FOREWORD BEOWULF HARD TIMES ANALYSIS CHAUCER SOCIAL SATIRE LADY OF SHALOTT

I would first like to say that I believe my work has come a long way since I first began writing at Roncalli. This includes some of my best and worst works of art, but they all shape who I am as a writer. Beowulf is my favorite essay because it is simple but yet fun to write and easy to understand. I also enjoyed my Chaucer piece because I got to use my sense of humor in a writing piece. All in all, with the failings and the successes I have had, I think I would have put more time and effort into my work than I have in the past. I have learned patience while working on this compilation of works.

Beowulf is one of the most profound and well-known heroes of the Anglo-Saxxon era. He embodies the most common traits of Anglo-Saxxon warrior culture and is a testament to the violence of the times. Beowulf shows some of the most common and distinctively Anglo-Saxxon characteristics. Beowulf is a pride filled character that does not allow danger or other men to stand in his way. His honor demanded that he win or die. Even when fighting a beast many times his size he refused to use weapons because his opponent had none. He pledges "That I alone and with the help of my men may purge all evil from this hall?he needs no weapons and fears none. Nor will I. My Lord Higlac." (Beowulf 243-247) This pledge shows Beowulf's pride in his work and reputation and he does not want to tarnish it in any way. In Anglo-Saxxon culture, pride and honor are the two things worth losing life over. If a warrior returns home defeated then it would have been better for him to have not come back at all. He will be excommunicated from his home and forced to live the life of a migrant. This kind of extreme warrior society still exists to some degree in the Islamic world, but nothing can come close to the degree of dedication to victory that a Viking warrior had. The closest example in modern times would be the Japaniese kamikaze who would sacrifice themselves and fly their planes into aircraft carriers to kill American sailors. He is also a very courageous, fearless warrior and leader of men. He stops at nothing to lead his men into battle and he kills without remorse or sympathy. He slays Grendel without weapons and then uses the sword of the gods to slay Grendels mother. His fight with Grendel ended with tremendous success for "from the rafters where Beowulf had hung it; was the monster's arm, claw, and shoulder and all" (394-395). It takes courage to face the unknown. Beowulf went up aganst a foe he had never faceed before, a foe he knew very little about, and a foe that had ripped apart whole legions of men armed with swords and armor. He did not take any weapons, armor, or men with him when he faced Grendel. Grendel did not carry a weapon or armor so Beowulf did not either. Beowulf shows the main characteristics of Anglo-Saxxon society. The Anglo-Saxxons valued sacrifice for the glory of honor. Beowulf is the epitomie of Anglo-Saxxon heritage. He is fearless, honorable, and proud. His men loved him and his enemies feared him. This is his legend, a legend of a warrior who would die before he was dishonored.

     

HARD TIMES ANALYSIS  

BY 

CHRISTOPHER ALLEN COOLEYFor

BReel

Charles Dickens paints a portrait of life inside English schools in his story Hard Times. The satire makes the point that schools have become too robotic and autonomous. However, this story also paints a story of the whole English system and one could argue that Charles Dickens was unsatisfied with the British government and British culture in general.

Sir Thomas Gradgrind is an imposing man who deals in fact and truth, not a dreamer or imaginative person. He belives that the children he is responsible for teaching are nothing but “little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.” (Dickens 3). He has been trained to teach no imagination and is a very cold and heartless man. Sissy Jupe is a young girl full of imagination who could think of enough beautiful things for her and Gradgrind to wonder about, however he crushes her and makes her feel worthless in front of her peers. He praises instead the boy Blitzer, whose answer is both factual and accurate.

Sissy or Cecilia Jupe is the student who still has imagination and hope for the world. Gradgrind can almost be seen circling her like a shark, ready for her blood of imagination to perforate the air so he can home in and strike at her very being. He begins to question her about her father’s profession when suddenly the opportunity to deal the fatal blow to her imagination presents itself when he asks he to define a horse. He then exclaims in front of the class (Girl number twenty unable to define a horse,” (Dickens 4). The whole point of this exercise is to show the rest of the class how undesirable imagination is in the face of pure fact, while at the same time dealing a crushing blow to Sissy’s self esteem and imagination.

The point Dickens makes is obviously to illustrate for a reader that the British school system is invariably flawed. The focus is no longer on making children grow, it is on the development of their memory and memorization of straight fact. In fact Gradgrind is so fact-based he does not even allow for the decoration of rooms with animal wallpaper or carpets.

The British society is invariably flawed. The culture is experiencing a cultural reform and technology is coming to the forefront of the world. According to Henry Longfellow, Charles Dickens based some of his work on the book Dante’s Inferno. He even goes so far as to state Dickens's debt to Dante in Hard Times extends not only to the evocations of infernal imagery in the descriptions of Coketown's factories and machinery, but also to the moral analysis Dickens performs on its denizens.” Many ideas such as the moral flaw and virus that afflict the nation of England come from Dante’s Inferno. He feels that England is “"fixed in the slime,” of corruption and thievery. (Inferno 7, 121)

In conclusion Hard Times is a story about corruption and misdoings in the school system and government of Great Britain during the 1800’s. Charles Dickens goes to great lengths to make sure that the people understand that there are social wrongs that are present in his day and age. The satire behind the characters shows an exaggerated world in which the only thing that matters is collective fact not independent idea or imagination. This book is based on the idea that there is grave corruption in England and that hell will be raised before the government allows anyone to think for themselves.

        Bibliography   Colón, Susan. Explicator, Fall2006, Vol. 65 Issue 1, p31-33, 3p; (AN 23653921) Alighieri, Dante. Dante's Inferno. 5 May. 2009 <http://pd.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno>.    

CHAUCER I am a doctor. I have a practice in England and I am making a pilgrimage to

Canterbury for reasons that are my own. I see the hurt on peoples faces every day and there has been nothing I can do for this plague of death that has the wrath of God reaching from the sky. I do not know when this plague will end but by God I hope it is over soon. My wife says that the plague is a trial from God; I hope it takes her next. She is always nagging me to clean the house or feed the donkey. I do not want to live life with this wretched woman anymore.  I am tall, handsome, and I have made my money in the service of the king.I could find another wife. There are many people on this journey, some wise, some foolish, and some who came for lack of somewhere to be. Some of them are quite attractive. I am going to try to get to know some of these people and find a young woman to replace my nagging old ball and chain. I think my life will be better and more bearable then. If I can find a way to dispose of my wife then I will be all set. My life has always been a trial. I was raised poor, the son of a farmer. I broke free from my chains of poverty when I met my best friend Charlie. Who knew he would eventually become king of England? He helped me with my practice and education more than my lowly dog of a father could ever do. Then I met my wife. She was so beautiful. She changed after we got married. She let her body deteriorate and she turned into a loathsome creature. I became afraid of the nightly tussle in the bedroom for fear that she would rip my throat out. If God loves me, he will strike her down with the unholy fires of hell that she belongs in. She came up to me last night and proposed this journey and I am only here because it shut her up. Oh look, the knight has a sword.

 

SOCIAL SATIRE Two-thirds of the adults in the United States are overweight and almost one-third are considered obese

according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. According to the same source, obese people cost the economy of the United States one hundred seventeen billion dollars in 2001. The direct cost of feeding these people is also felt upon the American worker. Because of obese people, normal sized people have less food to go around. This results in more and more people being unable to feed their families. The price of food goes up when there is more demand and the more fat people that go to the grocery store the higher prices are going to be. That being said, the price of broccoli has not risen in almost 10 years. Therefore the United States needs a solution to the problem of childhood and adult obesity. I hereby propose forcing them to get liposuction (at their expense, its their fault their fat,) and using the resulting material from the liposuction to fuel automobiles. This would resolve four issues. The obese people would be better off because of the lack of a spare tire around their stomach, back, and legs. This would result in the death rate from heart disease and pulmanary distress to fall dramatically, thus resulting in more funds from these causes to go to cancer research, a disease that is not preventable by exercising and not being filled with lard. Therefore, by removing the fat from fat people, there would be less heart and lung disease and cancer patients would have more money going towards cancer research. The second problem that would be solved by forcing fat people to get liposuction is food costs would go down. If there is less demand by the fat people of the world there will be more food to go around. The increase in supply will allow more foodstuffs to reach the average sized person and allow the Average Joe to feed his family more efficiently. A drop in the price of food allows for a better style of living and provides a stronger economy.With the newly freed up flow of food strengthening the world economy, more food could be sent to third-world countries to help the poor and needy in the impoverished areas of the world. This would result in the end to world hunger. The poor and needy would be able to come into the shelters and have plenty to eat because lard-filled people who obviously could stand to miss a meal had not consumed all the food before it could be donated. This being said, more people would be able to work in the areas of the world where poor people lived because they would all have enough to eat. This would allow time for them to find work instead of begging for a meal. Forcing people the size of a small car to have liposuction would end world hunger and curb poverty. The fourth area that would be affected by the liposuctioning of fat people is fuel economy. If we could find a way to convert the fat extracted from obese lardbacks into a consumable resource usable as fuel, the United States could end its dependence on foreign oil. This would allow gas prices to fall in the U.S. and because of the new surplus, in the world as well. This would allow everyone to afford the price of fuel in their domestic car and allow the Big Three to continue production without having to spend billions in research on ethonol. It takes 40 gallons of gas to make one gallon of ethenol. This is a reason gas prices are so are. The research into better fuel is breaking the fuel economy back. If the American people forced fat people to get the lard sucked out of them, four world problems would be solved. World Hunger, food prices, cancer research, and fuel economy would benefit greatly from their liposuction. Therefore I modestly propose the United States Congress pass a law requiring people that are clinically obese to pay for lipsuction.A modest propsal to rid the world of fat people

The lady of Shalott is waiting on the other side of the river. There are white willow trees around her and her horses are pulling slow barges. Only reapers reaping early hear her song from down the river by Camelot. In song someone whispers, this is the fairy lady of Shalott.

She moves around by day and night without sleep. She is cursed if she stays in one place and therefore must stay away from Camelot. She moves through a mirror and sees the shadows of the world and therefore she sees Camelot. Occasionally she sees a troop of dancing damsels or a curly haired Sheppard, She sees two knights riding by her and she becomes sad because she has no knight to call her own fair lord. She still delights in her web and prefers to weave in the mirror. More often than not she sees a funeral come to Camelot and it makes her sick of the shadows.

Lancelot arrives and sees her, the Lady of Shalott. He rides in with a red cross on his cheast and stands above her in his shining armor and playing his bugle. He rides into Camelot to met his wife. His golden hair flows in the sun and his armor gleams like a burning flame. His horse runs on shined hoofs and his coal-black mane flows in the wind. Sir Lancelot sings Tirra lira as he moves towards Camelot. The lady leaves her web and her loom to walk to the man of Camelot. She then realizes that her curse is upon her.

The wind blows in from the east carrying a storm that towers over Camelot. The lady finds a boat under a willow tree and writes on it “The Lady of Shalott”. She rows downstream and gently floated down the river to Camelot. She dies as the boat floats down the water and her body continues on its journey. The people find her body and read the name, The lady of Shalott.