values, and themes. I also plan to discuss how these transformations change the meaning of the story and reflect different cultural/historical contexts. There are some major differences between these two works, if only because of when they were written.
People exploit the faults in their surroundings in hypocritical attempts to justify their own imperfections. Goodman Brown and Dimmesdale demonstrate hypocrisy in their efforts to avoid confronting their own distorted realities. Both Goodman Brown and Dimmesdale seek to exemplify the ideal Puritan lifestyle. After succumbing to unfaithful temptations, both men recognize that they have transgressed certain central values of their respective puritan communities yet neither correctly identifies the sin that ultimately debases his initially righteous character. For instance, Goodman Brown breaches basic Puritan prin...
In conclusion to this essay, having examined these 19th century gothic texts, it is fair to say that normative gender behaviour and sexuality pervades them. This element gives the reader a deep insight into the culture context of the time in which these stories are situated. It enables the reader to delve into the darker sides of humanity at that time, that they would not have been able to do otherwise.
Delany, Samuel. "Aversion/Perversion/Diversion." Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1996
The first century morality was not unlike our twenty-first century morality. Premarital and extra-marital affairs exist in both. Prostitution is common in both centuries. The speed in which sexual perverseness can occur in today’s society can occur at a much more rapid rate due to the Internet, however, with the same outcome as it was then, the defiling of one’s body, a body that belongs to God. God forgives us as Christians, as King David wa...
In Charles Baudelaire’s “The Old Acrobat,” the flaneur describes his encounter with a fallen figure who eventually reveals the lack of humanity in the city people’s hardened hearts. The flaneur finds comfort in people with border personality types because he can easily relate to them. He is an idler in a world which concentrates on excess, over-stimulation and one of which runs on a constant invisible ticking clock that pushes the masses towards desensitization and unhappiness. These, among many other pretentious things, make him seek out the uncommon populace, a breed of seemingly raw people who live their lives in front of the world’s eyes. He is bored and uninterested in the ennui, commonplace people who make up the majority of society because they can create facades to shield their faults from the world’s view. Rather than concentrating on the mundane and masked life of the middle and upper class, the flanuer focuses his attention towards the transient, eccentric “drifting clouds”1 who are not a part of the active social milieu.
...s, by his own free will, to continue to worship the devil "Faustus vows never to look to Heaven, never to the name God, or to pray to him, to burn his Scriptures, slay his ministers and to make my spirits pull his churches down." (Pg. 28, Marlowe) Therefore, there is no single cause of evil and when humankind does evil; it is the cause of its own evil doing.
The Marquis de Sade led a lifestyle that disgusted some but influenced others. “This was a life, then, of swashbuckling adventure, narrow escapes, wild abandon, and bloody crime” (Lever, introduction on front flap). He is famous for coining the term “sadism” from his known love for sexual violence in his own life and literature. The Marquis’ own libertine values, which allowed for him to escape the moral restraints of law and religion, allowed for his life and works of literature to challenge censorship.
This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay
Sinners are placed in the lesser part of Hell, the incontinence, when demonstrating an uncontrollable appetite for human desires. The application of the psychological function is evident through Dante’s descriptions of the sins committed. “Th...
This comes when he kills the spider that wrapped him in its web as he slept. Killing the spider changes him, giving him a newfound sense of confidence and pride.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
Evildoing is caused by inordinate desire. Things such as adultery, murder, and sacrilege, are considered forms of evildoing. If one desires to commit any of these evildoings then he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act. In St. Augustine’s On Free Choice of the Will, he introduces a free will theodicy, which is one of the most influential theodicies and serves as a prominent foundation for Christianity today. He explains his theodicy as the following: free will, not evil, cause sin to happen. St. Augustine, an influential church father believed man caused most of evil. Relative to St. Augustine’s belief, in the dynamic poem Paradise Lost, free will is a consistent lingering theme throughout the poem. Milton acknowledges that God gave man free will alongside reason, by which he describes “reason also is choice”(III.108). Milton explains that it is our own choice whether we obey or disobey God because when he gave us reason, he gave us free will. In this paper, I will explore the joint between free will, love, and reason in relation to our obedience and/ or disobedience to God. More so, in this paper I will use the works of John Milton and St. Augustine to comprehend the notion that the presence of evil is a result of human’s free will, not Satan or a predestined fate.