Customer Comments

City is an apocalyptic novel, in which the world ends “not with a bang, but with a whisper.” Reminiscent of Asimov’s I, robot, City is a collection of short stories loosely interrelated written after World War II. It portrays a decadent peaceful almost pastoral world, in which Mankind evolutionates towards its own extinction, replaced first by Dogs and then Ants. The novel, or rather the first story City, begins with Simak’s version of the aftermath of WWII. After the atomic bomb scare, Mankind has abandoned the cities and secluded themselves in hydroponic farms leading a pastoral self-sufficient life. Without the existence of cities, families have become isolated, each in their farm, where everything is available at the touch of a button (internet). The second story, Huddling Place follows by expounding on the idea of Mankind’s isolation as portrayed by the Webster family and its robot serf Jenkins. As in Asimov’s I, robot, Jenkins has two main purposes: he serves as the servant of the Webster family, as well as, a machine or computer that keeps all the family’s historical records, somewhat like Star War’s R2D2. Agoraphobia, the fear of the outdoors and unfamiliar places has taken hold of Mankind; as a result, of his escape from the cities and his own destructive impulses. In Census, Jerome Webster’s grandson operates on Dogs and gives them the power of speech and better eyesight. In an effort to push Mankind further into evolution, Jerome gives these physical talents to Dogs because “2 brains are better than one”. This propels Mankind further into its own extinction, as it is replaced by the civilization of the Dogs. Reminiscent of Asimov’s Foundation series, a mutant robot named Joe helps Mankind in his conquest of the stars by providing the technology of the rocket ship. In Desertion, Man succeeds in the conquest of Jupiter. Each man of the group and his dog, go out to gather data (in an transformed physical nature in order to adapt to Jupiter’s atmosphere) and never come back. In Paradise, 5 years after Desertion, Fowler returns to his human form to tell Mankind about Jupiter’s paradise. Tyler Webster interprets this news as a threat to Mankind’s existence as humans. Joe gives humans telepathy, and this propels them to their domination of the Universe. In Hobbies, Jon Webster is one of the few remaining humans on Earth, after the majority has left to Jupiter. In desesperation to occupy his time, he takes on useless and meaningless hobbies. Jon pulls a switch that encapsulates Geneva, the last city in a protective shield that furthers Mankind’s extinction. In Aesop, the robot serf, Jenkins is 7,000 years old, and is the overseer of the Dogs, and the few ‘violent’ humans whom he later takes to a parallel world in an attempt to preserve ‘peace on Earth.’ Unlike Asimov’s Daniel-Oliwav, Jenkins is not an entirely loyal serf to the humans, and instead strives to preserve the civilization of the Dogs by facilitating the human conquest of the stars. In the Simple Way, Earth is now inhabited by the Beasts, watcher robots and ever more intelligent Ants, who are now able to reprogram robots to build their city. Jenkins revives Jon Webster from suspended animation, to learn the ‘simple way’ to kill the Ants, a poison sweetener. Of course, the Dogs would never agree to such ‘mass killing’, so Jenkins lets Nature take its course. In Epilog, all Beasts are now dead including Dogs and the Ant city has taken over the world. When the Ant city begins to crumble, Jenkins regresses to his original purpose and leaves to Jupiter to help in the survival of the few ‘transformed’ humans. All that remains on Earth of the ‘glorious’ human civilization is Jon Webster in suspended animation. City was Simak’s masterpiece and he received the National Fantasy award for it in 1953.

By Georgina H Brandt February 8, 2003 How did The Trial give rise to the word ‘Kafkaesque’? in Kafka’s The Trial ‘Kafkaesque’ is defined as the helplessness of man in the face of unknown forces that persecute him without reason. In Kafka’s The Trial, Joseph K. is persecuted by the Law (symbolized by the Court) and is not given a reason for his arrest. The entire court system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I is parodied, as well as the police, who are portrayed as a ‘theater’ act; they were open to bribery and corruption of all sorts while conducting legal procedures that made no sense. Along with this central theme, the novel also denotes the alienation and anxiety of humanity in general ‘in the absence of God’ as revealed by other existentialists such as: Sartre, Camus, Dostoevsky and Kierkegard. In the first chapter, Joseph K. is told he is under arrest, but his charge is kept secret, for the two men and the Inspector are mere underlings and have no other information. He assumes that his employees at the office are playing some kind of joke on him, but as the fanfare goes along his situation gets more critical. He tells them that he is innocent, but no one seems to be listening to him, he is also told that he is allowed to contact his lawyer (which will do nothing to advance his case). According to the Austrian law of 1873, the accused had the right to counsel throughout all stages of criminal proceedings; however, the function of counsel was extremely limited during the preliminary stages: he could only call matters to the judge’s attention, examine questionable documents, and advice the client on how to respond to the charges, he was not allowed to interrogate the accused or the witnesses; therefore, at this moment his function was practically useless. Afterwards, he decides not to call his lawyer and is told by the Inspector that he could go to work as usual. This is considered normal procedure in the European system of criminal law; the only time pretrial detention is enforced is when: 1) guilt is highly probable, 2) the offense is major, or 3) there is a danger that the accused would flee, tamper with the evidence or repeat the offense, all these factors are apparently not present; although the chosen place for the arrest’s notification is highly inappropriate. Kafka was also a lawyer, worked in a law office during his last term at the University; following his graduation he worked in the criminal courts for a year, then he worked in a large insurance company in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its capital in Vienna) concerned with worker’s compensation for industrial accidents. Kafka also mentions the strange fact of the secrecy of the laws in his well-known parable The Problem of Our Laws: “Our laws are not generally known; they are kept secret by the small group of nobles that rule us. We are convinced that these ancient laws are scrupulously administered; nevertheless it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that one does not know.” He also in the same essay makes the following observation: “…and though there is still a possible freedom of interpretation left, it has now become very restricted.” The Magistrate, a judge of an inferior court, had extensive powers to hear witnesses, inspect premises, order domiciliary searches, and proceed with an arrest. The accused would not necessarily be informed at first, nor would the proceedings be made public. Before the authorities would order such an arrest they must be quite well-informed about the reasons for the arrest and the person of the arrestee: “Our officials, so far as I know them, says Willem, never go hunting for crime in the populace, but as the Law decrees, are drawn toward the guilty and must then send out warders. That is the Law.” Joseph K. must therefore be guilty, furthermore, the warder Franz observes later: “See…he admits that he doesn’t know the Law and yet he claims he’s innocent.” He condemns himself by offering his ignorance as proof of his innocence, one who does not know the law cannot possibly know whether it has been violated, although this could not be used as grounds of exculpation, according to the Austrian Penal Act of 1945. Yet, the entire scene can be read as a classic burlesque of the police and their secret practices. This theme returns in a later chapter when K. has accused the warders of attempted bribery and they are then flogged by Whipper in a closet at the Bank, their chief complaint is that now they have lost their chances of promotion to be floggers themselves. The reason for the secrecy is mainly for the protection of the reputation of the accused, and only those charges sound in fact and law go to trial or were made public, as it has been since the Medieval period. In chapter two, K. is informed that the hearing of his case will occur the following Sunday. When he arrives at Court, he becomes aware of the ‘dimness, dust and reek’ perhaps an allusion to the secrecy of his charge, and the obvious corruption of the Court, which later he discovers is also open to bribery and also that having the right connections matters a lot more than being in the right. The Examining Magistrate commits a typical mistake by confusing K.’s identity with that of a house painter; he then grabs the opportunity to denounce the whole proceeding as senseless and absurd, where innocent people are humiliated in public. He then rushes out of the door, where he is stopped by the Examining Magistrates, who says to him: “ Today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man.” This man is more interested in talking with bystanders than questioning K., has little authority to control the audience and is easily humiliated, it is all a parody of the Judge and the jury, which at that time was under attack and later abandoned. Restored in 1873, the jury did not gain acceptance by legal scholars, indeed, it was thought to be a Utopian dream, the reasons for this were: 1) the jurors were ignorant of the psychological principles for evaluating proof, 2) grasping the significance of evidence and deducing questions and/or conclusions, and 3) that their political independence was a myth for they were dominated by the government, counsel and the press. Hans Gross, a former judge and a professor at the German University where Kafka graduated as a lawyer and who was a brilliant scholar and whose work on Criminal Psychology is still considered a basic text, criticized the investigative process by saying: “Every fundamental investigation must first of all establish the nature of its subject matter… witness and judge, have not defined the nature of this subject; they have not determined what they wanted of each other….the one did not know, and the other did not tell him.” Neither Joseph K. nor the Examining Magistrate has any understanding about what the other one thinks the inquiry is all about. The parody is made more hilarious by presenting lawyers and judges as a bunch of lusty, lecherous officials more interested in examining pornography than studying their own law books, which exist only to collect dust; upon K. taking a closer look at the Magistrate’s table, he finds a salacious novel and another book that contains an indecent picture. The usher’s wife is being pursued and later raped by one of the law students in the court and has also attracted the Magistrate’s attention, she is then carried off by the law student for the Magistrate which K. tries to prevent to no avail. Emrich, a critic of Kafka, suggested that the role of the usher’s wife is that of Woman living in conflict with the court, contrasted to Woman outside the court (Fraulein Burstner) and Woman defeated by the court’s power (Leni). The subject of bribes returns with the discovery by K. of the flogging of his warders, which he tries to have them pardoned by offering a bribe himself. Bribery was commonplace in the judicial system, K. also makes the observation that it is not for lack of money that the court offices are so poorly housed, but it is because the court officials pocket the money. Another humorous observation is made later when the unbreathable air is explained as the result of “washing their dirty linen.” After this scene, K. becomes progressively isolated and obsessed with his case, to the point where he cannot concentrate on his work, while at the office. His uncle comes from the country and finds him a very competent and influential lawyer, but who does nothing and is later fired by K., because the lawyer is more arrogant and more proud of having connections than of doing anything for his clients; but under Austrian law, pleas could only be entered after the presentation of evidence and only after the investigation led to a trial, which has yet not occurred in K.’s case, therefore, there is nothing his lawyer can do at this point. Judges are represented as vengeful, dishonest, bad tempered, unpredictable, and vain. Before firing his lawyer, K. has a conversation with another of his clients, a tradesman named Block whom he finds in bed with Leni, in this conversation a debate prevalent at that time in the courts (and which to some extent is still extant today) is introduced: according to the Darwinist, Lombroso, man is born with certain features or traits which are hereditary and which can be recognized as criminalistic and also primitive such as disproportionate mandibles and cheekbones (prejudicial to Asian and American Indians); this is contrasted with Enrico Fermi’s theory in which he sets out to show that crime is the product of a variety of physical and social forces; Kafka decides the argument by having Block say: “they take refuge in superstition.” A minor theme in this novel is that of the alienation and anxiety of humanity in general, as represented by K., who grows more anxious as his case becomes more complicated and also as to its outcome. This is a common theme among all Existentialists, Dostoevsky says: “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible”, and Sartre further stressed by saying: “neither within him nor without him does he find anything to cling to.” According to Heidegger, anxiety leads to the individual’s confrontation with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for their choices; the lack of freedom of choice and the inevitably of disproving K.’s guilt is also stressed throughout the novel. Also Heidegger tells us that each individual must choose to follow a goal, aware of the certainty of death and the meaninglessness of one’s life; we discussed earlier the meaninglessness of the Court’s procedures in this novel and therefore we know that eventually K. will be executed for crimes which he has been found guilty before his arrest was even performed. In Kafka’s The Trial, the entire Austro-Hungarian court system is parodied through the eyes of Joseph K., who is persecuted by unknown forces, even though he is innocent, arrested and executed; without ever his crime being revealed to him. This led to the term ‘Kafkaesque’, which has been used ever since in literature as well as in legal documents. The alienation and anxiety of humanity is also described in the novel, these are also common existentialist themes found elsewhere in literature.

By Georgina H Brandt February 25, 2003 How do the events of The Plague lead Dr Rieux to an understanding of why man’s existence has meaning? In Camus’ The Plague its events lead Dr. Rieux to an understanding of the meaning of man’s existence. In this novel, several existentialist principles are illustrated: first, men have freedom of choice; second, we are responsible for our actions and its consequences; third, what each person does he believes is good for all mankind (we become role models or examples); fourth, this responsibility brings anxiety or suffering; fifth, the absurdity of life through the inevitability of death; and sixth, alienation from societal institutions. This novel is divided into five parts like a classical drama. The first part of the novel is introductory. The town of Oran is introduced as a place where: “…everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, ‘doing business.’ Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as lovemaking, sea bathing, and going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible….” This description illustrates the limited freedom of the population; as slaves of commerce and habits. The plague is introduced as a problem through the death of the rats and the efforts of Dr. Rieux and Castell in their discoveries. Its symptoms are described; and the history of several plagues in different countries is retold. At first, Dr Rieux among others engage in a bitter struggle against the authorities who drag their feet about warning the city because they do not want to create panic. Part II begins with the closing of the city’s gates and the population’s affliction to their imposed exile or alienation from the outside world. This exile is portrayed as: “Still, if it was an exile, it was, for most of us, exile in one’s own home. And though the narrator experienced only the common form of exile, he cannot forget the case of those who, like Rambert the journalist and a good many others, had to endure an aggravated deprivation, since, being travelers caught by the plague and forced to stay were they were, they were cut off both from the person with whom they wanted to be and from their homes as well. In the general exile they were the most exiled; since while time gave rise for them, as for us all, to the suffering appropriate to it, there was also for them the space factor;…” Every person reacted differently: Dr Rieux dedicated himself to his work of saving as many lives as possible (alienating himself from his family); others resorted to loving each other as if they would die the next day; and still others took advantage of the situation by smuggling goods for profit. Father Paneloux calls onto the population to turn to God, for the plague has been sent to punish the wicked; his message run thus: “…to quote a text from Exodus relating to the plague of Egypt, and said: ‘The first time this scourge appears in history, it was wielded to strike down the enemies of God. Pharaoph set himself up against the divine will, and the plague beat him to his knees. Thus from the dawn of recorded history the scourge of God has humbled the proud of heart and laid low those who hardened himself against Him. Ponder this well, my friends; and fall on your knees.’” Dr. Rieux sees it as a test: “…What’s true of all the evils of the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves….”; later Paneloux agrees with him after he sees a little boy die. Solidarity became commonplace, and Tarrou and his friends formed a group of volunteers to help the doctors: “…Since plague became in this way some men’s duty, it revealed itself as what it really was; that is, the concern of all.” At the end of it, Dr Rieux tells us his definition of ‘common decency’: “…it consists in doing my job.” Part III consists of the devastation of the plague and the fight against it. The town and its population is now portrayed: “…contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power of choice…. only a collective destiny,… sense of exile and of deprivation, with all the crosscurrents of revolt and fear…. excesses of the living, burials of the dead, and the plight of parted lovers.” And later as: “…wasting away emotionally as well as physically….” The anxiety caused by so many deaths is portrayed as: “…without hope, they lived for the moment only…. killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship….” and “…the blind endurance that had ousted love from all our hearts.” In Part IV, the protagonist begins to be victorious as the plague is forced into retreat. Rambert decides to join with them in the fight against the plague: “…a life of idleness to one of constant work had left him almost void of thoughts or energy….” Father Paneloux has a reversal of attitude after he sees a child die and his message changes to: “…time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?” and “…in periods of extreme calamity He laid extremes demands on it….” The town also experienced an immense weariness after so much death and despair: “…we all have plague, and I have lost my peace….” and “…nothing remains to set us free except death.” In Part V, the plague is finally but temporarily defeated; nevertheless, the gates are opened, and the town returns to normalcy. Just days before it the population reacted thus: “It must, however, be admitted that our fellow citizens’ reactions during that month were diverse to the point of incoherence. More precisely, they fluctuated between high optimism and extreme depression. Hence the odd circumstance that several more attempts to escape took place at the very moment when the statistics where most encouraging.” Dr Rieux wins the fight against the plague but loses his friend Tarrou to it: “…So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories. But Tarrou, perhaps, would have called that winning the match.” The gates were opened, and people feasted and went to parties; and now Rambert unites with his love, but he is no longer the same person. The events of the plague, its indiscriminate punishment, the relenting fight against it at times without much hope, and the final return to normalcy were quite an ordeal to the town as well as Dr Rieux. Yet he had won, and he rejoiced that the town was happy; even though, he had lost his wife and also his best friend Tarrou. He decides then to write about the plague, because it should come back he wants to inspire others to fight against it; for inspiration and solidarity do indeed give meaning to a man’s existence.

By Georgina H Brandt September 18, 2008 Essay on The Garden of Iden By K. Baker In the Garden of Iden, time travel is not just a means of transportation but a way to fix history. With the technology of time travel, the Company rescues children from various perils to become its agents or collectors of knowledge for the financial advancement of its Chief, Dr Zeus. This Dr Zeus has all the talents of a millionaire entrepreneur, but none of their vices: no greed, gambling, or any perversion towards women is present. In the first 5 chapters, the girl Mendoza is kidnapped by Jews in Spain during the Middle Ages, almost put to death by the Spanish Inquisition and rescued by the Company. During her indoctrination, she meets other children who were also orphans or cannot locate their parents like her. They have all been rescued by the Company and sent to brain surgery to turn them into geniuses. They later meet Dr Zeus, are told of their mission of fixing history, and told to emulate great learned people such as: Dickens, Freud, etc. and to try to stay away from war and bloodshed. At the end of Chapter 6, the Mendoza girl is told about her mission: she will be one of the Inquisitors sent from Spain to England to help Queen Mary Stuart to turn her Kingdom Catholic, after nearly 2 generations of England been Protestant. The Mendoza girl has a very slight chance of succeeding at such an enterprise, and she also will be wearing a costume much hated and persecuted by King Edward, only male heir of King Henry VIII. In Chapter 7, the Mendoza girl arrives to her native Spain and meets her fellow Inquisitors and company colleagues; they are all sent to England to convince the Queen and her subjects of the wisdom of the Catholic faith and to marry the Queen to Prince Philip II of Spain. The Mendoza girl is supposed to develop an exotic plant as a gift to the owner of the Garden of Iden. Joseph, her Inquisitor company savior, hates religious fanatics, yet is accompanying a group of Catholic fanatics to convert an England all ready Protestant by Henry VIII’s rule. Queen Mary, persecuted Protestants and burned them at the stake, and now with this marriage will make her rule stronger, to conquer Europe in the name of Catholicism. Unfortunately, she does not survive the shock of losing the battle of Calais to the French.

By Georgina H Brandt February 21, 2003 Why does Dinesen present Out of Africa as a paradise or a fairy tale? In Dinesen’s Out of Africa the writer describes the land as if they were living in a paradise or in a fairy tale. There are two main reasons for this: first, the land, animals and natives complement each other; second, natives and animals when given the choice between freedom and oppression, they will themselves to die rather than to live without freedom. A minor theme of this novel is that whites and natives complement each other, so that one cannot live without the other. First, the land, animals and natives complement each other as thought they were living in a paradise. In Part I, Chapter I, the author introduces a setting of tremendous beauty: “…combined to create a landscape….There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled…like the strong and refined essence of a continent…. or a heroic and romantic air…whole wood were faintly vibrating….Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.” “…: Here I am, where I ought to be.” She later describes the mountains: “The hill country … is tremendously big, picturesque and mysterious; varied with long valleys, thickets, green slopes and rocky crags.” In contrast, on page 299, Dinesen alludes to the Bible and the story of the Garden of Eden when she talks about snakes: “…Only to the godly man this beauty and gracefulness are in themselves loathsome, they smell from perdition, and remind him of the fall of man. Something within him makes him run away from the snake as from the devil, and that is what is call the voice of conscience….” The Natives are introduced as workers on the land or squatters on page 9: “…the squatters are Natives, who with their families hold a few acres on a white man’s farm, and in return have to work for him …” In Part I, Chapter IV, a deer named Lulu joins the household and on page 76 this union is described as: “It also seemed to me that the free union between my house and the antelope was a rare, honorable thing. Lulu came in from the wild world to show that we were on good terms with it, and she made my house one with the African landscape, so that nobody could tell where one stopped and the other one began….” This novel is an example of pastoral literature, in which mankind is pictured as being connected to the earth and its animals for food and shelter. A pastoral place allows us to understand ourselves better. It gives us a means of placing the complex into the simple so that we can better understand our world. Second, natives and animals when given the choice between freedom and oppression, they prefer to will themselves to die. This is most apparent with the Masai, who are described thus: “The Masai …had never been slaves….they cannot even be put into prison. They die in prison if they are brought there, within three months, so the English law of the country holds with no penalty of imprisonment for the Masai, they are punished by fines. This stark inability to keep alive under the yoke has given the Masai, alone among all the Native tribes, rank with the immigrant aristocracy.” On Part IV, Chapter I, Kitosch’s story illustrates the principle of the will to death of the Natives like this: “….when he goes by his own free will and because he does not want to stay….” “By this strong sense in him of what is right and decorous, …with his firm will to die,…In it is embodied the fugitiveness of the wild things who are, in the hour of need, conscious of a refuge somewhere in existence; who go when they like; of whom we can never get hold.” And later, the same will to die is wished by the author on the giraffes being taken out of their natural habitat: “Good-bye, …I wish that you may die on the journey, both of you, …” There is also a rather modern theme for the times, which is that Natives and whites complement each other. This is apparent in Part IV, Chapter I, when: “The tales that white people tell you of their Native servants are conceived in the same spirit. If they had been told that they played no more important part in the lives of the Natives than the Natives played in their own lives, they would have been highly indignant and ill at ease.” And, “If you had told the Natives that they played no greater part in the life of the white people than the white people played in their lives, they would never have believed you, but would have laughed at you….” Also, when Dinesen talks of pride she tells us the following on Part IV: “…The barbarian loves its own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, the pride of others. I will be a civilized being, I will love the pride of my adversaries, of my servants, and my lover; and my house shall be, in all humility, in the wilderness a civilized place.” “Pride is the idea that God had, when he made us. A proud is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to God’s idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny. As the good citizen finds his happiness in the fulfillment of his duty to the community, so does the proud man finds his happiness in the fulfillment of his fate.” The pastoral style of literature is emphasized throughout Out of Africa. In this style the land is described as if it were a paradise. There is also a minor theme, which is that; Natives and whites complement each other, so that neither is complete without the other.

Georgina H Brandt December 1, 2004 Comparison and contrast of Characters in Hamlet Hamlet is a revenge tragedy of Elizabethan drama, written in about 1602 by William Shakespeare. It is based on the Historia Danica (1200) by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian who wrote it in Latin. Later, an Italian version by Bandello, translated into French by Belleforest in his Cent Histoires Tragiques, was rendered into English in 1608 (Greenan, 83). In Shakespeare’s play, the death of Old King Hamlet triggers different actions in its major characters; especially Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and to a lesser extent Polonius and Ophelia. These actions are disastrous not only to Denmark as a political entity; but also lead to the deaths of the all the play’s characters, except for Horatio. In Act I Scene 5, the Ghost explains to Hamlet, how Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, murdered his father and that he wants Hamlet to avenge his death (I.v.38-90). The Ghost is directly linked to the majority of the play’s themes. For example, he introduces the darkness of evil prevalent in Denmark and in its court, when he says: “A serpent stung me, so the whole ear of Denmark is a forged process of my death rankly abused: but know thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.” (I.v.35-39); and “Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest. But howsoever thou pursues this act, taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.” (I.v.82-88). As a result of this evil, Hamlet suffers greatly when he learns of his mother’s rushed marriage: “…a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer—married with my uncle, my father’s brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules: within a month, …she married. O most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets…” (I.ii.150-156). According to Jones, Hamlet’s successfully repressed covetousness for his father and lure to his mother is readdressed by Gertrude’s remarriage to Claudius, this also results in maternal loss as is apparent from Hamlet’s first soliloquy (Hull.uk). According to Adelman, the son needs ‘to make his own identity …in the presence of the wife/mother’, whose ‘chief crime is her uncontrolled sexuality’ which becomes an object of disgust for her son (Hull.uk). A partial translation into modern English of the first soliloquy is given by Rubinstein and Partridge, which throws immense light on the sexuality underlying it: “ How weary, stale [prostitute], flat [to copulate], and unprofitable seem [to fornicate, with additional pun on ‘seam’: filth] to me all the uses [sexual enjoyment] of this world! Fie on’t, ah fie [dung], ‘tis an unweeded garden [womb] that grows [becomes pregnant] to seed [semen], things [male sex] rank [in heat] and gross [lewd] in nature [female sex] possess it [sexually] merely [‘merrily’, lecherously].” (Hull.uk). Furthermore, Hamlet is dominated by disgust for his mother’s sexuality to an exaggeration; which according to T. S. Eliot is “a feeling which he cannot understand… remains to poison life and construct action.” (Bartleby.com). Additionally, the ‘increase’ of Gertrude’s voracious ‘appetite’ triggers the shift from a comforting ‘her’ to an angst-ridden ‘she’ (Hull.uk). However, there is a stronger incestuous desire in the relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother; as is apparent in the following: “My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time and makes as healthful music”. (III. iv. 161-162). Because of this tendency, psychologists have concluded that Hamlet must have suffered from an Oedipus complex (pinkmonkey.com). According to the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, all males possess this tendency, which is marked by a desire to kill their fathers and marry their mothers; as occurs in the earlier Greek play of Oedipus the king. In fact, Hamlet urges Gertrude not to have intercourse with Claudius at all; and even to curb her sexual desires entirely, when he says: “Good night. But not go to my uncle’s bed. Assume a virtue if you have not… Refrain and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence,” (III. iv. 180-188). Additionally, the Ghost is indirectly related to the theme of Hamlet’s procrastination, which is considered his chief weakness. This weakness was copied from Thomas Kyd’s earlier play Spanish Tragedy; who also wrote a play named Ur-Hamlet (Wikipedia.org). After the Ghost’s visit, in a few weeks, Hamlet’s indecision led to doubt, and more absolute proof was needed. This was acquired as a result of the play on the ‘murder of Gonzago’ (III. ii. 175-265): in Act III, scene i, the King displays his guilt to the audience of the crime committed; and after the interlude he delivers these self-condemning words: “O, my offence is rank: it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon it, a brother’s murder.”(III. iii. 40-42). Later, Hamlet lets his thoughts talk him out of killing Claudius while the King prays; and instead decides to avenge his father’s death: “…when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, …or about some act that has no relish of salvation in it then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, … ” (III, iv, 95-97). According to historical interpretations, it is melancholy that guide Hamlet’s hesitation. Several treatises were written during Elizabethan times about this malady. The primary characteristics of melancholy are: sadness, fear, doubt, despair, and procrastination with additional sarcastic humor. Hamlet displays all these traits: he is extremely sad over the death of his father and hasty remarriage of his mother; he is fearful and distrusting of the Ghost; he procrastinates about taking revenge on Claudius; and falls into despair over his inaction to the point of contemplating suicide, this also occurs from the incomplete detachment from the mother (Hull.uk). In Act III, scene I, Hamlet delivers his famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy: “to be or not to be—that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—no more and by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to—‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—to sleep, perchance to dream.” (III. i. 64-73). He also jests sardonically with people he dislikes, like Polonius. In short, his mood alters between depression and elation (pinkmonkey.com). Although he does not commit suicide, Ophelia, his beloved, does, after Hamlet accidentally kills her father; Laertes describes it thus: “ And so have I a noble father lost, a sister driven into desperate terms, …but my revenge will come.” (IV. vii. 28-31). In 1917, Freud published his essay called Mourning and melancholia in which he identifies its symptoms as: “a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment.” (Freud, 252). Another negative aspect of Hamlet’s personality has to do with misogyny, a hatred of women or womanhood. This occurs throughout the play, but is more apparent when Hamlet learns of his mother’s marriage to Claudius, in the beginning of the play. This hatred stems from a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption; which leads him to reject Ophelia’s love and to call his mother incestuous. Claudius, Hamlet’s major antagonist, is a manipulating, lustful, conniving king; whose only interest is to gain and maintain his political power at all costs. In Act V, scene ii, we see his craftiness when he arranges to have Hamlet killed in a duel with Laertes, who wants to avenge his father’s death, and so Laertes says: “…but in my terms of honor… I have a voice and precedent of peace to keep my name ungored.” (V. ii. 261-265). In this duel, he allows Laertes to use the sharpened sword and the poisoned blade, but also insists on the poisoned goblet; which Gertrude accidentally drinks. This in turn, directs Hamlet’s resolution on killing Claudius and he stabs him, before he himself dies, ending the play. Then, Fortinbras, another avenger of his father’s death assumes power in the name of Norway; granting the end of Denmark as an independent country. Claudius also admonishes Hamlet of continued grief or mourning over the death of his father, but saying that excessive mourning is morally corrupt and even against God when he says: “But to persevere in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness, ‘tis unmanly grief, it shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heat unfortified, a mind impatient, and understanding simple and unschooled; fie, its a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature,” (I.ii.92-102). The uncertainty of life in general is personified in Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Countless questions are not answered in the play about her: Was she romantically involved with Claudius before her husband’s murder? Was she an accomplice in her husband’s murder? Is she a victim or an accomplished manipulator of men? Does she intentionally betray Hamlet? (Shakespeare ‘Introduction’, 13) Each one of these speculations can lead to numerous controversies. Hamlet’s disgust with Gertrude’s moral corruption and women in general is expressed in his first soliloquy thus: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (I. ii. 150). A stark contrast to the personality of Gertrude is that of Ophelia, whom both her father and Hamlet manipulate. In an effort to find a reason for Hamlet’s madness, Polonius suggests to Claudius that his daughter’s love has made him mad: “And then I prescripts gave her, that he should lock herself from his resort, admit no messengers, receive no tokens; which done, she took the fruits of my advice, and, he, repelled …fell…into the madness wherein now he raves…” (II. ii. 151-159). First, Ophelia rejects Hamlet’s advances after her father says to her that Hamlet’s love may not be honest. Then, she meets Hamlet at her father’s insistence, in which she is utterly rejected by him and he tells her to be ‘off to a nunnery!’ She commits suicide after her father is accidentally killed by Hamlet. A third avenger of his father’s death is Laertes, Polonius’ son. He is a man of quick action in stark contrast to Hamlet’s highly procrastinating behavior. Before he goes to France, he warns his sister, Ophelia, that Hamlet’s love for her may not be honest or authentic: “For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more.” (I. iii. 6-11). His father is accidentally killed by Hamlet, while talking to Gertrude, since Polonius was eavesdropping behind the curtains, and Hamlet mistakes him for Claudius. As mentioned earlier, he becomes a pawn of Claudius’ machinations to kill Hamlet; and is killed by Hamlet in a duel. Hamlet is a revenge play in which each of its major characters reacts differently to the death of Old King Hamlet. By fulfilling his revenge, Hamlet ironically destroys his family while upholding his father’s honor. On the other hand, Laertes becomes a supporter of the evil Claudius and causes much destruction. In the end, only Fortinbras accomplishes his father’s dreams by becoming Denmark’s conqueror in the name of Norway.

By Georgina H Brandt May 26, 2008 Essay on The Canterville Ghost, By Oscar Wilde The Canterville Ghost is not just a short story about a haunted mansion with a ghost; it is also a comedy and a parody of British aristocracy. In this story, the author makes fun of American pride and love of wealth by having the Minister who buys the mansion say: “I will take the furniture and the ghost at a valuation. I have come from a modern country, where we have everything that money can buy; and with all our spry young fellows painting the Old World red, and carrying off your best actors and prima-donnas, I reckon if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the road as a show.” The author, Wilde founded the avant garde movement of ‘Art for Art’s sake’ coined by Gautier. However, even fellow artists such as Gilbert and Sullivan harshly criticized his modern ideas in the United States. Instead, in England he became a permanent influence on the decorative arts. His masterpiece, The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891, is also somewhat autobiographical. Due to his homosexuality, he was convicted of sodomy in 1895, and sentence to 2 years of hard labor in a London prison. Shortly thereafter in 1900, he died of meningitis caused by the syphilis he had been suffering since his youth. Getting back to our story, the new owners of the Canterville Mansion or Chase, the Otis cannot believe in ghosts not even after he appears to them in chains. The Mansion bears a permanent bloodstain in the sitting room where the murder of Lady Eleanor occurred in 1575 by her husband. The Otis want the bloodstain to be removed and do not understand the housekeeper’s reasons that this would be impossible and also a great loss, because it is a tourist attraction. The owner’s wife removes it herself, and a flash of lightning lights up the room and the housekeeper faints. The owner’s wife then complains to her husband about the terrible weather and the fainting housekeeper, because she wants to get her fired. Unfortunately, the bloodstain comes back the next morning. After trying to scare the Otis family several times and failing, the ghost becomes extremely sad and utterly depressed. His worst rival were the Otis’s children who first, dumped water down his head a gave him a cold, and then by putting strings in their bedroom caused him a tremendous fall. At the end of Chapter 5, the Ghost tricks the young Virginia Otis and kidnaps her to the Valley of Death, because she is the only one who can understand him from the entire household. Virginia comes back to her family after they have been looking for her for a day, and brings them back to the Ghost to ask for their forgiveness. The Ghost is finally buried and his funeral is held in the following chapter. She wore the jewels left by the Ghost to Virginia later at her wedding.

By Georgina H Brandt February 5, 2003 The Conflict between Slavophiles and Westernizers in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky expounds on the conflict between Slavophiles and Westernizers, which has existed in Russia since the reign of Tsar Peter the Great in the 18th century. In The Brothers Karamazov, the atheistic, intellectual Ivan represents the Westernizers, while the loving, ascetic Alyosha represents the Slavophiles and/or Russian Orthodox. In Russia these two groups are not only two contradictory value systems, but are also politically different. Alyosha, the brother monk, represents the Slavophile movement, championed and protected by the Russian Orthodox Church. This religion venerates elders to whom a group of monks is bound by absolute obedience until their release by him; the elders and the Tsar are considered saints or gods, deemed perfect instruments of God’s love on Earth towards all humanity. Salvation is attained through expiation, prayers and much suffering, a recurrent theme in the novel. Alyosha is urged and encouraged to bring love to the world and peace to his family by the elder Father Zosima. According to The Brothers Karamazov, “elders were highly esteemed by the people … [who] confessed their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings; and ask[ed] for counsel and admonition”. Such practice could become a two-edged sword, and this is also explained in The Brothers Karamazov: “…moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility…may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom”. The Russian Orthodox Church does not based its faith on miracles like Catholicism or confession on the belief of Christ as many Protestant sects do; but on deeds, especially love that is totally non-judgmental. This religion is also Dostoevsky’s answer to Nihilism (absolute freedom) and Rationalism (“Man is not a rational animal”). The mysticism or asceticism of this religion can be equated to Hinduism or Buddhism, in which enlightenment or salvation is attained by unity with God, i.e. spiritual vision is turned inward, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The Slavophiles also believed in the ‘sacred kingship’ of the Tsar, representing the humanity of Christ, while the priesthood symbolized His Divinity; the Tsar is considered a Messiah leading his nation into holiness. Women were not permitted to rule legally, this was changed in the 18th century, after the reign of Peter the Great (the Anti-Christ) who was succeeded by Catherine the Great. The Russian Orthodox Church is against the principles of Equality and the ‘pursuit of happiness’ found in the French and the United States Constitutions respectively; and agrees with Aristotle in saying that “Equality breeds mediocrity”, although it condemns science and progress. The Russian Orthodox Church exists to change the world, not to be changed by it. In contrast, the Westernizers were greatly influenced by French political ideas as expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man; as well as those from the French philosophers such as: Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. The first Westernizer in Russian history was Peter the Great, among his reforms were: establishment of the Russian navy and the school system; but his most unpopular reform was the creation of the Holy Synod. The Holy Synod enabled him and all the following Tsars to control the Russian Orthodox Church; from then on separation of Church and State completely disappeared. With the Holy Synod the Russian Orthodox Church became a department of the State and the Patriarchate was abolished in 1721. He also included the Ukrainian clergy in its midst, and even admirers of German Lutheranism among its saints. His reforms continued thru the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (ruled during Dostoevsky’s life), who took power after the defeat of the Decembrist revolution of 1825; and who also emancipated the serfs. In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan struggles with belief and immortality, life and death, and argues that Man suffers because he does not have the strength for free will. In his poem “The Grand Inquisitor”, he attacks the Roman Catholic Church by saying that it wants power and empire at all costs, even if it goes against God and the Bible. The Catholics prove themselves by ‘miracles’. Ivan affirms that the Church would be more effective in punishing criminals than the State; and that Man prompted to act by self-interest. Ivan accepts God, but not the world he has created. The most famous philosopher among the Westernizers was Chaadaev; who wrote about Kant, materialism, as well as various religious issues. He was a liberal, but among the Westernizers we also find Socialists and Communists. The Communists came to power in 1917, which led to their persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and all other religions in Russia. Publications of numerous religious ideas were prohibited and countless priests were executed, also religious property was confiscated. In conclusion, Dostoevsky depicts the conflict between Slavophiles and Westernizers in The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan was the young radical Dostoevsky, who after the publication of his socialist ideas, was sentenced to death, later commuted to hard labor in Siberia. He returned a new man and a convert to the Russian Orthodox religion. After the death of his three-year-old son, Alyosha, he performed a pilgrimage to a monastery.

By Georgina H. Brandt August 28, 2002 Essay on Antigone, daughter of Oedipus Written by Sophocles- Greek playwright In the Greek play Antigone, we are faced with a conflict between religious or moral law vs. state or human law, represented by the equally proud and stubborn Antigone (the rebel) and Creon (king or state ruler). Antigone considers god’s decrees and her own family duties towards her two brothers more important than any of man’s laws or decrees, even if such rules come from not only the most powerful ruler of Thebes in her time; but her also from a man who is her own uncle. In Episode 1, Antigone and Ismene (her sister) have an argument about what they should do with the bodies of their two brothers: one (Eteocles) who is considered a hero and should be buried with all honors as declared by Creon’s law for fighting on the side of Thebes, and the other whose body (Polyneices) should be left to rot and be eaten by birds as the city’s traitor. Antigone knows the punishment for burial of the latter is stoning to death by the populace; nevertheless, she refuses to shrink from her religious and family duties, and proceeds to perform the proper dead rites upon his body (later in the play when the guard finds her and apprehends her) and gives him proper burial; Ismene, on the other hand, prefers to follow the rule of law without any deviations. Of course, Antigone would have been happier if she could have given them proper burial, without having to fear death by stoning from her own uncle and thereby broken family ties even farther (beyond the conflict of her two brothers and with her own sister), without having to defy the law by setting herself as a rebel against the good of the state, by committing suicide in the end in the cave in which Creon had imprisoned her (buried alive while the dead are left unburied, such irony), thereby leading to the suicide of her beloved Haemon (Creon’s only son). In lines 995-1004, Creon goes to seek the counsel of a blind priest (Teiresias) who tells him leaving the bodies to rot hastens the city’s doom thru a plague ordered by the gods due to his folly and misdirected pride, and also his lack of judgment. As the hatred of his people thickens, as warned by his son, and the suicide of his own son later, he decides to yield to reason, and curbs his pride, replaces his well-meant principles towards the benefit of his city with fear and dread for the gods; but the change comes too late, and faced with so much death he asks the gods to kill him by a crushing weight. Both Antigone and Creon are torn by pride, or hubris, this trait despised by the gods brings suffering, Antigone continues on her stubbornness till the end and denies herself happiness with Haemon because of it. Creon, on the other hand, is less stubborn and has a reversal of mind and action at the end, as was pointed out earlier. Both are plagued by lack of judgment, which leads them to their doom. The conflict of man against woman, or double standard, is a somewhat lesser theme but also central to the understanding of this play. Antigone’s rebellion upsets gender roles and hierarchy; the ideal role of woman in Greek culture is represented by the passiveness of Ismene’s actions. During Creon’s argument with his son, he expresses his chosen course of action of imprisoning Antigone in the face of earning the wrong reputation as a tyrant with the following words: “Better to fall from power, …by a man’s hand, than be called weaker than a woman.” It is in his mind, a lesser threat to lose in battle than to see the whole structure of society as it was known and admired then, toppled by the rebelliousness and stubbornness of a woman’s actions, even though, she was doing the right thing. The lines 995-1004, reinforces my opinion of Antigone’s wisdom in her course of action to bury both her brothers, they also reveal that she considers moral law more important than state law, she also possesses tremendous pride to insist on her principles, and immense courage to do this against extremely huge obstacles.

It is the continuation of Oedipus Rex, but it is more than that, because the story centers on his two daughters and their conflict for women's rights, between law and religion and family values. It also has to do with respect for elders, respect for the law and customs, murder, love, authority, war and funeral rites. A Greek tragedy, greater in meaning and trascendence than Oedipus Rex, by a well known playwright.

historical fiction play about revenge, family problems like adultery, murder, duels, throne rivalry and other violent themes. Is a tragedy strictly for adults, it also explores suicide as a means of salvation from problems discussed above. Many essays and notes exist by different writers. Hamlet was a real prince of Denmark, but he is portrayed with English customs.