Vagueness Essays

  • Essay on the Artful Paradox of Sonnet 66

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    In sonnet 66, Shakespeare creates a paradoxical difficulty for himself as a poet. As Helen Vendler points out, the censorship described in line 9 necessitates an absence of art from the poem (309-10), yet coevally Shakespeare must keep the reader interested. He straddles this problem by speeding the tempo, creating questions in the reader’s mind, and representing intense emotions-- all through apparently artless techniques. Most obtrusively, both sound technique and constant end-stoppage speed

  • The Importance Of Vagueness

    544 Words  | 2 Pages

    (Hall, 2014) Vagueness is a due process of law with regards to any criminal and civil statutes of uncertain that do not provide notice of the conduct prohibited to what penalty may be imposed that may affect a person which implies in the area of expression. Vagueness addresses the unfairness of criminal punishment on an individual who is unaware that such conduct is prohibited. The vagueness statutes have the effect of the unconstitutional definition of what is criminal. The vagueness statutes encourage

  • Definition Essay - What is Wisdom?

    571 Words  | 2 Pages

    of learning, and the personification of God's will in the creation of the universe (according to the American Heritage Dictionary, 6th ed.). The abstract nature of the word wisdom allows for broad interpretation of its context. To limit the vagueness of the definition, many interpret wisdom as the accumulation of knowledge. In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena was known for her wisdom. Additionally, the personification of animals as possessing wisdom also heavily influenced Greek lore. Owls

  • Mary Robinson’s The Haunted Beach

    1548 Words  | 4 Pages

    hover’d craving” the reader fervently reads on, seeking some illumination on the “strong and mystic chain” which binds both men and nature’s actions which is never fully revealed. For all its semblance of order, the poem is marked by ambiguity and vagueness; pronouns have no clear antecedents, shadowy light covers the scene, and the events themselves are told in reverse order. Yet still Robinson strives to conclude with order and meaning, bringing together the strange mesh of seemingly opposed forces

  • Indeterminacy: Order Versus Chaos

    2775 Words  | 6 Pages

    Indeterminacy: Order Versus Chaos ABSTRACT: Indeterminacy, uncertainty, disorder, randomness, vagueness, fuzziness, ambiguity, crisis, undecideability, chaos, are all different terms. Yet, they are also semantically related to the idea of something opposed to order or structure and organization. Such terms denote prima facie insuperable obstacles to the attainment of true, certain, or precise knowledge about things and events. After analysing the ontological, logical, and axiological status

  • An Analysis of The Building

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    obligatory underlayer which so many people miss, but in "The Building" it is easier to discern and comprehend. The title of the poem, "The Building" already hints at the main theme of the poem. The word "building" is a very vague term and in it's vagueness one can make out the fright of the author for this building, he cannot specify that it is a hospital as if not saying the word will make it go away. At the same time in this poem, Larkin makes out the hospital as the real world, everything around

  • An Analysis of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    An Analysis of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken In "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost, many questions arose about the meaning of the poem. One common interpretation of the poem about assertion of individualism, where the speaker is taking the road not traveled so that he can assert his individualism, is a nice interpretation. However, I believe that the speaker is really having a hard time making up his mind, and the poem is a conversation with himself trying to rationalize his decision

  • How to Avoid Miscommunication with Correct Language Usage

    1406 Words  | 3 Pages

    problem of communication which is unclear or vague is one which results from the use words for which the "range of application is not clear" (Hospers, 22). One could also say that something which is vague is that which lacks precision. This type of vagueness results from statements or words which are not quantifiable. For instance, the phrase "He is fairly heavy" does not communicate a precise weight or condition of the person. A person who weighs 240 lbs may be considered by some to be "fairly heavy"

  • Essay On Ambiguity In Turn Of The Screw And The Innocents

    2798 Words  | 6 Pages

    without difficulty. A written story can involve ambiguity in the characters, plot, narrative - every factor in the story can have to it a sense of uncertainty. However, uncertainty concerning ambiguity is subtly different from uncertainty involving vagueness; the former is a deliberate ploy by the writer to leave interpretation open to the reader's own imagination, whereas the latter comes

  • Human Insecurity in T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

    1130 Words  | 3 Pages

    mental rejection plays off the poem's many ambiguities, both structural and literal. Eliot uses these uncertainties to develop both the plot of the poem and the character of J. Alfred Prufrock. The poem's setting is one that conjures up images of vagueness. It is filled with "yellow fog" and "yellow smoke", both of which suggest a certain denseness and haziness. Similarly, Prufrock is faced with another kind of mist - "perfume from a dress (65) that sends him back into his spiral of insecurity.

  • Analysis of Dickinson’s Pain has an Element of Blank

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    usage of "Pain": the sense of loss in "grief" and "mourning" or the sense of pity in "anguish" and "suffering."  She chooses the lexical vagueness of "Pain" to embrace all these facets of the emotion. In introducing the "Element of Blank," it becomes the context that she thus examines pain.  The exact context of "Blank" possesses a vagueness that suggests its own inadequacy of solid definition.  Perhaps this sense of indefinition is the impression that this usage of "Blank"

  • environment analysis of the BPO industry in india

    4836 Words  | 10 Pages

    providers, as set in a contract”. The typical consequence of such a decision is a decline of employment in the plant/firm that is doing the “outsourcing” and a rise in employment in the plant/firm from which the supplies are sourced thereafter. The vagueness of the term is often related to the fact that it is not made clear if the change in sourcing of supplies refers to the plant level, the firm level or to the national level. The term “recurring interval activities” might include a given level of in-house

  • Releasing the Moment in Clampitt’s Poem Fog

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    dissolves; it defeats sight. "Fog" reveals, illuminates, widens, and intensifies; it gives sight. There is a pleasing poetic irony in Clampitt’s ability to render so present to the mind’s eye precisely what the eyes themselves cannot see at all. "A vagueness comes over everything, / as though proving color and contour / alike dispensable" (Clampitt 610). As things disappear, "the lighthou...

  • law in political science

    3381 Words  | 7 Pages

    community. Legal reasoning gives a common ground for people to argue and either come together or apart. Without legal reasoning the people can’t tell if a judge is impartial. Legal reasoning helps us to understand the way that a judge interpreted the vagueness of words in constitutional law. The effects that law has on people outside of the courts is the position that Engel and Munger take in trying to explain where law gets meaning and fits into our daily lives. Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation

  • Heroism in Lord Jim

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    ships . . . an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in a book" (3). His thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: He loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with a heroic tread . . ." (12). Despite this heroic desire, while on the Patna, Jim and five others ironically betray the "savage" men who were "surrendered to the wisdom of white men and to their courage"(10) when they

  • Improving The Literacy Of America

    1580 Words  | 4 Pages

    example, if someone can read a sentence and decipher what it means does this mean the person is literate. Or should the individual be able to interpret a sentence as well as write and respond to a given situation to be considered literate. Due to this vagueness in what encompasses a literate individual, I will not state statistical information about the state of literacy in the United States. The statistical information is not important, rather the way the literacy rate can be risen in the U.S. is what

  • Nihilism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

    2363 Words  | 5 Pages

    the reader can witness a man who lacks restraint due to his acknowledgment of purposelessness, thus becoming a nihilistic hero. Marlow's search for such a man is the ultimate goal of the novel. It is then Conrad's goal to lead the reader through vagueness and pessimism to a conclusive void. The novel's conclusion ultimately portrays existential nihilism, where Kurtz's last words confirm the world's meaninglessness and Marlow becomes more like the pessimistic Kurtz by the lie told to Kurtz's Intended

  • Use of Imagery in Jean Toomer's Cane

    2441 Words  | 5 Pages

    Use of Imagery in Jean Toomer's Cane Dusk. It is that darker side of twilight when the sun has just set, but the moon has yet to take full charge. It is a time of mergings, of vagueness and ambiguity, when an end and a beginning change places. The sun steps aside and lets the moon and stars take over for a while. As the most pervasive image in the first section of Jean Toomer's Cane, it is the time of day when "[t]he sky, lazily disdaining to pursue/The setting sun, too indolent to hold/

  • Tension and Conflict in Mending Wall

    2528 Words  | 6 Pages

    admits for whatever it is "that doesn't love a wall." Frost establishes at the outset his speaker's discursive indirection. He combines the indefinite pronoun "something" with the loose expletive construction "there is" to evoke a ruminative vagueness even before raising the central subject of walls. A more straightforward character (like the Yankee farmer) might condense this opening line to three direct words: "Something dislikes walls." But Frost employs informal, indulgently convoluted language

  • George Orwell Vagueness

    583 Words  | 2 Pages

    Orwell believes that the language which is vague or meaningless hides the truth rather than express it. Orwell encourages concreteness and clarity instead of vagueness, and individuality over political conformity. Moreover Orwell argues on the fact that the English language becomes “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”He argues that these result from bad writing habits which are spread by imitation