Jacques Barzun Essays

Barzun is a French born American, who has always been in love with baseball. Sometimes in history, in order to understand one idea, it is easier to compare it to an idea you already know. This is exactly what Barzun has done in some of his books. He compares baseball to Greek tragedy. In his book, “God’s Country and Mine”, he said, “the despair groaned out

“Each day I wait for you.” (Schnabel) is the heart-wrenching, lump-in-the-throat moment that had us all grasping onto our seats which resonated with an intensity that defined the shades of the film as it began to wrap up. These emotionally riveting moments are portrayed through several instances throughout the movie and it overshadows his pitiful character in the book. Buaby’s inspiring endurance which formulates sympathy is quickly extinguished and Bauby’s personality tunes itself on a spectrum

In Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Thesis), Cohen analyzes the psychology behind monsters and how, rather than being a monstrous beast for the protagonist of the story to play against, “the monster signifies something other than itself”. Cohen makes the claim that by analyzing monsters in mythology and stories, you can learn much about the culture that gave rise to them. In Thesis 1 of Monster Culture, Cohen proposes that “the monster’s body literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety

In this essay, masculinity and femininity is discussed, as well as the understanding of masculinity within femininity. According to the English Dictionary, femininity is the quality of being female, and it is the quality of womanliness. And masculinity is the possession of qualities traditionally associated with men. Female genitalia represents femininity, although, femininity can be represented through body language and personal preference. And the same goes for masculinity. One can choose to be

There are multiple symbols within Lord of the Flies, however, the fourth chapter mainly focuses on Piggy’s spectacles, fire, painted faces, and long hair. It is Piggy’s glasses and their reflection that causes the boys to first create a fire on top of the mountain. Without them, the boys may still remain in the dark before finding an alternative way to spark a flame. This makes the spectacles a key survival tool. Therefore, the spectacles represent the progression of technology on the island and

American soldier Ambrose Bierce once said, "Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." Logical reasoning is crucial for maintaining order and making good choices. This is displayed in William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, in which a group of British schoolboys is stranded on a deserted island and must learn to fend for themselves to ensure survival. Ralph uses logos to make sensible decisions that benefit

Alfred Hitchcock is a well-known movie director for his interpretations of using the concepts and the theory of psychoanalysis in his films. Specifically in the film, “The Birds”, there are scenes throughout the movie that represent psychoanalysis. An imagery that Alfred Hitchcock uses to represent psychoanalysis is the concept of the unconscious mind to show to the relationship of Melanie Daniel and the birds. By using the concept of “the unconscious”, in the movie to he represents it through

How is it that it’s so hard to communicate with one another face to face yet we can carry a twenty-four-hour conversation on our devices? Is it because we can be quick to delete our true selves and permit ourselves a sense of empowerment to out alter egos; which we project to others for our satisfaction and their expectations of us. Or does the person simply lack proper social skills. When finally having that physical communication with someone you connect with is some type of level, whether if it’s

A common theme within KOBG, The Yellow Wallpaper, and Modernism is alienation. This is evident by the narrator’s isolation in The Yellow Wallpaper, alienation of the individual from his own society and the criticism of his society in King of the Bingo Game, and the feeling of isolation the narrator feels in Robert Frost’s Desert Places. Firstly, in The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator is believed to be ill, but her husband and brother don’t believe her. For her to be isolated from society, the narrator

Pan’s Labyrinth shows an interesting mix between the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and the imagination of a child that leaves viewers questioning if the imaginary world is actual part of the “real world.” Throughout these mixings of reality, observers are presented with female characters that come to show that the questioning of authority and reality seemingly results in a positive outcome. Ofelia and her mother Carmen are two opposite examples of this. Ofelia continuously disobeys those around

1603, canada was inhabited by the indians. In 1534 Francois the first sent Jacques Cartier for his first voyage to explore the new world. Champlain discussed an alliance with the indians and the french King which was accepted and was followed with a small celebration. Champlain continued his exploration and explored the Saguenay River. He quotes that in this new world there are no flat lands, everywhere I look all I see is Mountains. He finally reached Quebec. On his way he spotted many forests and

Romare Bearden’s painting The Family portrays a scene of a family who are in a negative situation. They are being visited by two unwelcome guest late at night this can be seen from the body language given by the father and mother as it implies that the topic is a negative one. The family is caught in a scene at the moment of the meeting going hostile. The family is painted with a somber tone with solid colors giving leaving the painting with a feeling of anticipation that something is going to happen

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein depicts the remarkable resemblance to the “modern” myth of Prometheus. The intertextuality used to connect these two stories, allow Shelley to bring out the most prominent themes of Power and suffering. As both of the characters deal differently with the struggle to resist the power that comes with creating life, the inevitable end for both characters are the same; they fall at the hands of their own creations. Shelley carefully utilizes the legend of Prometheus to express

The acknowledgment of and connection with nature is an essential element in order to become a person’s most genuine self. A similar variation of this idea is communicated in“The Village” by Henry David Thoreau. The essay was written in 1854 and published in his short collection of essays, Walden or Life in the Woods, a series of essays derived from his two and a half year spent living in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts. The essay aims to persuade active members of American society, intellectuals

Discrimination is not the only reason for the lack of women advancing through international relations; Tickner argues that on top of that the field of international relations theory in itself is discriminatory. Tickner presents a feminist analysis of Hans Morgenthau's six principles of political realism, which, the author claims, exhibit a masculine bias. It argues that realism is not an inaccurate portrayal of the international system but an incomplete one that is a partial picture of reality. She

Deconstruction was introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Later “deconstruction” develops to interrogate the assumptions of Western thought by reversing or displacing the "binary oppositions" that provide its foundation. (Shen, 2012) To deconstruct colonial discourse is not simple a process of expelling colonizers but more importantly reconstruct the cultural code that the colonial discourse imposed upon the colonized. (Georgetown University Library)Therefore to deconstruct colonial discourse

: Sigmund Freud, “Some Neurotic Mechanisms in jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality,” On Psychopathology. tr. James Strachey (Harmondsworth :Penguin, 1979, rpt. 1983) P-198. Chapter-3 (Tagore ’s Short Stories : A Study of Psycho-Socio Realities of Characters) “…………the artist finds out the unique, the individual, which yet is in the heart of the universal. When he looks on a tree, he looks on that tree as unique, not as the botanist who generalizes and classifies. It is the function of the artist

The modern era can be categorized as a period in which power, and its structures, dispersed. No longer could one identify discrete institutions, organizations, or individuals who held a majority of power over the common people. While in the past, feudalism, the church, and the king governed much of an individual’s conduct, the modern era, marked by the emergence of modern, industrial capitalism, diffused this power among many different institutions, organizations, and individuals. Foucault’s Discipline

Freud, Kant and Nostalgia Sigmund Freud never directly tackled the concept of collecting in his psychology but just before he was forced to leave Vienna for London, the photographer ‘Edmund Engelmann’ photographed his 2,000 objects that Freud had kept over the previous 40 years after his father had passed away. These photographs provided a record that served as a replicate to the desk full of specimens that had always dominated Freud’s room in England. He proposed a more pragmatic account for

Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain who is known for her essay on visual pleasures in narrative cinema. Being inspired by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan’s ideology combined with psychoanalysis, Mulvey comes up with the ‘Male Gaze Theory regarding sexual objectification on women in the media. The male gaze is the way in which the visual arts and the literature portrays women and world from a masculine point of view presenting women as objects of male pleasure regardless of being