I have spent several days watching Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” YouTube video as well as reading the transcript located in the description section of the video. Panic stricken, I fought to conjure up a great thesis that will explain what I think the meaning of this video is. I am struggling with creating an essay that casts my personal reflection upon people that don’t know me from Adam, in the meantime watching the clock tick as I lose daylight once again with a blank sheet of good quality paper
Like Gail Hightower, Joanna Burden is an outcast because of the past. However, Hightower idealizes the heroic southern past, while Joanna was raised to reject southern ideas of race. Hightower’s ancestors inadvertently affect his present state; Joanna’s ancestors directly influence her social position in the town. When her family first arrived they were outcast, “they hated us here. We were Yankees. Foreigners. Worse than foreigners: enemies. Carpet baggers . . . Stirring up the negros to murder
The Way to Rainy Mountain was written in 1969 by Pulitzer Prize winning author N. Scott Momaday. The novel is about Scott Momaday's Kiowa ancestors and their journey from the Montana area to Fort Sill near Rainy Mountain, Oklahoma, where their surrender to the United States Cavalry took place. In The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday traces his ancestral roots back to the beginning of the Kiowa tribe while not only learning more about the Kiowa people but rediscovering himself and finding out what
that the primality human archetypes are the persona, anima, animus, and shadow. Persona is an archetype that people can access social recognition to reach their goal. Anima is male imagery of women in inner lives and animus is female imagery of men in inner lives. Also, Jung indicates that men and women have anima and animus in their unconscious, and these two archetypes may cause desires of father complex and mother complex. Shadow archetype is the real face of the human mind, including primitive physiological
Usually when someone reads a story, there are literary devices built in that help add flavor and meaning to the story. Literary devices help the reader comprehend the main themes and ideas of the story effortlessly. There can be multiple literary devices in a story, such as foreshadowing, irony, imagery, and so forth. Symbolism is a common literary device used because a symbol can be a word or an image to describe a certain meaning or message the author may be trying to get across. In the short story
abilities, he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride and saw it as part of his growing up. In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later
Structurally, Walcott creolizes the epic genre and makes it his own. Homeric epics deal with battles and honor, which reflects the culture of the Ancient Greeks. Walcott is doing the same; he is reflecting the experience of the new empowered people of the receding empire and telling the struggle of his own tribe. The reader often comes across a reference that resonates with something read in the classic epics, and it would be unfair for Walcott to expect the reader to refrain from these associations
American is a leader, someone who does not follow in someone else’s footprints but makes their own. Leadership has been a standing characteristic in America since the first Europeans stepped foot on its soil. It took leadership among the colonists-our ancestors-to form successful colonies that eventually became the basis of our country. It took leadership, along with courage, to declare independence from Great Britain over three hundred years ago. It took an immense amount of leadership to overcome the
but I nodded assent. My father’s face was a collage of fear and disappointment. He turned away. I spoke the oath. “I will, under penalty of death and damnation, make all haste to recover the body of my husband, and bring it back to the land of his ancestors, taking any risk necessary to ensure its return. I bind my soul to my promise with blood.” I made a small cut on my forearm and let the blood drip on the white linen of the coffin. The Requist nodded, “The oath has been made. The Twins have
The light of the typical Ivy League student may not need to sparkle from within because the outside light is radiant; gifted from birth and straight A’s in advanced Shakespeare classes litter the scores of acceptance essays. The light of the atypical Ivy League student, conversely, needs to sparkle from within because of the adversity he may have faced. In order for him to transcend intellectually, he has to find that indomitable spirit. He needs to forge ahead against uncertainty because nothing
The Old South and John Crowe Ransom Most remember it as a time of dashing young heroes on horseback, fair damsels in distress, and majestic castles hidden from the vulgarity of daily life by the cool shade of fragrant magnolia and honeysuckle. It was a time and place so far removed from today’s fast moving, billboard covered world that one could easily imagine that this lost civilization existed on some far off continent, or perhaps not at all. However, the fact remains that once upon a time
slavery, Baby Suggs; the grandmother, Sethe; the mother and Denver; the daughter. In Beloved, Toni Morrison centralizes the main theme around the history of slavery in the United States. The overall theme of the novel is the reconstruction in the shadow of slavery; the need for ex-slaves to deal with their agonizing pasts in order to heal or reconstruct themselves. To develop this theme, Morrison tells the story of Sethe, a former slave woman who chooses to kill her baby girl rather than allowing
every one of us has ego and personal unconscious, we also have a deeper structure in our psyche known as collective unconscious (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). The collective unconscious stores hidden but present memories of human kinds and even the ancestors of human (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). It also represents the thoughts and feelings about something those shared by all human beings because we are all evolved from a common past (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). According to Jung, collective unconscious
Contemporary writer, living in a contemporary world, when she speaks of and for her people older voices are mixed with hers- the voices of Methodist forebears and preachers who preached the word, the anonymous voices of many who lived and were forgotten and yet out of bondage and hope made a lasting music. (Benet 3-4) For the purpose of this chapter, these words by Stephen Vincent Benet in his foreword to Margaret Walker’s first volume of poetry, For My People (1942) are really important. They
The voice of Africa has evolved over the decades. There was a time when the writings and the teachings of Africa Society and culture came from the European writers given their side of the story only. Colonial and Post Colonial Literature has taught us that there is always another voice and another side of a story. Literature from Africa at one point had no voice for itself. Colonial Literature is the writing and studies of the native cultures and societies of Africa. This is a time when the European
culture change in the Mexican way of life. They are forced to “speak American,” forcing the Chicanos to deny parts of themselves, to acculturate (2012). By forcing the acculturation, it forces their Spanish tongue to change and to eventually be forgotten. Language is part of one’s identity, so to lose your language is to lose part of oneself. When they cross the border, it becomes no a celebration to their homeland but an invasion. To Gloria, these events are American democracy, globalization, tyranny
The tale of ‘Rip Van Winkle’ can be read as a political allegory of Britain’s relation with her American colonies and as an Anti-Feminist discourse. These readings can be defined through analysis of the dynamics between Rip Van Winkle and the Dame. From this one can explore the themes of Monarchy, the Ego, Marriage and Motherhood. The strong and dominate character of the Dame and the Passive idleness of rip creates a strong allusion to the relations between Great Britain and her colonies. The
Knowledge is a distinctively human virtue. After all, if not for the want of human beings to learn of and master our habitat, would we not still be counted among the beasts? For all of the good that knowledge brings to us, however, knowledge can just as easily bring pain. We discover new types of medicine to extend our lives, but that is balanced by our awareness of our mortality. We find new advances in technology with which to bring convenience into our lives, but those advances are countered
"Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge brakes to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. / From forth the fatal lions of these foes / A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life; / Whose misadventured piteous overthrows / Doth with their death bury their parent’s strife. / The fearful passage of their death-marked love, / And the continuance of their parent’s rage, / Which, but their children’s end, naught could
World War II is an important event in history. Adolf Hitler, a ruthless dictator who rose to power, segregated and killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Hitler wanted absolute power over all of Europe, so he took advantage of the worldwide depression to gain political power and support, promising to make Germany great again. However, there were many that did not approve of his methods, and opposed his Nazi party and ideals. So, Hitler used two organizations, the SS and Gestapo, to silence