Depending on how you view life will influence how you feel about the city you live in.
People who live an honest life and see the glass half full will be more hopeful about tragedies.
People who do not live an honest life and see the glass half empty will be more disparaging
during tragedies. An optimist will also look at tragedy as a time of rebuilding where a pessimist
will look at the same tragedy as life as we know it over. In this essay I will describe the view
of London from Dyden's Annus Mirabilis and Pepys' Diary, I will discuss what each excerpt
have in common and what differs with regards to the representation of the Great Fire of 1666, I
will display each author's attitude toward the city, the nation and its people and finally showcase
which writer is more optimistic of the city's future.
By the very first line in Annus Mirabilis you can see that the author viewed the city
before the fire as a great city that has made a turn for the worst "Yet London, empress of the
northern clime, By an high fate thou greatly didst expire" (2085, 1-2). Dryden felt the city had
claimed too much fame and possibly too much sin. This poem is remnant of the story from the
bible of Sodom and Gomorrah because those cities were destined to be destroyed by God for
the people of the cities sinful nature. Dryden must have believed London needed to suffer the
same fate, but instead of being completely destroyed and gone forever London is not entirely
burned and is rebuilt better than it was before "Great as the world's, which at the death of time
Must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire" (2085, 3-4).
Looking into how Pepys feels about London it is a bit more difficult to decipher because
he is writing...
... middle of paper ...
...d this will
keep him from having the sky come crashing down if everything does not turn out as he believes
it will.
In this essay, I have described the view of London from Dyden's Annus Mirabilis and
Pepys' Diary. I have also discussed what each excerpt has in common and what differs with
regards to the representation of the Great Fire of 1666. I have depicted each author's attitude
toward the city, the nation and its people and finally showcased Dryden as the more optimistic
writer with regards to the city's future. Remembering to look at the positive side of things when
there is a tragedy is sometimes what makes us resilient enough to rise out of the ashes and
rebuild. Every place on earth experiences tragedy and it is not the tragedy that defines people,
but it is the actions they take afterwards that stakes claim in who they really are.
During the 14th century, England was a very rural country where most of the population worked and lived in the countryside. London was one of the major cities that England had and stood in it’s own class. There were a total of 70,000 people who live...
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Both Twain and London explain two dreadful San Francisco earthquakes that took place in 1865 and 1906. However, they target different aspects of the destruction the earthquakes caused. As Twain’s focus’ on the destruction of the people during the 1865 earthquake, London focus’ on the destruction of the city in the 1906 earthquake.
The Great Fire of London, as documented by Samuel Pepys and other writers, began on the early morning of Sunday, September 2nd 1666 when a fire erupted at Pudding Lane in Thomas Farriner’s bakery (Dailey and Tomedi 43). Farriner, who was the king’s baker, went to fetch a candle some time close to midnight. While going to get the candle, Farriner observed that his oven was not lit and that there were no embers. However, two hours later Farriner and his family awoke feeling “almost choked with smoked” (Shields 80). Farriner quickly dashed over to the top of the stairs and found flames making their way up from the shop below. According to Farriner, the fire was not in the proximity of his over nor the pile of wood close to his house (Shields 81). However this and the actual cause of the fire in the house are debatable due to Farriner possibly attempting to remove any blame placed on him from the fire by lying in his testimony of the in...
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It has been said that the grass is always greener on the other side. Being excited about the newness and challenges of a new place may not enable it to stay green for a lifetime, but the new place is a great place to spend the next four years. So even though I lived my whole high school life in one city where there were no actual problems, it still was time for me to move where there were new experiences.
Cowie, Leonard W. “Plague and Fire London 1665-1666.” East Sussex: Wayland Publishers, 1970. 56-63. Print.
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So at last I had come to the capital. It was a strange way to come to it, after such a roundabout journey. If I had come to it fresh from my upriver town it would have seemed immense, rich, a capital. But after Europe, and with London still close to me, it seemed flimsy in spite of its size, an echo of Europe, and like make-believe, at the end of all that forest. (247)
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The world is made up of optimist and pessimists, and the survival of human beings and our well-being requires a balance between optimism and pessimism. Disproportionate pessimism makes life unbearable; however, too much optimism can advance to dangerously hazardous behaviors. The Optimism and pessimism approach is expecting a positive or negative future outcome, a recognizable way of reasoning is best conceptualized as continuity with many amounts of optimism and pessimism. Successful living requires a great balance between optimism and pessimism. Too much optimism may embolden one to take uncalculated risks that will lead to inadvertent and reckless behaviors, which may conclude in a catastrophe. On the contrary, worrying too much about
How does the city I am currently living in differ from the city I am moving to?