The Hindenburg
The Inferno
The arrival of the Hindenburg, thirteen hours behind schedule, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the evening of May 6, 1937, promised to be routine. The ship had an unblemished safety record on eighteen previous Atlantic crossings. In fact, no passenger had ever lost his life on any commercial airship. Still, because this was the beginning of the most ambitious season yet for airship voyages, reporters, photographers and news reel cameramen had their eyes and lenses focused on the great dirigible as it approached. When disaster struck it was sudden. Without warning flames gushed from within the Hindenburg's hull; thirty-two seconds later the airship lay on the ground, ravaged. Never had the sights and sounds of a disaster in progress been so graphically documented. Within a day, newspaper readers and theater audiences were confronted by fiery images of the Hindenburg. Radio listeners heard the emotional words of newsman Herb Morrison, sobbing into his recorder, "It's burning, bursting into flames, and it's falling on the mooring mast and all the folks. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. . . . Oh, the humanity and all the passengers!(Marben 58)" When this floating cathedral, called the Hindenburg, burst into a geyser of flaming hydrogen there was a tremendous impact on the public, although two thirds of the people on board survived. Two theories about why it happened surfaced and this tragedy put an end to the short age of these massive airships.
The demise of the Hindenburg had a searing impact on public consciousness that far surpassed the bare statistics of the calamity. Men and women escaped, even from this inferno. One elderly lady walked out by the normal exit as though nothing had happened and was unscratched. A fourteen-year-old cabin boy jumped to the ground into flames and smoke. He was almost unconscious from the fumes when a water-ballast bag collapsed over his head. He got out. One passenger hacked his way through a jungle of hot metal using his bare hands. Another emerged safely, only to have another passenger land upon him and cripple him. One man, at an open window with every chance to jump to safety, went back into the flames to his wife, both died. The final count was 36 dead, including 13 passengers. Nearly two thirds, of the 97 persons on board survived, but that fact was forever obscured, and the name Hindenburg became comparable only to the name Titanic(Abbott 69).
By the second torpedo, all the men on The USS Indianapolis were wide awake. Things were starting to go wrong on the USS “Indy.” Flames were venting and all the power h...
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie struggles to find herself and her identity. Throughout the course of the novel she has many different people tell her who she should be and how she should behave, but none of these ideas quite fit Janie. The main people telling Janie who she should be is her grandmother and Janie’s 3 husbands. The people in Janie's life influence her search for identity by teaching her about marriage, hard work, class, society, love and happiness.
Like all works that have been taught in English classes, Frankenstein has been explicated and analyzed by students and teachers alike for much of the twentieth and all of the twenty-first century. Academia is correct for doing so because Frankenstein can appeal to the interests of students. Students, teachers and experts in the areas of medicine, psychology, and sociology can relevantly analyze Frankenstein in their respective fields. However, Peter Brooks explains in “Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein” that Shelly had presented the problem of “Monsterism” through her language. According to Brooks, Monsterism is explicitly and implicitly addressed in Shelly’s language. While this may be correct, Brooks does it in such a way that requires vast knowledge of subjects that many readers may not be knowledgeable in. After summarizing and analyzing the positive and negative qualities of Brooks’ work, I will explain how the connection of many different fields of study in literature creates a better work.
In today’s world of genetically engineered hearts and genetically altered glowing rats, the story of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, seems as if it could be seen in the newspapers in our near future. The discoveries seen in modern science, as well as in the novel, often have controversy and negative consequences that follow them, the biggest of which being the responsibility the creator of life has to what has been created. Victor Frankenstein suffers from a variety of internal and external conflicts stemming from the creation of his monster, which in return also experiences similar problems. Shelley uses these tumultuous issues to portray the discrepancies between right and wrong, particularly through romanticism and the knowledge of science.
I will demonstrate in this paper how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein confirms, and at the same time contradicts Darwin's ideas presented in "The Origin of the Species" and "The Decent of Man."
The phrase Paris capital of modernity refers to the time in the second half of the nineteenth century when Paris was considered one of the most innovative cities in the world. This was largely a result of Haussmann’s renovation of the city between 1851 and 1869. A Prefect of Paris under Napoleon III, he transformed Paris into a city with wide streets, new shops and cafes, and a unified architecture.
Shelley, Mary. “Frankenstein.” In A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1996.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or; The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818, is a product of its time. Written in a world of social, political, scientific and economic upheaval it highlights human desire to uncover the scientific secrets of our universe, yet also confirms the importance of emotions and individual relationships that define us as human, in contrast to the monstrous. Here we question what is meant by the terms ‘human’ and ‘monstrous’ as defined by the novel. Yet to fully understand how Frankenstein defines these terms we must look to the etymology of them. The novel however, defines the terms through its main characters, through the themes of language, nature versus nurture, forbidden knowledge, and the doppelganger motif. Shelley also shows us, in Frankenstein, that although juxtaposing terms, the monstrous being everything human is not, they are also intertwined, in that you can not have one without the other. There is also an overwhelming desire to know the monstrous, if only temporarily and this calls into question the influence the monstrous has on the human definition.
Millions of people have heard about the massive ship that claimed to be ¨unsinkable¨ (Callery 14). The ship exploded with excitement and hope for the passengers. Travelers from various different lifestyles and incomes came together for one purpose, to glide across the ocean one wave at a time. Passengers onboard the Titanic had no idea what they would encounter or the fame that would come out of this already famous ship. No one expected the tragedy that would take place in the middle of the ocean. The structure, passengers, and the sinking of the Titanic made it one of the most famous ships of the twentieth century.
On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean at 2:20 a.m. after striking an iceberg, with the loss of more than 1, 500 passengers and crew. Thomas Andrews knew the ship’s flaws when he designed her nevertheless, Captain Smith knew of the collision between the ship and the iceberg. However, left all faith in the “Unsinkable Titanic.”
The impressionist movement is often considered to mark the beginning of the modern period of art. It was developed in France during the late 19th century. The impressionist movement arose out of dissatisfaction with the classical, dull subjects and clean cut precise techniques of painting. They preferred to paint outdoors concentrating more on landscapes and street scenes, and began to paint ordinary everyday people and liked to show the effects in natural light.
Walter Scott’s critique in the 1818, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein, is that Frankenstein is a novel of romantic fiction depicting a peculiar nature that narrates the real laws of nature and family values. This review explains that Mary Shelley manages the style of composition, and gives her characters an indirect importance to the reader as the laws of nature takes course in the novel. In addition, Walter Scott appreciates the numerous theme...
Overall, the Titanic disaster was one of the worst maritime disasters in history. Many people called it “the ship of dreams,” yet it turned out to be a nightmare. That was an achievement of arrogance and greed. A man once said 'Remember, a lone amateur built the Ark, yet a large group of professionals built the Titanic.'(Dave Barry) Ninety-nine years since the disaster and it sits in some peoples mind, as a reminder. Although we do not know, it will stay with us for many more years.
“...the TItanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 pm and sank at 2:20 am” (Lord 173). April 12, 1912 marked the night the RMS Titanic vanished into the vast Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic only had enough lifeboats for ⅓ of the 2208 people on board. This survival rate is so meager because the appearance of the Titanic was more salient than its passengers’ safety. Captain Edward Smith figured all the necessary amount of lifeboats would look “cluttered” on deck. The Titanic also had the prominent title of “unsinkable ship” because of that, the captain thought lifeboats wouldn’t be needed but indeed they were. The impact of the lifeboat shortage on the Titanic forced the captain to call the BirkenHead drill, caused men to dress as women, and brought passengers to participate in bribery.
The Titanic was a massive ship that every man dreamed of the ‘unsinkable’ ship left people devastated, killed or injured. The Titanic ended tragically. “On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, carrying 2,207 passengers en route to New York. Unfortunately, the ship never made it to its final destination” (Titanic