Novels

In her article, Amanda Lee Castro discusses the relationship between characters and the physical setting in Chopin's "The Awakening", and the impact of the "destructive" forces in the novel.

Abstract -- Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) is a nightmarish depiction of a post-human world where human beings are mass-produced to serve production and consumption. In this paper, I discuss the manipulations of minds and bodies with reference to Foucault's biopower and disciplinary systems that make the citizens of the world state more profitable and productive. I argue that Brave New World depicts a dystopian systematic control of mind and body through eugenic engineering, biological conditioning, hypnopaedia, sexual satisfaction, and drugs so as to keep the worldians completely controlled, collectivized and contented in a totalitarian society. The world state eradicates love, religion, art and history and deploys language devoid of any emotions and thoughts to control the mind that judges and decides. I argue that Brave New World anticipates the Foucauldian paradigm of resistance, subversion and containment, ending in eliminating the forces that pose a challenge to the ideology of the world state.

The importance of visual imagery in social control is explored, using the novels 'Brave New World' and '1984'. Topics include Aldous Huxley's and George Orwell's condemnation of sociopolitical conditioning, and the misuse and forging of photographs, documents and other materials to achieve it.

This program looks back at the life and work of Aldous Huxley. Best known for Brave New World, Huxley left behind a large body of work, from his early novels which helped set the mood of the Roaring Twenties, to his essay "The Doors of Perception," which became the manifesto of the 1960s drug culture. The program evaluates Huxley's legacy with the poet Stephen Spender, close friends Yehudi Menuhin and Huston Smith, the late drug guru Timothy Leary, biographers Sybille Bedford and David Bradshaw, critic John Carey, geneticist Steve Jones, Huxley's widow Laura and his son Matthew, and in extracts from archival interviews with Aldous Huxley himself. Filmed in California, where Huxley spent most of his life, and in Maryland and England, the program features numerous extracts from Huxley's major works.(50 minutes)

In this essay, Czarnecki discusses the relationship between violence, war, trauma, and gender roles in novels by Silko and Woolf.

Piper discusses the landscape of western influence and cultural appropriation.

The article discusses Leslie Marmon Silko's novel, "Ceremony" and its various characters. It relates the significance of the characters, including the bear, the mountain lion, the deer, and the yellow woman. The author recognizes the importance of the animal spirits in healing the main character by restoring his faith in himself, in the land, and in the ceremony.

This article reads Alice Walker's 1982 novel The Color Purple as a response to the politics of black pride that informed African American writing of the 1960s and 1970s. The Color Purple suggests that black women's open and vocal articulation of (same-sex) sexual experiences can cultivate a liberating sense of black lesbian shamelessness. This sensibility opposes the politics of pride that defined the Black Arts Movement, as well as the politics of silence that has muted black women's expressions and explorations of (queer) sexuality since at least the nineteenth century. The novel characterizes black lesbian shamelessness as an approach to racial, gender, and sexual identification that acknowledges the mutually constitutive, inter-subjective conditions of these categories, as well as the history of black violation in the United States. This article also considers The Color Purple's realist form, arguing that critical backlash in the 1980s against Walker's queering of black literary realism indicates that realism is critical terrain for the simultaneous negotiation of black community, queerness, and anti-racist politics.

The shift in attitude from traditional Christianity to a pantheistic outlook parallels the movement from oppression to freedom for Celie, the central character in Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple.' Celie is dominated and abused by every male figure in the novel, and she associates a biblical God with fear and violence. Celie's growing love for Shug Avery offers the first reciprocal relationship Celie has ever known, and her final letter to God demonstrates the view that God inhabits all things.

In the following essay, Dixon considers how the male characters in The Color Purple shape the protagonist, Celie, throughout her life. According to Dixon, in her novel, “Walker demonstrates that a man’s violent, abusive, and sadistic behavior, intended to control and restrict a woman, can often actually contribute to a woman’s growth and development.”

The representation of the many manifestations of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in several young adult novels including 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' by Mark Haddon, 'Rules' by Cynthia Lord and 'Anything but Typical' by Nora Raleigh is analyzed. Portrayal of ASD in young adult literature where characters with autism is just one element of the plot is suggested.

n Extraordinary Bodies: figuring disability in American culture and literature, Rosemary Garland Thompson contends that disability is another 'culture-bound, physically justified difference to consider along with race, gender, class, ethnicity and sexuality' (1997, p.5). The two reigning models that have marked disability as a site of difference are the medical and the social; the former in both its benign and pernicious forms identifying the somatic and psychological markers of disability and scaffolding around these regimes of medical intervention and correction, the latter involving social recognition of disabilities, and identifying ways to 'establish social equity that do not depend on a medical response, but on modifying man-made societal arrangements' (Saunders 2004, p.2). The medical and social models have been critiqued by theorists in the field who have argued that they are not only underpinned by the view that disability is a 'personal medical tragedy' (Campbell 2004, p.443), but also that they are often mutually exclusive, failing to successfully cognate the culturally discursive, the socially regulated and the multiple realities of disabled people's lives (Price and Schildrick 2002). This paper will situate Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003) within these current debates in disability theory, arguing that fictional representations such as Haddon's contribute powerfully to what Judy Singer calls a more 'ecological view of society', that is 'one that is more relaxed about different styles of being' (1999, p.67).

Asperger's syndrome was only formally accepted into the ICD and DSM classifications of psychiatric disorders in the 1990s. It has been written about extensively in the scholarly literature for two decades, but diagnostic tools are continuing to evolve, as well as understanding of its genetic component and its brain development features. In the criminal law context it poses difficult issues at trial and at sentencing. Contextualising Asperger's disorder within current knowledge about autism spectrum disorders, this article identifies relevant court decisions internationally, and particularly scrutinizes selected decisions in the United Kingdom ( Sultan v The Queen [2008] EWCA Crim 6), Victoria, Australia ( Parish v DPP [2007] VSC 494), and Nova Scotia, Canada ( R v Kagan (2007) 261 NSR (2d) 285; (2008) 261 NSR (2d) 168). It argues that Asperger's disorder needs to be distinguished by the courts from other disorders, such as personality disorders and intellectual disability, and should be recognized as having the potential to affect in important, albeit subtle, ways defendants' thinking and understanding, as well as their emotional responses to situations that are to them traumatic. This makes Asperger's disorder relevant to a number of threshold issues in relation to criminal responsibility as well as to criminal culpability.

Explores Tolstoy's own fear of death and the relationship between "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and Tolstoy's attempts to come to terms with mortality.

For over a century, Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych has been one of the most influential examinations of how we come to terms with our own mortality. Of the many who care for Ivan Ilych, only the uneducated peasant, Gerasim, is able to help him find meaning and resolution before death. An excerpt that describes Gerasim’s key interaction with Ivan Ilych is provided. Analysis of the text reveals how cultural values may hinder a patient’s ability to confront mortality and how unique social barriers inhibit different caretakers’ ability to care for a dying patient.

Extrapolates helping behaviors depicted in `The Death of Ivan Ilyich,' a classic novel by Leo Tolstoy manifested by the central character and his servant Gerasim. Illustration on the principles on the theory of caring modeled by Gerasim; Role of classical literature in demonstration of human values.

An investigation of those who suffer indicates that while many remain in a disabled and anguished state of being, others find personal meaning in their plight that allows them to transcend their anguish. It is shown here that the capacity to transcend anguish and find personal meaning is a socioemotional process that allows the sufferer to define himself in ways that respect his personal agency. Two literary sources are employed here to explore the issue of personal agency--Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Book of Job.

Masterpieces of literature can bring us deeply into our experiences as patients and physicians, revealing otherwise obscure or hidden truths. Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich is such a work of art. This article presents an approach to teaching this novella in a seminar format.

Full text of the novella in PDF form.

This essay examines relationships between men and the role patriarchal capitalism plays in the construction of sexuality in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), a novel written during a critical period in the history of sexuality, as well as of gay and lesbian history. The ambivalence about male bonds—in particular the simultaneously loving and abusive dynamics of mentoring—depicted in this canonical work of American literature reveals the author's unease about his relationship with Catholic priest and teacher Sigourney Fay and provides insight into the author's well-known lifelong anxiety about his gender and sexuality.

This essay centers around one of the most important yet least examined scenes in The Great Gatsby: the moment late in the novel when Nick Carraway, wandering past Gatsby's house, catches sigh of—and then erases—an obscene word scrawled on Gatsby's steps. This scene then gives way to the last four paragraphs of the novel, which stage Gatsby's final redemption and apotheosis as an American icon. Through foregrounding Nick's act of erasure, Fitzgerald emphasizes the process through which the "whitewashing" of Gatsby's reputation must occure in order for Gatsby's story to become the story of America itself. And by emphasizing this process, Fitzgerald reveals a central uncertainty, or void, that lies within the text's final, transcendent vision. This uncertainty is linked to the historical context of the novel, and to Fitzgerald's own suspicions at the time of those who threatened the group to which he felt he belonged, "the old American aristocracy."

In 1919, The New York Timesran an editorial lamenting the end of an era: "L. Frank Baum is dead, [...] and the children have suffered a loss they do not know" ("Fairy Tales" 140). While this article is ostensibly an obituary, it mourns the death of the fairy tale genre as much as it does one of its artists. But the announcement of the fairy tale's demise is a bit late, the article implies, because "a fairy story has to be written by one who believes in fairies," and Baum did not. Observing that "behind the scenes you could see the smile of the showman" (140, 141), the writer describes Baum as a wizard of sorts, projecting images on a screen to entertain his audience, an audience who feigns belief just as much as the author does. "Is the age of fairy-tale writing [dead] ?" the writer asks. "Not so long as men like Baum can counterfeit it. But the real note of sincerity can never come back in this age. We cannot write about fairies with honesty any more than we can write about Greek gods" (142). The editorialist describes another collection of tales as "a perfectly good book of fairy stories for children [...], but no sort of fairy story for people who know what the real thing is" (140). While "real" seems to be a questionable adjective for a genre defined by fantasy, by its subversion of reality, it does raise some important issues about the place of the fairy tale in American culture.

F. Scott Fitzgerald likely gleaned the title for his magnum opus The Great Gatsby from an enigmatic passage in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim , in which the eponymous character is said to be “of great gabasidy” — a polyglot's pronunciation of great capacity. But the parallels between Conrad and Fitzgerald's novels go well beyond the title, most notably in the way that Fitzgerald fashions Gatsby in the image of Jim. Moreover, both Conrad and Fitzgerald meditate on Jim's and Gatsby's “capacity,” which they imbue with a romantic optimism that forestalls the traumas of the past. Fitzgerald utilizes Conrad and his protagonist as a model for how to place a conventionally romantic character within a text that is otherwise preoccupied with modernist forms and themes.

Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' portrays the US as founded on a dream of equality and liberty but corrupted by marginalizing Native Americans, African Americans, and women. Puritan prejudice and conformity is intensified in the fictional Gilead, and those seeking to establish an ideal society have created a place of terror. Atwood suggests in this novel that global human rights will remain a fantasy until the repressive past has been acknowledged.

In Canada, they said, 'Could it happen here?' In England, they said, 'jolly good yam.' In the United States, they said, 'How long have we got?'" Such were the reactions, according to an interview that Margaret Atwood gave to The New York Times , to her futuristic novel The Handmaid's Tale . The British response is the calmest, viewing the work, that is, purely as fantasy, like Alice in Wonderland or Lord of the Rings . Canadians feel, apparently, some modest degree of apprehension. But it is in America, where the tale is set, that reaction has been most intense, most alarmed. By now a canonical text (the self-important term that academics use for books that get taught a lot) in university courses, the source of a film and an opera, a work particularly revered by pessi-feminists, The Handmaid's Tale has been widely viewed as a serious commentary on the socio-political conditions of the day. I want to cast a critical eye on the putatively American way of responding to Atwood's tale.

A literary criticism of the book ''The Handmaid's Tale'' by Margaret Atwood is presented. The author explores the book as an example of a dystopian novel with the central themes of resistance and conflict in a static, prison state. The author emphasizes that Atwood used author George Orwell's book ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' as a direct model for her book.

A type of intertextuality exists in women's writing which is in opposition to the dominant culture, and this is exemplified by two modern novels which utilize ghosts. Maxine Hong Kingston's 1975 novel 'The Woman Warrior' deals with a Chinese American and the spirits of her Chinese ancestors. Isabel Allende's 1985 novel 'The House of the Spirits' covers three generations of a Chilean family. Both novels create authentic female voices by their use of fantasy and the supernatural.

In the following essay, Espadas traces the literary sources that influenced The House of the Spirits. She explains that Allende drew on chronicles of discovery, such as early Spanish texts in the Americas; women’s testimonial narratives, such as those by Clara and Alba; and the basic framework of a love story to present multiple views of a familial history, as well as Chilean social values.

Exhibiting remarkable insight into the human condition, Latin American author Isabel Allende fills this program with the same passion and intelligence found in her many novels. Allende confronts issues that trouble not only South and Central America but the planet as a whole, using her poetic voice to articulate compelling views on immigration, religious fundamentalism, the exploitation of women and children, and the resilience of feminism. The author of The House of the Spirits and Of Love and Shadows also discusses how Chilean democracy, made vulnerable by a kind of national amnesia, succumbed to Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. (Spanish with English subtitles, 25 minutes)

Called "a novel of force and charm" by The Washington Post and "sharply observant" by The New York Times, The House of the Spirits earned Isabel Allende paeans of praise, making its author the most unexpected sensation from Latin America since the emergence of Gabriel García Márquez. In this classic interview, award-winning writer Isabel Allende discusses why she turned to writing novels, the impact of Chile’s 1973 coup, her life as an émigré, and her recurring literary theme of exile. Although at peace with her life abroad, she also describes her longing for her homeland, which continues to take up space in her life. (46 minutes)

By the very first movie in 1902, the first sound - on - movie in 1927 and the first Turkish movie in 1914, cinema is an important art form in our lives from 1895. Throughout the history of 120 years of cinema, as with all areas of life, has been a close relati onship with religion or religious phenomena directly or indirectly. This relationship has lead to positive or negative results but has been effective in each case. The movies like "The Message" which issues the spread of Islam and "The Passion” which issue s the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life are religious films. Beside them movies with subliminal messages also reveal how an important force lies to create religious perception created in this area... In this regard, one of the films that are surrounded by the i nfluence of Hinduism's belief in God “Life of Pi "is an important example. Life of Pi (2012) is an 4 Oscar - winning movie which adapted to the cinema by David Magee by Yann Martel's novel of the same name and directed by Ang Lee. In the movie Pi (Piscine Pa ttel) is an Indian boy who struggles for survival in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean during 227 days with a Bengal tiger after the sinking of a ship. The movie has a clear message which “leads to belief in God”. Alongside this message it uses many metaphor s to impress the audience and gives a magnificent example for how religion could be used in the cinema. According to the film Pi is a boy questioning beliefs from childhood to find the meaning of life, to recognize God. It’s possible to see him as a child who wants to be a baptized Christian and prays like a Muslim besides being a Hindu. He is questioning a combination of religion. After his father’s quote "there is no difference between to believe in everything at the same time and nothing to believe in" h e understands that it’s not probable to be a follower of all beliefs, but this does not also mean to prevent from understanding the others. Today movies like Life of Pi show us how cinema will be a conscious way to strengthen the sayings against Islamophob ia and religious wars.