... point for spiritual growth. Hallucinogens clear “old mists”(47); they let you perceive yourself without any armour. They force you to stand naked and alone, without any defense to your own emotional states. You become very close to the oneness Matthiessen describes, “Then I breathe, and the mountain breathes, setting the world in motion once again.”(198) Nevertheless this oneness is very hard to achieve in practice and harder still to maintain. Drugs always leave you short of the goal of oneness because the drugs themselves are an obstacle, a mist that will always stop you short of total oneness. Drugs will always hold you back becaus ...

... hero must be an important or influential man who makes an error in judgment, and who must then suffer the consequences of his actions. Those actions are seen when Oedipus forces Teiresias to reveal his destiny and his father's name. When Teiresias tries to warn him by saying " I say that you and your most dearly loved are wrapped together in a hideous sin, blind to the horror of it" (Sophocles 428). Oedipus still does not care and proceeds with his questioning as if he did not understand what Teiresias was talking about. The tragic hero must learn a lesson from his errors in judgment and become an example to the audience of what happens when great men fall from the ...

... One wrong he saw with society was that man could be so cruel and inhumane to his fellow man. Take the irony that surrounds the situation at the Phelps’ farm. The Phelps’ were good-natured Christians whom were taught by society that slavery was morally right. Therefore, Jim is treated accordingly and locked up in a shed for running away. One subtle part of the irony is that the cruelest person to Jim was not the Phelps’, who locked him in the shed, nor the king, who sold Jim to the Phelps. Instead the most cruel person happens to be Tom Sawyer. Tom needlessly put Jim through arduous conditions: first, for knowing that Jim was already a fr ...

... Sound and Sense he states the definition of interpretive literature is "Literature written to deepen and broaden and sharpen our awareness of life." Interpretive literature is not candy coated. It allows its readers to experience the trials and tribulations of life. By using graphically realistic plots and endings, which are consistent to those in real life, interpretive literature achieves a higher literary value than escape literature. Interpretive literature allows its reader too step out of the fantasy world they might be living in and focus on what the world is really about. One might say an interpretive story provides insight to understandin ...

... He advises Huck not to look as he says, “It’s a dead man... dead two er three days... come in Huck, but doan’ look at his face.” At the end of the book the reader finds out that the dead man turns out as Huck’s father. Further on down the river, Huck and Jim engage in a deep conversation. Jim speaks of the family he feels he has left behind. Jim tries hard to save up all his money in hopes of buying back his wife and children when he becomes a free man. He expresses that he feels terrible for leaving behind his family and misses them very much. As a result, Huck feels responsible and guilty for ruining Jim’s freedom. Huck dec ...

... putting "Bromide" in the prisoner’s food. The prisoners are provided no forms of personal hygiene such as showers, except the one they receive when they enter and leave the camp, other than that they are given no forms of washing or grooming. Their toilet facilities are non-existent, and instead they have to balance precariously over a pit that is never emptied of the stagnant waste that remains inside. They receive no protection from the sun in summer and because of this they develop numerous blisters and scars all over their bodies. In one part of the story gets a chance to see what she looks like and she is shocked at her appearance, because she hadn’ ...

... plays a role which knowledges a reader about the horrors of the time period when the story takes place. Simply by the name Mr. Wright, tells us that men are always right when it comes to opposition against women. Men in this story are shown to be superior to their sub species, women. It shows us that anything a man does is always right even though it might be wrong, where else a thing that can be considered right, done by a women is shown to be wrong. This fact can be supported by the character of John Wright who is an abusive husband. Even though he treats his wife improperly, his actions are not condemned; where as Minnie’s character, who killing her ...

... In this piece Whitman writes, "Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums-so shrill you bugles blow." This passage tells of a farmer having no peace now that the war is happening on his fields. Some writers however tried to keep their literature free of war, and they wrote about the westward movement. The civil war authors told of the sorrows society felt during the Civil War. Before, during, and after the Civil War writers were writing about the society of the westward movement. A famous westward movement author was Mark Twain. Twain wrote mostly stories pertaining to life on th ...

... are superb and he is even able to boast about all his achievements. Beowulf is the ultimate epic hero who risks his life countless times for immortal glory and for the good of others. Beowulf is in the eyes of his fellow men through his amazing physical strength. He fought in numerous battles and returned victorious from all but his last. In his argument with Unferth, Beowulf explains the reason he lost a simple swimming match with his youthful opponent Brecca. Not only had Beowulf been swimming for seven nights, he had also stopped to kill nine sea creatures in the depths of the ocean. Beowulf is also strong enough to kill the monster Grendel, who has been t ...

... the idea of a totalitarian government, the concept of independent personalities, and the idea of anarchism and rebellion against the government policy are all present and represent great significance to the theme of Utopia. Both novels focus on the idea of a totalitarian government that forces the people to live the way they want them to. In the novel 1984, a totalitarian government, or a one party government, keeps watch over everybody. They use extreme measures to keep individuals in line. The Party in Orwell's novel is very powerful because it is a group whose primary purpose is to gain and keep their power over the world. The methods they use are hars ...