Painful Path Essays

  • Oedipus the King: A Painful Path to Wisdom

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    Oedipus:  The Painful Path to Wisdom Through the character of Oedipus, Sophocles shows the futility and consequences of defying the divine order. Oedipus served Thebes as a great ruler, loved by his subjects; but it is his one tragic flaw, hubris, which dooms his existence, regardless of the character attributes that make him such a beloved king. From the opening dialogue we sense the character of Oedipus. When confronted by his subjects praying for relief of the plague he reacts kingly and

  • Oedipus the King: A Painful Path to Truth

    742 Words  | 2 Pages

    Truth in Oedipus Rex The play "Oedipus Rex" is a very full and lively one to say the least. Everything a reader could ask for is included in this play. There is excitement, suspense, happiness, sorrow, and much more. Truth is the main theme of the play. Oedipus cannot accept the truth as it comes to him or even where it comes from. He is blinded in his own life, trying to ignore the truth of his life. Oedipus will find out that truth is rock solid. The story is mainly about a young man named

  • Dubliners

    1301 Words  | 3 Pages

    concept of nationality embracing all who lived in Ireland regardless of creed or origin. A small insurrection in 1848 failed, but their ideas influenced the coming generations. This small nationalism was illustrated in the stories "Evelyn" and "A Painful Case." In the latter, Mr. James Duffy, despite his dislike of the "modern an pretentious" Dublin, decides to stay at least in the suburbs and commute back and forth to his house. Also in the story of "Eveline", we see her refusing to leave with her

  • Fragments of A Painful Case and Paper Pills

    1680 Words  | 4 Pages

    Fragments of "A Painful Case" and "Paper Pills" Although James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson situate their subjects in very different milieux (Joyce's in Dublin; Anderson's in Winesburg, Ohio), two of their subjects speak the same language of idiosyncrasy. In Joyce's "A Painful Case," Mr. Duffy keeps on his desk "a little sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile

  • The Search for Truth or Meaning in James Joyce's Dubliners

    1799 Words  | 4 Pages

    Meaning in Dubliners Several of James Joyce's stories in Dubliners can read as lamentations on a frustrating inability of man to represent meaning by external means, including written word. When characters in "Araby," "Counterparts," and "A Painful Case" attempt to represent or signify themselves, other characters, or abstract spiritual entities with or through words, they not only fail, but end up emotionally ruined. Moreover, the inconclusive endings of the three stories correspond with the

  • Comparing the Women in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses

    3158 Words  | 7 Pages

    highly self-conscious, isolated literary men (or men with literary aspirations) with women who follow more romantic models, even stereotypes. In Dubliners, Joyce utilizes a clichéd story of doomed love ending in death-physical or spiritual-in "A Painful Case" and "The Dead." The former holds far more to these conventions and can be read as a precursor to the more sophisticated techniques in the latter, which draws the reader's attention to the cliché only to redirect it. Nevertheless, it is Joyce's

  • Odour Of Chrysanthemums Analysis

    1024 Words  | 3 Pages

    Odour of the Chrysanthemums and A Painful Case; Two Cases of Progressive, Venomous Asphyxiation In this comparative essay, I shall be analysing Lawrence’s Odour of Chrysanthemums and Joyce’s A Painful Case (Dubliners), identifying and highlighting similarities, but also examining the divergences. I will be scrutinizing the elegantly intertwined fibres which are the symbols and motifs of both stories, in search of intersections, moments of parallelism and detachments. The first similarity I encountered

  • Dubliners and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Several of Joyce's stories in Dubliners can read as lamentations. They are showing the frustrated inability of man to represent meaning by external means, including written word. When characters in ^Araby^, and ^A Painful Case^ attempt to represent or signify themselves, other characters or abstract spiritual entities with or through words, they not only fail, but end up emotionally ruined. In T.S. Eliots^ poem, ^ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,^ the feeling

  • Human Identity in James Joyce's The Dead

    927 Words  | 2 Pages

    the first story, "The Sisters," a young boy is confronted with the death of an influencing figure in his life. The women in "Eveline" and "Clay" are haunted by death: Eveline, by the memory of her mother, and Maria, by the omen of her own death. "A Painful Case" is the story of the tragic death of a rejected woman. A dead political figure is the basis of "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." All these stories revolve around characters' pains and experiences with death. James Joyce's "The Dead" exhibits the

  • Mr. Duffy

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    was flat out what the wanted or alone due to some kind of forced circumstance that grew out of a previous choice they made, but when it comes down to it loneliness is never truly desired. In the short stories A Painful Case and Eveline we see examples of each type of loneliness. In A Painful Case Mr. Duffy for the most part of his life chooses to be alone. In Eveline, Eveline seems to be lonely because she’s unable to leave her duties to her family. In both stories the main characters display their

  • Search for Meaning in James Joyce's Dubliners

    2387 Words  | 5 Pages

    brilliantly opens up the entire collection for a different kind of reading, one based on noticing rather than overlooking literature's limitations. With... ... middle of paper ... ...eems not only "hard," as in difficult or complex, but viscerally painful to attempt to capture some meaning or truth about the real through the medium of words on a page. Works Cited: Benstock, Bernard. Critical Essays on James Joyce. G.K. Hall & Co. Boston, Massachusetts: 1985. Joyce, James. Dubliners.

  • Illuminating The Path Of Progress

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    Illuminating the Path of Progress Thomas Alva Edison is the most famous inventor in American History. Edison designed, built, and delivered the electrical age. He started a revolution that would refocus technology, change life patterns, and create millions of jobs. He became famous for his scientific inventions, even though he was not a scientist. His real talent was his ability to clearly judge a problem and be persistent in experimenting. He was the master of the trial and error method. Thomas

  • Women and Maturity in Eschenbach's Parzival

    1246 Words  | 3 Pages

    course of Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic romance Parzival, it becomes abundantly clear that the main characters, Parzival and Gawan, must attain some level of maturity or growth before they will be able to persevere in their personal quests. While their paths to maturity involve a great deal of combat and contests of knightly skill, it is their encounters with noble women that truly redefine their characters. Parzival is undeniably a romance. It contains all the typical components of an early romance:

  • womenoed Essay on Sophocles' Antigone - Sisters

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sisters Two sisters destined to love each other, but conflict interrupts their paths. The first's journey is one of self-exploration and discovery; the other's of continual oppression and hardships. Ismene and Antigone are the troubled sisters whose decisions take them on different courses, but these same choices also brought them together. Even though their actions show differently, Antigone and Ismene's morals and philosophies show that they are true sisters at heart. Antigone shows the attribute

  • An Analysis of the Poem Buffalo Dusk

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    intentional march towards death. When writing about the stampeding buffaloes, the author thought about the immigrants of the United States, and how they charged across prairies and mountains across the land, from east to west, trampling everything in their paths.  This is accentuated by line 5, which describes the buffalo’s pos... ... middle of paper ... ...e a loud drum, as alliteration of words like “pawed”, “prairie”, “pageant” accentuate peaks in the poem.  This has the purpose of emphasizing the imagery

  • School Food - The Path to Self-Destruction

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    The deaths exceed thousands each year, almost as many as million lives, and behind this serious issue, there is a simple solution; the solution is school foods. I, and many others, extremely disagree with the current filthiness of school foods that are provided regularly; therefore, the food conditions must be improved. Inside your body, the chemicals clog your blood vessels; ravage your heart, liver and kidney. Their purpose is to subjugate your body and mind. The store of toxic substances inside

  • Book Review of The Path of Prayer: Four Sermons on Prayer by St. Theophan the Recluse

    3575 Words  | 8 Pages

    Book Review of The Path of Prayer: Four Sermons on Prayer by St. Theophan the Recluse It is often said that there are no more heroes in today\\'s world or even that this is an age of the anti-hero. Yet anyone who is blessed with the opportunity to observe children for any length of time will see that regard for those who exemplify certain ideals (heroes) is a spontaneous element in basic human psychology. The reported lack of heroes and the cult of the anti-hero are the fruit of a disillusioned

  • Road Not Taken

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    The timeless poem by Robert Frost “the road not taken” uses symbolism to explain this aspect of human life. The poem tells us a situation of a man traveling on a journey arriving at the crossroads where he is presented two paths. He describes these paths in lines 4-7. The two paths he is torn between directly symbolizes decisions w...

  • Qingming Shanghe Tu Scroll: Video Analysis

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    generally in regards to the commerce and the specific elements that contribute, such as nodes, edges, and paths. The video begins with the bridge where the bridge

  • Dead Men's Path by Chinua Achebe

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Dead Men’s Path” by Chinua Achebe In this short story “Dead Men’s Path,” Chinua Achebe gives the protagonist an exciting chance to fulfill his dream. Michael Obi was fixed officially headmaster of Ndume Central School, which was backward in every sense. He had to turn the school into a progressive one, however the school received a bad report when the supervisor came to inspect. Why did the school get a nasty report and Obi could not become a glorious headmaster even though he put his whole