Tom Clancy
When choosing an author for my paper, I chose international suspense because I am very interested in foreign relations and the technology of modern day war. I have read stories by Edgar Allen Poe, with suspense and vivid imagery, which reminded me of Clancy's work. I decided to choose Tom Clancy because of his talent to weave such realistic tales of international suspense. Clancy creates the scenes in his books with such detail, it makes the reader feel like he/she is there. My first choice for this paper was Dr. Suess, but because he has passed away, I had to keep looking. I knew very little information about my author before writing this paper. I had read two of his books, but had no real knowledge of his personal life or past history. Tom Clancy, a successful American author of international suspense, has captured his love of military and technology and profitably employed it in the books he writes.
The life of Thomas L. Clancy Jr. started like any other, but changed with the success of his work. He was born the year 1947, in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a postal carrier and also a store credit employer (Speace 98). Clancy spent his life educated in only Catholic schools. Because of this Clancy says, "I was never swept up in the drugs or music"(Cohen 2). He attended Loyola College in Baltimore Maryland, and earned a degree in English (Speace 98). At that time, Clancy then tried to enlist in the army. He was excused though, because of a case of myopia. "I thought I would have made a good tank commander"(Speace 99) , said Clancy, whose childhood dreams had been broken when he was kept from entering into the military. He then took on a career as an insurance agent in Baltimore Maryland, and kept that job until around 1973 (Speace 98). He then became a business owner from 1973 to the year 1980. In 1969, Clancy married a woman named Wanda Thomas, who was an eye surgeon and an insurance agency manager (Speace 98). They had four children, Michelle, Christine, Tom, and Kathleen, and a dog named Freddie (Cohen 115). They lived on 400 wooded acres in Maryland, along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Standing on the front lawn is a tank, given to him as a gift by his wife at the time (Schindehette 114). On the property there are also two tennis courts, two basketball courts, a full length football field and...
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... go of your dreams when there are obstacles in the way.
Works Cited
Speace, Geri. NewsMakers. 1998 vol. New York, 1998.
Cohen, Rich. "Master of War" Rolling Stone December 1994:114
Greenberg, Martin H. The Tom Clancy Companion. New York: Berkley Books, 1992.
http://www.RedStorm Entertainment.com RedStorm Entertainment, 1999.
Cerasini, Marc A. Tom Clancy's Fiction: The Birth of a Techno Thriller. New York:
Berkley Books, 1991.
Zaleski, Jeff. "The Hunt for Tom Clancy". Publishers Weekly 15 July 1998
Schindehette, Susan. "Storm Rising". People Magazine 15 June 1998: 141
Clancy, Tom. Op Center. New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1995
Clancy, Tom. Sum of All Fears. New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1992
Clancy, Tom. Red Storm Rising. New York: Putnam Books, 1986
Hitbrand, David. "Tom Clancy's Op Center". People Magazine 27 February 1995:12
"There's No Pot of Gold at the End of Clancy's ‘Rainbow Six'". The Washington Post
7 September 1998, Final ed
Zinsser, John. "Clear and Present Sounds". Publishers Weekly 3 July 1998: pages N/A
Maryles, Daisy. "Clancy's Latest Victory". Publishers Weekly 17 August 1998: pages N/A
War novels often depict a war hero facing off against an enemy, with a winner on the other side. However, Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five takes an opposite approach to the telling of a war story. The narrator uses the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, to display his own anti-war sentiment. Vonnegut’s style of writing as well as his characters help to portray the effect of war on individuals and society as a whole.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any reader. Although one of his most famous novels, Slaughterhouse Five, is based off of his experiences in World War II, during the time of its publishing, antiwar groups applied the novel’s themes to the Vietnam War. Early life tragedies and imprisonment established Kurt Vonnegut’s antiwar opinions in his semiautobiographical novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which would influence and encourage the younger Vietnam generation to protest an unnecessary war.
For years, psychologists have been wondering over the mysterious field of dreams. Dreams have always been mysterious. The content of the dreams can shift instantly, featuring unexplained events or sudden terrifying images (Whitman, Ornstein & Baldridge, 1964). The fact that the content of dreams can be enthralling is what causes many psychologists to believe that there has to be some implication to dreams (Webb & Cartwright, 1978). While many theories are formed to explain the functions and meanings of dreams, there is a lack of evidence on their purpose. In fact, recent researchers such as G. William Domhoff suggested that dreams most likely serve no real purpose (Domhoff, 2001). This research essay considers the whether there are a significant functions and meanings of dreams by responding to the following questions.
O’Brien’s unique verisimilitude writing style fills the novel with deep meaning and emotion. Analyzing the novel through a psychological lens only adds to its allure. Understanding why characters act the way they do helps bring this novel to life. The reader begins to empathize with the characters. Every day, the soldiers’ lives hang in the balance. How these soldiers react to life-threatening situations will inspire the reader. Life has an expiration date. Reading about people who are held captive by their minds and who die in the name of war, will inspire the reader to live everyday as if they are currently in the
The book ‘Clear and Present Danger’ is a novel written by Tom Clancy in 1989 and published in 1990 by Thorndike-Magna Publisher (Beetz 824). This book has one thousand one hundred and forty pages, with the latest edition published by Berkley Books having six hundred and eighty eight pages. This novel like most of Clancy’s writings relies on a basic formula of good versus evil where the United States is represented as a nation that is on the right side (Sharp 398). In this novel, a United States ambassador and the visiting chief of the Federal Investigation Bureau are assassinated by Colombian drug lords. This assassination prompts a mystifying underground response and a series of investigations of the actions by the United States and the Colombian drug lords by Jack Ryan, the main character in the book (Clancy 524). This paper is review of this literary work by Tom Clancy.
O’Brien, Tim. How to Tell a True War Story. Literature and Ourselves. Sixth Edition. Eds.
... of her boyfriends states to her when she was not in an upbeat mood, “Why the hell don’t you stay home and not go spoiling everybody’s evening?” (Parker 199) Parker is reiterating her the idea that women were not meant to be anything but positive and upbeat in this society. It even states that “even her slightest acquaintance seemed irritated if she were not conspicuously light hearted.” (Parker 199) Thus the idea that women were made to be positive and upbeat continues in her world.
Tom Clancy, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947, was the son of a mail carrier and a credit employee. He graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore in 1969. After marrying Wanda Thomas, an insurance agency manager, Clancy became an insurance agent. Later, in 1973, he joined the O.F. Bowen Agency in Owings, Maryland. He became an owner there in 1980. Although he was very interested in the military, his poor eyesight made him ineligible for a military career. However, he kept his interest and researched various aspects of the armed forces and military technology. In the late 1970’s he formed ideas for several novels which were later written in the 1980’s. Clancy wrote in his spare time, while still working to raise a family. In 1984 the Naval Institute Press, a noncommercial publisher, published his first novel, The Hunt for Red October. This book was noticed by President Reagan, who praised the book and helped boost it to bestseller lists. Clancy continued to use plots based on political issues of the world.
Many different cultures around the world and through out time feel that dreams are bigger; more important than our brains just continuing the thought process while we sleep. One example of cultural differences on why people dream, and what they mean; “The ancient Egyptians used dreams to make predictions about the future. They thought dreams were messages from the gods, which contained vital wisdom and prophecies,” (Turner). This allows researchers to think there may be deeper purposes for the brain to create these mini movies in peoples minds, while at rest. This paper will take a further look into two theories of why we dream, and what people dream about; emotions/trauma, and problem solving. Then taking a look at what lucid dreaming is, and controlling dreams and how they coincide with emotions and trauma, and with dreams being problem solving actions of the brain.
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
during the war. This novel is able to portray the overwhelming effects and power war has
There are many facts that are unknown about dreams and their meanings. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand the meaning of dreams. They have all been fascinated by the fact that the content of dreams may have meanings relating to one's life. Are dreams just thoughts in people's minds, or are dreams in fact representations of different areas in people's lives? Dreams represent many different areas of one's life in physical, emotional, and mental ways. Dreams can relay to people facts about their lives that they are not even aware of. There are also many ways that dreams can help cure different physical, emotional, and mental problems in one's life. This paper will discuss dreams and their meanings, and ways of interpreting a dream using such methods as hypnotherapy and psychoanalysis therapy that can help a person in physical, mental, and emotional ways. The first fact that will be discussed is what dreams are and how they work for people in allowing the person to discover more about himself. Dreams can be defined as "a conscious series of images that occur during sleep" (Collier's, vol. 8). Dreams are usually very vivid in color and imagery. They reveal to the dreamer different wishes, concerns, and worries that he or she has. Dreams usually reflect every part of who the dreamer is. The content of the person's dream is usually made up according to how old the dreamer is and how educated the he or she is (Collier's, vol. 8). Dreams are not planned out or thought up. The unconscious part of the mind brings out bits and pieces of information in the dreamer's mind and places them together. According to Encarta, dreams are almost always visual. Forty to fifty percent of dreams have some form of communication present in them and a very small percentage of dreams give the dreamer the ability to use his or her five senses (Encarta). Dreams allow one to take a closer look into his mind and himself in a quest for self-discovery. Dreams can be used to solve all different types of problems. In Sigmund Freud's book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud states: "As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred by it to the sleeping state […]" (Freud 113). They relay things about a person that the person may not be able to see.
Austin based filmmaker Richard Linklater recently released a movie that is a dream. By that I mean both that it is about a dream, and that it is dreamlike. "Waking Life" received mixed reviews, but it also sparked new interest in an idea that has actually been around a long time: lucid dreaming. In this paper I intend to explore the concept of lucidity in dreams, and to concentrate on the research of Stanford University's Stephen LaBerge, who has used lucid dreaming as a tool to better understand the biological phenomena of sleep and dreams.
IV. (Preview Main Points) Although we have experienced countless dreams in our lifetime, do we ever stop to think: how dreams occur? How dreams affect our lives? Do dreams even mean anything? Today in my informative speech about dreams, I hope to enlighten you about dreams forming in our minds, the importance of dreams, and lastly the interpretations of dreams.
For thousands of years humans have experienced a phenomenon which we describe today as dreaming. It has puzzled and sparked interest to all whom experience it. For as long as people have been dreaming, there have been people trying to understand and interpret them. This research paper examines the causation and deeper meaning of dreams. It will compare and contrast the differentiating ideas on the subject by famous psychologists and also examine first-hand accounts from real individuals. The objective of paper is to shed some light on this complex and bizarre behavior.