The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a hilarious sci-fi comedy. With witty comments about digital watches and depressed robots, Douglas Adams truly is a prophet to all comedy writers. The book opens with Earth and a man named Arthur Dent. Arthur's house is going to be demolished to make way for a bypass. To delay this, Arthur lays in front of the bulldozer that is advancing on his home. After laying there for quite a while, his friend, Ford Prefect tells him to get up and go to the bar with him because he has to tell him something important. After convincing the construction workers to wait in the plowing down of Arthur's home, they both head over to the local bar.
After three drinks each, a group of Vogon spaceships move in and blow the Earth to dust , to make way for an interstellar bypass. Fortunately, Arthur and Ford are both transported up to one of the spaceships. From there, they're discovered by the owners of the ship, and are pushed out of the airlock. They're picked up by the most powerful ship in the universe, The Heart of Gold, within thirty seconds of the airlock opening. The Heart of Gold, recently stolen by the President of the Galaxy, is powered by a Infinite Improbability Drive. An engine that basically allows the ship to do anything, no matter how improbable. From there, they travel with the President of the Galaxy and his girlfriend and a depressed robot. Traveling through space, they learn about the meaning of life, who the smartest beings on the Earth really were and what happens when you change a nuclear missile into a whale and drop it from outer space.
Adams directly states what the character Arthur Dent has in his personality: "He was about thirty as well, tall, dark-haired and ne...
... middle of paper ...
...hey are a part of the story.
In addition, every few chapters, there is an entire excerpt devoted to an entry of the in-book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, basically this book's version of our Wikipedia. Usually this entry would have something to do with the predicament that the group is in at the moment. I believe that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the perfect book for students of my age to be reading because of it's hilarious storyline and engaging and well developed characters In fact, if we weren't already reading a book in class, I would encourage you to read it to the class. It contains lower level vocabulary than I am used to, but still a great book. The only complaint I have about this book is the same thing that The Washington Post Book World had to say about the book: "Extremely funny . . .Inspired lunacy. . .[and] over much too soon."
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the author uses foreshadowing to lead up to the unexpected twist of fate that the family finds when meeting the story’s antagonist “The Misfit.” As columnist in English Language Notes David Piwinski explains, “The murders of the grandmother and her family by the Misfit come as no surprise to the attentive reader, since O’Connor’s story is filled with incidents and details that ominously foreshadow the family’s catastrophic fate” (73). The following passage will explore O’Connor’s usage of foreshadowing in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
The title of this novel is 2001: A Space Odyssey, this amazing book was written by Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke has many degrees that allow him to give depth to the plot. Clarke has also written a lot of books, like the Space Odyssey series, Childhood's End, and many more. There are three major settings in this story. The first takes place on the moon, where the climax begins when TMA-1 is found. The second setting is the Inter-planetary ship Discovery, when it is on its way to one of Jupiter's moons. The last setting is actually a lot mini settings because TMA-2 becomes a star gate, which leads to a variety of wondrous places, like an abandoned spaceport and an inhabited sun.
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
The novel Beyond the Blue Event Horizon is the sequel to Frederik Pohl’s Nebula Award winning novel, Gateway. Without prior knowledge of the first book’s plot, the sequel is extremely hard to read and get into. The story starts on a ship somewhere in space with a mysterious boy named Wan. On a different ship, the Herter-Halls company is making a journey to the Food Factory since there was a shortage on Earth. As the book progresses, the two ships meet up, and they meet an alien race. The aliens imprison the Herter-Halls company. The book’s characters, plot, and setting help make this book interesting and directional.
In book one of the metamorphoses, Ovid talks of artists, and how art can be used to create and transform. Metamorphoses means transformation or change, so in one word, Ovid’s title tells the reader what is to come. Ovid uses art in the Metamorphoses to prove a point. To show how strong the human spirit is, or to teach you to watch what you say, because you never know who is around. The story of Arachne displays a great example of watching what you say. Minerva hears Arachne saying that she is the greatest weaver, and Minerva sets out to prove her wrong. With Daedalus and Icarus, Daedalus uses his art to try and find an escape for him and his son. Showing just how strong he is and how much he cares for his son. For Pygmalion, his art shows the power of his love and how much he wants to find the proper woman for himself.
The Roman and Chinese empire, once established, shared a number of common features as well as differences. For this reason, I picked these two empires for my essay. My focus for this essay is to differentiate between the Roman Empire and the Chinese Empire, also state the similarities that these two empires had or might have had. Main points that I will use to differentiate these two empires are religion, origins of empire, economics, and agriculture. Based on these four points I will be able to get an idea on how these two empires ruled, as well as see what made the Chinese and Roman Empire the wonderful and unique empire that they were.
In the essay, The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision, author Kenneth Jackson tells about the changes in the nation after World War II ended, and there was a spike in baby births. He talks about the creation of the Levittown suburbs to accommodate families in need of housing because of this. While the new rise of suburbs created a new kind of community and family, it also proved to have a changing effect on inner city areas and certain people.
Spirituals: African American spirituals are a key contribution to the creation of the initial genre of jazz. African Americans used spirituals during the earliest turmoil of slavery. These spirituals were used as songs to sing during labor and an initial way of communication for the Underground Railroad. These African American folk sounds mixed with gospel hymns were sun fused with instruments such as the harmonicas, banjos, and other instruments that could primarily be found. This initial form of the music started to separate itself from the gospel rendition. This mixture of different styles of music fused and gave birth to such things as minstrel shows, ragtime, and other forms of music. The most important that spirituals truly helped develop, was Jazz. Spirituals were the first true form of Negro expression in the form of music. Marshall W. Steams, Professor of English Literature at Hunter College states that “The spiritual was created out of nowhere by a sort of spontaneous combustion of Negro’s genius” (125). This mixture of hymns and instrumental instruction took form into one of the most versatile genres known to date, Jazz.
The early hominins of Africa were similar to other hominins in gross anatomical features, however, there were differences between the early hominins of Africa and other hominins, such as those found in Asia and other parts of the world as discovered in fossil remains. Not only were there some differences in the anatomical structures, there were also evidentiary differences in their culture and environmental factors in their lives, especially as the species evolved. Below, I will compare some of the differences of the early African hominins to other hominins as well as discuss how they might have lived day to day and show how the evidence supports these findings.
Antisocial personality disorder is a personality disorder marked by a general pattern of disregard for a violation of other people’s rights. Explanations of antisocial personality disorder come from the psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and biological models. As with many other personality disorders, psychodynamic theorists propose that this disorder starts with an absence of parental love during infancy leading to a lack of basic trust. In this view, the children that develop this disorder respond to early inadequacies by becoming emotionally distant, and they bond with others through use of power and destructiveness. Behavioral theorists have suggested that antisocial symptoms may be learned through modeling, or imitation. As evidence, they point to the higher rate of antisocial personality disorder found among the parents of people with this disorder. Other behaviorists suggest that some parent’s unintentionally teach antisocial behavior by regularly awarding a child’s aggressive behavior. The cognitive view says that people with this disorder hold attitudes that trivialize the importance of other people’s needs. Cognitive theorists also believe that these people have a genuine difficulty recognizing a point of view other than their own. Finally studies show that biological factors may play an important role in developing antisocial disorder. Researchers have found that antisocial people, particularly those with high impulse and aggression, display lower serotonin activity and has been linked this same activity with other studies as well.
During the sixteenth century and even into the seventeenth century, scientific discoveries and new empirical ways of thinking began to emerge. This period of history is commonly referred to as the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution challenged past authorities by challenging church teachings, philosophy, and traditionally held views of humanity’s place in the cosmos.
In “Excerpts from The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the senses”, Juhani Pallasmaa discusses the idea that people's senses have been dulled by both the advancement of society and the fact that we've started to focus and rely mainly on sight to perceive the world around us. As technology changes and moves forward, we begin to lose the naturalistic sense of life that we innately had inside of us as animals on this planet, and we get closer to not having to rely on that same naturalistic sense. Pallasma brings up the idea that we are sight-centered. What she means is that light overshadows the other senses and that society relies on vision too much. Sound is as necessary because, as Pallasmaa states, “buildings do not react to our gaze, but they do return our sounds back to our ears” (Pallasmaa 289). Society should not rely on vision much as it distances and separates humans from reality and the relationship they have. The other senses, such as touch, should be used, as it involves intimacy. Pallasmaa's argument is that of a vision-dominated society which blocks richer experiences in this world and limits knowledge and understanding. He does this through the intimacy of touch, tactile sensation and kinesthetic communication, and how vision is overused and it blocks imagination.
If we look at sociology in general, it is a study of society and human behavior. However, to be able to understand it in deeper sense we need to understand humans itself and how they interact with one another in a crowd. This involves observing humans in a micro (individual itself) and a macro level (how an individual interacts with government, family and other social institutions. As we all know, the great sociologist, C. Wright Mills defined the term “Sociological Imagination” which helps us understand the connection between individual and sociological demographics along with the history and biography. Another famous sociologist named W. E. B. DuBois wrote a book “Souls of Black Folks” where he explained the struggles of black people in the United States during The Civil War. I believe that the concept of Sociological Imagination and Idea of Double Consciousness are very intertwined with each other and can be synced to explain many behaviors of our society.
The plot of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams, commences when the diverse, disheveled, and, at least in the case of the paranoid android, depressed crew of the spaceship, The Heart of Gold, find themselves incapable of utilizing the ship’s infinite improbability drive to warp through hyperspace to escape the Vogon flagship’s attempts to exterminate the last of the human race due to the ship’s computer faculties being temporarily consumed by the simple task of figuring out to synthesize a cup of tea. After a desperate séance and a quick visit from a deceased ancestor, the flamboyantly tacky, ex-president of the universe, and captain of The Heart of Gold, Zaphod Bebblebrox, is unwillingly flung on a journey by an old friend, after the improbability drive starts working of course, to find the true ruler of the universe with his friends in tow. After witnessing the end of the universe over dinner, searching for the ultimate meaning of life, almost flying into the sun, and getting separated 2 million years in the past, the story ends with Zaphod meeting the nihilist ruler of the universe while Arthur and Ford are stranded on prehistoric earth with an excess of imbeciles and no hope of ever finding the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. The novel’s theme is that no matter how contradictory life may seem, it will always become more contrary than we could ever imagine.