Essays on Book Page 14

Prompt: What is the play’s attitude towards women? How might a female playwright tell the story of Fences differently than August Wilson? Do Rose and the women mentioned in the play typify the role of women in the 1950s or defy them? What attributes or actions of the female characters support your argument? What if…

Human nature is ‘the fundamental dispositions and traits of humans.’ (“Human Nature.” Merriam-Webster) Human nature can be divided into two spheres: good and bad. Good human nature means to have desires like doing something which can make oneself or others feel good while bad human nature means to have bad desires like selfishness, irritation, abhorrence,…

Everywhere we look there are people that are trying to define the type of people we are. Society sometimes pressures us into molding into these profiles. It can feel suffocating as we are putting on a mask to fit the pre-set social norm. In both personal essays Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell and The…

Shooting an elephant by George Orwell, an anti-imperialist writer, is a political piece of work that explores the dystopian world of the British imperialism in 19th century India. This essay opens in Moulmein, an underdeveloped city in Lower Burma, which is governed by the British Empire. Orwell, the narrator of the story, is a colonial…

According to Maya Angelou’s, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, she describes many hardships she overcame as she grew up an African American woman in the south parts of America as well as California, throughout the 1930’s – 1940’s. It’s an evocative story of the horrible undergoing’s of her youth, in the course of…

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou begins when Maya’s parents divorce when she is extremely young. Deserting their responsibility to raise their own children, her estranged parents decide to send their son and daughter to live with their grandmother, Annie, in Arkansas. Annie, aka “Momma” lives in Arkansa, one of the…

The arts are fundamental to our humanity, as they convey the rich tapestry of human existence, including our emotions and our divergent perspectives, over time. By examining the art of both the past and the near future, they may also serve as a warning for society to avoid the pitfalls of those who have come…

The links between language and power are multifarious. Even an examination of etymologies and fundamental grammatical formulations betray a set of gendered assumptions which some suggest are linguistic building-blocks of oppression. The Handmaid’s Tale examines the way in which language can be weaponised in order to circumscribe the expression of thought – and, by extension,…

Women are one of the most oppressed gatherings among all civilizations around the world. The theme of women’s oppression is as a result of the gender roles that society has planted upon them, which further leads them to serving a subordinate role. Thus the reason women have been accustomed to feeling oppressed is because sexism…

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, was controversial and influential in the decades following its publication. The book acquired best-seller status in the 1980s and has continued to sell in North America and abroad being translated into more than thirty-five languages, including Chinese and Serbo-Croatian. The Handmaid’s Tale has been transformed into a film, an…