“I am not what you call a civilized man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!" - Captain Nemo. These strong words that echoed through out the natallius showed that a man thought to be good and science loving, could turn it into such an evil thing. Pierre Aronnax in the story 20000 leagues under the sea by Jules Vernes, faces a large conflict with only two ways out in the past he kept his conformity, but after the death of two people it puts him off the edge. His decision was difficult for it was the choice of knowledge, science and biology over the choice of man. Science, which had intrigued Aronnax from a young age, was the love of his life. He was a famous marine biologist who in the year 1866, struck off on an amazing adventure to catch the beast that was terrorizing the pacific. His lifelong dream had just begun, but at the height of an adventure, he falls off the ship the Abraham Lincoln. After floating around for hours, he finds t...
Frederic is very much alienated from the science of his day. He finds it obscure and frightening, involved in inhuman and ritualistic experiments, and motivated by goals that are fully detached from the needs of ordinary people. His dread and loathing of the coldness and ruthlessness of the aloof scientist come from the Gothic horror of writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley.
Deadly and helpful, science is a dual-edged sword. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the first to emphasize this through his literary works. “Rappaccini's Daughter” and “The Birthmark” are two of his works where he teaches this lesson through the trials of his characters. Focusing on the motif of the “mad scientist”, Hawthorne brings to light the points that people struggle with humanity, learning to love themselves and others, and that science can be more harmful then helpful.
The Pacific coast port city of San Francisco, California provides a distinctively mysterious backdrop in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Unlike many other detective stories that are anchored in well-known metropolises such as Los Angeles or New York City, Hammett opted to place the events of his text in the lesser-known, yet similarly exotic cultural confines of San Francisco. Hammett used his own intricate knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area - coupled with details collected during a stint as a detective for the now defunct Pinkerton Agency - to craft a distinctive brand of detective fiction that thrived on such an original setting (Paul 93). By examining the setting of 1920’s San Francisco in The Maltese Falcon, it becomes apparent that one of Hammett’s literary strengths was his exceptional ability to intertwine non-fictional places with a fictional plot and characters in order to produce a logical and exceedingly believable detective mystery.
In this novel, Shelley focuses on the debate between scientific discoveries, religion and the moral ethics of how far man should pursue his desire for knowledge, which reflects the society of the 19th century’s concern of where the scientific advancements were going similarly to the present day debate on whether stem cell research is valid.
Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born on December 3, 1857 to members of the Polish gentry in a Russian occupied section of the country (Conrad 1 & Gorra 43). Before the should-be jubilant age of five, Conrad and his parents were exiled to an area north of Moscow. Each parent died of tuberculosis within four years of each other. Young Jozef, then twelve years old, was left to his uncle on his mother’s side. Jozef must have lived a relatively uneventful life with his uncle until 1874, when we finally catch up with him again. In this year, Jozef made a decision that really was no decision at all. Rather than serve in an army that was responsible for his current situation -and with an unexplainable yearning for the sea- Jozef left Cracow for France (Gorra 43). The future author wound up in Marseilles and began to learn the ways of an officer in the French Merchant Marine service.
Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a book which can be read as a general metaphor for the battle between the evil powers of the Devil versus the divine powers of God and Jesus, both try to obtain the souls of mankind in order to assist in each other's destruction. In this metaphor, the Devil is shown through the person of Captain Ahab, God becomes nature, Jesus is seen as the White Whale, and the representation of mankind is the crew. The voyage of the Pequod, therefore, is a representation of a similar voyage of mankind on earth, until the death of Jesus, during the whole thing the influences of these three “supernatural forces” are connected. Thus, the basis of this idea is that in the plot of Melville's book, there are also peeks of the "plot" of the Bible.
In "Ocean’s Eleven" Steven Soderbergh did a great job as a director in keeping the audience interested throughout the whole movie time. Path-goal theory of leader effectiveness can be easily applied to the movie. The path-goal theory by Robert House holds that the leader can affect group’s performance, satisfaction and motivation by offering rewards for achieving goals, clarifying paths towards these goals and removing obstacles to performance.
Humans are intricate. They have built civilizations and invented the concept of society, moving accordingly from savage primal instincts to disciplined behaviour. William Golding, however, does not praise humanity in his pessimistic novel, Lord of The Flies, which tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who are stranded on an uninhabited tropical island without any adults – a dystopia. Golding evidently expresses three views of humanity in this novel. He suggests that, without the rules and restrictions on which societies and civilizations are built, humans are intrinsically selfish, impulsive and violent.
Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France. Born to lawyer, Pierre Verne, and housewife, Sophie Allotte; Verne was the eldest of the two boys and three girls (Press 7). At a very young age, Verne was interested in new experiences and travel. Verne would go on sailing trips with his father and brother, on one of these trips the boat sunk and Verne was stranded on a small island. Verne has to wait until low tide to be able to reach the main shore and his family (The UnMusuem–Jules Verne). The article “Jules Verne” in Space Sciences describes Verne’s first thirst for his own adventure. The article says, “At twelve years of age, Verne ran off to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship, thinking he was going to have an adventure. However, his father caught up with the ship before it got very far.” Soon after this expedition, Verne kept his adventure in his mind. This, with the ongoing political, scientific, and religious revolutions, later sparked his creativity for complex and innovative stories (Press 3).
Jobes, Katharine, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Old Man and the Sea. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968.
For my video paper I chose to do a Pixar movie called Finding Nemo. Although Pixar movies are more aimed for the younger generations, it is becoming more popular for these movies to be introduced in the classrooms. In our DeVito text it shows and explains all the different forms of communication that can be related back to Finding Nemo. Along with other Pixar movies, they all portray many different aspects of communication. Nonverbal communication is presented in the movie by using gestures/movement. Although cartoon characters are not actually real people in the movie, they are created by real people who have experienced nonverbal communication in their lives.
Treasure Island, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, is about a boy named Jim Hawkins who goes on a search for Flint’s buried treasure. Jim Hawkins goes on this journey with Doctor Livesey, and Squire Trelawney, and they hire hands to help them. John Silver—a one-legged pirate also in search for this treasure—joins the crew as well, unfortunately. The other members of the crew, that they hired, planned mutiny. A battle between the pirates and Jim’s party takes place once they reach the island. There are many interesting conflicts, betrayals, and situations going on throughout the novel.
When the marquis presents his theory of fluidum letale, which states that the Earth emits a lethal gas that obstructs “vital energies” of living creatures, he intentionally includes vivid details to exaggerate the description of Grenouille’s body, such as “the presence of pustules and scars caused by the corrosive gas” and “clear evidence of fluidal deformation of bone structure” (Süskind 141). Through the visual imagery, Süskind illustrates that the marquis’ scientific belief involves a degree of overthinking that leads to the false interpretation of the causes of Grenouille’s condition. The marquis misinterprets the fluidum letale’s role in Grenouille’s physical deteriorating state, but in reality, Grenouille’s extended isolation in the cave caused his ailing condition. Furthermore, the marquis creates confirmation bias, or the tendency to notice evidence that supports one’s position and ignore evidence which contradicts it, because he includes manipulated visual descriptions fitted to his own fluidum letale theory as justification for his audience. Thus, Süskind satirizes the Enlightenment by suggesting that French scientists, such as the marquis, formulated their ideas with a foundation of false assumptions, looking upon the surface of the concept without truly understanding its workings. French scientists, motivated by greed, wanted to provide quick answers during the Enlightenment, so they twisted the truth, intentionally or unintentionally, to fit their interpretation of the
Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea to show how you can push through the hardest of times and still not be defeated. The story shows how an old fisherman overcame an unlucky slump with the support from a young boy that loved and helped Santiago named Manolin. Santiago fought through the discrimination of the other old fisherman and refused to give up. Through Santiago’s struggles when trying to catch the great marlin, he kept pursuing his goal. Through sweat and tears Santiago never gives up before accomplishing his goal. He endured the pain of slicing his hands on the fishing line many of times in return to pull up the biggest fish he had ever landed.
A frame tale is a smaller tale inside of a larger story. In the Prologue of The Thousand and One Nights, The King named Shahrayar witnessed his very unfaithful wife by making love with another man. Because of this eventful tragedy, Shahrayar decides to have his wife killed because of her unfaithful acts. The man that killed his wife, named Vizer, once the dead was done by killing his wife, Vizer had a new job which was to find a new women to sleep with each night. Every morning the woman is killed after she sleeps with the king by Vizer. He did this so he would not have to deal it the pain of having an unfaithful woman in his presents and feel that pain ever again. One day Vizer’s daughter, named Shahrazad, came to her father and told him that she was sick of all the death and it was time for him to settle down and marry her. Vizer decides to give his daughter to Shahrayar to marry him. This is when the frame tale begins, each night Vizer is forced to tell a story to her husband, the king, if she wants to stay alive. One of the stories that were told it called “The Porter an...